Where is OSHA When You Need It?

Scary.

How Solar Cells Work

A detailed introduction can be found here.

What's the matter with France?

From the Economist:

... Why are the French so restless? The answer is threefold. First, their economy has lost ground. For example, France's GDP measured at current exchange rates has been overtaken by Britain's, which is now 5% bigger (even though the two countries' populations are much the same). Back in the late 1970s it was the other way round: the British economy was only three-quarters the size of the French one. Over the past 25 years, in terms of GDP per head at current exchange rates, the French have dropped from seventh place in the world to 17th. Even allowing for things France does well, such as health care and welfare, the 2005 United Nations Human Development Index ranked it 16th, down from eighth in 1990. The French feel the slippage keenly. Polls show that “loss of purchasing power” is one of their top concerns.

Second, France's heavily planned economy has reached its limits. In the past, the French dirigiste model, which relies on a strong centralised state in the pre-revolutionary tradition established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, served the country well. It speeded up reconstruction after the second world war. It delivered the trente glorieuses, or 30 years of post-war prosperity. And it laid the ground for the rapid transformation of the economy into an industrial powerhouse.

Even today, elements of dirigiste planning have helped to set France up for the modern age. Its high-speed TGV train network reaches into new corners each year: to Strasbourg in 2007, from Lyon to Turin by 2018, with projects to extend lines to Bordeaux, Rennes and Perpignan. As Thierry Breton, the finance minister, points out, France's early decision to invest in nuclear energy, which accounts for 78% of its electricity production, has turned a country short of fossil fuels into a net electricity exporter.

Yet the planned society relies crucially on an intelligent and efficient state, and over the years the French version has become untenable: too many bureaucrats, supported by too many taxes, impose too many rules in too many overlapping organisations. Despite all this effort, there is little sign that the public sector in France is any more efficient than in other rich countries. French public spending accounts for 54% of GDP, compared with an OECD average of 41% (see chart 1). One in four French workers is employed by the public sector. Public debt amounts to 66% of GDP, compared with 42% in Britain, and over the past ten years has grown faster in France than in any other EU-15 country. The baby-boom generation is leaving behind a poisoned legacy: as the title of a recent book puts it, “Our Children Will Hate Us”.

Moreover, in such a hierarchical system people too often expect solutions to be provided from the top. For example, whereas Google was devised by two graduate students at Stanford University, a rival search engine with the unpronounceable name “Quaero” was ordered by the French government from, among others, two big French companies, Thomson and France Telecom. CNN was founded by Ted Turner, an American entrepreneur in Atlanta; a new French challenger to the cable television network, France 24, which is due to start broadcasting shortly, was invented by Mr Chirac and is financed with government money.

The problems have been building up for some time. Thirty years ago, Alain Peyrefitte predicted that the mal français—essentially, a bureaucratic mentality—would stifle creativity and innovation and entrench resistance to change. Another critic wrote in 1994 of a “France suffering from a more profound sickness” than anybody then imagined: a “heavy and inert” state machinery that, if unreformed, would “block the evolution of society”. The prescient author? Mr Chirac.

Even so, politicians have consistently failed to explain to the citizens why the country cannot afford to go on as before. This is the third source of French electoral dissatisfaction. Instead of making the case for change, successive politicians have preferred to blame, and thus to discredit, outside forces—usually Europe, America or globalisation. “The French political class has constructed a wall of lies against the globalised world,” comments Nicolas Baverez, author of “France in Freefall”. No wonder there is no consensus for reform.

GPL Version 3

New article from Forbes Magazine. With Oracle now providing support for (RedHat) Linux, hopefully, Stallman compromises.

Identity Theft 2.0

This stuff is freaky: Hacking into online trading accounts:

... The scams typically begin with a hacker obtaining customer passwords and user names, experts said. One way is by placing keystroke-monitoring software on any public computer in a library, hotel business center or airport. With the software, all keystrokes entered on the computer can be recorded and e-mailed anywhere in the world.

Experts said all hackers have to do is wait until anyone types in the Web address of E-Trade, Ameritrade or another online broker, and then watch the next several dozen keystrokes, which are likely to include someone's password and login name.

