Category: News

Since retiring from Congress, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has devoted much of his time leading a pro-drilling front group with “resources” from the oil industry (see “Gingrich’s ‘drill here, drill now’ campaign continues as BP oil disaster grows“).

Now, he is promoting his new anti-regulation, pro-drilling book, To Save America, which argues repeatedly that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are a “secular-socialist machine” that “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.”  TP has the story of Gingrich’s defense of that hate speech — and how even people in his own party are attacking his extremist views.

Gingrich has repeatedly defended this claim, telling both NBC’s Meredith Vieira and Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he truly believes that the Obama administration is an equivalent “threat” to America as brutal dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin:

VIEIRA: Can you honestly compare what’s going on with the Democrats with Nazi Germany?

GINGRICH: No it’s not a question of how evil they were. Nazi Germany was terrible, Stalin’s Russia was terrible, Mao’s China was terrible. It’s a question of finality. Had we lost either of those contests, we would have become a radically different country.

* * * *WALLACE: So — but you compare that to the Nazis and the Communists?

GINGRICH: I compare that as a threat.

Watch it:

In reaching to make his case, Gingrich repeatedly tries desperately to connect the Obama administration with Nazi Germany. The index of Gingrich’s book cites Nazi references eight times, many of which are attempts to compare Obama and progressivism to totalitarianism (view a screen shot of the index below):

– pp. 48-49 Gingrich quotes David Horowitz arguing that the great atrocities of the modern era, whether from Nazis or Communists, were committed by people who believe in a “future that would save mankind.” Gingrich uses Horowitz’s quote to draw a comparison to “the current leaders of the Democratic Party.”

– pp. 295-296 argues that “the Left” is pursuing an “international strategy to take away” Second Amendment rights to own firearms. Gingrich writes that if Hitler had not disarmed “Jews and other anti-Nazi groups,” then the “Holocaust would have been virtually impossible to implement.”

– pp. 268-269 says that “Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism” each “required the use of a powerful, centralized state authority” where “those who resisted were eliminated,” “religion was enemy number one,” and “religious texts” were replaced with “nationalist propaganda in schools.” Gingrich then writes that “there are many parallels between the anti-religious governments of the twentieth century and the anti-religious elite of the United States in the twenty-first.”

While Gingrich’s book is laced with these Nazi comparisons, he also rehashes other absurdities, like a defense of Palin’s “death panel” charge and an argument that there are actually too many regulations on offshore oil exploration. Gingrich — who has repeatedly backed establishment Republican candidates like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Dede Scozzafava over tea party challengers — seems to be trying to establish his credibility within the fringe base of the conservative movement by touting Nazi comparisons popularized by Glenn Beck and other hate radio personalities.

While Gingrich hopes that social and religious conservatives will forget that he left his dying wife to be with another woman, it is unlikely that Gingrich will be able to deceive tea parties with his Beck-like Nazi rhetoric.

This repost is by Lee Fang at Think Progress.  What follows is an excerpt from another TP pieces.

On Fox News Sunday this past weekend, host Chris Wallace challenged Gingrich on that quote, asking if it was a “wildly over the top” comparison. Gingrich said it wasn’t:

WALLACE: You also write this, and let’s put it up on the screen. “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn’t that wildly over the top?

GINGRICH: No, not if by America you mean the historic contract we’ve had which says your rights come from your creator, they’re unalienable, you’re allowed to pursue happiness. I mean, just listen to President Obama’s language.

On her CNN Headline News show last night, Joy Behar asked former GOP congresswoman Susan Molinari — who served in Congress while Gingrich was speaker of the House — if Gingrich was “losing his marbles” by making such comparisons. Molinari replied that Gingrich’s comments were “outrageous” and “crazy”:

BEHAR: Susan, when Bush was called a Nazi, the right wing went berserk on him. And yet, Gingrich just throws the word around as if it’s nothing. What is up with him? What is he, losing his marbles?

MOLINARI: This has always been — let me distance myself from that remark first of all in all seriousness. To compare anything that is going on in this country to the atrocities of Nazi Germany in any way, shape or form is just crazy. And you know that Newt was so smart. He got the Republican majority back in a generation, contract with America. And then, you know, moved quickly into a government shutdown and complained about his seat on President Clinton’s plane.

This is Newt. He can be really smart sometimes and sometimes he can just say some absolutely outrageous things. I would be like to be in that corner of saying that is outrageous.

Watch it:

Later in the show, Molinari tried to change the subject, saying, “let’s just take Newt off the table because that’s just not even worth talking about.” “Let’s put him under the table,” replied Behar. “Right. Exactly. Thank you,” responded Molinari.

