Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • hotrod® Cartridge heaters

    Hotrod® Cartridge heaters (type HHP and LHT) are core products of hotset’s tradition. Excellent knowledge, high-quality materials as well as the outstanding manufacturing guarantee long life and excellent product features.

    By intensive cooperation – also with special applications – hotset gives again and again innovative impulses to its hotrod® cartridge heaters with new technical features (e .g. humidity-resistant connection area).

  • I-7530-FT RS-232/CAN low speed fault tolerance converter is available

    I-7530-FT is a RS-232/CAN low speed fault tolerance converter and can accurately convert messages between CAN and RS-232 communication media. Compare with the I-7530, I-7530-FT follows the ISO 11898-3 specification. It can resist more noise in harsh environment, and even access CAN messages with single line of CAN bus. In order to use the CAN network with traditional programmable RS-232 devices, we provide an easy way to achieve this purpose by several of user function call. It can be used in the application of CAN bus monitoring, building automation, remote data acquisition, environment control and monitoring, laboratory equipment & research, factory automation, etc. The main features are described as below:

    •Microprocessor inside with 20MHz
    •Built-in CAN/RS-232 converter firmware
    •Fully compatible with ISO 11898-3 standard
    •Support single-wire transmission and/or reception on CAN side
    •Max transmission speed up to 125 kbps for CAN and 115.2 kbps for RS-232
    •Support both CAN 2.0A and CAN 2.0B
    •Build-in RS-232/CAN FIFO buffers
    •Power, data flow and error indicator for CAN and RS-232
    •Hardware watchdog design

  • Infinity Ward drama: Head Jason West let go, IW struggling against Acti changes

    Details are now trickling out as to the sudden appearance of security in the Infinity Ward offices. As it turns out, IW head Jason West had been let go.
     
     
     

  • Geneva 2010: Citroen Survolt bridges the divide

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    Citroen Survolt Concept – Click above for high-res image gallery

    Of all the automakers in the world – and by the world, we mean the world outside the United States – Citroen‘s design arguably runs the gamut more than any other’s. On the one hand, you’ve got cheap, compact and quirky hatchbacks like the comically named Revolte concept revealed in Frankfurt half a year back. On the other, you’ve got the GTbyCitroen, an extreme exotic supercar concept, now slated for limited production. In between lies a gorge as big as, well, France itself. But the chevron-emblazoned automaker has bridged the divide this year in Geneva with an intriguing concept called the Survolt.

    Not digging the Revolte/GT comparo? Think Bugatti Veyron meets Chevy Volt, circa “Hackers”. Beneath the compact sportscar shape, splattered with more neon graphics than “Tron”, lies an all-electric powertrain. Citroen’s provided little in the way of details regarding the propulsion, but you can read more esoteric prose about the design in the press release after the jump. Better yet, check it out for yourself in the gallery of live shots from the Geneva show floor below, and the studio shots in the gallery below that.

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: Citroen Survolt

    Continue reading Geneva 2010: Citroen Survolt bridges the divide

    Geneva 2010: Citroen Survolt bridges the divide originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Picnik Web Photo Editor Acquired by Google

    Another week another acquisition, that seems to be the Google mantra. To kick things off to a good start this week, Google has announced it has purchased Picnik, an online photo editor that integrates with several photo-sharing services including Picasa and Flickr. No financial details have been released. There are no changes planned for Picnik for now… (read more)

  • A Con Queso Dip of Fail

    The Villages’ self-appointed enforcer returns to the Twitterati-set after a two week layoff, and off-putting self-embarassment, to do a a touchdown dance:

    Because SOCIAL secretary of the District is her job, just ask her…or just wait and she’ll tell you.

    And guess who wants to go to her parties and toss his keys in the bowl with the likes of Dana Milbank and Richard Cohen? No, not Harold Ford — but the man who allegedly does far more than stare at goats:

    Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat.

    And before you stop laughing…

    Mickey Kaus draws Michael Barone’s car keys

    And in his Kausfiles blog, Kaus has quite the widely-read bully pulpit, with an estimated readership of as many as 30,000 people daily.

    Oh, yes, the all powerful 30,000 visitors a day. Surely, he cannot be stopped!

    (actual pic from here)

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  • Geneva 2010: 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid and Turbo say ‘Tag in hi-po stereo

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    2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid and Turbo – Click above for high-res image gallery

    Porsche‘s got a lot on the Cayenne line, and having had a look at the new Hybrid and Turbo variants we don’t believe they have anything to worry about. The Hybrid is the first from the automaker, but will be just one of five Cayenne trims on offer, and gets you 23-percent better mileage for what is sure to be a hefty premium. Overall system horsepower is 380 horsepower, yet often times you won’t even notice it because you’ll be “sailing,” which is when the drivetrain is decoupled from the engine and happens at speeds up to 97 mph. Follow the jump for the skinny, and check them both out – as well as that curvaceous interior in the Hybrid – in the gallery of high-res photos below.

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: 2011 Porsche Cayenne

    Continue reading Geneva 2010: 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid and Turbo say ‘Tag in hi-po stereo

    Geneva 2010: 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid and Turbo say ‘Tag in hi-po stereo originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Geneva 2010: Porsche 911 Turbo S is all that in blue, now with “bending lights”

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    2010 Porsche 911 Turbo S – Click above for high-res image gallery

    The Porsche 911 Turbo S isn’t new, it’s just, well, more. All those options boxes on the Porsche Turbo (and you know how Porsche loves options boxes) don’t need to be ticked – Porsche already checked them for you. It’s the torque vectoring, seven-speed-DSG-and-dynamic-engine-mount-having, chrono-sport-timing, all-singing, all-dancing adaptive (“bending”) headlight wearing wunderkind. Oh, and it gets 24.8 miles per gallon. Which makes the “S” short for “sipping.” Kinda. Have a look at the release after the jump and the gallery of high-res photos below.

