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Coldway’s containers to play it cool at Medica

Coldway of France, a specialist in thermochemical solutions, has presented its range of cooling containers, which use an innovative closed-circuit thermochemical process, at the Medica trade fair, from 18 to 21 November 2009.

Coldway’s cooling containers ensure that a regulated internal temperature prevails with no need for an electrical connection. The containers are recharged via a temporary electrical connection, while there is full traceability for both the temperature and for the lid openings and closings.

Thanks to a patented, reversible thermochemical process that requires no consumables, Coldway’s temperature-controlled containers ensure cold production when the user requires it and maintains the products at the required temperature for up to 24 hours (depending on the model). The reversible process can be recharged by plugging into the power supply for four to five hours, depending on the model.

This process is more economical than using refrigerated vehicles. It is also environmentally friendly as no consumables are required, nor any fluids that damage the ozone layer, such as CFCs, HCFCs or other substitutes banned by international agreements. As it has neither a motor nor a compressor, the cooling container is silent, requires little maintenance, and is not subject to wear and tear. A variety of ranges provide controlled temperatures ranging from 30°C to +37°C, for volumes ranging from 7 litres to 1,000 litres. Every unit is certified to EFS standards (NFX15-140).

About Coldway

Coldway, which is headquartered in Pia (near Perpignan, in southern France), was founded in 2001 by two engineers from CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), who are experts in the thermochemical process and in refrigeration engineering.

Coldway offers several ranges of stand-alone containers for the handling and transport of thermo-sensitive products. The company’s R&D department also develops customised products and can integrate its technology into industrial solutions. Coldway’s products are used in hospitals, blood-donor centres and medical laboratories, and are also used by specialists in the transport of medical products.

For further information, please go to: www.coldway.fr

You don’t need booming sales figures to tell you that netbooks have taken over the world — the mobile computing world, at least. Their screenless and battery-free brethren, however, have yet to find quite the same success. Nettops are great tiny little machines but in general they’ve been under-powered and, while people love eking out another hour or two of battery life on the road, few sadly care whether their desktop computers pull down 17 or 71 watts of juice. Still, it’s hard to deny the appeal of a fully-functional computer that’s half the size of a Wii — especially when it can manage 1080p output over HDMI. Viewsonic’s VOT132, with its Ion graphics and trick magnetic DVD drive, is tiny, efficient, and powerful. The perfect media PC? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Viewsonic VOT132 nettop review

Viewsonic VOT132 nettop review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are so many different ways to make a holiday wreath. I like the fact that making your own wreath makes it a one of a kind decoration. You can put anything you choose on the wreath and it is not only for hanging outdoors. I have a wreath hanging in just about every room in my house.

Kathy Zengolewicz

Here is what you will need to get started making a Santa Face Wreath:

• An artificial wreath ( I suppose you could use a real wreath too)
• A Santa face ornament (This time of year you can find them everywhere)
• Hot glue gun
• Floral wire
• Pinecones (optional) I have small pinecones on my picks
• Christmas picks (I chose berries and poinsettia picks)
• Red Ribbon (also optional, I didn’t have room for one)

Start out by arranging your wreath. Pull and shape the wreath until it looks full. You won’t be able to do any shaping once you add the ornaments and picks.

I have my Santa’s face in the middle at the top, but you can put it anywhere. Place the picks, arranging them randomly, around the wreath. Some of the ornaments may need to be glued and all of the picks and the pinecones will need to be fastened to the wreath with floral wire.

For an added touch, you can put a little bit of spray snow on the tips of the greenery. That will give it a rich look.

If you have two doors, for example doors leading to a deck, why not make another wreath and put Mrs. Santa’s face on that one.  That is a real cute idea, a pair of wreaths.

Wreaths are another craft that are easy and inexpensive to make. You choose what to put on them and that makes your wreath unique. You can also use styrofoam wreaths for this project.

Post from: Blisstree

Santa Face Wreath

This is just a fun little video for your Christmas Eve — a sweet little dog who knows he’s done something wrong!

It’s funny to me that dogs do this. Though my dogs are pretty small there have been times where they’ve damaged something or done something they know they shouldn’t (Honey hates the rain and thunder, and will avoid going outside to do her business at all costs when there’s a storm, if you catch my drift), and before we’ve even discovered what they’ve done, they’ve got the ears turned downward, the poor puppy dog eyes, and the tail tucked.

Does your dog act guilty when they know they’ve done something they shouldn’t?

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Christmas Tree Disaster

HTC’s H1 line up for T-Mobile is pretty uninspiring, except for the HTC Trophy, which would be HTC’s first Windows Mobile Professional device with a front-facing QWERTY keyboard.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 is set to sport a 3 inch VGA capacitive touch, Qualcomm 600 Mhz MSM7227 processor, massive 1400 mAh battery and still only a a svelte 11 mm thin form factor.  