JR:  The bottom line is that Gingrich’s extremist hate speech should take him out of the bounds of public and political discourse.

Related Post:

• Gingrich says Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin is a conservative leader on energy issues
  

The NYT has an article on how water availability is becoming a constraining factor for the development of new power generation capacity (except for solar PV and wind power, which don’t require any) – Water Adds New Constraints to Power.

In the Mojave Desert, solar developers are scrambling to secure permits to build vast expanses of new generating capacity. But they are discovering that cost and carbon emissions are not the only limiting factors in new energy decisions in California. They are bumping up against water scarcity.

In the United States, thermoelectric power generation — mainly coal, nuclear and natural gas — accounted for 41 percent of U.S. freshwater withdrawals in 2005, U.S. Geological Society data show.

“Typically, project developers have wanted to use water for cooling because it’s more efficient and capital costs are less,” said Terry O’Brien, the California Energy Commission’s deputy director for power plant licensing. “That makes the project more economic.”

But there is a growing awareness in California and throughout the United States that the use of water for energy generation may be reaching its limits.

California has extensive experience with water shortages, resulting in its adoption of a policy, included in the energy commission’s 2003 Integrated Energy Policy Report, that discourages freshwater use for power plant cooling. The commission’s regularly updated reports provide current data and set the parameters for state energy and conservation policies.

“It’s just not possible anymore in California, and increasingly anywhere, to find unlimited water for the old water-intensive cooling systems,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, which researches water issues and advises on policy. “If you want to build a big central power plant, whether it’s oil, gas or nuclear, you can’t take the water for granted.”

In the past decade, water availability has increasingly had an effect on the reliability of power supplies in many countries, with droughts leading to temporary closings of nuclear plants in Australia, France, Germany, Romania and Spain. Similar shutdowns have been threatened in the United States.

For a thermoelectric plant, the cooling technology used is the biggest factor in its water needs.

Once-through cooling, an inexpensive, energy-efficient and therefore widely used process, sucks up huge quantities of river, lake, or sea water. A typical 500-megawatt power plant takes in almost 19 million gallons, or 72 million liters, an hour, according to a 2005 report from the U.S. Department of Energy.

After running through the plant, almost all of this is returned to the river, lake or ocean. The used water, however, may be polluted, and the heat that it has absorbed can be lethal to fish, while the intake can kill wildlife and microorganisms. Research of the environmental consequences has led to tighter regulations in recent years, making it nearly impossible to get permits for new plants using once-through cooling anywhere in the United States.

The California state water board, going further, adopted rules this month tightening environmental protection requirements for existing coastal once-through plants — a step toward phasing out the technology at 19 plants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is evaluating whether to follow California’s lead.

As once-through cooling has fallen out of favor, wet cooling, which exploits the chilling effect of evaporation, has become more common. It uses only about 3 percent of the water needed for once-through cooling — but it loses 90 percent of that to vapor. Wet-cooling systems are more expensive to build than once-through and consume as much as 3 percent of the energy generated by the plant. But a point in their favor is that they can use non-freshwater sources, like wastewater or mine pools.

Recent government data show that 56 percent of U.S. thermoelectric generating capacity is now wet-cooled, against 43 percent using once-through systems.

A newer process, dry cooling, which uses fans to push waste heat into the atmosphere instead of into water, is still more expensive and less efficient. On hot days, as much as 15 percent of the energy generated by a plant may be expended on cooling, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a research body funded by the energy industry.

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

A whistleblower filed a lawsuit this week to force the federal government
to halt operations at another massive BP oil platform in the Gulf of
Mexico, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for
the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident
that could “dwarf” the company’s Deepwater Horizon spill.

The
allegations about BP’s Atlantis platform were first made last year, but
they were laid out in fresh detail in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District
Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the
Minerals Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating
offshore drilling in the Gulf.

The whistleblower is Kenneth
Abbott, a former project control supervisor contracted by BP who also
gave an interview to “60
Minutes” on Sunday night. In a
conversation last week with ProPublica, Abbott alleged that BP failed to
review thousands of final design documents for systems and equipment on
the Atlantis platform — meaning BP management never confirmed the
systems were built as they were intended – and didn’t properly file the
documentation that functions as an instruction manual for rig workers to
shut down operations in the case of a blowout or other emergency.

Abbott
alleges that when he warned BP about the dangers presented by the
missing documentation the company ignored his concerns and instead
emphasized saving money.