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: Porsche 911 Turbo S

    Continue reading Geneva 2010: Porsche 911 Turbo S is all that in blue, now with “bending lights”

    Geneva 2010: Porsche 911 Turbo S is all that in blue, now with “bending lights” originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Geneva 2010: Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid Concept mixes old and new

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    Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid Concept – Click above for high-res image gallery

    We got sneak peek of the first ever Lotus Hybrid a couple of days ago, and now we’ve seen the Evora 414E Hybrid in the metallic flesh. Just a slight refresher on the technology, the 414E makes 408 horsepower and a skull-popping 590 pound-feet of torque via electricity.

    That’s right, this is not your Prius-style hybrid. Like Chevy’s Volt, the Evora 414E is an extended-range electric vehicle. Meaning that it runs on batteries (for up to 35 miles) before a 47-hp three-cylinder engine kicks on to provide power. Also, instead of one electric motor, the 414E has two. One for each rear wheel. And since most of the time the car will be running off lithium-ion batteries, Lotus is employing HALOsonic Internal and External Electronic Sound Synthesis systems to make the 414E sound like a “real” car.

    On the outside, the 414E looks like your “standard” Evora, except that this here show car is covered in faux-electric circuitry. Plus it’s painted in a gorgeous shade of matte copper. The real story though, is inside. Talk about Black and Gold! Even if the Evora 414E Hybrid never makes it to production (we hearing it will in two to three years) we hope they offer those seats as an option. Yes, we’re odd people. Deal with it.

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid

    Geneva 2010: Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid Concept mixes old and new originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Geneva 2010: The Porsche 918 Spyder Concept is sexy hybrid madness

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    Porsche 918 Spyder Concept – Click above for high-res image gallery

    We hate to go back to the well-used well on this one but we have no choice: The Porsche 918 Spyder Concept is even hotter in person than it is in photos. About the size of a Boxster, it’s a little wider and a lot meaner. Underneath all that sharkness you get a 500-horsepower V8 in addition to 218 overall horsepower from the two axle-mounted electric motors. And that will get you to 60 in 3.2 lickety-split seconds as well along with the feelgood factor of 94 mph. How badly do we want this car made? Have a read of the press release after the jump and the gallery of high-res photos below while we think about it… but it starts with “OMG so @#$&! want…”

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: Porsche 918 Spyder Concept

    Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

    Geneva 2010: The Porsche 918 Spyder Concept is sexy hybrid madness originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Bloom Box Thoughts







    I would love nothing more than to appoint myself as lead cheerleader for this technology.  Except that we are in the snow job stage of corporate disclosure and the SEC is not there to look over anyone’s shoulder as yet.
    I think that we can accept that they can produce a neat fuel cell component.  So can a lot of other folks, and we can assume that they can at least match industry best practice.  The numbers been bandied about may support superior performance but that is best answered by side by side testing which is curiously not been provided.  Hell, I will accept manufacturer X.  Maybe I missed something, but if I had bragging rights, it is the first thing I would do to bring the boffins on side.
    Then we come to the other issue with fuel cell technology.  How does one produce ample free hydrogen?  The disclosure we have had so far supports only the traditional hand waving laid out by the fuel cell industry.  This is not kind, but solar supported tech suggests no more than solar based electrolysis which we know will not fly.  And hydrogen from hydrocarbons is a messy job.
    So what is the magic?
    Fuel cell technology is simple to explain and yet has shown itself to be technically intractable.  I do not even want to begin to discuss the science that I have been exposed to covered in those last two paragraphs.
    It appears that his argument is mostly that he can produce the cell units cheaply.  If he can, that in itself is certainly important and may allow penetration of the industrial market he has targeted.  I certainly like the manufacturing method portrayed.
    If we can accommodate high temperatures then other issues may become easy.  After all, natural gas is mostly methane.  High temperature forces separation of the carbon and the hydrogen.  If the fuel cell operates at those temperatures, then a lot of bother disappears in the chemistry.  The carbon may simply stay on the separation membrane and not interfere with escaping hydrogen.
    He claims a large jump in energy conversion efficiency for natural gas.  There is still a lot of system heat to deal with that I do not have the answer for yet. It certainly helps explains the presence of a metal layer between the cells as this device is possibly a heat engine running at 800 degrees.
    I am sure there is more to come and if third party buyers are happy then cheaper is surely in the cards.  The big advantage is extracting twice the power from natural gas which is certainly a welcome development.
    Bloom: Thinking inside the box
         