These emerging Internet stock schemes appear to be new versions of the widely used "pump-and-dump" e-mail scams, in which spammers send out mass e-mails containing bogus news alerts intended to manipulate stock prices.

Stark said perpetrators are breaking into customer accounts and buying shares of thinly traded, microcap securities, also known as penny stocks. The hacker gains access using the customer's user name and password, then liquidates that person's existing stock holdings and uses the proceeds to buy shares in the microcap. The goal, regulators said, is to boost the price of a stock the hacker has already bought at a lower price in another account. The hacker then liquidates the stock and wires the money either to an offshore account or through a series of straw men, or dummy corporations, Stark said. The straw man may not know he is participating in fraud; he may have been told he is helping, say, an offshore business.

The entire operation can take a matter of minutes, or at most, hours.

"The unwitting victim opens the account in the morning and finds he or she owns thousands of shares in a microcap company that they have never heard of," Stark said.

The Fire Next Time

Set in Flathead Valley, Montana, The Fire Next Time is an extremely powerful documentary, which chronicles conflict in a small town. Things escalate when an ex-mortgage broker from Washington state, purchases and starts hosting a 3-hour daily, talk-radio program. The host goes after environmentalists (taunting them on the air as "Green Nazis"), and their names and addresses start getting repeated on the program.

It is a classic lumber town, whose economy is rapidly changing: mill and lumber jobs are giving way to service/retail and construction jobs. The wake-up call arrives in the form of the arrest of a local militia leader, and the discovery of a huge cache of weapons.

The environmentalists come across as quite reasonable in the film. Some of the locals on the other side, exhibited rage and anger, and some in the film, seemed utterly unable to participate in dialogue. It is a scary look at what happens when one side is incapable is engaging in any form of interaction. Sadly, the talk-radio program becomes a forum where inaccurate information and outright lies get repeated, and distrust escalates.

Actually this documentary reinforced my agreement with Nancy Pelosi's proclamation that if the Democrats regain control of the House, "impeachment is off the table". The Democrats need to show the country what programs they support, and what anti-corruption reforms they will put in place. Impeachment will be a major distraction and a media circus will ensue. Fox News and AM talk-radio will go after them. I'm convinced that their priority should be to show the country they can behave like adults, and hopefully solidify their majority in 2008.

Stay the Course

Kos is right on the money:

You've got to love Republicans claiming that they were never for "stay the course". I mean, it takes some serious gumption to get up and lie so blatantly to people who know you are full of shit. But nope, they have no apparent sense of shame.

The funniest part of the whole mess is that "stay the course" was their own framing. It's their words. It's not like the Democrats outframed the GOP on this one. They outframed themselves.

Mr. Stewart notices it as well:

Remaking American Medicine

Another great series from PBS.

Stem-Cell Research

I'm proud California approved last year's $10B bond measure. Now it's up to the rest of the country, starting with Missouri:

Bill Moyers on Net Neutrality

Excellent documentary, watch it online. One of the organizations I learned about is Teletruth, looking forward to learning more about them.

The Midterm Elections

Charlie Cook is predicting the Democrats will do well next month. The futures markets are indicating that the House will go to the Democrats, while the Senate will still be controlled by the Republicans, although recent trends are looking good for Democrats as well.

Karl Rove and the White House believe that their Get-Out-The-Vote machine will save both houses for the Republicans. I'm more concerned about their ability to cleanse voter rolls and discourage minority and low-income voters.

I advise people to assume the worse, and work hard through election day. If you want to contribute a few hours as a phone volunteer, go here.

UPDATE: TradeSports has similar numbers.

UPDATE: The NY Times has an article on electronic voting and voter registration:

... As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results.

In Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, a shortage of technicians has vendors for new machines soliciting applications for technical support workers on job Web sites like Monster.com. Ms. Oakley, who is also facing a shortage, raided the computer science department at the University of California, Davis, hiring 60 graduate students as troubleshooters.

Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the states considered most likely to experience difficulties, according to voting experts who have been tracking the technology and other election changes.