“There were hundreds, if not thousands,
of drawings that hadn’t been approved and to send drawings (to the rig)
that hadn’t been approved could result in catastrophic operator errors,”
Abbott told ProPublica. “They turned their eye away from their
responsibility to make sure the overall design works. Instead they are
having bits and pieces fabricated and they are just hoping that these
contractors who make all these separate pieces can pull it together and
make it safe. The truth is these contractors see a piece of the puzzle;
they don’t see the whole thing.”

BP did not respond to a request
for comment from ProPublica, but has previously addressed Abbott’s
concerns in a January letter to congressional investigators stating that
the allegations are unfounded and that the Atlantis platform had final
documentation in place before it began operating.

According to an
e-mail sent to Abbott by BP’s ombudsman’s office, an independent group
employed by the company to address internal complaints, BP had not
complied with its own rules governing how and where the documentation
should be kept but had not necessarily violated any regulations for
drilling. The e-mail does not address the specifics raised in the
lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said
the agency would not comment on pending litigation.

Congress and
the Minerals and Management Service have been investigating Abbott’s
concerns since last year, when he and Food and Water Watch, an
environmental organization based in Washington, D.C., first filed the
complaints. But according to both Abbott and FWW, little has been done.
After the Deepwater Horizon Gulf spill underscored their concerns, they
decided to jointly file the lawsuit. Abbott was laid off shortly after
he raised the concerns to BP management.

According to the
lawsuit, by Nov. 28, 2008, when Abbott last had access to BP’s files,
only half of the 7,176 drawings detailing Atlantis’ sub-sea equipment
had been approved for design by an engineer and only 274 had been
approved “as built,” meaning they were checked and confirmed to meet
quality and design standards and the documentation made available to the
rig crew. Ninety percent of the design documents, the suit alleges, had
never been approved at all.

The Atlantis rig is even larger than
the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank in April. It began producing oil in
2007 and can produce 8.4 million gallons a day.

The components
include some of the critical infrastructure to protect against a spill.
According the suit, none of the sub-sea risers – the pipelines and hoses
that serve as a conduit for moving materials from the bottom of the
ocean to the facility — had been “issued for design.” The suit also
alleges that none of the wellhead documents were approved, and that none
of the documents for the manifolds that combine multiple pipeline flows
into a single line at the seafloor had been reviewed for final use.

Directions for how to use the piping and instrument systems that
help shut down operations in the event of an emergency, as well as the
computer software used to enact an emergency shutdown, had also not been
approved, the lawsuit says. According to the lawsuit, 14 percent those
documents had been approved for construction, and none received final
approval to ensure they were built and functioning properly.

“BP’s
worst-case scenario indicates that an oil spill from the BP Atlantis
Facility could be many times larger than the current oil spill from the
BP Deepwater Horizon,” the lawsuit states. “The catastrophic Horizon oil
spill would be a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the potential
size of a spill from the BP Atlantis facility.”

It is not clear
from the lawsuit or the limited statements made by BP or federal
regulators if BP has corrected the documentation problem since Abbott
was laid off.

Abbott told ProPublica he raised the documentation
issues repeatedly in e-mails and conversations with management, “saying
this was critical to operator safety and rig safety.”

“They just
ignored my requests for help,” he said. “There seemed to be a big
emphasis to push the contractors to get things done. And that was always
at the forefront of the operation.”

(Photo of the Atlantis rig from GVA’s website.)

by Kevin Jon Heller

I continue to believe that this is a terrible idea:

Eco Factor: Sustainable chair uses recycled playing cards

What keeps people glued to the Las Vegas casinos will now hold you back. Well, I am talking about the playing cards that give some very interesting games of Black Jack and Poker. The cards that were discarded by the casinos became the source of inspiration for BRC Designs, who used a few of them to create something exquisite.

(more…)

The judges determined the three top singers in the ninth season of American Idol 2010. Now you can find out who got kicked off “American Idol” on may 18 2010. In this results show, Michael Lynche left the competition (for the second time) as Crystal, Casey and Lee were placed as finalists. The program also presented Bon Jovi, Fantasia Barrino and Chris Daughtry.

There are only three left in the contest:  24 years old Crystal Bowersox, of Toledo, Ohio, the paint vendor Dewyze Lee 24, of Mount Prospect, Illinois, and the musician James Casey 27, of Fort Worth, Texas .

American Idol may 18 2010 results:

Related posts:

1. American Idol 2010: the final four
2. Chris Daughtry is Back on the Idol Stage
3. American Idol Finalists Sing Frank Sinatra Hits

I have some good news, and a mea culpa of sorts.