    26 FEB 2010 3:16 PM

    BY TODD WOODY
    http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-26-bloom-thinking-inside-the-box
    Green tech had its Google moment this week in Silicon Valley when one of the most secretive and well-funded startups around, Bloom Energy, literally lifted the curtain on what it claims is a breakthrough in fuel cell technology: affordable electricity! Fewer greenhouse gas emissions! And that’s all before they throw in the bamboo steamer.  
    After eight years in stealth mode—until this week, Bloom’s website featured the company’s name and little else—the startup pulled out the stops in a carefully stage-managed media blitz that recalled the high-flying dot-com days of a decade ago. First came a report on “60 Minutes” that got the blogs abuzz along with stories in Fortune and The New York Times.
    It all culminated in a star-studded press conference at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose on Wednesday, where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, K.R. Sridhar, and gave him a bear hug before several hundred suits, environmental movement honchos and a bank of television cameras.
    Before Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and a Bloom board member, delivered the benediction, testimonials were offered by Google co-founder Larry Page and top executives from Wal-Mart, eBay, Federal Express, Coca-Cola, and other Fortune 500 companies that had quietly purchased 100-kilowatt Bloom Energy Servers over the past year. 
    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), meanwhile, beamed in a bipartisan endorsement via video.
    “This technology is going to fundamentally change the world,” the California Democrat declared.
    But is it?
    That’s the $400 million question (what some of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capitalists have poured into Bloom so far).
    With the hype—the apparently brilliant but unassuming Sridhar was compared to Steve Jobs at one point Wednesday—comes the backlash. Almost immediately analysts and competitors began asking hard questions about Bloom’s claims.
    And there are some big unknowns. Will the fuel cell stacks last as long as the company anticipates or will frequent replacement undermine the economics of going off the grid, for both Bloom and their customers?
    What’s the total cost of ownership for customers? Bloom says the energy servers have a lifespan of 10 years and a payback period of three to five years. That’s based on the current price of natural gas—which is one fuel used by the devices—and state and federal subsidies that halve the cost of the machines that sell for between $700,000 and $800,000. Will Bloom be able to scale up manufacturing and continue to innovate to bring the price of the energy server down? Can they be competitive without subsidies?
    All legitimate questions. But it’s important not to lose sight of what looks to be some fundamental breakthroughs, not only in energy technology but in the way some major corporate players are embracing distributed generation-placing electricity production where it is consumed.
    Fuel cells convert hydrogen, natural gas, or another fuel into electricity through an electrochemical process that results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
    For decades scientists have sought to create a solid oxide fuel cell that can operate at extremely high temperatures-around 800 degrees C. That increases efficiency and eliminates the need for expensive precious metals and rare earth elements required as catalysts in lower-temperature fuel cells.
    The challenge has been to engineer fuels cells that can withstand such high temperatures without cracking or leaking. UTC Power, the leading fuel cell maker, for instance, has spent three decades trying to perfect a cost-competitive and durable solid oxide fuel cell.
    Bloom says it cracked the code by using a combination of common materials like sand and proprietary technology.
    “What we have today is a very sellable product and that’s why people are buying it,” Sridhar, a 49-year-old former NASA scientist, said as he gave me a tour of company’s manufacturing operations before Wednesday’s unveiling of the Bloom Box.
    One side of the building located in a non-descript Silicon Valley office park resembles a semiconductor clean room. Thin ceramic fuel cells the size of floppy disks shuffle through machines that paint them with green and black inks that serve as the devices’ anodes and cathodes, respectively. Next door, workers assemble 25-watt fuel cells into one-kilowatt stacks that are inserted into a metal cylinder, which in turn is placed into a silver metal cube.
    In another area of the office, employees monitor the 30 Bloom Energy Servers in operation at companies around California. On one screen, video of a Bloom Box installed at Google appears along with a stream of data.
    “Customers like Wal-Mart believe in doing the green thing but they absolutely believe in the bottom line,” says Sridhar. “The technology had to pass the muster and the muster simply was the rate of return on the investment.”
    As the world’s largest corporation, Wal-Mart alone could be the key to giving Bloom and its many competitors a market to drive down costs and continue innovating. 
    “We would like to be able to do this at scale,” Bill Simon, Wal-Mart’s chief operating officer, said on Wednesday in San Jose, noting the company had installed Bloom Boxes at two of its California stores. (Wal-Mart on Thursday announced that it is requiring its suppliers to cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015. As one speaker at the Cleantech Forum confab in San Francisco on Thursday noted, Wal-Mart has the heft to set global climate change policy while governments dither.)
    Sridhar says the Bloom Energy Server generates electricity at 50 percent to 55 percent efficiency, which is about twice as efficient as the overall power grid. Unlike competing systems, the Bloom Box will not repurpose excess heat to warm buildings and water, which can raise the overall energy efficiency of fuel cells to 90 percent. The tradeoff is that installing so-called combined heat and power systems is an expensive and months-long process.
    The Bloom Box is plug and play—“power in hours,” as company executives like to say. That removes hurdles from the deployment of widespread distributed generation.
    “I’d love to see us have a whole data center running on this at some point when they’re ready,” Google’s Larry Page said Wednesday. “Moving production of energy closer to where it’s used has a lot of environmental benefits and a lot of commercial benefits. It lets you choose your fuel source.”
    There’s been much debate about the environmental impact of the Bloom fuel cells. Most will use natural gas and thus emit carbon dioxide, though much less than a typical fossil fuel power plant. If they use biogas—made from methane emitted by cow manure—carbon footprint drops to zero. But to have any meaningful impact, there will need to be a huge ramp up in biogas production .
    But distributed generation, even when powered by natural gas, offers other environmental benefits. New transmission lines don’t need to be built—itself a carbon-intensive process—and you don’t lose efficiency by transmitting electricity from a distant power plant.
    Rather than judge the Bloom Box unveiled Wednesday as a final product, it’s probably best to view it as the 1.0 version.
    The pressure will be on Bloom to build cleaner and cleaner versions of its fuel cell if they are to be placed in cities and, as the company predicts, in backyards one day.
    For instance, Bloom has patented and tested a next-generation fuel cell that would tap solar electricity from a rooftop array to produce hydrogen that could be stored and used to generate electricity at night or when the sun does not shine.
    “That’s the killer app,” said Sridhar.
    As he noted Wednesday, “Why clean? Is it because you’re an environmentalist? Because of regulation? No. For energy to be distributed it also has to be clean.”
    I am adding this comment from a energy industry pro to add some additional insight.

    An Open Letter to John Doerr Regarding Bloom Energy

    Welcome to the energy business.

