Rocketboom offers climate-blues solution

Since watching “An Inconvenient Truth” and talking to my environmental scientist roommate about global warming I have been filled with an impending sense of doom looking at the vast hurdles we as a species would have to overcome if we were to save ourselves from near-certain extinction.
Luckily I’m not the only one experiencing “climate dread” and today’s Rocketboom video offers some solutions.
The daily video log at Rocketboom.com has been a part of my daily internet rounds for about 6 months now and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes refreshing points of view, a pretty woman with a cute British accent and/or very strange feature stories.

Liverpool FC bought by American sports moguls

Liverpool soccer club has just been sold to American businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks. The pair already own a number of sports franchises with Hicks owning the NHL”s Dallas Stars and Major League Baseball”s Texas Rangers and Gillett owning the Montreal Canadiens. This whole affair begs the question: who the hell becomes a sports franchise tycoon? They don”t make a video game for that.
BBC Sports article on the buyout

Loneliness, another "cause" of Alzheimer's

There are a lot of things out there that are blamed for the devastating neurological disease, but what exactly causes Alzheimer”s.
Scientists can describe what it is, sort of, but they certainly don’t know what causes it.  As in any case where we don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on, a number of potential “causes” are popular.  Aluminum (like the kind in 12 oz cans and anti-perspirant) is a pretty popular villain, as well as copper.  I even had an girlfriend once who refused to eat pork on the grounds that it was linked to the disease.  A new report coming out of the US has just added another potential source of the problem: loneliness.  Apparently loneliness, or more specifically feeling lonely can up to double your chances of developing Alzheimer’s.
Does that mean that having imaginary friends could prevent it?

Origami, it's not just for silly napkins anymore

UC San Diego engineers have developed a high-resolution optical lens that borrows its structure from the ancient Japanese art of paper folding.  Using diamond machining tools on calcium fluoride disks to save on bulk, this lens can gain a field of depth that was only previously possible for a glass lens seven times as thick.  Comparing its size to a “lens cap,” this fully functional camera could revolutionize the business of cell phone cameras and finally settle the debate as to whether you really need a separate camera at all.
Check out the UCSD article on this new technology here.

Signs of hope in the transportation sector

I’ve recently stumbled across two innovations in the transportation sector that made me smile and think, if only for a moment, that we may not go extinct in the next hundred years.  The first was this hydrogen fuel cell motorcycle, dubbed the ENV, from hydrogen fuel cell company Intelligent Energy
The second sign of hope was this collaborative project from Lotus and ZAP, the ZAP-X.  This electric crossover will apparently sport a 350 mile range, a top-speed of 155 mph and 644 bhp.  More than that, unlike most electric car concepts it looks like this one may actually go into production.

Surfing goes nuclear

Heather Bourbeau from Wired Magazine Online has just written a short article about the adaptation of super-tough and ultra-light foam used in nuclear warheads to the science of surfboards.  Apparently the material, TufFoam, is better for the environment, lighter, and of course tougher (or is it tuffer?) and will go into surf board production next year.  No word on whether snowboard companies have bit onto the new technology yet.

For Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states the long wait is over

We can finally stop biting our fingernails over the ongoing Cauvery river dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states in southern India. After 17 years of deliberation, the special investigative panel has determined that Tamil Nadu will get the lions share of the available 689 annual cubic feet of water. And you thought the waiting in line at the DMV was bad.rnrnFor more in depth information about the conflict and its resolution (which will be appealed by the way) read this BBC news article . ‘, ‘

We can finally stop biting our fingernails over the ongoing Cauvery river dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states in southern India. After 17 years of deliberation, the special investigative panel has determined that Tamil Nadu will get the lions share of the available 689 annual cubic feet of water. And you thought the waiting in line at the DMV was bad.

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For more in depth information about the conflict and its resolution (which will be appealed by the way) read this BBC news article .

Interview with Takashi Matsumoto

Check out this awesome interview with Takashi Matsumoto from We Make Money Not Art (WMMNA). Takashi is one of those incredible people who see all the wonderful application of technology in society and actually has the knowledge and skills to make it real. WMMNA is one of the better blogs I read on a daily basis and I highly recommend adding it to your daily digest. ‘, ‘
Check out this awesome interview with Takashi Matsumoto from We Make Money Not Art (WMMNA). Takashi is one of those incredible people who see all the wonderful application of technology in society and actually has the knowledge and skills to make it real. WMMNA is one of the better blogs I read on a daily basis and I highly recommend adding it to your daily digest.

Drunk Russians latest sign of global warming

For anyone who has seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” you probably remember the moving animation of the cute polar bear struggling to stay dry on a fast-disappearing ice floe.  The point of the clip is to show how rapidly the polar ice is melting and how it’s adversely effecting the environment.  It turns out that polar bears are not alone in being left stranded out on the floating ice created by global warming.  442 fishermen from the north Pacific Russian island of Sakhalin (the barracuda-shaped land mass north of Japan) were rescued Saturday from sheets of ice, many of whom had spent their time adrift getting quite drunk.
If you still haven’t seen the documentary, you can order a free copy online from sharethetruth.us.  Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is a pretty great Threadless tee inspired by the polar bear from the documentary.  I hope some intrepid, overly clever graphic designer submits a follow-up shirt design featuring the stranded drunk Sakhalinian fishermen.