First, the good stuff: the COMPETES act may go to the Floor of the House of Representatives for voting as early as today! This act will fund a lot of scientific innovation and education, and is sorely needed if we are to invest in our future as a country. I’m very happy this is happening — assuming it passes, which I think it will. The original act passed in 2007, and much of this new bill authorizes funding to be extended.

Now, regular readers may be wondering, “Wait! Didn’t you say this bill was dead?”

Yes, I did. You can read that earlier post to get the background, but basically this bill passed through committee, but at the last second a Representative from Texas, Ralph Hall, added some language to it using a parliamentary procedure called a Motion to Recommit. As I understood it at the time, this meant that Congressmen had two choices: overturn the Motion and let the bill be voted upon, or send the bill back to committee where it would almost certainly be tabled indefinitely, the usual outcome of such an event.

The problem was that overturning the Motion was a political landmine; the language Hall added punished people who were downloading porn on their government computers, saying that no money from the act could be used to pay those people’s salaries. So overturning the Motion meant Democrats would basically be handing the far-right media spin machine gasoline for the fire: they would claim the Democrats weren’t punishing the people looking at porn.

So they voted to send the bill back to committee. This is where I made my mistake: everything I had read said that this meant the bill would stagnate and die. However, this is incorrect: the bill can be reintroduced to the House Floor “under suspension”, which means as-is with the new language included (technically, this is because the Motion was submitted “with instructions”). This was not clear to me before — the rules can be quite Byzantine — and I readily admit that.

However — and this is a big however — it does NOT change the fact that Hall held this bill hostage by throwing in the non sequitur of the porn addendum. He wanted some changes made to it dealing with funding levels and for how long it would be funded. The committee has apparently acquiesced to this demand… but I’ll note that the shameful language about pornography is still in the bill!

It seems obvious that the Democrats on the committee had to back off on this, or else Hall or someone like him would use some other procedure to hamstring the bill again.

I know that a lot of riders are added to bills when they’re created. Usually, though, it’s done as a pet project that gets attached to some bill that everyone will vote yea on, thus getting that pet project approved. That stinks, in many cases, but at least the major bill gets passed. In this case, though, the language was added in an attempt to stop the bill. This may also be done on a regular basis in Congress, but I still say that it was done in an underhanded way, and done cynically to a bill that we desperately need if we are to compete in the global marketplace of science and technology.

Don’t ignore the manipulative actions of Representative Hall because of my error on the status of the bill. The bulk and the meat of what I wrote in that earlier post still stands.

But… I’ll take a deep breath. The good news to focus on is that the COMPETES reauthorization will get its day in court. I just hope that Democrats — and the American people — learn a lesson from this.

Thanks to Dan Vergano for tweeting about this. Image credit: kevindooley’s Flickr photostream, used under the Creative Commons license.

Hello!

I have a complete and total mish-mosh of dining and cooking tidbits. No organizing principle whatsoever.

First up — great news for east-side fans of fluffy frozen treats:

Suno Dessert Café will open a new location near Emory University, at the corner of N. Decatur Road and Clairmont Road, later this month. The Asian-style dessert features freshly shaved milky ice topped with fruit, powders, beans, syrups, condensed milk and various other options. Here is a strawberry/kiwi cup I ate last weekend at the Suno in Duluth.

Next — Ramen noodle restaurant offers rich broth option:

I have always liked the broth at Umaido in Suwanee just the way it is. But I do sometimes hear from ramenaniacs who find the tonkotsu pork bone broth not rich enough. They should go back and try the “rich” option, now available on all the soups. Here is my daughter’s rich tonkotsu ramen:

And here is the non-rich, extra-spicy ramen I ordered:

The restaurants offers spice levels of 1 to 3. This is 3. …

KNOXVILLE — The final candidate for the job of director of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will participate in a public forum today.

The forum, featuring Carl Pierce, will be held from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Toyota Auditorium at the Baker Center, 1640 Cumberland Ave.

Pierce is the W. Allen Separk Distinguished Professor of Law at UT Knoxville and interim director of the Baker Center.

To view a live webcast of the forum or watch an archived version later, go to http://bakercenter.utk.edu/main/search-finalists.php, follow the link and then click on the title.

For more about the Baker Center, see http://bakercenter.utk.edu/main/. For more about the director candidates, see http://bakercenter.utk.edu/main/search-finalists.php.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, [email protected])

On Sunday, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, “Where is the oil?”  I guess he’s using the same playbook as BP’s Tony ‘Soprano‘ Hayward.  TP has the story:

Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been aggressively downplaying the disaster and bristling at comparisons to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. During the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Hume dismissed the expert analysis that many times more oil have spilled already than the Exxon Valdez disaster, a point raised by fellow panelist Juan Williams:

WILLIAMS: First of all, don’t you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.