“We’ve got new laws, new technology, heightened partisanship and a growing involvement of lawyers in the voting process,” said Tova Wang, who studies elections for the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. “We also have the greatest potential for problems in more places next month than in any voting season before.”

Election officials in many of the states are struggling with delays in the delivery of machines before the election as old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines are phased out. A chronic shortage of poll workers, many of them retirees uncomfortable with new technology, has worsened matters.

... “We’re expecting arguments at the polls in these states that will slow everything down and probably cause large numbers of legitimate voters to be turned away or to be forced to vote on provisional ballots,” said Barbara Burt, an elections reform director for Common Cause.

Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.

“In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won’t be able to get a recount,” said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.

Deborah L. Markowitz, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, was less inclined to sound the alarm. She said that since it was not a presidential election year and many states had encouraged voting by mail, fewer people would turn up at the polls than in 2004.

PayPal Mafia

Only in Silicon Valley, from the NY Times:

... Since 2002, when dozens of employees left PayPal after it was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion, those workers have gone on to start or join a new generation of Internet companies and other ventures. They have remained a tight-knit group, attending each other’s parties, helping to shape each other’s business plans, backing each other’s companies and recruiting each other for new projects.

Silicon Valley was largely built by networks of people and companies whose interlocking relationships help to spawn new start-ups. But the PayPal alumni have been unusually prolific, especially given the company’s modest size compared to Internet giants like Netscape, eBay and Yahoo.

“PayPal may have the highest ratio of individuals going off to start or finance new start-ups in the Valley,” said Scott Dettmer, a founding partner of Gunderson Dettmer, who has been providing legal advice to venture capitalists, start-ups and entrepreneurs since the 1980’s.

None of the PayPal network’s other offspring is anywhere near to matching the success of YouTube. But the PayPal alumni have started a number of promising ventures, mostly revolving around the Internet.

Among them is LinkedIn, the largest business-oriented social networking site, which was started by Reid Hoffman, a former PayPal executive vice president. It received funding from, among others, Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder and former chief executive. Mr. Thiel himself started a hedge fund, Clarium Capital, which he said has grown from $11 million in assets to more than $2.3 billion in four years. He also runs a small venture firm with other PayPal alumni.

Another new Internet venture is Slide, a company started by Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, that makes it easy to publish, find and view slide shows on the Web. A handful of other start-ups are in earlier stages of development.

David O. Sacks, the former chief operating officer of PayPal, started a movie production company called Room 9 Entertainment. Its first film, “Thank You for Smoking,” a satire about the tobacco industry, has grossed more than $24 million at the box office. Mr. Thiel, Mr. Levchin and Elon Musk, another PayPal founder, all helped finance Room 9. Mr. Sacks said he had other film projects in the works, but he is also in the process of starting a new Internet company, for which Mr. Thiel provided some funding.

Mr. Musk started a company called Space Explorations Technology, or SpaceX, that is developing relatively low-cost rockets and is backed with $100 million of his own money.

YouTube was hatched by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim, all PayPal alumni, early last year. At a backyard barbecue last summer, Mr. Karim showed the site to a friend, Keith Rabois, a former PayPal executive who now works at LinkedIn. Mr. Rabois later told PayPal’s former chief financial officer, Roelof Botha, who is a partner at Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that has backed Apple, Google and Yahoo, among other big names. After meeting with YouTube’s founders, Mr. Botha got Sequoia to invest in it.

“What happened at PayPal is pretty unusual in that the PayPal alumni have ended up founding some pretty impressive teams and companies,” said Ron Conway, an “angel” or early-stage investor who has backed more than 400 start-ups.

...From the beginning, PayPal hired people whom its founders or other early employees already knew.

Mr. Thiel tapped his network of friends from Stanford, many of whom had worked at the Stanford Review, a libertarian magazine that Mr. Thiel co-founded in 1987. They populated PayPal’s business ranks. Mr. Levchin, for his part, hired engineers in large part from his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had earlier been home to the team that developed the software that would be the basis for Netscape’s Web browser.