    Dear John,

    AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN DOERR
    I want to congratulate you and all your colleagues at Bloom Energy.  Both for putting on a great show over the last several days, but more importantly for having the fortitude necessary to make it to this point. I am sure that you and KR are acutely aware that you are standing on the shoulders of many good technologists from the past.
    Welcome to the energy business.
    I’ve been in the business, oops, space — both clean and not so clean — for almost four decades. I have to admit that I am a technology junkie and wouldn’t make a good VC, since I never met an energy technology or energy technologist that I didn’t like (well, almost never).
    But I’d like to talk to you a little like a “Dutch Uncle,” since you and Bloom are entering what is really new territory for you, but old and familiar to me.
    First, the technology is not really all that disruptive. As a matter of fact, when Clayton Christensen published his first book (1997), he spoke at a local angel investors group in Palo Alto. He mentioned that someone told him “fuel cells were a new, disruptive technology for the energy business.” He looked a little sheepish when I told him that fuel cells had been around forever. Yes, the technology sizzles (metaphorically, I hope), but there are other ways to get where you say you are right now.
    For instance, a 650-kilowatt Caterpillar genset fueled with natural gas and backed up by a 500-kilowatt diesel genset and all the necessary electric panels costs under $1 million. Home Depot had four similar systems operating from 2004 to 2006 around New York City. Gas prices were about $6.50/Mcf (Mcf = 1000 cubic feet) at the meter and the cost of generation was about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Home Depot didn’t purchase any power from ConEd and saved $30,000 per year (about 10 percent) for each of the stores. Last year, natural gas prices in California to commercial customers ranged from about $6.00/Mcf to about $9.50, so the old-style gensets are still in the mix to the right customers.
    Each of the Home Depot units cost about twice what you say your customers pay for each of the Bloom Servers, with all the “price supports.” The gensets use about 60 percent more natural gas per kilowatt-hour.  But each of the units at The Home Depot produced more than six times the amount of electricity as each of the Bloom Energy Servers. You can spend a lot on natural gas for the savings in capital costs.
    So the Bloom Servers really don’t provide such a big disruption in the business of distributed power, and maybe not all that much of a technology disruption.
    They do seem, at least from the outside, to be providing some substantial improvements in fuel cells. It used to be that the size of solid oxide fuel cells had a tough time going below about 250 kilowatts because of the sizing of the steam reformer — that’s the thing that takes the fuel and chops off the hydrogen from the methane or hydrocarbon molecule. It sounds as though you have pushed that along pretty well.
    I thought General Powell hit on some really good points.
    Developing countries need power.  KR can tell you that the gensets that Caterpillar and others supply are a ubiquitous part of life in most of these countries. At least ubiquitous for the elites. There is a fantastic after-market for refurbished gensets from the U.S. and Europe into these countries. So here again, you’ll run into some obstacles at the pricing points you currently have. That’s not to say that the Bloom Energy Server can’t contribute. Since the fuel cell is more forgiving with respect to the type fuel, the generation of biogas and biofuels in developing areas could be huge. At the right price.
    The military already has some pretty good substitutes. The M1 battle tank has a 1,500 hp (that’s about 1.2 megawatts) gas turbine engine. They’re expensive and use a lot of fuel. But they’re also not much bigger than your box and they have 12 times the output. More importantly, the Army can have kids with a high school diploma fix them in the field with a small tool kit.
    Now for the markets.
    About 90 percent of all commercial buildings have access to natural gas. This compares to about 70 percent of all residential buildings (though there are 70 million of them). Both of these markets are really, really, really big. Lots of opportunities.
    But it’s puzzling from what you said on 60 Minutes — that you find this to be an electric utility play. Yes, it replaces the need for big power plants. But it uses natural gas. Let me say that again.
    It uses natural gas.
    Not all customers have the same company deliver natural gas and electricity. Probably half the customers have to write two checks each month. One bill going to the electric company and one to the local gas distribution company. Even where gas and electric service is provided by the same company, they are hardly the same when you view them from inside the organizations. There aren’t many CEOs in these companies who got their start on the gas side of the business. Certainly, HR in these companies should check with legal to see if there could be any discrimination lawsuits. The cultures tend to be very different. I had a friend start out on the gas side of his company and later became the COO of the electric side. He said he always had a better time on the gas side of the business than the electric side.
    Please don’t take that to mean that people who run electric companies are strange. They are not. It’s just that the businesses are different. Electric companies are the most difficult business in the world to run. Their customers want electricity when they want it. That very instant. And they can’t really put any product into inventory (at least not very easily).
    As far as your comments about locating Bloom Servers at electric substations, boy, it’s been a long time since I heard that. In the early 90s, it was one of the mantras of the distributed generation crowd. It never really took off much. You don’t really find many gas mains close to electric substations.
    So let me come back around to the beginning. The Bloom Energy Server looks like a really neat technology. It isn’t, at this point, something that’s going to knock the market on its ear. But that’s how the energy business works. You’ve got something that you can take to the market and have at least an even chance of being heard. That’s all you really need. That and patience.
    You should have a clear shot at the commercial market.
    The residential market is different. If you can get KR to rework the insides of the box to be able to serve the variations in electric, space conditioning, and hot water that residential customers need, then the sky’s the limit. Even if you have to pair it with one of TJ’s [T.J. Rogers–ed.] solar panels.
    But look to the natural gas side of the business and to the current HVAC market — including companies like York, Trane, etc. — to install the systems. They know that market cold.
    Talk to the people in the gas transmission and supply side. I’m sure Aubrey McClendon at Chesapeake will take your call and can tell you how to make it happen.
    You’re going to have a blast making the business work.
    And just one more thing…
    Remember, above all, this ain’t the Web.
    Rich Hilt / Menlo Park, CA
    Bio
    In the ’70s, Rich was involved in Corporate Energy Management at a $2 billion Fortune 100 Company with annual energy costs of $100 million. He crawled over industrial boilers, slogged through nasty chemical plants, and changed light bulbs in manufacturing facilities. To help increase operational efficiency, he set up a reporting system to measure and track energy consumption and match that against plant output. He created a corporate awareness campaign to better communicate the importance of reducing energy use to the average employee.
    In the ’80s, Rich worked for the natural gas industry in Washington during the industry’s period of deregulation. He helped build and run a strategic policy analysis group to position the industry for a more competitive environment. This group became an important player in D.C. energy policy discussions, contributing to: the debates on coal gasification; early information on how increased use of carbon would effect world energy use; the expansion of natural gas into the electric power industry; the impact of proposals for the Clean Act Amendments of 1991; and the potential contribution energy technologies would have on the economy and the environment.
    In the ’90s, Rich tried to do the same for the electric power industry. He worked to redirect the strategic position of the Electric Power Research Institute in preparation for the industry’s deregulation activities. After leaving EPRI, he continued to address industry policy direction, by writing several special studies that were published by McGraw-Hill. Some of the studies were used by states in developing information on the impact that deregulation would take and on the legislation the ensued. He provided benchmarks for the industry that were useful in measuring both operational and financial performance.
    Later, he and several other EPRI expats formed BrightLine Energy, which focused on the opportunities that arose from the deregulated environment. He was involved in writing business plans for a variety of energy related startups, including one for a unique microturbine business model.
    In the first years of the 21st century, Rich helped found a company providing energy to “big-box retailers.” He worked on the Smart Grid (before it was too smart) in the marketing department of CellNet Data Systems.
    He was a cofounder of Arare Ventures — first time VCs focused on CleanTech — that morphed into LiveFuels, an algae-to-biofuels science-based startup. Afterward, he tried to “jump the chasm” by proposing to develop a 1,000 hectare algae farm in Chile. Just as the financial markets collapsed.
    His educational background is in engineering, economics, and public policy. Rich is always looking to help out in greentech to atone for his past sins. He can be reached at [email protected].