HUME: Let’s see if that happens. There’s a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?

WILLIAMS: “Where is the oil?”

HUME: It’s not on — except for little of chunks of it, you’re not even seeing it on the shore yet.

Watch it:

Independent experts, using both surface and subsea estimates, believe the vast sea of oil gushing from multiple leaks on the seabed surpassed the Exxon Valdez weeks ago. “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.” “The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out. ”

The slick on the surface of the Gulf is now about 4,922 square miles, larger than Los Angeles County, Delaware, or Rhode Island. On the surface, oil contamination has reached the barrier islands of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

After Hume repeated the “natural seepage” talking point to falsely imply the oil industry’s catastrophic record of spills is unimportant, he then mirrored Rush Limbaugh’s argument that “The ocean will take care of this on its own“:

WILLIAMS: But I think it will damage the environment in the gulf and damage tourism and damage fishing. I don’t think there’s any question this is in excess of anything we’ve previously asked the ocean to absorb.

HUME: We’ll see if it is. We’ll see if it is. The ocean absorbs a lot, Juan, an awful lot. The ocean absorbs a lot.

WILLIAMS: I think Rush Limbaugh went down this road, “The ocean can handle it.” I think we have to take some responsibility for the environment and be responsible to people who live in the area, vacation in that area, fish in that area. It’s just wrong to think, “You know what? Dump it on the ocean and let the ocean handle it.”

HUME: Who said that? Who is saying that? No one’s making that argument.

Nearly two weeks ago, Gulf Coast marine scientists told ThinkProgress they “shudder to think” of the devastation this underwater apocalypse could entail, because “oil is bad for everything” that lives in the ocean.

This repost brought to you by Think Progress.

Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, said earlier this week that it was increasing its equity stake in Archimede Solar to 45 percent from 28 percent. Archimede is a joint venture with Angelantoni Industries that develops receivers for Italian CSP solar power plants. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed.

The J.V. plans to use the fresh bath of capital to accelerate the setup of a solar receiver production line in Massa Martana, in central Italy’s Umbria region. Early next year the plant is expected to produce 75,000 solar receivers annually and 140,000 annually by 2012.

The Archimede plant has a commercial contract to supply up to 1,500 solar receivers to the Priolo Garallo Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), which is currently under construction in Sicily.

CSP produces electricity by capturing solar heat to drive steam turbines or reciprocating engines that spin electric generators. Because of its large wind business, Siemens controls a portfolio of turbine technology that it wants to expand into solar applications.

The Munich-based company is betting on greentech to generate a growing share of its overall revenues. According to industry Web site Alarm: Clock, Siemens, whose green investments focus on the wind sector, estimates that the solar thermal power plant market will experience double digit annual growth up over the next five years and could reach $12.3 billion by 2015.

BP’s disastrous uncontrolled oil eruption continues beneath the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the health and livelihood of fishermen, ecosystems, and communities from the Mexican coast to the Florida Keys. It’s more important than ever for U.S. voters to have a serious debate about fixing our unsustainable energy path.  CAP’s Tina Ramos and Bracken Hendricks have the story.

Rebuilding our economy on the foundation of energy efficiency and clean renewable energy is essential to protect against further environmental catastrophe, and it is the best way forward for workers, industry, and strong communities.

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) released a draft of their American Power Act climate bill on Wednesday. It places a firm limit on carbon emissions and puts a price on pollution so the economy recognizes the true cost of poor energy choices. This is an important, but still incomplete, step in the climate and energy debate.

Capping and pricing carbon emissions is key to well-crafted policy to rein in greenhouse gases. But there are five key policy areas to build a low-carbon economy that will drive investment in high-paying jobs, clean technology, and new industries. The American Power Act includes some of these investment-driving policies, and others exist within energy bills that have been passed in the House and Senate. It is essential that these five pieces be moved together as components of a single comprehensive strategy to build a low-carbon economy in the United States.

First, we must focus efforts to reduce oil dependence on vehicles and transportation infrastructure since 70 percent of oil is used in this sector and two-thirds of this is for passenger vehicles. Making vehicles more fuel efficient, commercializing electric vehicles, developing cleaner alternative fuels, and investing in public transportation infrastructure would be the fastest ways to reduce oil use while promoting innovation in the auto industry.

