Renewable energy buildings at MetaEfficient.com


I recently discovered a cool site that highlights solar and wind energy using buildings called “MetaEfficient.com”:http://www.metaefficient.com/. Just looking through their archives I’ve found a lot of fascinating buildings and building technologies. For example, the above building is Sanyo’s “Solar Ark”:, a 315 meter long building incorporating 5,046 individual solar panels in central Japan. There’s also a “solar skyscraper”:http://www.cis.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?cid=1116834043894&pagename=CoopBank/Page/tplBlank&c=Page in Manchester that’s worth looking at if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
If you happen to be building yourself, you might also want to look at these “solar tiles”:http://www.sunpowercorp.com/homebuilders/suntile.html or this “domestic turbine”:http://www.mariah-power.com/.

Chemtrail theory


There are people out there who believe that the contrails of jets might not be the result of normal jet operation. Proponents believe that the potentially harmful ‘chemtrails’ could contain radioactive particles, psycho-active drugs, or anything else that is not the product of normal propulsion. These ‘chemtrails’ are apparently being used as part of a global mind-control conspiracy, weather modification, or even as a suspended military communications network in the air. As with any good conspiracy theory, there are a lot of ‘well-researched’ websites out there if you’re interested in learning more. I looked on “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrails, but it’s more entertaining to check out “Chemtrail Central”:http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ (photo credit), “Anomalies Unlimited”:http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Chemtrails.html, and “Chemtrails 911”:http://www.chemtrails911.com/.
(Thanks Dave)

Mahogany car


Normally reserved for high-class furniture, mahogany is an especially strong slow-growing African hardwood. No wonder it was the material of choice to make this all-wood car, the Tryane II. The three-wheeled car can reach a top speed of 101 mph and can apparently get 55-70 miles per gallon. Like many home-built cars, the Tryane II is built on the classic Citroen 2CV engine. Enjoy the picture and if you want to know more, check out “this article”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=451055&in_page_id=1770 from the Daily Mail newspaper.

Sustainable paper products


Apparently the big brands in disposable paper products are not environmentally responsible. While this isn’t much of a surprise to me, it has been to some of the people I’ve told, so up on the site it goes. As usual, Greenpeace has done all the work and put together “Kleercut.net”:http://kleercut.net/en/, a site dedicated to the fight for sustainable paper products. It turns out that Kimberly-Clark, the owner of the Kleenex brand, has a habit of not using recycled paper and instead getting their pulp from ancient-growth forests. Other brands to avoid (unless you for some reason hate the world) are Kleenex, Scott, Scottbrand, Cottonelle, and Viva.
Feeling guilty about going through boxes and boxes of Kleenex this past winter? Buy a “Greenpeace hankie”:http://www.strategicprofitsinc.com/mastercart/Cart/product_details.php?mid=685968961088617609&product_id=454502751098677958.

Killer Apps for Mac – Vienna Reader

http://www.firefox.com because I read a lot of news-feeds on a "daily basis":http://duenos.net/alex, and Safari's integrated reader kicks butt. Packed full of "features":http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna_features.php, Vienna Reader is a freeware feed reader that replaces and multiplies the functionality of any other RSS program, including Safari. It has a great Mail-like interface that is intuitive and just simple enough to use without being ungainly. It's also very customizable, although I ended up going back to the default settings a few days into using the program, and the built-in browser is nice for when you don't really want to open up Firefox to look at a link. If you get any of your news from RSS or ATOM feeds, you need to try Vienna Reader. If you don't, you should start by "downloading":http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php Vienna and "subscribing":http://feeds.feedburner.com/Duenosnet to Duenos.net. Previous _Killer Apps for Mac_: "Adium":http://duenos.net/article/129/killer-apps-for-mac-adium, "Sidenote":http://duenos.net/article/111/killer-apps-for-mac-sidenote, "Darwiin Remote":http://duenos.net/article/193/KillerAppsforMacDarwiinRemote, "Mac Pilot":http://duenos.net/article/174/KillerAppsforMacMacPilot, "Disk Inventory X":http://duenos.net/article/163/KillerAppsforMacDiskInventoryX, "Tangerine":http://duenos.net/article/150/KillerAppsforMacTangerine, and "SizzlingKeys":http://duenos.net/article/119/killer-apps-for-mac-sizzlingkeys.

The obsolescence of men


It’s almost here ladies, the ability to reproduce entirely without men. According to Dr. Karim Nayernia from the Northeast England Stem Cell Institute, his team have been able to grow early stage sperm cells from female bone marrow. Of course, they’ve only been able to pull it off in mice, but this could be the beginning of the end for all of us cursed with a Y-chromosome. To read more about it, check out “this article”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VPBSMUNYG3EAFQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/13/nsperm13.xml in the “Telegraph”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk, to read the report itself, check your mailbox for the latest issue of medical journal _Reproduction: Gamete Biology_.

The ultimate folding bike


Folding bikes are really great for commuters, people living in small apartments, or for traveling. The original paratrooper folding bikes, while foldable, weren’t very good as bikes. Recently that has changed as most convertibles are great at everything, although they can be somewhat ungainly to carry in their folded forms. That’s why this adaptation of the folding bike concept is so cool. The whole thing fits inside the suitcase-looking body shown above. Here’s a corny animated video showing how the folding mechanisms work:

I couldn’t find the original company website, but I got the story from “TreeHugger”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/the_suitcase_bi.php who in turn took it from “Ride This Bike”:http://ridethisbike.com/2007/04/suitcase-bicycle-video-photos-price.html.

Bouncy ball collection

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/3printerpreviewWhile at the "Evil Mad Scientist":http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/superballs blog, I did some more poking around and found this how-to on "organizing collections on Flickr!":http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/superballs. The collection in question? 324 rubber bouncy balls meticulously organized by texture, color, transparency, pattern, and form. The weird thing about it is that all that work made a really beautiful mosaic of color that I couldn't help but post above. "Flickr!":http://www.flickr.com is a tag-based photo/social site that really is perfect for this kind of thing if you have the time. The "original post":http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/superballs is full of detail and well-worth looking at, but if you want to see something else, "this site":http://www.superballs.com/ claims to sell the 'original' superballs.

Piracy is down (the real kind)

As opposed to the bullish media-downloading market, naval piracy is way down compared to normal. In the last quarter, there were only 41 incidents of pirate activity compared to last year’s 61. The numbers itself are not that interesting but the way in which the international community analyzes and manages piracy is really cool. The pirate-control group is the “International Maritime Bureau”:http://www.icc-ccs.org/imb/overview.php part of “International Chamber of Commerce”:http://www.iccwbo.org/. View the IMB’s latest piracy report “here”:http://www.icc-ccs.org/main/news.php?newsid=83.