One of the first engineers Mr. Levchin hired at PayPal, for example, was Russel Simmons, who went on to become a co-founder of Yelp. Mr. Simmons, in turn, helped convince another engineer, Yu Pan, to join PayPal. Mr. Pan went on to become one of the first people hired at YouTube. Other University of Illinois recruits included Mr. Chen and Mr. Karim, two-thirds of YouTube’s founding troika. “YouTube is like a PayPal reunion,” Mr. Levchin said. A YouTube spokeswoman declined to make Mr. Hurley and Mr. Chen available for this story.

The long-standing bonds created an atmosphere of openness and trust, which not only helped PayPal succeed, but also made it easier for members of the network to embrace each other’s post-PayPal projects.

The founding of Yelp in the summer of 2004 is a prime example. It happened after a lunch celebrating Mr. Levchin’s 29th birthday at the Slanted Door, an upscale Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. There were about 16 people at the lunch, a majority of them ex-PayPal employees, Mr. Levchin said. At one point, the conversation turned to how hard it was to find, say, a good dentist. That got Mr. Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman, PayPal’s former vice president of engineering, talking about a Web site where people could review local services.

On the walk back from the restaurant to their offices — an incubator for start-up companies run by Mr. Levchin — Mr. Stoppelman and Mr. Simmons discussed the idea further. “We were bubbling with excitement,” Mr. Stoppelman said. “As soon as we got back to the office, we pulled Max aside and pitched him the idea.” Mr. Levchin liked it, and the next day he agreed to back the project with $1 million.

Airbus and European Capitalism, Part II

A few days ago, I linked to a discussion over at washingtonpost.com, on European vs. US capitalism. The discussion was hosted by Steve Pearlstein, who had just written about the problems facing Airbus.

Businessweek has also just published an article on Airbus which illustrates the problem with incessant meddling by politicians from several countries:

... Constant political meddling, it seems, is the price Airbus must pay for billions of dollars in low-interest government loans that have helped fuel its growth. Politicians lean on the company to spread work across its 16 European factories, sapping efficiency and increasing the risk of production glitches. "The fairy tale has turned into a nightmare that even the fiercest Euro-skeptics wouldn't have imagined possible," according to Eric Chaney, Morgan Stanley's chief European economist.

The $16 billion A380 project was a victim of that nightmare. The plane's mismatched wiring was produced by Airbus' Finkenwerder factory, a vast complex near the port of Hamburg that employs more than 10,000 people. In many respects, Finkenwerder would be the most logical site for the A380's final assembly line. Thanks to the plant's waterfront location, the plane's wings and fuselage -- too big for conventional land and air transport -- could have been delivered by ship directly to the factory door. Instead, political horse-trading led Airbus to put the assembly line in landlocked Toulouse, where the huge components have to be shipped on custom-built river barges and flatbed trucks. More than 100 miles of highway had to be widened and straightened so the trucks could get through.

SOMA FM

SOMA FM is a listener supported , internet radio station, based in the Mission District of San Francisco. They are located in the same building as my partner's Art Studio.

Please check them out, they depend on financial support from listeners.

Housing Market Futures Contracts

With prompting from Robert Shiller (the guy who put together this graph), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has launched futures contracts covering 10 U.S. Metro Areas. Business Week has an article comparing the futures markets, with econometric analysis. Some people feel that there is not enough trading/liquidity, so the futures prices may be unreliable.

You can check out contract descriptions here.

S3 as a Backup Service

Hmmmm, I wonder if I should start using S3 to backup all my home machines.

Book Watch: Let My People Go Surfing

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, has written a book that I think every college student should read -- or, more appropriately, Business Schools should recommend. It is a look into the history of the company, and the continuing evolution of its philosophy.

The book is written in a casual style but is full of examples of what sets Patagonia apart: from their product development philosophy, sales, human resources, and environmental/social justice practices. I really think that M.B.A. students would benefit from the Patagonia perspective. While Green M.B.A. programs already exist, traditional M.B.A. students will learn Patagonia's approach does not hurt the bottom line. In fact intense customer loyalty always translates to higher profitability per customer. Chouinard recognizes that in order for a small company like Patagonia to influence corporate America, it needs to demonstrate that it's values and methods do not hurt profitability.

