Amtrak is experimenting with a bio-diesel fueled train … called the Heartland Flyer.  

" …  nation’s first-ever test of a cleaner and renewable biodiesel fuel blend to power a daily interstate passenger train between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth … research project … on the daily Heartland Flyer train operated by Amtrak … biodiesel blend includes beef byproduct and is provided by a Texas-based vendor."

" … the biodiesel blend known as B20 (20% pure biofuel and 80% diesel) reduced hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide each by 10 percent, reduced particulates by 15 percent and sulfates by 20 percent. … measurements will be taken … at the end of 12 months so any impact of the biodiesel on valves and gaskets can be measured…."

Via:  Amtrak LINK

	Volt production pushed up to October? GM says plans “have not changed” So, um, when, exactly?		Scientist wants automakers held accountable for how electricty is generated for plug-ins This not a good idea.
	The Nissan Leaf in five new colors, and other tidbits from the registration process Red, black, white, blue and silver.	Other news: Poll: Who’s already registered to buy a Nissan Leaf? 240 trees offset 1 car per year and other fun facts Video: Largest gathering of Tesla Roadsters ever

AutoblogGreen for 04.22.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yahoo has posted some better-than-expected results for the first quarter of 2010. While revenue stayed flat, income was more than double mostly due to several one-time deals. Money from Microsoft has started pouring in and display ads, arguably Yahoo’s strong suit, have seen a 20-percent uptake in the first three months of the… (read more)

[JURIST] A US government official said Wednesday that at least five accused Somali pirates will face charges in the US, according to the Associated Press. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the transfers are pending, said that the accused will arrive in Norfolk, Virginia, by the end of this week. Although Kenyan courts are no longer willing to prosecute piracy cases, the source claims that not all 21 of those recently arrested in piracy incidents will face charges in the US. US State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley told reporters Wednesday, “I would not deny that we have plans to bring pirates who are responsible for attacks against our vessels back to the United States.” Crowley added that, “Kenya is reaching a capacity problem – challenge. So this is where all countries have to step up just as we are doing and take responsibility for pirates who have attacked their ships and prosecute them to the fullest extent of national law.”
In January, the International Chamber of Commerce International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reported that 2009 marked the worst year for maritime piracy in six years. The information indicated that the total reported incidents of piracy reached 406, surpassing 400 for the first time since 2003. Earlier that month, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a superseding indictment against alleged Somali pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, claiming that he led the takeover of two additional ships. Muse pleaded not guilty to the charges. In November, Somali judge Mohamed Abdi Aware, known for jailing suspected pirates, human traffickers, and Islamist insurgents, was shot dead while leaving a mosque in the Puntland city of Bossaso.

After the appapalooza that was Tuesday, you might find yourself disappointed by Wednesday’s app drop. Don’t be, not every day can be a rock star day. Granted, some new apps would have been nice…

Updated apps:

• Asphalt 5, $4.99
• Brothers In Arms®: Hour of Heroes, $4.99
• Deer Hunter 3D, $6.99
• Dungeon Hunter, $4.99
• Family Guy: Uncensored, $4.99
• Free Game Chess Clock Tournament, Free
• Guitar Hero 5, $6.99
• How to Train Your Dragon Mobile Game, $0.99
• iBored, $1.99
• Let’s Golf, $4.99
• Stickyman, $1.49
• Super KO Boxing! 2, $4.99
• World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend, $2.99

A sign outside a West Virginia vigil for coal miners who lost their lives in the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5 (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Charleston, W.Va. — Two weeks after the horrific explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Southern West Virginia, it’s business as usual for the owner of the project.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

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Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected make-shift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on-shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Such anecdotes aren’t easy to come by. Massey — the top coal producer in Appalachia — has built a reputation of intimidating its workers into a type of lock-step compliance that most often takes the form of silence, particularly when the subject revolves around safety in the company’s mines. The reason is clear: Massey is the economic engine in parts of West Virginia, and there’s a lingering fear among many workers that any grumbling could leave them unemployed. Some former employees said this week that the reluctance of Upper Big Branch miners to discuss the conditions inside those tunnels prior to the blast is no accident.

“I guarantee it: Massey’s already told these guys, ‘Hey, don’t say nothin’. You’re not talking to no reporters. You’re not saying nothin’ about our safety record — or you won’t have a job,’” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “That’s the way they operate.”

Still, Massey’s history of safety violations — including hundreds racked up at its other Appalachian projects in the last two weeks alone — has raised plenty of eyebrows in Washington in the wake of this month’s disaster. The White House, which had responded to the blast by vowing to reinspect the country’s most problematic mines, released a list of those projects Wednesday. At least eight of the 57 mines are Massey-owned.