  • Dictionar


    Afemeiat = Om care nu bea si nu fumeaza

    Ateu = (Ne)om ingimfat care crede ca nu are nevoie de Dumnezeu…

    Automobil = Obiect folosit pentru uciderea (ne)intentionata a altor persoane

    Sofer = Criminal de profesie

    Bautor = Om care n-are cum sa-si iroseasca altfel timpul,ajungind betiv.

    Credincios = Om care nu are suficienta incredere in sine , avand nevoie de sustinere din afara

    Criminal = Om care vrea sa faca bine altora, dar face acest lucru fortind nota…

    Femeie = Animal domestic util pe linga casa omului…

    Feminista = Femeie ce lupta pentru egalitatea dintre animale

    Misogin = Persoana care n-are nevoie de animale domestice…

    Om = Un animal egoist ce se crede superior altor animale

    Filosofie = Stiinta care permite si despicarea firului de par in 4…

    Fumator = Om care s-a lasat de mestecat guma…

    Informatica = Stiinta care se ocupa cu progresul calculatoarelor si asigura regresul omenirii

    Informatician = Om care,nestiind cum sa zapaceasca lucrurile mai bine,foloseste unul din calculatoarele cu avertismentul: INTEL inside…

    Istorie = Stiinta care se ocupa cu mintirea urmasilor despre virtutile stramosilor

    Presedinte = Om care e echivalentul regelui in jocul de sah,adica-i cel mai neajutorat …

    Profesie = Etapa intermediara dintre pasiune si rutina

    Sah = Joc in care lumea se gindeste si la altfel de …partide

    Ziarist = Om caruia-i place sa irite pe altii fie cu adevarul,fie cu minciunile spuse…

    Acru = Barbat, cu nevasta dulce pentru altii

    Atent = Asa cum e sotul cu alte femei

    Cuvant = Indiscretia gandului

    Trimite si prietenilor:





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    4. Legile entropiei
    5. Suc de cocos
    6. Palaria
    7. Charles,Liverpool si Papa
    8. Cei 3 Muschetari
    9. Violul
    10. Fizica atomica si fetita