The device will still also feature consumer features such as a 3.5 mm  headphone jack, FM radio and 5 megapixel camera.

On the business side it will have Straight talk lite, HTC’s new People software, Super Search and Business card scanner.

The device is the answer to many people’s prayers, who have been asking for a front facing QWERTY device with a large high resolution touch screen, and should find immediate popularity amongst Windows Mobile fans who have not bought into the iPhone back slab phenomena. As can be seen from the mock-up above, the smartphone is considerably narrower but taller than similar devices, but feature a much larger screen.

The HTC Trophy is set to arrive some time in May 2010.

Are you excited about this smartphone?  If so, let us know why in the comments below.

Tim Flannery

A word cloud of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks to the UN Climate Change Conference (Wordle/ecopolitology.org)

On April 5, 2009, Denmark got a new Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. He was the third Danish Prime Minister in a row to bear that surname, replacing Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had been named the new Secretary-General of NATO. A capable local politician in his forties, Lars Rasmussen had, in contrast to his predecessor, almost no experience in international politics. His appointment received little media coverage outside Denmark. But just eight months later, with Denmark the host of the Copenhagen climate summit (officially the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP-15), Lars Rasmussen’s—and Denmark’s—lack of experience in international politics would have a global impact.

Following internal conflicts in the Danish cabinet, Rasmussen abruptly took over as chair of the conference two days before it ended, replacing Connie Hedegaard, the President of the COP (and previously his climate and energy minister) at a point when the negotiations had reached a critical juncture. As the host country, Denmark was expected to deliver for consideration that evening a draft statement on a final agreement. It did not arrive; nor was it produced the following morning. When it again failed to appear by lunchtime on December 17, a sense of crisis gripped the national delegations from 113 different countries. Numerous obstructions and demands by particular countries impeded a successful outcome. Leaders of some small countries were using the meeting to grandstand, while others were using it to push their own agendas. Many expressed astonishment when the representative from the Sudan likened a deal to cut carbon emissions to genocide, a comment that was perhaps prompted by Amnesty International’s call for the Danes to arrest Sudanese President Omar al Bashir if he attended the meeting. (He did not.) And by all accounts Rasmussen’s chairing of the final days of the meeting did not help in dealing with such unwelcome developments.

By the morning of Friday the 18th, the last formal day of the meeting, there was only one source of hope remaining—President Obama, who was scheduled to fly in that morning. Tellingly, upon arrival he did not, as diplomatic protocol dictates, meet with Rasmussen, but instead went directly into a meeting with about twenty world leaders, including Gordon Brown, Nicholas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and Manmohan Singh, and then into an hour-long meeting with Wen Jiabao.

When he spoke afterward, President Obama was clearly both frustrated and surprised at the limited progress that had been made toward a resolution. Nor did things go terribly well after that. The key objective for Obama in his meeting with Premier Wen was to secure greater transparency on Chinese emissions targets, and Wen signaled his dissatisfaction by dispatching increasingly junior emissaries to meet with Obama.

Then, much to the annoyance of the Chinese delegation, Obama burst uninvited into a meeting between Wen, Manmohan Singh, Lula da Silva of Brazil, and South African President Jacob Zuma. It was at that meeting—in which no European leaders were present—that the final touches were put on the three-page document that would become known as the Copenhagen Accord. In this agreement, despite Chinese resistance, Obama could claim to have—in principle at least—achieved his key objective of obtaining greater international transparency and accountability for emissions reduction targets; and with the UNFCCC negotiations still in full swing, the US President flew home, citing deteriorating weather as the reason, leaving European representatives and those from the smaller developing countries alike surprised and chagrined.

When I awoke on Saturday, December 19th—the morning after what was to be the final day of the conference—I was concerned to discover that it had not ended and the wording of the final accord was still being discussed. As it was, the final negotiations ran until nearly 2:30 p.m. that afternoon, ultimately resulting in a resolution to “take note of the Copenhagen Accord of December 18, 2009,” as Rasmussen put it, before sharply banging down his gavel to close COP 15.

So just what has the world got out of this much-anticipated meeting? The Copenhagen Accord reaffirms the objective—first expressed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992—of keeping Earth’s temperature from rising more than two degrees. It affirms a commitment by developed countries to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change by creating a $100 billion fund for adaptation and mitigation by 2020. It commits the so-called Annex 1 countries (developed countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol) to announcing their emissions targets by January 31, 2010—within weeks—and it obliges “non-Annex 1 parties” to the Kyoto Protocol (developing countries such as China and India) to list national schedules of action to combat climate change.