Second, we must place a high priority on establishing a strong national renewable energy standard that would require at least 25 percent of energy to be produced from renewable sources by 2025. A national RES would foster the long-term market stability essential to our competitiveness in renewable energy manufacturing—since 30 countries already have a robust RES—and would ensure that investment capital flows into developing new projects.

Firm market demand for renewable energy would also create jobs in every region of the country. Colorado’s 30 percent RES by 2020 has made Colorado home to more than 1,500 clean energy companies—up 18 percent since 2004 to make it the state’s fastest-growing economic sector—and the fourth-highest concentration of clean energy workers in the country. This is a model for the nation.

Third, we must make buildings more energy efficient. Energy efficiency is the cheapest, cleanest, and most abundant source of energy we have. Buildings account for 70 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption and 40 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Retrofitting buildings to be more efficient is an effective way to reduce global warming pollution and put construction workers back on the job at a time when we have 25 percent unemployment in the building and construction trades.

Fourth, the federal government must play a roll in ensuring that financing is available for new clean energy investments. Programs established in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—such as the grant program to aid wind farm developers, loan guarantee programs to support renewable energy projects, and advanced manufacturing tax credits—can jump start the production of clean energy in the short term. But we must supplement these measures with stable, long-term financing mechanisms for the development and commercialization of clean energy technology. One way to provide low-cost financing for the commercialization of clean energy is through a public “Green Bank” that works in partnership with the private sector to open credit markets and motivate businesses and entrepreneurs to invest in energy innovation.

Finally, we must make sure to do no harm. The federal government lagged behind the rest of the world on clean energy during the last decade, and states and local governments from New Mexico to Texas to Pennsylvania led the way in demonstrating that clean energy creates more jobs, better public health, and more vibrant economies. National policy must not roll back state and local innovators’ ability to continue to lead. But it is also important to allow federal authorities like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate in the public interest in light of the BP oil spill disaster. The American Power Act limits states’ and the EPA’s authority in key ways, and these measures should be reconsidered.

The recent legislation introduced by Sens. Kerry and Lieberman may be imperfect, but it is an important step in the right direction. We must rein in carbon emissions for the health of the planet. But we will do this best if we use these policy mechanisms to build vibrant new industries and create new jobs from the efficient use of renewable energy. A comprehensive climate strategy will revitalize America’s economic engine.

This is a repost from the Center for American Progress where Tina Ramos is a Special Assistant, and Bracken Hendricks is a Senior Fellow.

It’s been a little over a month since I’ve introduced the iPad to my digital workflow. In a post last year, I wrote, “I’m not saying I don’t think there is a market for a device that’s larger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook …” and lo and behold, that is how Apple billed it.

I did have an iPad-sized hole in my life. For me, a MacBook is weighty overkill. I have two jobs: the corporate-level one that pays the bills and my writing gig where I blog, freelance, and work on personal projects. The day job comes with its own Windows laptop that I lug around. I try to maintain a separation between the corporate job and personal work, so there’s very little in the way of personal data on the work machine. My commute is almost four hours round-trip. Most of it’s on a train, but if I wanted to write, I’d need the MacBook with me.

For personal work, my needs are modest. I need to write, research ideas, and read a book or watch a video. Simply put, I just need a tool to let me put words down. I don’t care about how they look when I’m composing on the iPad; just want to get them out of my head and onto what passes for paper for these days.

Productivity

A month in, I find Pages whelming. I felt Pages was about one patch from elevating itself from “merely OK” to “good,” and the 1.1 patch did that with support for landscape toolbars. I find myself to be fairly proficient with the virtual keyboard. While I am clearly faster and more accurate with an external keyboard, the iPad doesn’t seem to handle swapping between virtual and physical keyboards well, so I tend to say with the iPad’s.

What I wasn’t expecting is, even at home, I prefer to write on the iPad. I think it comes down to a fantastic screen and, oddly, the single-tasking nature of the device. Pages gives me enough of a distraction-free environment that I can focus on writing.

For an in-depth look at Pages for Mac, view Pages 101 (subscription required).

I’m going to be giving a talk in a month or so, and as much as I try and tell myself I can do it on the iPad, the fact is, I can’t. While I tend to use my own fonts for my talks, I can design an effective presentation for the iPad using stock fonts, but I don’t want to be chained to the podium with no remote control.