Still, there’s evidence that, around the Upper Big Branch, Blankenship’s idea of running the company properly is rubbing some miners’ families the wrong way.

Some residents, for example, had kept vigil candles burning until all 29 miners were discovered. Now they’re keeping them lit until another milestone is reached: They’ll keep them burning, the Massey miner’s wife said, “until there’s justice.”

Jim submitted this story about a paramedic who left a thumb drive containing child pornography plugged into a shared computer. A coworker later found the files on the thumb drive, and the owner of the drive was brought up on charges for the offending files.

Obviously child pornography is a serious crime and needs to be stopped; that’s not the issue that is in question here. As law professor Orin Kerr points, out, the concern here is whether or not looking through the contents of an inadvertently plugged in thumb drive constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure and a violation of our fourth amendment rights. In this case, United States v. Durdley, the district court ruled that leaving a thumb drive in a shared computer removed an expectation of privacy since no extraordinary means were necessary to access those files:

Durdley’s files were exposed to anyone who sat down at the computer station who used the traditional means for opening and viewing files (such as Windows Explorer and the My Computer icon). Johnson encountered the files without employing any special means or intruding into any area which Durdley could reasonably expect to remain private once he left the drive attached to the common-use computer. The Court concludes, therefore, that Mr. Durdley had no more reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the thumb drive once he attached it to the common-use computer than the defendant in King did in his drive once he attached it to the airbase network.

Kerr disagrees with the ruling, and equates leaving a thumb drive plugged into a shared computer to leaving luggage in a bus terminal:

I think the social norm is that when you see a private person’s thumb drive on a shared-use computer, it’s understood that you’re invading that person’s privacy if you start clicking around to see what the files are. It’s kind of like someone leaving their luggage in the waiting room of a bus station. If the owner leaves the luggage behind for some reason, no one would see that as a waiver of privacy rights in the luggage or an invitation to unzip the luggage and look around.

It’s hard to see how opening someone else’s luggage is remotely close to looking at files on a thumb drive. Whereas luggage has clear physical boundaries, once a thumb drive is part of a file system, those barriers no longer exist. After all, when a thumb drive is plugged into a PC, it appears as a drive under “My Computer” and looks very similar to the other drives attached to the computer. So, if we really want a real-world analogy, a more appropriate one would be an open suitcase in a public bus station. Sure, while it’s kind of nosy to peek inside, things in plain view have long been understood to not be protected under the fourth amendment.

So, the moral of the story is, if you have files you don’t want people looking at, it’s best to not leave your thumb drives plugged into shared computers. Even better, don’t have illegal files in the first place.

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1 million Pakistanis fleeing from fighting remain in overcrowded camps, depending on emergency relief to survive. Caroline Gluck talks to people in the camps and looks at Oxfam’s cash-for work programmes in the community.

Girls at Jalozai camp. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

I met Marhaba, who introduced herself as a widow and mother of four young children, at Jalozai camp, near the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

She told me that she’d been forced to abandon her home in Upper Dir, north-western Pakistan, during intense fighting and shelling a year ago.  As families fled in terror, she became separated from her husband. “I call myself a widow now,” she explained. “I have no idea if my husband is dead or alive.”

Marhaba has ended up living on a site that now houses almost a quarter of a million people: a vast city of plastic tents. Jalozai first opened three decades ago, providing shelter to Afghan refugees fleeing into Pakistan to escape fighting. But more recent arrivals have come from Pakistan’s Swat Valley and other regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

More than 3 million displaced

Last year, more than 3 million people fled their homes amid military operations in the Swat Valley and surrounding areas, in what was one of the largest and fastest displacements in Pakistan’s recent history. It triggered a major humanitarian response.

But almost a year on, more than 1 million Pakistanis remain uprooted, depending on emergency relief to survive. More than 200,000 have been freshly displaced in recent months by military offensives in tribal areas of Pakistan. While some live in overcrowded camps, the majority have received no official help. They are forced to rent or stay with friends or relatives.

Most, like Marhaba, left their homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. “We fled our village barefoot,” she told me, saying it took two nights of travel to reach the safety of the camp.

Daily life is still a struggle. While she has a domicile card, Marhaba doesn’t have her husband’s identity card and that can make it hard to access food and other help from the camp authorities. She often has to wait last in line, hoping for leftovers or help from her brothers-in-law and their families.