  • 11,500 Year Old Stone Monuments in Turkey

    This is the earliest known example of stone based monumentalism and appears to predate formal settlement and the related agriculture. Our own example of Pacific Northwest wood based monumentalism informs us that any economy that encouraged assembly also encouraged this form of building.
    This looks rather like a series of clan temples to clan gods or ancestral spirits at a favored gathering locale used to mine flint.  One imagines hunting groups coming here to restock flint and trade with other clans.  It fits nicely into the expected life way that had its origins in the Pleistocene.  I think the clan god idea is a bit ambitious when ancestor worship was common among nomads
    It surely was a focus for clans a couple hundred miles in all directions.  The stone structures were likely preceded by cairns and even wood.  The presence of flint suggests that this locale had been in use for thousands of years during the heyday of big game hunting.
    I am pleased to see such stone work is readily present this early.  Remember my comment about lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.  We now know it was possible to build stone monuments for all of twelve millennia.  Their lack is only a measure of desire.
    A lot is made of new gods.  I suspect that technology made settlement possible largely ending nomadic existence.   The clan gods simply moved to their new villages and took up residence there.  The hill top slowly lost importance.
    History in the Remaking
    A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/233844/page/3
    A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
    By Patrick Symmes 
    Published Feb 19, 2010
    From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010
    They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.
    Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
    Global Greats
    With pundits speculating about the end of American global dominance, a look back on the rise and fall of the world’s great powers.
    Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.
    Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.
    The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date,” according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archeology program. Enthusing over the “huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art” at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: “Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.”
    Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.
    This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a “Neolithic revolution” 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the “high” religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.
    Religion now appears so early in civilized life—earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct—that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance. The archeologist Jacques Cauvin once posited that “the beginning of the gods was the beginning of agriculture,” and Göbekli may prove his case.
    The builders of Göbekli Tepe could not write or leave other explanations of their work. Schmidt speculates that nomadic bands from hundreds of miles in every direction were already gathering here for rituals, feasting, and initiation rites before the first stones were cut. The religious purpose of the site is implicit in its size and location. “You don’t move 10-ton stones for no reason,” Schmidt observes. “Temples like to be on high sites,” he adds, waving an arm over the stony, round hilltop. “Sanctuaries like to be away from the mundane world.”
    Unlike most discoveries from the ancient world, Göbekli Tepe was found intact, the stones upright, the order and artistry of the work plain even to the un-trained eye. Most startling is the elaborate carving found on about half of the 50 pillars Schmidt has unearthed. There are a few abstract symbols, but the site is almost covered in graceful, naturalistic sculptures and bas-reliefs of the animals that were central to the imagination of hunter-gatherers. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers. The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have no faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. “In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image,” says Johns Hopkins archeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe “is the first time you can see humans with that idea, that they resemble gods.”
    The temples thus offer unexpected proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gatherers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capable of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts. A Catholic born in Franconia, Germany, Schmidt wanders the site in a white turban, pointing out the evidence of that transition. “The people here invented agriculture. They were the inventors of cultivated plants, of domestic architecture,” he says.
    Göbekli sits at the Fertile Crescent’s northernmost tip, a productive borderland on the shoulder of forests and within sight of plains. The hill was ideally situated for ancient hunters. Wild gazelles still migrate past twice a year as they did 11 millennia ago, and birds fly overhead in long skeins. Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat was in this immediate area—perhaps at a mountain visible in the distance—a few centuries after Göbekli’s founding. Animal husbandry also began near here—the first domesticated pigs came from the surrounding area in about 8000 B.C., and cattle were domesticated in Turkey before 6500 B.C. Pottery followed. Those discoveries then flowed out to places like Çatalhöyük, the oldest-known Neolithic village, which is 300 miles to the west.
    The artists of Göbekli Tepe depicted swarms of what Schmidt calls “scary, nasty” creatures: spiders, scorpions, snakes, triple-fanged monsters, and, most common of all, carrion birds. The single largest carving shows a vulture poised over a headless human. Schmidt theorizes that human corpses were ex-posed here on the hilltop for consumption by birds—what a Tibetan would call a sky burial. Sifting the tons of dirt removed from the site has produced very few human bones, however, perhaps because they were removed to distant homes for ancestor worship. Absence is the source of Schmidt’s great theoretical claim. “There are no traces of daily life,” he explains. “No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here.” Everything from food to flint had to be imported, so the site “was not a village,” Schmidt says. Since the temples predate any known settlement anywhere, Schmidt concludes that man’s first house was a house of worship: “First the temple, then the city,” he insists.
    Some archeologists, like Hodder, the Neolithic specialist, wonder if Schmidt has simply missed evidence of a village or if his dating of the site is too precise. But the real reason the ruins at Göbekli remain almost unknown, not yet incorporated in textbooks, is that the evidence is too strong, not too weak. “The problem with this discovery,” as Schwartz of Johns Hopkins puts it, “is that it is unique.” No other monumental sites from the era have been found. Before Göbekli, humans drew stick figures on cave walls, shaped clay into tiny dolls, and perhaps piled up small stones for shelter or worship. Even after Göbekli, there is little evidence of sophisticated building. Dating of ancient sites is highly contested, but Çatalhöyük is probably about 1,500 years younger than Göbekli, and features no carvings or grand constructions. The walls of Jericho, thought until now to be the oldest monumental construction by man, were probably started more than a thousand years after Göbekli. Huge temples did emerge again—but the next unambiguous example dates from 5,000 years later, in southern Iraq.
    The site is such an outlier that an American archeologist who stumbled on it in the 1960s simply walked away, unable to interpret what he saw. On a hunch, Schmidt followed the American’s notes to the hilltop 15 years ago, a day he still recalls with a huge grin. He saw carved flint everywhere, and recognized a Neolithic quarry on an adjacent hill, with unfinished slabs of limestone hinting at some monument buried nearby. “In one minute—in one second—it was clear,” the bearded, sun-browned archeologist recalls. He too considered walking away, he says, knowing that if he stayed, he would have to spend the rest of his life digging on the hill.
    Now 55 and a staff member at the German Archaeological Institute, Schmidt has joined a long line of his countrymen here, reaching back to Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. He has settled in, marrying a Turkish woman and making a home in a modest “dig house” in the narrow streets of old Urfa. Decades of work lie ahead.
    Disputes are normal at the site—the workers, Schmidt laments, are divided into three separate clans who feud constantly. (“Three groups,” the archeologist says, exasperated. “Not two. Three!”) So far Schmidt has uncovered less than 5 percent of the site, and he plans to leave some temples untouched so that future researchers can examine them with more sophisticated tools.
    Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 B.C., when the entire site was buried, deliberately and all at once, Schmidt believes. The temples had been in decline for a thousand years—later circles are less than half the size of the early ones, indicating a lack of resources or motivation among the worshipers. This “clear digression” followed by a sudden burial marks “the end of a very strange culture,” Schmidt says. But it was also the birth of a new, settled civilization, humanity having now exchanged the hilltops of hunters for the valleys of farmers and shepherds. New ways of life demand new religious practices, Schmidt suggests, and “when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones.”

  • Geneva 2010: Koenigsegg Agera is the Swedish supercar evolved

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    2010 Koenigsegg Agera – Click above for high-res image gallery

    Talk about a super way to kick off the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. And yes, we intend the pun. We all know and love the Koenigsegg CCX, but it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, at least as far as supercars go. Introduced to the world at large at (no surprise) 2006 Geneva Motor Show, the Swedish rocket has wowed enthusiasts for the past five years. But that was then-and in the case of biofuled, 1,100 horsepower monster CCXR, then was a few months ago-the Agera is now.

