Photo via the New Republic It's a widely held notion that politicians have long been in the pocket of Big Oil. And there's good reason for that perception: oil companies' huge campaign donations, vast lobbying power, and close ties to politicians have ensured that their taxes remain low , that hidden subsidies are around to provide extra funding, and that they receive preferential treatment in US energy policy. But there could be a new, ... View original post here: The Next Big Oil: Big Smart Grid?
So there really isn't anything that deep to this image. It's just a (more or less) life-sized blue whale eye. And on the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society site you can educate yourself/be mesmerized/ waste some time for a while staring at it while the entire life-sized animal scrolls across your browser window. Believe me, it's way cooler than you might think:... Read more from the original source: Ever See a Blue Whale Life-Sized on Your Computer? Now You Can
published May 11, 2011 and has No Comments
Screen capture via YouTube Potholes are ugly, irksome, and often dangerous, but sometimes it seems that no amount complaining ever really helps to get them filled. So, with that in mind, a group of forward thinking Brazilians have decided to make lemonade with all those lemons -- by gathering up their woods and irons to play a bit of ...
Read more...published March 18, 2011 and has No Comments
Photo: GanMed64 , Flickr, (CC by 2.0) To say that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that rocked Japan last week was devastating is an understatement. It wiped entire cities off the map, left a staggering death toll in its wake (though one that would have been much higher were it not for Japan's strong building laws ), and sparked ...
Read more...published March 17, 2011 and has No Comments
It's a Tool to Properly Allocate and Value Scarce Public Space Economics 101 tells us that if we take something valuable and scarce and offer it for a very low price, demand is probably going to exceed supply and we'll end up with rationing, which can manifest itself as a queue outside of a store or traffic jams in ...
Read more...published March 8, 2011 and has No Comments
Only Pay for a Car When You Need One If you live in a rural area, owning a car might not be much of a choice. But in cities, there are so many ways to get around that owning a car often doesn't make much sense, especially now that car-sharing companies are well established and have technologies that make ...
Read more...published March 2, 2011 and has No Comments
Image: LA Bike Plan Bike Plan Approved by City Council The Los Angeles City Council approved a new bike master plan that would potentially make the city much more bike-friendly. The plan calls for 1,680 miles of interconnected bike paths (compared to 378 miles right now), with about 200 new miles being created every five years for 35 years, ...
Read more...published February 28, 2011 and has No Comments
Image: Maritime Connector Food and agriculture giant Cargill will soon start using giant kites on its shipping vessels to generate propulsion—and reduce fuel consumption by up to 35 percent. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger The rest is here: Cargill to Start Flying Kites Across the Ocean: SkySails Will Reduce Carbon Emissions of Shipping Vessels
Read more...published February 4, 2011 and has No Comments
Photo: Screen grabs from video Chapter 1: The New City Our Dear Leader was interviewed for a documentary series about the future of mobility. The first instalment is about our increasingly urban future and how mega-cities are, in Graham's words, "very efficient sharing systems". Graham also gives us a quick tour of his extremely space-efficient apartment (see LifeEdited for ...
Read more...published February 1, 2011 and has No Comments
The battery pack of a Tesla Roadster electric car. Photo: Tesla Motors Turning Batteries Into Batteries In a gasoline car, the majority - on the order of 80-90% - of the environmental impact comes from usage (ie. burning fossil fuels). But with an electric car , most of the impact comes from manufacturing and disposal, especially if you charge ...
Read more...published February 1, 2011 and has No Comments
Image: MTA.me Train Conductor, in the Musical Meaning of the Word Public transit is our favorite way of moving large number of commuters around (except for walking and biking, when that's possible), but it's also - surprisingly - the inspiration for a piece of interactive art. Alexander Chen has taken New York City's MTA subway schedule and turned it ...
Read more...published January 31, 2011 and has No Comments
Photo: Wikipedia , Public domain. If You Insist on Car-Commuting, At Least Fill it Up With People! Thanks to modern social networking technologies and mobile computing, finding people to carpool with has never been easier. But sadly, that doesn't seem to be enough. The popularity of carpooling is in sharp decline in the US, down about 50% since 1980s, ...
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Contrary to previously held notions of how whale songs are shared between neighboring populations, a surprising study finds that whales living the same ocean basin are singing different songs. Read the original post: Study: Humpback Whales Living in Same Ocean ...
"The technology that we have here gives us a first-ever look at the Amazon in its full three-dimensional detail, over very large regions," says the study's lead researcher. Here is the original post: Lasers Used to Generate Remarkably Detailed 3D ...