Like many, she’s heard that her village has been badly damaged, and she’s reluctant to return to an uncertain future. She’s also not entirely convinced the situation is safe for her children to return.

The government is keen for people to return home. It has recently declared several areas safe and wants families to move back. But many people I talked to in the camps were reluctant, knowing that basic services like electricity, water and hospitals have been destroyed. Opportunities to work are also scarce. And they have received no compensation for their destroyed or damaged houses and livelihoods.

A forgotten crisis

Building a new well in Sijburn village. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Oxfam has been working with many returnee families, running cash-for work programmes so that people can earn some money working on projects that can also benefit the community, like building wells and roads. It is also helping farmers, providing agricultural inputs, tools, cows and goats.

But Oxfam, like many other leading humanitarian agencies, is also sounding an alarm bell: funding for emergency work is drying up. Less than one-third of an emergency fund to help those affected by the crisis has been funded by international donors, and some programmes may have to close.

Pakistan is in danger of becoming a forgotten crisis. And the future remains uncertain for those like Marhaba, now living a hand-to-mouth existence, who prays for things to get better.

Displaced Pakistanis talk about life at Jalozai camp.

Where we work: Pakistan

Remember when phones actually had handsets attached to a cord that made it comfortable to spend hours on a call? No? Well, believe me, such things existed.

Now Novophone lets you experience the glory of yesteryear with their Retro Handset that plugs into your cellphone.

Will you look slightly ridiculous talking into an old-fashioned receiver plugged into your mobile phone? Sure, but you’ll have clearer sounding calls and won’t have to worry about that pesky cellphone radiation.

The Retro Handset – available in red, black, and blue – will run you $27.95 and can be purchased at the Novophone website.

Related posts:

1. Land Rover Creates World’s Toughest Cell Phone
2. Have Phone Sex With Lost’s Evangeline Lilly
3. A Stereo Headset that Vibrates with the Music

There’s a shakeup headed for Seaside Heights, if a new report from The New York Post’s PageSix Column is to be believed. Although producers deny it, we hear MTV is looking to trim the fat on the upcoming third season its breakout reality smash Jersey Shore — and that could very well include ditching some of the fist-pumpin’ guidos and guidettes that make up the show’s cast.

While audience faves Snooki, Pauly D, and The Situation are all reportedly on board for a third installment of the docu-soap that shot them to reality infamy, the network is considering replacing the other Shore regulars — Ronnie Magro, Sammi Giancola, Jenni “J-Woww” Farley, and Vinny Guadagnino — with a crop of new and even more “outrageous” characters, the Big Apple tabloid reports.

No word on what will happen to former castoff Angelina Pivarnick, who recently returned to Jersey Shore after leaving three episodes into the first season

Modern web browsers such as Firefox are pretty secure. Unfortunately, even the very latest browsers won’t identify all potentially dangerous websites. Most people are aware that not all sites can be trusted, but are you aware visiting one may cause you to receive unwanted emails and, in some cases, they may even be used to send spam or ship adware with downloads. The only real solution is to identify these harmful sites or pages before it’s too late.

McAfee SiteAdvisor 3 for Firefox is an add-on that enables users to identify dangerous pages or sites by using a traffic light style warning system. Green signifies trusted sites, yellow for sites that may send unwanted mail and red for sites they may infect your PC with spam or adware. There is also an Internet Explorer version available.

McAfee SiteAdvisor 3 link.

It’s not just 3D gaming that the PS3 will be offering soon. Major League Baseball will apparently be streamed live to consoles by the end of this week, but if you’ve got grand ideas of free baseball, think again. More »

The Guardian has George Monbiot’s latest installment of his long campaign against the global airline industry – What links the banking crisis and the volcano?. I don’t really agree with his conclusion – in the long run we’ll find that we can electrify most forms of transport and air travel will consume much of our (vastly reduced) liquid fuel production.

We have several such vulnerabilities. The most catastrophic would be an unexpected coronal mass ejection – a solar storm – which causes a surge of direct current down our electricity grids, taking out the transformers. It could happen in seconds; the damage and collapse would take years to reverse, if we ever recovered. We would soon become aware of our dependence on electricity: an asset which, like oxygen, we notice only when it fails.

As New Scientist magazine points out, an event like this would knacker most of the systems which keep us alive. It would take out water treatment plants and pumping stations. It would paralyse oil pumping and delivery, which would quickly bring down food supplies. It would clobber hospitals, financial systems and just about every kind of business – even the manufacturers of candles and paraffin lamps. Emergency generators would function only until the oil ran out. Burnt-out transformers cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. Over the past year I’ve sent freedom of information requests to electricity transmitters and distributors, asking them what contingency plans they have made, and whether they have stockpiled transformers to replace any destroyed by a solar storm. I haven’t got to the end of it yet, but the early results suggest that they haven’t.