    Designed to stay ahead of the hypercar curve, the Agera can be thought of as an evolution of the CCX. If the previous Koenigsegg had any flaw, it was its slabby, just kinda… there looks. The Agera changes that, with a much more sculpted, almost pinched front end. We find it much more attractive than the CCX, but as always, judge for yourself. Other design highlights include the wheels that generate a vortex in order to better suck hot air away from the brakes. You’ve also got the oval doughnut taillights, the doughnut part meaning that hot air escapes the engine bay via holes in the taillights. Pretty cool, no?

    Of course, what we really care about is what lies under the Agera’s carbon fiber skin. It’s the same 4.7-liter built-in-house Koenigsegg V8 from the CCX, but with a twist. Unlike the dual-superchargers found on the CCX, the Agera’s engine gets twin-turbos. Power is typically bonkers, with 910 hp at 7,250 rpm. Though the real story might be the force-inducted torque. Are you sitting down? 738 pound-feet of the stuff is available from 2,680 rpm to 6,170 rpm, with a torque peak of 811 lb-ft. Also, we should point out that the Agera weighs 2,832 pounds.

    The (manufacturer claimed) numbers are equally head spinning. Zero to sixty miles an hour takes 3.1 seconds, 0-124 mph happens in 13.7 seconds and the top speed is somewhere north of 245 miles per hour. The top speed might be (slightly) down from the CCXR (supposedly that beast can go faster than 250 mph) but check out the road-holding. Koenigsegg is claiming that the Agera can pull 1.6 g. Holy Swedish moly, man.

    Gallery: Geneva 2010: Koenigsegg Agera

    Geneva 2010: Koenigsegg Agera is the Swedish supercar evolved originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Chilean Quake and Building Codes

    We certainly are getting a reintroduction to earthquake risk.  This continues to bring home the direct economic benefits of strong building codes in danger areas and even elsewhere.  The cost of imposing resistant codes for new buildings in even those deemed as low risk areas is not prohibitive.  The benefit is clearly hugely economic if a disaster strikes.    The cost is simply worked into the cost of all building and is generally not significant enough to impede building and may provide a gain in terms of insurance costs.
    The Pacific Northwest is on the ring of fire and the critical slip plane is out to sea off the coast.  Vancouver Island and the Olympic peninsula largely protect population centers from a major quake plausibly as a shock absorber.  Other fault structures exist in the populated and sunken valley now called the Salish Sea, but these are not likely to be as violent and are apparently deep.
    California is not so protected and the major fault is on land in the population centers.  Yet serious quakes have been ridden through with modern building technology proving its worth.
    I know that ground zero of a maximum quake is impossible to resist.  Yet is appears that good sense embodied in good codes can massively reduce exposure.  That is a great investment that the next century will certainly see implemented most everywhere.  It should include everywhere simply because the crust has plenty of hidden faults and we do not know if risk even exists until it is triggered.
    In particular, the east coast of North America does have areas of interest that cannot be discounted.  Modern codes would protect from the likeliest risk type of mid range quakes.
    Otherwise we have the New Madrid on the Mississippi and the Lisbon quake as nasty reminders of possibilities.
    I think that this next generation in particular needs to go the extra mile to change all building codes.  A cost shared by all disappears.
    Building codes, quake locations key to Chile-Haiti tolls
    by Staff Writers

    Washington (AFP) Feb 28, 2010
    http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Building_codes_quake_locations_key_to_Chile-Haiti_tolls_999.html

    A combination of geography, comparative wealth and disaster readiness is why     Chile‘s massive earthquake won’t come close to Haiti‘s calamitous toll even though it was much stronger, experts say.

    Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude quake, the seventh most powerful on record, struck central Chile some 325 kilometers (200 miles) south of the capital Santiago and 115 kilometers north-northeast of the second city of Concepcion.

    So far the death toll is over 700 and rising, although President Michelle Bachelet in announcing the newest figures warned the toll would still rise with hundreds of people remaining missing.

    Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, was struck on January 12 with a 7.0-magnitude quake — hundreds of times weaker than the one in Chile — but the epicenter was just 24 kilometers from the overflowing capital Port-au-Prince.

    The most recent estimates put the toll there at over 220,000 dead, with President Rene Preval warning the final figure could reach 300,000, making it the worst natural disaster in modern history.

    Seismically speaking, comparisons between the tremors are irrelevant because the situations at their fault lines are so different, experts said.

    But put in geographic context, the two earthquakes show how events of different strengths at varying distances from densely urban areas can have vastly different outcomes.

    The epicenter of Chile‘s earthquake was 35 kilometers below the ocean floor, with the seabed absorbing a large portion of the shock — although it did prompt a tsunami that threatened the entire Pacific region.

    At a depth of only 10 kilometers, it was the Haiti quake’s shallowness that proved so catastrophic, according to experts.

    This proximity to the surface amplified the vibrations and caused far more damage to densely-packed urban areas near the Haitian capital.

    The epicenter of Chile‘s quake was almost five times farther away from the second city of Concepcion than Port-au-Prince was to Haiti‘s quake.

    “The difference between the Chile quake and Haiti was not only that the epicenter of the Haiti quake was closer… but also that Chile was better prepared than Haiti for a quake of this magnitude and intensity,” Roger Bilham, a geology expert at the University of Colorado, told AFP.

    Because Chileans live on an active fault line, with the experience of the largest recorded earthquake in history, the South American country was far more ready for a major seismic event than Haiti — relatively unused to such quakes.

    Since May 1960’s record 9.5-magnitude quake that left over 2,000 dead, successive Chilean governments have ensured sensible moves towards robust construction standards.