The presentation issue pales to getting files to and from the iPad. Original rumors hinted of some sort of a shared-pool for files, but that never came true. Instead, each app still has files isolated to its own sandbox. You can use iTunes to transfer files into the sandboxes, but it’s a pain. Since there’s no true syncing, I can’t really work on a file on a desktop and get it back to the iPad without feeling like I’m playing a shell game. My ideal solution would be to have a Documents version of Photos. Apps could read and write to that sandbox to their heart’s content and there would be  OS-level integration of MobileMe iDisk.

These issues, while frustrating, don’t make me regret my decision to buy the iPad at all. I’m getting more done with the device, so that’s a win

Recreation

Like most writers, I read. A lot. I probably read about 30-40 books a year, not counting assigned reading for class and the like. I also am somewhat of a magazine junky. The iPad is indispensable for consuming this type of media.

Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple’s iBooks are both fine readers. Amazon’s selection is better, but I like the flexibility in iBooks’s presentation; the ability to change the order of my library is huge. However, when I’m researching, Amazon’s note tool wins out.  One small thing iBooks does is tell me how many pages are left in a chapter. That’s great for reading in bed and deciding if I want to commit to the next chapter.

I find the Zinio app fine for reading magazines. Recent updates have significantly improved page load times. As with the Amazon app, my chief complaint is not being able to arrange the library the way I want it. Deleting magazines seems undoable, also. I’d love an archive feature like the Kindle’s. I have a few subscriptions that thoughtfully provide DRM-free PDFs and GoodReader is my choice for reading them.

3G vs Wi-Fi

This was one of the hardest decisions I made regarding the iPad. In the end, I chose the Wi-Fi because it was out sooner. A close family member was having some major surgery and hospital stay before the 3G game out. I’d had some luck using the iPhone during a previous hospital visitation, but knew the iPad would be better. I also knew I’d be weak and keep the $30 data plan going and didn’t want the expense. While there have been times I wished the iPad had always-on Internet, I don’t regret my decision.

Final Thoughts

A month later, like my iPhone, the iPad is a device I rarely leave the house without. Its excellent battery life means I don’t need to worry about charging out. A heavy night of writing, surfing and game playing barely takes 30 percent of the battery. I like that I can get a creative idea and be writing it in less than 30 seconds. I do see an anti-glare film in my immediate future. It’s almost unusable outside, and a frequent place I use it has a fluorescent light directly overhead.

How about you? One month later, what are your thoughts?

Eastern Conference Finals is 2 games down where Boston Celtics nailing both to set rival Orlando Magic cramming for a win in their third meeting on May 22. Not that Magic did not sweat it out on Tuesday’s match, what could have been double-digit lost was pull down to 95-92.

If statistics will translate the lead, Boston is to fill in one of the slots in the championship. NBA track has seen 22 out 25 series of 7 won by the team that snatches the first 2.

With that calculation plus the Boston home court advantage, Magic might have to get ready in breaking scientific spells like moving mountains.

Coach Stan Van Gundy sees Magic’s performance last Tuesday as “not enough for a good defensive team”.

There hasn’t been much movement from Jameer Nelson as Rajon Rondo scores 25 points with 8 assists that his team translated to some more points.

Magic has a steady scoreboard although never going past that of Celtics especially on the last quarter. It must have been a 1-1 if only Dwight Howard was able to get some teammates pulling-off defense more than looking for a way to hit a hard basket.

Related posts:

1. Steve Nash Leads the Suns Despine Eye Injury
2. Game 5: Cavaliers’ Worst Ever Home Play-off Loss, Made the Team Owner Unhappy
3. James Lebron’s Hard Court Tantrums

Every so often, some new iPhone app comes along that makes me go, “Dang, I really wish I had one o’ dem iPhone thingers.” Well, as you are probably expecting, right now is one of those moments.

I just read on Mashable that the original Prince of Persia is coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch as Prince of Persia Retro.

I was but a young-un when the game came out, but it was my first real experience with video games, and certainly the most memorable. Maybe that and Stunts.

My point is that it was awesome. Great graphics (you know, for the time), fluid animation, swords, puzzles, a princess… it was like man-Mario.

And now all you lucky iPhone owners get to take one of the greatest 8-bit adventures ever told around with you in your pocket. And you don’t even have to worry about fiddling with extended memory or floppy disks. You darn kids have got it so easy.

The game should come out some time before June 2010. Sadly, the price is not yet announced.

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

Thomas Thurston usually charges big bucks for a consultation like the one he gave me this week. But you’re getting it for free here. Of course, maybe it’s a freebie that will make you seek him out for more information. Either way, consider yourself lucky. I do.