While many of these commitments were expected, the pathway to agreement was a surprise. Indeed, as the meeting unfolded I got the feeling that I was watching the death of the old UN-sponsored process and the birth of something new. That’s not to say that COP 16 won’t occur in Mexico next year, as planned, but just that the really important work of abating climate change is likely to take place elsewhere.

The hopelessly confused arrangements for the Copenhagen conference will be cautionary. Meetings among powerful nations—such as the one Obama broke in on—don’t have to take place at COP. Just where the key negotiations on climate will occur in future is unclear, but it seems likely that the G20 will be an important venue, as may the G8. This will frustrate the smaller developing countries—such as Bolivia and Sudan—that have the most to lose from runaway climate change. How they will react to this shift away from COP, which amounts to their disempowerment, is yet to be seen.

The Copenhagen Accord left much hanging, including the question of precise commitments and how they can be enforced. Among the key questions it poses is whether the US is prepared to take concrete steps to reduce emissions, for since the US did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, it is not bound to announce its gas emissions target by January 31.

Much depends upon the fate of a cap-and-trade bill now before the US Senate. If such a bill passes, then the US will be able to commit, in a fully accountable way, to a national target of emissions reduction. If instead, the US is forced to rely upon regulations by the Environmental Protection Administration, including the imposition of fuel efficiency standards on coal-fired power plants, it will be much more difficult to commit to a precise reduction target, simply because it’s hard to be sure how much such measures will actually reduce emissions. And if that is the outcome, will the US seek to use a “national schedules” approach like China and India—according to which no hard target on national emissions reductions is mandated?

The Copenhagen Accord ends with two blank appendices, one for Annex 1, and another for non-Annex 1 countries. How they are filled in over 2010 will determine in large part the world’s success in averting dangerous climate change. Whatever the case, it is now clear that the focus in combating climate change will revert once again to the national level, which means that 2010 could be the definitive year in places such as the US and China, in the battle for climatic stability.

Several months back, a major study comparing the nutritional value of organic food to conventional food made the rounds. Organic food, it found, was “no healthier” than ordinary food. There were no significant “differences in nutrient content,” and the study’s authors found “no evidence to support the selection of organic over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.” Hmm, so there were “differences,” but they were “unlikely to be of any public health relevance.” Okay – even if I accept that the differences were unimportant, there was a major, glaring qualifier: “nutritional superiority.” Going organic, then, doesn’t suddenly change the essential composition of a plant. A grape remains a grape (small differences aside), whether you use artificial pesticides or “natural” pesticides. I buy that, and I don’t think many people who support organic are arguing that industrial organic farms produce purer, more “appley” apples than conventional farms. They’re simply wary of ingesting the artificial chemical cocktails applied to conventional crops.

If you’re interested in just how many pesticides you may be ingesting, the PAN Pesticides Database deserves a look. It’s limited to California data, but you can obtain full listings of what pesticides were used on which crops. Go to “Tomatoes for Processing,” (soups, sauces, etc) for example, and you’ll see that over 10 million gross pounds of chemicals were applied to tomatoes intended for processing. The data is raw and admittedly incomplete (and perhaps even under-reported), but it gives you a general idea of the scale. And that’s just a single crop, in a single state, using only “reported tomato acreage.” There are hundreds more, and each one is – apparently – drenched in chemicals. Organic, then, is about much more than small micronutrient differences. It’s about avoiding the flood of artificial chemicals, which the study did not address.

The real issue is the industrialization of farming. You see, the organic label has become a big money maker. Sales of organics increase annually, and most major producers have at least one organic division. Up until the last decade or so, organic produce inhabited a tiny niche in the market. If you wanted organic, you’d probably have to grow it yourself or visit a farmers’ market that featured small, local organic family farm produce. Now, certified organic farms exist on massive scales rivaling the biggest conventional growing operations. Places like Costco carry organic produce: enormous tubs of lettuce, ten-pound bags of carrots, and drums of onions. You can’t expect Costco to get their organic produce from small, local hobby farmers who get intimate with their crops and fine tune the soil composition, take chances and try new methods; they have to rely on the enormous industrial organic farms, operations that use proven organic methods on a huge scale. These guys aren’t necessarily concerned with growing the perfect, richest, best tasting peach. They want something that satisfies the organic certification requirements, can be produced on a major scale, and can travel long distances without damage or spoilage. They aren’t handing out samples and beaming proudly like a parent.

The larger the scale, the more impersonal the relationship between farmer and food, regardless of organic status. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s unavoidable with the increasing consumer demand for organics – but it does mean the organic apple you get from Costco will differ qualitatively from the apple you get from Joe down at the farmer’s market. And yes, I’d even bet there would be nutritional differences between Joe’s produce and the organic produce at Costco. The study’s authors certainly weren’t looking at farmers’ market stuff, because most organic produce is purchased in grocery stores, not farmers’ markets. For most people, “organic” means the slightly more expensive lettuce next to the cheaper, conventional lettuce in the grocery store, so that’s what they examined. Only a small subset of the population shops locally.