There’s a similar lack of planning for the possibility that global supplies of oil might soon peak then go into decline. My FoI requests to the British government reveal that it has made no contingency plans, on the grounds that it doesn’t believe it will happen. The issue remains the preserve of beardy lentil-eaters such as, er, the US joint forces command. Its latest report on possible future conflicts maintains that “a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity”.

It suggests that “by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10m barrels per day”. A shortage of refining and production capacity is not the same thing as peak oil, but the report warns that a chronic constraint looms behind the immediate crisis: even under “the most optimistic scenario … petroleum production will be hard pressed to meet the expected future demand”. A global oil shortage would soon expose the weaknesses of our complex economic systems. As the cultural anthropologist Joseph Tainter has shown, their dependence on high energy use is one of the factors that makes complex societies vulnerable to collapse.

His work has helped to overturn the old assumption that social complexity is a response to surplus energy. Instead, he proposes, complexity drives higher energy production. While complexity solves many problems – such as reliance on an exclusively local and therefore vulnerable food supply – it’s subject to diminishing returns. In extreme cases the cost of maintaining such systems causes them to collapse. …

For the third time in two years we’ve discovered that flying is one of the weakest links in our overstretched system. In 2008 the rising cost of fuel drove several airlines out of business. The recession compounded the damage; the volcano might ruin several more. Energy-hungry, weather-dependent, easily disrupted, a large aviation industry is one of the hardest sectors for any society to sustain, especially one beginning to encounter a series of crises. The greater our dependence on flying, the more vulnerable we are likely to become.

Over the past few days people living under the flight paths have seen the future, and they like it. The state of global oil supplies, the industry’s social and environmental costs and its extreme vulnerability mean that current levels of flying – let alone the growth the government anticipates – cannot be maintained indefinitely. We have a choice. We can start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it. Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means.

Has South Park gone too far this time?

Producers of the irreverant Comedy Central series South Park beeped out the words Prophet Muhammad and plastered its Wednesday episode with the word “CENSORED” after being issued a grim warning by a radical New York-based Muslim group this week.

In a description of last night’s episode, the network wrote: “South Park is in danger from angry celebrities, violent Ginger kids and Mecha Streisand in an all-new episode titled ‘201,’ premiering on Wednesday, April 21 at 10PM on Comedy Central. It’s a tense situation in South Park as Muhammad has become the pawn in the game to save the town. The Ginger kids are threatening to destroy the city if Stan and Kyle don’t hand over the Prophet and the celebrities have met violence with violence by unleashing Mecha Streisand.”

Revolutionmuslim.com criticized the show for including a satirical discussion on whether an image of the Prophet Mohammed could be shown, and a posting on the website now warns South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that their flippancy could make them the targets of violent attacks.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” the message read, referring to a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered after making a film about violence against women in some Islamic societies. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

The website warning followed the first in a two-part episode of South Park (entitled “201″) a week ago in which Prophet Mohammad was depicted in a bear outfit. The statement posted the address of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Los Angeles production studio, however a spokesman for the group denied the statement was a threat against the animators.

“Revolution Muslim only wants those offended to be able to voice their opposition by letters to the show’s creators,” a spokesman told CNN Wednesday.

Two prominent Democratic candidates for governor – Dannel Malloy and Mary Glassman – both sharply criticized the state’s practice of borrowing money for operating expenses that is part of the Democratic-written budget that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell would not sign.

Malloy and Glassman rejected the practice known as “securitization” during a gubernatorial forum Wednesday at the University of Connecticut’s law school in Hartford’s West End. Four Democratic candidates appeared separately from seven Republican candidates in back-to-back debates in front of about 200 UConn students, alumni, and officials on the law school’s 21-acre campus.

Malloy, who served as Stamford’s mayor for 14 years, said that securitization is “really bad public policy.” 

In the budget for the 2011 fiscal year, the state legislature filled a hole of $1.3 billion by promising to borrow money that would be paid off with money from various state revenue streams. Those revenue streams are not specified under state law, and Rell and the legislators are currently debating over exactly how the hole should be filled.

At the Capitol, each side has blamed the other recently over securitization as no one wants to claim authorship of the idea.