Thurston is the founder of Growth Science International, a research and consultancy firm in Portland, OR. If you’re an entrepreneur, startup investor, or just like to play the stock market, you’ll want to know about his work. Thurston has developed a sophisticated mathematical model of “disruptive innovation,” based on principles put forth by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School (who spoke in Seattle earlier this week). Using his model, Thurston claims to be able to predict, with 85 percent accuracy, the fates of companies.

Whether or not you believe his model, you might want to listen to his advice. Most of it hinges on the key idea of “disruption” coming from cheaper, lower-performing products that work their way up-market.

“The biggest mistake startups make is assuming the competition will leave them alone when they’re better-performing,” says Thurston, who previously worked at Intel Capital. “Startups always want to be better than their competitors. It’s so ingrained in their fiber. They’re with disruption theory until they have to be worse—but you can’t just be cheaper. Cheaper and better is ‘sustaining,’ not disruptive. Startups want to raise capital, so they want to talk about why they’re better.”

Without further ado, here are a few tips from the startup predictor. Ignore them at your peril:

1. Go non-mainstream.

Of course, there’s an art to pitching a “disruptive” startup to customers and investors. “You don’t go out and say, ‘I’m worse.’ You find non-mainstream customers who value what you’re good at, even though you’re worse at what the mainstream customers want,” Thurston says. “But if you’re making better margins in your competitors’ market, they’re going to want to take your business.” (What’s interesting here is that venture-backed startups usually target the biggest possible market; not so, disruptive startups.)

2. Study failures.

Thurston built his predictive model in part by studying which companies failed and why. “Most people look at companies who survived and try to learn why. Usually it’s random, it’s hard to see. What people don’t do enough is look at failures, because the data is harder to get,” he says. “When you study a lot of failures, you see patterns much more strongly. Startups aren’t spending enough time studying failures.” (This also ties into an interesting cultural discussion about the tolerance for failure in the Seattle innovation community.)

3. Pay attention to narrative—especially when it comes to your competitors.

Surprisingly, Thurston’s research suggests the valuation companies get from investors can vary by about a factor of three based solely on how they tell their story. Assuming a company has real …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is now the latest organization to instruct Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli in how science works. In particular, I liked this aspect of the AAAS board statement: Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations simply for providing scientific results that may be controversial or inconvenient, particularly on high profile topics of interest to society. The way to resolve controversies of this nature is through scientific review and additional research. In the majority of cases, scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the process of scientific progress. The scientific community takes seriously their responsibility for policing scientific misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise. Unless founded on some openly discussed evidence of potential misconduct, investigations such as that targeting Professor Mann could have a long-lasting and chilling effect on a broad spectrum of research fields that are critical to a range of national interests from public health to national security to the environment. Unless more clearly justified, Attorney General Cuccinelli’s apparently political action should be withdrawn. That’s right–the AAAS just called Cuccinelli’s investigation “political.” It is, of course–but …

BlueAnt Wireless just released its new hands-free speakerphone, the S4. It attaches to any car visor and connects wirelessly to most Bluetooth handsets. Simply turn it on and go. Reading the manual is not required; the S4 will vocally guide you through setup.

Once paired with your handset, you can use the hands-free device without ever having to take your phone out of your pocket. The S4 offers a bunch of features although some seem gimmicky at best.

BlueAnt collaborated with Vlingo to bring text-to-speech to the device for less distracted text messaging while driving. This feature can save lives, but only for the Blackberry and Android 2.0+ platforms. Bing support will bring maps, stocks, news and weather reports straight to you during your commute.

Using A2DP, the S4 can playback turn-by-turn directions from you mobile maps application. You could also send your music from your handset, but playing songs on the small speakerphone might be a little strange.

Available May 23 at Best Buy and then rolling out to AT&T stores on June 6. Expect to pay $99.99.

Looks like Facebook wants to redeem itself. It can now be accessed through mobile phone, thanks to the wireless operators who have partnered with the site in coming up with O.facebook.com – a text only version of the social network.It is simple, fast, and free.Operators include Reliance and Videocon in India, T-Mobile in Hungary, and Vodafone in Greece. The new application will be available in 40 countries including Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey. Users can view posts and send messages for free excluding photos and videos which require a standard charge. Facebook targets users who have limited experience on mobile internet as well as those who do not have the latest Apple’s iPhone for instance.Facebook have no financial deals with the operators in providing the service.

It is quite timely this development shoots up when Facebook is being criticized for its privacy settings. Users may have second thoughts in deleting their accounts since at the moment it is the only social networking site who have gone this far.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Is Growing By Leaps And Bounds
2. Facebook: Privacy Setting, 2010
3. Facebook comes to India New offices in Hyderabad