    While Saturday’s quake still constitutes a major disaster, Chile‘s widespread adoption and enforcement of modern, seismic-resistant building practices “has mitigated the potential for devastation,” according to US risk modelling firm EQECAT.

    Sustainable building group Architecture for Humanity noted the differences between construction in the two countries by saying “stronger building codes and location/depth of the epicenter” resulted in less damage in South America.

    Following Haiti‘s quake, engineering experts blamed lax building standards in the Caribbean nation for having exacerbated the disaster.

    When the quake struck, apartment blocks and smaller homes simply crumbled to the ground, trapping thousands under rubble and burying thousands more alive.

    “The quality of construction in Haiti, even in buildings that are supposedly engineered construction, is not good at all,” Farzad Naeim, president of the board of directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), told AFP at the time.

    From photographs he saw of the devastation in Haiti, Naeim said many of the larger buildings were built using non-ductile concrete.

    This was described in a report presented at the World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing in 2008 as “arguably… the greatest seismic life safety hazard in many urban centers worldwide because of the collapse potential.”

  • AutoblogGreen for 03.02.10

    Geneva Preview: Audi A1 e-tron extended range EV with Wankel rotary
    Want one?
    		 Nissan: AAA could provide roadside electric vehicle charging
    Hmmmmm.
    A canary? CA electric vehicle dealership closes as market gets tough for NEVs
    Buyers not flocking to small, slow vehicles. Surprise.    		 Other news:

    AutoblogGreen for 03.02.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • T-Mobile HTC HD2 to be the best, cheapest

    2010-03-01-17.13.52 We already know the T-Mobile USA version of the HTC HD2 is set to be best specified version, with a larger ROM and a better software package. Now it seems it will also be the cheapest, with the handset available for $199 on a two year contract, or $449.99 contract free.

    At the moment the future of Windows mobile handsets are very uncertain, but at these low prices I see no reason not to jump in.

    Source: Tmonews via WMExperts.com

  • Don’t Believe Japan’s Surprisingly Good Unemployment Data

    Japanese unemployment data beat expectations yesterday, falling to 4.9%. Yet as Econompic highlights, the drop in unemployment was less about job growth and more about people simply dropping out of the jobs market. This is made clear by the chart below.

    While unemployment fell in January to a 7-month low, the employment rate (the % of the adult population participating in the work force) fell simultaneously. In fact, the employment rate has hit a multi-year low, if not an all-time low. (feel free to enlighten us with some data)

    Chart

    Thus Japan’s unemployment good news isn’t quite as exciting as it would be if it had been accompanied by actual growth in the employment rate. As Japan’s population continues to age, the unemployment rate is likely to stay pretty low since the country will increasingly face a shortage of working-age labor. Yet this is far from a good thing given the massive current debt and future elderly care liabilities ahead.

    (Chart and tip via Econompic)

    Join the conversation about this story »

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  • Author Barry Hannah dies at 67 in Mississippi

    JACKSON, Miss. — Author Barry Hannah, whose fiction was laced with dark humor and populated by hard-drinking Southerners, died Monday at his home in Oxford, Miss. He was 67.

    Lafayette County Coroner Rocky Kennedy said Hannah died Monday afternoon of “natural causes,” declining to elaborate until he shared the details with Hannah’s wife, Susan. Kennedy said the death is not under investigation.

    Hannah’s first novel, “Geronimo Rex,” was published in 1972. It received the William Faulkner prize for writing and was nominated for a National Book Award. His 1996 short story collection, “High Lonesome,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

    Novelist and Mississippi native Richard Ford called Hannah “a shooting star.”

    “Barry could somehow make the English sentence generous and unpredictable, yet still make wonderful sense, which for readers is thrilling,” Ford said from his home in Maine. “You never knew the source of the next word. But he seemed to command the short story form and the novel form and make those forms up newly for himself.”

    Longtime friend Malcolm White, the director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, said Hannah “loved words, fishing, his family and going fast.”

    “Barry was Mississippi’s irreverent poet of the dark side, our rebellious, misfit uncle of the nightlife, the voice of the unrehearsed and the unapologetic outburst in corner of the room,” White said Monday.

    Hannah was born and raised in Mississippi. He graduated in 1964 from Mississippi College in Clinton and later earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Arkansas.

    He taught writing at the University of Mississippi for more than 25 years. In 1996, Hannah told the student newspaper at the University of Mississippi that teaching inspired him.

    “The short fiction form that I teach is a great format for fine classroom conversation about the art,” Hannah said. “My writing has always been enhanced by my teaching.”

    He also worked as writer in residence at the University of Iowa, the University of Montana-Missoula and Middlebury College in Vermont.

    In 2003, Hannah was given the PEN/Malamud Award, which recognizes excellence in the art of short fiction.

    Ford said he and Hannah spoke often about the idea of “Southernness.”

    “We circled the whole issue of Southernness differently,” said Ford, whose novel, “Independence Day,” won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “I think he embraced it in a way that he took sustenance from. He chose to live in William Faulkner’s town, chose to stay in the South, to his great strength and credit. But he was not a regional talent. He was much larger than that.”

    The friendship between the two writers grew after Ford’s mother died in 1981. He said he drove from New Orleans to Oxford and just looked Hannah up.

    “I hadn’t ever really met him,” he said. “I’d heard about him, but didn’t really know him. He’s the one guy, I knew, who I could make a connection with. He took me in, saw to me. Even when he didn’t have to because I was just another writer he knew. I’ve always loved him for that.”

    Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

    Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services


  • Multiplayer not in God of War III, but it *could* be accommodated in the future

    Not all hope is lost! There still may be some room for a multiplayer feature in God of War III or in the franchise at least. This was revealed by no other than John Hight, GoW