Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
A single HUGE windmill provides most of the power for Minnesota’s Carleton College. Another, about 5 miles away, provides power to Saint Olaf College. Both are in Northfield, MN about 70 miles south of Minneapolis.
I was very impressed with how a single windmill could provide most of the power needs for an entire college, and based on the financials of this other project it looks like these things may even be revenue positive.
OK, here’s a great resource for wazzup at Davos, the Davos Conversation site.
Hey, who needs the mysteries of the Da Vinci Code when you’ve got THIS immaculate conception to explain?
Just don’t tell Charleton Heston, OK?
Kim Search Comments and discussion – click here
This effort is very interesting. I’m highlighting notes from a Jeff Barnard A.P. article:
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski wants the state to explore ways of helping local agencies better communicate and coordinate during rescue efforts.
The governor also is concerned that county sheriff’s departments, which are responsible for conducting search and rescue operations in Oregon, may not be funded adequately, spokeswoman Anna Richter-Taylor said.
“Maybe what we need to do is to look a little bit broader and to see if there’s a different relationship, a partnership between the state and the counties, so that we can help the counties in some of these operations,” Kulongoski told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
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Kulongoski’s spokeswoman said the governor wanted to review after-incident reports to figure out where the state can better support efforts on the ground by the local communities.
“Whether it is communications, helping establish a system of centralized communications, or around equipment, the state wants to do everything it can to be supportive,” she said from Salem.
Kulongoski’s budget for 2007 includes $561 million to establish the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network, Richter-Taylor said.The money would go toward building 54 communications towers around the state to allow first-responders from state, local and federal agencies involved in emergency operations to talk to each other.
Related: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,69234-0.html
See comments for more
Thanks to Glenn (hey dude, where’s your blog to link to!?) who just pointed me to this fascinating claim by UCONN professor Ronald Mallet suggesting that we’ll probably be traveling in time this century, and that time travel will be verified on the subatomic level within a few years using this clever experiment:
To determine if time loops exist, Mallett is designing a desktop-sized device that will test his time-warping theory. By arranging mirrors, Mallett can make a circulating light beam which should warp surrounding space.
Because some subatomic particles have extremely short lifetimes, Mallett hopes that he will observe these particles to exist for a longer time than expected when placed in the vicinity of the circulating light beam.
A longer lifetime means that the particles must have flowed through a time loop into the future.
… Mallett – an advocate of the Parallel Universes theory – assures us that time machines will not present any danger.
“The Grandfather Paradox [where you go back in time and kill your grandfather] is not an issue,” said Mallett. “In a sense, time travel means that you’re traveling both in time and into other universes. If you go back into the past, you’ll go into another universe. As soon as you arrive at the past, you’re making a choice and there’ll be a split. Our universe will not be affected by what you do in your visit to the past.”
The parallel universe stuff is not all that fanciful either, rather it’s consistent with the new but increasingly mainstream thinking in physics called “M Theory” that supports the *possibility* of parallel universes that would be essentially invisible to earch other except perhaps by the influences of gravity.
Yes, it sounds like science fiction but it’s not fiction at all, just speculative rather than hard science. At least for now.
Nasa and Google are embarking on a major space information project called the “Space Act Agreement”.
Details are HERE and this looks like annother innovation coup by the Big G:
Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA’s information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.
“This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin
Thanks to Glenn for the tip!
Time gets it right naming you, me, and everybody else in the exploding online community the person of the year. The power of the community internet aka “Web 2.0” is the big story now and for many years to come as millions more flock online every week to surf, buy, blog, meet, marry, and much more.
Unlike the initial thrust that brought millions of ‘techno centric’ folks to the digital water coolers and watering holes of the early web the “new web” has almost no barriers to entry, a far more robust broadband infrastructure, a global reach, and will soon capture all but the most stubborn luddites.
Online community isn’t just big news, it’s great news.
Regarding the study of the history of *virtual worlds*, Timothy writes,
… my habitual dissatisfaction with the tendency of anthropology to visit its own ethical obsessions on all discussions of ethnography as a method …
Phew! I really do need to get back to academia so I can get the PhD and write stuff like that …
… and really MEAN it!
Lots of interesting tech news today from TechMeme which is starting to distinguish itself as “the place” for tech insiders as Digg and Technorati increasingly seek to cater to a huge audience and Slashdot remains problematic because it’s not as robust with community input.
The New York Times reports that Huffington is adding “original” reporting to her extremely popular political blog. I wonder if this is as much for advertising credibility than quality, which clear thinking people know is not a function of whether you get paid to blog or not. Hey, wait a minute. A lot of bloggers (including me) are skeptical that paying people for blog posts, reviews and other online content serves the best interests of the blog community.
Yet nobody seems to frown on a journalist when they get paid to blog. Or, for that matter, run copious amounts of expensive advertising beside quality content as Mike does over at TechCrunch. For the time being I’m refiling my pay per post concerns under the folder “maybe right, but maybe just hypocritical pseudo-elitist nonsense”.
Also at NYT is this piece on the Third World Laptop project bringing cheap computing to the poor all over the world. It’s a very exciting concept that will certainly bring about big changes and also many unintended, unpredictable consequences. I remain confused as to why Bill Gates has opposed the laptop project because even though clean water and health and food are more immediate needs, the Laptops will connect the first and third worlds in ways that will *demand* more proactive participation in third world development by us rich folks. Also this project brings some of the best thinkers – people who often dwell in abstract and expensive first world problem solving realms – into the of “global poverty and development” department of innovation. Gates’ outstanding contributions in this realm are of global and historical significance so I hope he will eventually see how the laptop project is part of this excellent trend that is connecting the rich and the poor.
Aleks Krotoski has a great piece about digital violence over at Second Life where that blossoming virtual community is now under attack by opportunistic and malicious … programs. It’s not only art that imitates life, it’s virtually impossible to escape our human inadequacies even when humans are not physically present in the environment.
And those nifty Zunes can’t seem to crack the IPOD dominance in digital MP3 players. I often wonder how much of the tech trends are habit and how much innovation. Zunes seemed to offer better features yet they appear to be losing the battle. Ironically the neat song sharing feature using DRM restrictions seems to be backfiring on the Zune.
I didn’t realize how specialized glasses had become. There are computer glasses for people who spend a lot of time at the computer, which appear to be a form of progressive bifocal like the ones I have now. The anti reflective coating on these ise delaminating and it’s driving me nuts but I have not had time to take them in. I didn’t realize what it was at first, thinking it was paint or some other residue stuck on the lens. But it’s a coating that is degenerating, causing fuzzy spots on the lens.
I think it’s time to try the computer lenses since I’m at the box 8 or so hours per day.
Joe Duck 