This book would make an excellent holiday present. If you think you know and understand what makes one of America's great companies work, think again! I for one learned a lot of cool things in the area of product development and sales. Buy this book and be surprised at how your company can benefit from some of Patagonia's methodologies.

Jeffrey Goldberg

The former Middle East correspondent for the New Yorker, Goldberg was interviewed recently by Terry Gross. I like his humility and learned a lot about Israeli-Palestinian relations through this interview. I recommend it highly.

Europe vs. the U.S.

Interesting chat on the strengths and weaknesses of both flavors of capitalism, in the context of the competition between Airbus and Boeing:

...Steven Pearlstein: Every system has its strengths and weaknesses, and in each place, the two are often inseparable parts of the package. You can't just take the best of our system and the best of theirs and put them together. But when you consider, overall, the competitiveness and dynamism of the two systems, the US is winning -- and the gap is getting wider. I think the evidence on this, much of it anecdotal, is unambiguous now. And the Europeans are now going to have to rejigger their system. Government ownership has largely given way to government interference, but it is still a drag on large, global companies. And you see it in the investment pattersn of European based global companies, which now invest disproportionately outside their region, in part because of the desire to have the freedom of action that they don't have when work is done in Europe. Its not the whole story, by any means. But it is an important cultural and political change that business people know has to happen -- that government officials know has to happen -- and yet they just can't let go.

...Flat wages: I've worked in Europe for years, France in particular. Even smart young professionals, with good education, are stuck in a lockstep income system. There's no way for the really hardworking, bright, and energetic people to reap any rewards from their contribution. And it's tough to be an entreprenuer there too. The French equivalent of the SBA is a joke. There's a significant internal brain drain from France & Germany into Ireland and the UK, where it's easier to set up a new business.

Steven Pearlstein: This is such an important point, and one Europeans don't want to listen to, because it offends their egalitarian sensibilities. If you think this is unimportant, look at what happened in Israel, another socialist paradise of the 1960s. Lots of people lived on kibbutz's then. Now, not so many. Why? Because gradually, in a society where people have choices, the most talented people left the "income averaging" kibbutz so they could enjoy the full economic benefits that come from being a high achiever. And gradually, the kibbutz's became unable to compete economically against free standing businesses in providing stuff for the market or even for their own residents.

Maybe its cruel to say some people are more valuable econoically than others. But its true, just as it is true that some are better at music, at sex, at drawing, at sports. Why is it so terrible to accept different "results" in economics but not in those other areas.

...Silver Spring, Md.: How can you say the U.S. is 'winning' regarding the economic competitiveness of the two systems. This strikes me as American chauvinism at its worst. First of all, stop comparing GDP and start comparing GDP per hour worked

If the U.S. is 'winning' regarding the economic competitveness of the two systems, why is that France is more productive per hour worked than the U.S.? This figure is far more relevant per capita GDP since Americans work more hours per week than Europeans.

Steven Pearlstein: France is not more productive per hour worked when you are comparing auto worker to auto worker, journalist to journalist, etc. The reason we have lower productivity per hour, in an overall statistical sense, is that we have many, many, many more low-skilled jobs in our official economy. These jobs just do not exist in France (babysitters, gardeners for middle class people, housekeepers for middle class people, baggers at grocery stores). The labor and minimum wage laws don't permit it. As a result, they have more unemployment but higher average wages. Its a tradeoff -- and one, by the way, that makes their economy less efficient and discourages economic growth.

George Bush: A Life In Pictures

Jesus is ALWAYS at his side -- literally! From the creators of the Onion.

The Politics of Faith in America

Ray Suarez (formerly of NPR, and now with PBS) gave a great talk on the role of Religion in American politics. It was really interesting to hear him put things in historical perspective. The religious right in this country has taken over the Republican party, to the point that "fiscal" conservatives must feel under siege.

You can download the mp3 of the talk here. The World Affairs Council is another great resource for your iPod!

Kill-A-Watt

I want one of these.

Hardly Stricly Bluegrass

Great write-up in the SF Chronicle. I agree, the crowd was massive. It was a challenge to go from stage to stage. The weather was perfect, and the music was awesome. Only in SF do you get to go to so many free events!

