Originally submitted to Digg by Toughtech 10-12-2008
Found this one late. It’s really the video that deserves the credit for the front page, but the story about rugged laptops has its merits as well. Check out the video - the story itself isn’t wonderful, but it’s not too bad.
Original Description:
Fast, Tough and damn cheap. Why you should 86 your plastic laptop…
Submitted to Digg by life38 8/21/2008
Competition can cause many negative situations. This is one of those cases where a little competition is having an impact. It’s the kind of impact that, if done on a mass scale, can have tremendous results.
Check out Energy Smackdown. It pits families against one another in good-natured competition in hopes of increasing awareness and reducing each family member’s carbon footprint. Last year three families from Medford squared off against each other in the contest, which is taped and shown on local cable. This year BrainShift expanded the contest to Arlington, Cambridge, and Medford, where 10 families from each community will compete.
Live it and love it!
Original Description:
Neighborly Competition can be a good thing.
Submitted to Reddit by SVOboy and to Digg by Sconathon 8/19/2008
The sun is everywhere. It heats everything on the planet.
Roads and parking lots are everywhere.
It just makes sense that someone would come up with a way to harness the power of the sun and the heat collection capabilities of asphalt to produce energy. Frankly, I’m surprised nobody thought of it before.
This article in GreenUpgrader, plus these articles on Science Daily and CleanTechnica, shed some light (pun intended) on the potential of using the abundant combination of road and rays and making a super-potential power supply for the world.
Original Description:
They’ve figured out how to turn cobble stones into /solar panels. What’s next? It’s getting kind of ridiculous.
read more | digg story | reddit story | digg front page blog
Submitted to Propeller by MyWayOnNow and to Digg by bostmaguy 8/2/2008
Are we doing ourselves any favors by screaming “Global Warming!” every time something changes in the climate? Are these things truly run in cycles, and are we in the midst of something right now that is pointing towards the obvious and making us miss the root cause?
Bearing in mind, I am one who definitely believes that global warming is real, it’s dangerous, and we have to do something about it sooner rather than later. With that said, I think the message is lost whenever we start to point every finger at global warming.
The economy? Some blame global warming.
The food crisis? Many blame global warming.
The war in Iraq? Yep, global warming must have melted a certain president’s brain cells, at least according to some.
The point is, we have to temper what we attribute to global warming or the truly addressable issues will be missed.
Original Description:
We’re stuck on the notion that climate change is the culprit every time a natural disaster strikes. But that’s just muddying the waters.
Submitted to Reddit by DisConform and to Digg by kdobo 8/1/2008
There were several stories submitted to social media sites about the MIT breakthrough with a cheaper catalyst for hydrogen as an energy source. Strangely, none of them hit the front page of Digg, despite this being potentially huge news on a huge topic.
The problem with hydrogen as an energy source is in the catalyst necessary to start the electrical production: platinum. At nearly $2,000 per ounce, it hasn’t been practical with cheaper solar and wind energy offering the same bang for less bucks. But Chemist Daniel Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan discovered they could separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water by adding cobalt and phosphate to water and running a current through it.
Cobalt and phosphate cost roughly $2.25 an ounce and $.05 an ounce, respectively.
If all goes well, expect a dramatic shift towards hydrogen as an electrical energy source in the near future.
Original Description:
Cool new research eliminating platinum from the Hydrogen generating equation.
HunterGreen on July 27th, 2008
Submitted to Reddit by someone who deleted it and to Digg by besos 7-26-2008
The idea makes a lot of sense, but then it brings to mind the possible negative consequence of forcing more cars to be built to meet demand.
In theory, we can reduce the carbon footprint of those who have high-pollution automobiles by buying them back, then converting them to scrap (hopefully scrap that can be recycled, but that part isn’t covered). We can assume that the people who take advantage of this will then go out and buy newer, more eco-friendly cars.
My only question: is it worth the expenditure? Can that money be used better in other ways, since we’re talking about a lot of money? Good topic for debate. I would love to see the actual numbers.
Original Description:
Basically, the idea would be to have the federal government buy up many of the country’s oldest, most polluting cars and scrap them; the owners, who would likely be lower-income individuals, would be paid at above-market prices and allowed to spend the money however they would see fit.
Submitted to Reddit by weblaunches and to Digg by studiow 7/21/2008
Dark energy, “discovered” in 1998, seems to be pulling the universe in all directions at once. It has no presence in the current scientific understanding of the universe, but we know it’s there. We know what it does and what it doesn’t. We just don’t know how or why.
Original Description:
“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” Lily Tomlin -Comedian and philosopher. No observation in recent history of science has been more disturbing than the discovery of dark energy in 1998.
Submitted to Newsvine by krishna109, to Reddit by swampsparrow, and to Digg by wawoodworth 7/11/2008
Iran has Photoshop. We have it too. If they can add an extra missle to the image they post online to pretend like all 4 of their test missles fired properly, well by golly, we can do a little doctoring of the image, too. This piece that appeared on Wired compiles images from various sites and their interpretation of “We have Photoshop, too!”
Fark:
Snapped Shot: (my personal favorite)
Original Description:
You too can be like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and make your own missile defense photos!
read more | digg story | newsvine story | reddit story | social media blog
Submitted to Digg by jfew 7/8/2008
It’s an interesting question. Only one animated movie, Beauty and the Beast in 1991, has even received a nomination for Best Picture. Yet, with incredibly high reviews and a blockbuster-style year that is notably short on arthouse films, it is definitely a possibility.
The movie itself has many of the qualities of an Oscar-winning film. It has excellent performances (that they’re animated is merely a detail). There are emotional highs and lows. It has a point that it’s trying to make without preaching too much.
Most importantly, it entertains.
We’re only half-way through the year, but it’s definitely my favorite so far.
Original Desctiption:
Even though most of Hollywood’s Oscar contenders have yet to hit theaters, all that critical and commercial affection is leading awards-watchers to ponder: Could Wall-E finally be The One?
Submitted to Mixx by spuds, to Newsvine by spudsstuff, and Digg by Felix118 7/7/2008
For all intents and purposes, Windows Vista has been a failure. Between hundreds of thousands of people signing petitions to keep Windows XP and the acceleration of Windows 7 by 2 years, it is clear that Microsoft realizes they messed up. It isn’t as bad as many critics think (unless you have an old, slow computer, in which case, yes, Vista is that bad) but Vista is still too cumbersome and buggy to be considered an upgrade from XP.
It’s not a good thing when your biggest partner, in this case Intel, refuses to upgrade their own office computers to Vista.
It should be 18 months before we see Windows 7, but the real anticipation is directed towards what will hopefully be a gem: Midori. It promises to be a complete rethink of the whole Windows metaphor. We are still years from seeing it, but assuming that Windows 7 will be a slimmed down, practical version of Vista, it may be worth waiting for Midori (which means “green” in Japanese) to give us the signal to Go.
Original Description:
Two big things happened at Microsoft this past week. Bill Gates retired from the company after 32 years as co-founder, guiding spirit and undisputed boss. Then, following seven years as its flagship product, the venerable Windows XP —arguably the most successful, and certainly the most widely used, operating system in computerdom—was pensioned off
read more | digg story | mixx story | newsvine story | popFAIL
