What the iPad means for Haiti

January 27, 2010

Nothing.

Now give this reporter a job, Huffington Post.


The People’s Processor: China Builds One of Its Own

December 22, 2009

People’s Processor: Embrace China’s Homegrown Computer Chips
Wired

Credit is due to Tom Halfhill on this one, who despite being mentioned only once in the piece, has written thousands of words about the Loongson processor and even traveled to China to really break this story open for Microprocessor Report. His insight was invaluable and there is probably no one else in the West who has thought as much about what a homegrown family of MIPS-compatible CPUs could lead to – especially when it’s backed by the full might of the Chinese government.


Free Solar Panels

December 2, 2009

World Changing Ideas: 20 Ways to Build a Cleaner, Healthier, Smarter World
Scientific American

If you live in California or Arizona and you have a south-facing roof, there is a startup – possibly even startups – who would like to meet you. Their goal is simple: stick solar panels on your roof at no cost (or virtually no cost) to you. Really.


For the Ultimate in Secure Web Applications, Microsoft Clones Your Browser, Monitors Your Every Move

November 9, 2009

ripley_x220

Web Security Tool Copies Apps’ Moves
Technology Review

Imagine a sci-fi future in which a clone of you is modified so that its free will is limited to acts that are morally sound. Now your behavior and thought patterns are compared to it in real time, and if you ever do anything the clone wouldn’t, the thought police swoop in and shut you down. That’s sort of what Microsoft’s new web security invention does, except for web apps.


How to: Build the hurricane mitigation engine known as a Salter Sink

November 9, 2009

Hurricane Forcing: Can Tropical Cyclones Be Stopped?
Scientific American

The oceanographers I interviewed for this piece were not kind to v1.0 of the Salter Sink as proposed in Salter’s first paper on the subject. They did want to see more research on it, however. I’m beginning to think that Intellectual Ventures’ policy of revealing its new inventions before papers on them have wound their way through peer review is a mistake.


Meat is (Climate) Murder. Even the Grass-Fed Kind.

November 1, 2009

2261031493_69b75a38d0
image cc Paul Stevenson

You may have heard that, raised properly, grass-fed beef doesn’t hurt the climate. That’s a convenient lie: a recent lifecycle analysis of the carbon impact of grass-fed beef revealed that cows who are pastured for their entire lives emit 50% more greenhouse gasses than their less well treated colleagues trapped in Concentrated Animal Feed Operations.
Read the rest of this entry »


“Clean Coal” Technology To Be Used On Just About Anything But Coal

November 1, 2009

4024864398_f78031c035
image cc James Jordan

It turns out that removing CO2 from the smokestack of a coal fired power plant and then burying it under ground in a process called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is the most costly, least efficient way to interdict carbon before it hits the atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry »


Think You’re a Good Recycler? Think Again.

October 30, 2009


image cc Anne Norman

In the U.S., only a fifth of the aluminum we toss each year is recycled, according to the report Stop Trashing the Climate. (pdf) Paper isn’t much better – we’re only recycling about half of all our newspapers, boxes, magazines and paperboard.

If you’re a regular reader of Change.org, however, you’re probably already doing your best to recycle aluminum, paper and glass, all of which require large amount of energy – and therefore greenhouse gasses – to produce. (Together, the production of all three of these materials accounts for a third of annual U.S. CO2 emissions.)

But what you might not realize is that, like most households in America, every day you’re failing to recycle a kind of waste whose trip to the landfill is tremendously damaging to the climate: food.
Read the rest of this entry »


Most science “news” is just regurgitated press releases

October 23, 2009

(Don’t know why I didn’t post this a year ago, when I wrote it, but better late than never. Seems newly relevant in light of the launch of Futurity.org, which, you guessed it, is just more regurgitated press releases.)

Did you know that the most-visited source of science news on the internet, Science Daily, is basically 100% unedited press releases?
Read the rest of this entry »