Actually, I think the organizers should charge a nominal fee (say $2), and either use it to fund a non-profit to continue to stage the event, or donate it to charity.

National Credit Ratings

From Business Week:

... Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings are predictors of default risk. Essentially they measure the ability of the government to pay its debt on time. To come up with a sovereign rating, S&P looks at political risk, income and economic structure, growth prospects, fiscal balances, debt stocks, contingent fiscal risks, monetary policy, and external liquidity and external debt (debt owed to foreign creditors). At this point, 19 countries (out of 193) have S&P's highest sovereign rating of AAA, which means that the government "has an extremely strong capacity to meet its financial commitments."

Definitely worth going through the slideshow. Most of the countries on the list have relatively low population. In fact only the U.S. has more than 85M. But with the Republicans running up current account and trade deficits like crazy, how much longer will the U.S. have a AAA rating :-)

The House Corruption Scandal

We urgently need a fresh start in Congress. I am even more convinced after watching this documentary from Bill Moyers:

It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and although Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," says Bill Moyers. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works. Deep in the plea agreements of Jack Abramoff and his cronies is the admission that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe politicians; campaign finance is at the core of the corruption. They took great pains to cover their tracks, and they might have pulled it off except for a handful of honest people, and the work of some enterprising print reporters, Senate investigators, and the ethics team at the department of justice. Following the money in this story leads through a bizarre maze of cocktail parties, golf courses, private jets, four-star restaurants, sweatshops - and the aura of chandeliered rooms frequented by the high and mighty of Washington.

Please try to watch it online.

It's Your Data

In the Web 2.0 world, user-generated data is crucial. But the user needs to have some control over her/his data. MoveMyData is an open-source project that allows you do just that:

Your content and data should be yours to manage and do with as you please. Your images, writing, tags, profile, blog entries, comments, testimonials, video, and music should be yours to download and move anyplace you want.

We will help ensure that no website ever holds your data hostage.

Electric-Solar Car Hits The Market

From Business Week:

The Venturi Astrolab not only uses no fossil fuels but it can attain speeds of more than 70 mph.

It's not often we get lead stories on consecutive days from the same company (never before in fact) but French transportation futurists Venturi have done it again – this time with the first solar electric hybrid to be commercialised in the world. Named Astrolab (latin astro = star, labe = to take) because it takes its energy from the sun in order to move, the solar commuter is capable of working with very little energy (16 kW engine) and of recharging even when in motion, and does not need to be permanently exposed to the sun in order to move. The car's performance is remarkably close to that of a petrol-engined vehicle as it has a top speed of 120 kmh and a minimum range of 110 km. To attain this level of performance while using very little energy, the Astrolab has been designed like a Formula 1 car with an ultra-light carbon monocoque chassis serving as an oversized protection cell in the event of a collision and at the same time offering a large surface for the 3.6 square metres of photovoltaic cells. Its profile recalls the aqua-dynamic design of great racing yachts and Venturi draws the parallel between Astrolab and a sailboat : both advance silently while making best use of the elements and both offer sensations unlike any other. Its designer Sacha Lakic describes Astrolab as "a flying wing set on four wheels."Astoundingly, it's not just a show car - EUR92,000 will buy you one and the first vehicles are scheduled for delivery in January, 2008. Do be sure to see yesterday's equally remarkable story about the world's first energy-autonomous vehicle. Venturi, we salute you!

One of the many tricks involved in the Astrolab is the efficiency of the photovoltaic cells which offer an exceptional yield of 21%, as they are covered by a film composed of nano-prisms, enabling denser concentration of solar energy. Venturi is hoping for even higher yields in the years to come. The car uses liquid cooled NiMH Venturi NIV-7 batteries and enable it to be plugged into the electricity grid, making it the first electro-solar hybrid vehicle.

This is also the first vehicle that consumes no fossil resources in order to work (depending of course on where you live and how the electricity is made in your neck of the woods): the emissions of CO2 required for its construction will even be compensated for by Venturi's environmental actions.

