environment
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
by TalkToMeGuy
Richard Box, an artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, was one of the first people to discover the phenomenon. He describes it below:
A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground. Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ˜For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible, he says. ˜When it worked, I thought: ˜This is amazing.” 
Photo by Peter Dibdin
For more information and details on the project:
from our friends at DoobyBrain.com Continue reading »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
by TalkToMeGuy
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Blume writes in the Introduction to Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: “Various prospective publishers argued that putting all of this material into one large volume might scare off readers who just want a recipe book of how to make alcohol. They said, ‘All this history and politics is fascinating, but aren’t you afraid that including it in your how-to book would scare away some buyers?’ ‘Put it in a separate publication,’ their marketing experts said. But in the final analysis, I decided that this book should be a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation energy system, combining a broad, sweeping vision with intricate detail.
“I spent four years working on this book with a small team of researchers. I traveled all over the United States in search of the most up-to-date information. In frozen South Dakota, I talked to Orrie Swayze and his farmer and VFW buddies who are taking on the oil companies, and to alcohol combustion engineer and alcohol aviation expert, Jim Behnken. I went to Decatur, Illinois, to see the largest alcohol plant in the U.S., Archer Daniels Midland’s 200-million-gallon-per-year plant. My travels also took me to Brazil to document the world’s largest alcohol fuel program.
Alcohol Can Be a Gas! is the only comprehensive book ever written on alcohol fuel production and use for home and farm. Until now, it has been very difficult for farmers, contractors, alternative energy aficionados, those concerned about Peak Oil, and small-scale entrepreneurs to obtain good, accurate information on producing alcohol, or on converting vehicles to run on alcohol fuel. And with all the conflicting news stories about ethanol, the public finds it difficult to sort fact from fiction. This text, which has been reviewed by scientists around the world, is the definitive reference work on alcohol fuel.
from our friends at: www.coyotenetworknews.com
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
by TalkToMeGuy
"the earth is a source of life that is to be protected…"
Orville Looking Horse
The New Green Economy
Caroline welcomes Bob Gough, secretary for Inter-Tribal Coup, and lawyer for the Lakota Sioux, indefatigable agent of Red Green Power, the development of Wind Power, allying ancient infinite Power with reverently collaborative new technology on Native American reservations.
Price VS Cost !
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
from our friends at www.coyotenetworknews.com
Friday, February 19th, 2010
by TalkToMeGuy
brought to us by our friends at KCSM.org
Friday, February 19th, 2010
by TalkToMeGuy
Solar Dynamics Observatory Launch, Feb 11, 2010
A sun dog is a prismatic bright spot in the sky caused by sun shining through ice crystals. The Atlas V rocket exceeded the speed of sound in this layer of ice crystals, making the shock wave visible from the ground. The announcer can be heard in the video saying, “The vehicle is now supersonic.”
*HD SHORT VERSION WITH SLOW MOTION
44 seconds of magic
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
by TalkToMeGuy
Three years in the making, this riveting new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brothers Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet.
An inside look at the infamous $27 billion Amazon Chernobyl case, Crude is a real-life, high stakes legal drama involving global politics, the environmental movement, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, multinational corporate power, and the fate of disappearing indigenous cultures. Subverting the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, this award-winning film explores a complex situation from all angles, bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus. Rarely have such conflicts been examined with the depth and power of Joe Berlingers documentary Crude. These real characters and events play out on the screen like a sprawling legal thriller.
- Stephen Holden, The New York Times
www.crudethemovie.com
Friday, July 10th, 2009
by TalkToMeGuy
The life story and work of Nikola Tesla.
Here are Some of the Electromechanical devices and principles developed by Tesla:
* various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (1882)
* induction motor and high frequency alternator
* means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations
* alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system (1888)
* Tesla coil
* bladeless turbine
* bifilar coil
* Telegeodynamics
* systems for wireless communication (prior art for the invention of radio) and radio frequency oscillators
* robotics and the “AND” logic gate
* X-rays Tubes using the bremsstrahlung process
* devices for ionized gases
* devices for high field emission
* devices for charged particle beams
* methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current
* voltage multiplication circuitry
* devices for high voltage discharges
* devices for lightning protection
* Magnifying Transmitter
* VTOL aircraft
* Dynamic theory of gravity
* concepts for electric vehicles
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
by TalkToMeGuy
[wpvideo HYSZpHh2]
International Smile For No Reason Day is coming.
This will make you smile. And that will make you feel Good!
Music by General Fuzz
from our friends at www.limitless-one.com
more information here
runtime about 9 minutes
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
by TalkToMeGuy
[wpvideo zMQtUssW]
This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.
Pattie Maes was the key architect behind what was once called “collaborative filtering” and has become a key to Web 2.0: the immense engine of recommendations — or “things like this” — fueled by other users. In the 1990s, Maes’ Software Agents program at MIT created Firefly, a technology (and then a startup) that let users choose songs they liked, and find similar songs they’d never heard of, by taking cues from others with similar taste. This brought a sea change in the way we interact with software, with culture and with one another.
Now Maes is working on a similarly boundary-breaking initiative. Her newly founded Fluid Interfaces Group, also part of the MIT Media Lab, aims to rethink the ways in which humans and computers interact, partially by redefining both human and computer. In Maes’ world (and really, in all of ours), the computer is no longer a distinct object, but a source of intelligence that’s embedded in our environment. By outfitting ourselves with digital accessories, we can continually learn from (and teach) our surroundings. The uses of this tech — from healthcare to home furnishings, warfare to supermarkets — are powerful and increasingly real.
from our friends at TED
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
by TalkToMeGuy
LOS ANGELES — The 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI was named Green Car of the Year Thursday, the first time a diesel has won the award presented each year at the L.A. Auto Show.
The 41-mpg TDI beat out a pair of hybrids, a sporty clean-diesel sedan, and the trendy little Smart ForTwo, to take top honors because, the judges said, it “epitomizes what the Green Car of the Year is all about.”
“It raises the bar significantly in environmental performance,” said Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal and GreenCar.com, which has presented the award at the L.A. Auto Show since 2005. “This is all the more impressive when you consider the Jetta TDI is a clean diesel, achieving the kind of fuel efficiency offered by gasoline-electric hybrids but in a more affordable way.”
The award is significant because the award is presented here at the L.A. Auto Show only to those cars you can actually walk into a showroom and buy. And although the judges include greenies like Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, to give the award environmental cred, it also includes certified gearheads Jay Leno and Carroll Shelby to ensure the award goes to a car you’d actually want to own.
The Jetta got the nod over the Ford Fusion hybrid, the Saturn Vue Two-Mode Hybrid, the BMW 335d diesel and the ForTwo. (More on the nominees here.) The Jetta took top honors, Cogan said, because its 2.0-liter turbodiesel represents the state of the art in clean diesel injection and emissions technology, so the car is clean enough even for California — no mean feat. It’s also a comfortable five-passenger sedan with a list price of $21,990.
VW unveiled the Jetta TDI here in L.A. last year. Stefan Jacoby, president and CEO of VW North America, said the company sold 8,000 of them since it went on sale in August. “This award is a real honor,” he said in accepting the award one day after VW unveiled the new Touareg V6 TDI. “We are confident the popularity of clean diesels will continue to grow.”
UPDATE, 10 P.M. – To answer some questions from the commenters: the Jetta TDI is a 50-state car. Yes, that includes California. Fuel economy figure provided by Green Car Journal, and your mileage may vary. EPA’s fuel efficiency website has not yet listed 2010 models.
from our friends at wired.com
