Bollywood

Thanks to Bruce Sterling for bringing a bit of Bollywood to us today. YouTube in action!

http://www3.youtube.com/watch?v=TrKirCqXIjU&mode=related&search=

I love Bollywood flicks. So dreamy and steamy.

Genzyme

Recently I had opportunity to visit the Genzyme building at MIT. It's built with green tachnologies in mind. I got as far as the second floor lobby, then security said "that's all for the tour." Inside the building are a few artsy waterfountains. The building houses medical research businesses.

A GM phoney?

Fuel-Cell Cars Are a Cop-Out

"GM gets credit from the EPA for producing vehicles that aren't ready for market while doing little to increase fuel-efficiency in its commercial automobiles."

Green Weed

Big breaking news for the fuel economy:

India's Big Plans for Biodiesel by Michael Fitzgerald
"Researchers are developing new methods for cultivating a plant called jatropha."

By processing crops of jatropha, researchers believe they can revolutionize fuel used by the masses. Jatropha is a plant that prospers in any type of soil in tropical regions, especially India.

However, only southwestern states in the U.S., like Arizona or New Mexico, are ready for such a crop. In addition, critics warn that because corn is the leading omniplant in North America, jatropha pioneers will have a hard time making a stake in the fuel economy.

Researchers in India expect to see strides of success made by 2008.

Degrees Apart

I've always wondered about the dangers of social networks. Here's an article by Steve Kerrison that takes a look at the down side of "degrees apart."

From the article, "There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire."

Hope your holidays are merry.

Consider for a moment global warming fed by car emmissions. Must we as global citizens adjust our lives to the new environment of the 21st-century or is it possible to counter the effects of the growing level of CO2 on the planet with technology? Who is contributing to the improvement of our atmosphere?

BMW is working on an engine that burns hydrogen. BMW will then *give* these new engines away to celebrities and to any other high profile personage in an effort to promote the technology. Read more about it here: http://www.technologyreview.com/special/transportation/index.aspx

"BMW's Hydrogen Hopes
Hydrogen may never be feasible as a fuel for vehicles, but BMW is pushing ahead anyway with an advanced hydrogen-gas combustion hybrid."

"An Inconvenient Truth" for Free

From BoingBoing:

Free copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" for educators 50,000 copies of the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth which were rejected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) after apparent pressure from Exxon and oil industry advocates are now offered free of charge to teachers via Participate.net. The giveaway ends January 18, or when the DVDs run out. Teachers can request a copy at this link.

Reptilious Vert

From Slashdot:

"A tiny skeleton from the Early Cretaceous shows an embryonic or newborn reptile with two heads and two necks, called axial bifurcation ('two-headedness') (a well-known developmental flaw among reptile species today such as turtles and snakes) was found in China by French and Chinese paleontologists recovered from the Yixian Formation, which is nearly 150 million years old."

Internet Green

But wait, there's more. Let's consider the effect of the Internet on the World. Around 1995 the Internet went commercial. Academics in my circle and various on the Internet proper went nuts exclaiming that it wasn't secure enough for financial transactions while enterprises set up to cash in on the mass markets suddenly available due to the work of underpaid university faculty and students. Behold the IT .com bubble was born. On the one hand we had the global market door open to the little guy, the guy sitting at home behind his pc shipping out t-shirts, electronics, and stocks. On the other, we witnessed the power of corporations -- like Amazon, Ebay, and Microsoft -- reaching into the home. Remember when Yahoo! was home of the free?

Now the Internet Wars continue in the early 21st-century with the struggle between desktop computing and search engine mania. Blogs, or weblogs, count in the portfolio of search engine. Now is the era of Microsoft and Google. Of course, an era in terms of the Internet is between five and ten years. Google is a "humongatoid" since its inception in 1996 compared to Microsoft which was founded in 1975.

Paper networks cannot compete with the flash of the electronic Internet, thank goodness, save the trees. Although, unlike paper media, Internet date and time stamps have only recently been introduced to the Net via weblogs.

Green Day

Not the band, but my blog.

One of my main pet projects is leading the Venus Burn Movement, an Internet-based Green movement dedicated to highlighting, discussing, and challenging global environmental issues. Updates are disseminated via this blog. The purpose is to hash out Green social issues -- that is, issues pertaining to how the globe operates, the weather climate and what can be done about it, and related social interests. The scope will also include concerns that pertain to the environment that surrounds us, mental stimuli, and the function of governments.

Jim Hansen, director of NASA's climate research center -- the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that for 25 years data has been telling him that Earth is getting warmer, humans are causing it, and this is bad news. Let us begin to discuss.