Astrolab also opens up a new era as regards automobile architecture : light and high-profiled, it offers the rays of the sun 3.6 m2 of today's most sophisticated photovoltaic cells (for an overall vehicle length under 4 m).

Optimised to incorporate its solar cells, the Astrolab's design takes into account the effect of passengers' weight on the vehicle's dynamic behaviour. Very light when empty, the tandem architecture makes for perfect balance, whether the vehicle is occupied by one person or two.

East Asia and Mobile Technology

South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines are where mobile technologies (i.e. cell phones) are really an essential part of the culture. From the Washington Post:

... In recent years, growing numbers of people in the Philippines, as well as in countries as diverse as Japan and Zambia, have begun using new features on their mobile phones to pay bills, buy goods and transfer cash to relatives in the same country.

But international money transfers by this method have been slower to flourish, in part because regulators are trying to assure this new channel won't be used to launder money. Tightening the monitoring of international cash flows has become a prime goal of U.S. authorities who are trying to prevent terrorist attacks.

The Philippines, noted for embracing cellphone innovations and heavily reliant on remittances, has plowed ahead on its own. For now, however, phone companies are limiting international transfers to relatively small amounts, such as $200.

Globe Telecom officials said Filipino workers in 17 countries, including the United States, can now use their phones to send money home. In the United States, they said, the service recently linked up with remittance centers in California, Nevada and Texas.

Clean Energy News

The Monthly Newsletter from CleanEdge has a column on the new "Energy" companies:

... Who else could become an "energy company"? Almost anyone who makes metals, plastics, advanced materials, or coatings. Software companies, who may write the code that weaves the cacophony of energy producers into a harmonious system. Big-box retailers, whose spacious, flat roofs could collectively become solar farms for the surrounding community. And, by extension, big real estate developers -- of malls, warehouses, industrial parks, and other large complexes -- creating microgrids of solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cell, and other energy sources. Some of these players already are emerging, with many more still to come.

It may not be long before we're asking, "Who's not an energy company?"

But what happens to these new "Green Energy" initiatives as the price of oil continues to slump? The CS Monitor has an interesting discussion:

Green-energy stocks have pulled back in recent months. Are you worried?

Robinson: About a third of our portfolio is committed to that space. Obviously, with the stocks pulling back, almost directly correlated to the price of oil pulling back, our overall portfolio has declined a bit. But over the long haul, we think the trends are in place so it really makes a lot of sense to have a lot of exposure.

Becker: This pullback is probably an opportunity for long-term clean energy investors. Speculators have probably been driven out of the market.... But if you have a longer term horizon there's probably money to be made from here. The Department of Energy forecasts a gap of 14 terawatts of power globally between now and the year 2050. That's the equivalent of 14,000 1-gigawatt new energy plants. If you opened one a day, it would take 38 years to get there. So the problem is not going to be solved with nuclear and fossil fuels alone.

Build It Green

Build It Green,

... a professional non-profit membership organization whose mission is to promote healthy, energy and resource-efficient buildings in California. Supported by a solid foundation of outreach and education, Build It Green connects consumers and building professionals with the tools and technical expertise they need to build quality green buildings.

Build it Green is featured in a great article about green construction, in the NY Times:

... “The consumers are far ahead of the contractors,” said Dan Taddei, director of education for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, which represents 5,000 remodeling companies, most of which do not emphasize green building.

Although green projects make up only a small minority of renovations, he said, growing consumer interest, along with a lack of expertise among remodelers, spurred the association to start a pilot training program in green remodeling this fall. It plans to introduce a certification by spring.

While no one tracks the number of environmentally friendly remodeling projects, other groups also say they have seen a climb in interest. Build It Green, a nonprofit organization that provides free advice to homeowners in the San Francisco area, says inquiries have risen since 2003, to roughly 150 calls a month, from around 20.

“There’s been a significant uptick in the volume of people who are doing additions or remodels and want to know where to get green building materials or find architects or contractors,” said Brian Gitt, executive director of the group, based in Berkeley.

In the past three years, enrollment in Build It Green’s training course for architects and contractors has grown from 20 or 30 a session to 70, with a long waiting list.