Rell originally called for using money generated from legalizing the keno gambling game, but Democrats have sharply rejected that idea. Instead, they have called for using fees paid by customers of Connecticut Light & Power Co., which has prompted a campaign of radio commercials and newspaper advertisements that strongly criticize the idea.

“Securitization – really what it means is stealing,” Glassman said during the forum. “We stole those monies.”

In an interview after the debate, Glassman said, “We cannot keep stealing from the future to pay for the past. We cannot keep doing it.”

Malloy and Glassman were runningmates during the 2006 Democratic primary before Malloy lost the race against New Haven Mayor John DeStefano. Glassman, however, won her primary for lieutenant governor and then became DeStefano’s runningmate in the eventual race against Rell.

The two Democrats were joined on stage by Rudy Marconi, who has served as Ridgefield’s first selectman for the past 11 years, and former state Rep. Juan Figueroa, who is taking a leave of absence from a universal health care foundation to run for governor.

The Democratic frontrunner in the polls – Greenwich cable television entrepreneur Ned Lamont – did not attend because of a scheduling conflict. His spokeswoman, Justine Sessions, declined to detail the nature of the conflict or say where Lamont was on Wednesday. Lamont, she said, has already participated in more than 15 multi-candidate forums over the past several months and will be attending another one at 2 p.m. Saturday at Shepaug Valley High School in the Litchfield County town of Washington.

“If I had anything to do with Ned not showing up, I apologize,” Malloy said in his opening remarks to the crowd.

The Democratic debate followed a forum by seven Republicans who are seeking the party’s nomination at the convention on Saturday, May 22 in Hartford.

The Republican front-runner in the polls, Tom Foley of Greenwich, and Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of Stamford both said they would first push for cutting spending instead of raising taxes.

“Revenue is not the answer. That’s the easy cop-out,” Fedele said.

When some candidates said the state does not have a revenue problem, longtime business executive Oz Griebel of Simsbury said the state in fact does have a revenue problem because 100,000 unemployed citizens are not paying income taxes and sales taxes at the levels that they have in the past.

Former U.S. Rep. Larry DeNardis, who has served as a state senator and university president during his long career, noted that the candidates have not unveiled precise, line-by-line plans that would fill the state’s projected $3.8 billion deficit for the 2012 fiscal year.

“No one has a satisfactory answer. I don’t,” DeNardis told the crowd. “This will be the most difficult year in Connecticut history.”

When the candidates were asked how to keep higher education affordable, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton was the sixth person to speak.

“I’m not sure if I heard an answer,” Boughton said to the crowd.

A crucial way to hold down college costs at UConn and the Connecticut State University system, he said, is to moderate the lucrative pensions and benefits of the employees of the public universities. Boughton is a graduate of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Boughton said after the forum. “That’s one of the drivers of the budget. … Some of the salaries tend to butt up against the absurd.”

The candidates were introduced by UConn president Michael Hogan, who mispronounced the names of Boughton, Griebel, and journalist Keith Phaneuf, who was one of the questioners at both debates.

2010 Volkswagen Phaeton

Details with the next generation 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton have surfaced on to the Internet. Sources report that the facelift version 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton will debut at this year’s Auto Show in Beijing which starts April 25th and this revised model comes after 8 years since the company entered the luxury saloon segment.

The 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton will feature a front fascia that resembles the rest of the company’s models, with LED daytime runing lights and taillights and assembly will take place at a new plant in Dresda.

As far as engine options the 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton facelift will be fitted with the new 3.0-litre TFSI V6 unit (both diesel and petrol version) that was recently introduced on the 2011 Audi Q7 at the Auto Show in Leipzig.

Official details and photos with the 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton facelift will get revealed as the debut date approaches.

Text source

Happy Earth Day !!

 Today is the  40th anniversary of Earth Day !!

– What will you do today, and going forward for Earth Day?
– Use a reusable cup instead of a throw away one use cup ?
– Take public transportation or walk rather than drive by car?
– Car pool rather than drive alone? 

To learn more about Earth Day 2010 and things ** YOU ** can do … LINK

Via: Earth Day 2010  LINK

Mornin’ PopCrunchers,

We hope you didn’t forget that today, Thursday, April 22, is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Please remember to be extra kind to our beautiful Planet as you go about your day. Feel free to visit USATODAY.com and EarthDay.org for a complete history on this annual day of environmental awareness and to find out way that you can get involved!

I do love a good Rube Goldberg Machine example. While not as grand in scale as OK Go’s, Vodafone Italy‘s commercial looks like it was insanely fun putting together—all those smartphones, in one room! Working together! Amazing. More »