Despite all that, the Primal stance is generally pro-organic, the reasoning being that a plant, fruit, or animal grown without the administration of artificial pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics or growth hormones (in the case of animal products), most closely replicates wild or untampered-with growing conditions. If we’re trying to eat like our ancestors, going organic might be our best shot at approximating their dietary environment. An organic, locally grown blackberry might not be identical to the berries Grok stumbled upon, but at least its producers tried to replicate the “wild” growing environment by minimizing or even eliminating the manmade chemical load.

I think we have to consider the role of organics as existing on a continuum. This is not a binary, black-and-white situation. Ideally, we’d all have access to time-traveling, foraging food merchants making weekly trips back to the Paleolithic for berries, roots, tubers, and other vegetation (and maybe the occasional auroch, or mammoth, cargo space permitting), but in reality we have to make do with the best we’ve got.

Homegrown reigns supreme, of course. You ever eat a big, plump juicy tomato that’s been showered with love and daily attention as it’s allowed to ripen on the vine by a home gardener? There is simply no comparison. It practically becomes a different organism altogether. But few people have the time or the space to produce enough vegetables and fruit to sustain a Primal diet.

Local farmers’ market fare is next. Big cities pretty much always have them, and they’re beginning to pop up in smaller markets, too. If it’s environmental impact you’re worried about, local apples trounce those organic Fujis from Chile. If it’s better taste you want, you’re better off buying spinach from the farmer who lives with her crops and takes personal pride in their quality. She earns her living based on a small, committed cadre of customers who intensely care about taste. They could hit up Whole Foods for bagged spinach, but they go to the small, local farmers’ markets for the experience and the superior quality. The farmers, then, have an obligation and a powerful financial motivation to improve the taste of their products. Take the local Santa Monica Wednseday farmers’ market, for example – all the local chefs stock up there. You’ll see their carts piled high with fruits, veggies, and local meats. These guys’ primary (perhaps only) concern is quality, but you don’t see them prowling Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. They know quality and where to find it, sort of like when you’re stuck in the wilderness and follow an animal trail to a watering hole. Wild animals know the wilderness, and chefs know food quality.

After homegrown and local, regular store-bought organic is best. They may not have any appreciable advantage when it comes to vitamins or phytonutrients, but they will be cleaner, and organic produce generally tastes better than conventional produce.

Organic meat, eggs, and dairy (if you eat it) should absolutely take precedence, if that even needs to be said. We already know the qualitative differences between pastured and grain-fed beef, and between pastured chickens and “cage free” chickens (let alone chickens in battery cages). We also know that dairy and animal fat can concentrate environmental chemicals, just as it can be a source of fat-soluble vitamins. When it comes to animal products, organic (and pastured, free-range in an ideal world) is absolutely essential.

All that said, people have to eat. And if we can’t eat organic, local, or pastured, going with conventional produce is our only option. If you’re in that position, you can mitigate your chemical load by avoiding certain choices and going with others. Grain-fed, antibiotic-pumped meat can be trimmed of visible fat (boring, I know, but probably worth it).

So, is organic worth it? Yeah, it’s worth the trouble, but buying locally is best – often for your wallet, for the environment, and for your taste buds. Just don’t beat yourself up over the question of organic versus conventional. Your ability to put food on the table and pay the rent takes ultimate precedence over the amount of pesticides in said food. It’s sad and unfortunate that we often have to make that choice, but that’s the world we live in. And, like Grok did before us, we’ve gotta make the best with what we’ve got.

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Related posts:

1. On the Problems of Cultivated Fruit
2. Is Living Primal Good for the Environment?
3. How to Shop a Farmers’ Market

The movie studies have won another major legal victory in the ongoing war against file sharing, this one against an individual (Gary Fung) who ran a number of torrent search sites, including the popular isoHunt. Although the defendant had argued he was providing just another search engine, the judge has ruled that Fung’s legal team had neglected to rebut the studio’s primary arguments, and Fung himself had a history of statements showing that he encouraged copyright infringement. Although the ruling establishes liability, there’s no word yet on the sanctions that Fung will face.

Granting a summary judgement requires that the judge interpret all the arguments in favor of the losing party, and still find that their opponents have made a winning case, so it’s a pretty difficult standard to meet. Fung and his lawyers, however, seem to have made the job a bit easier.

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Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

ViaSat (NASDAQ: VSAT), the Carlsbad, CA-based satellite communications company raised $133 million in equity funding in December, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ViaSat spokesman Bruce Rowe tells me the company issued about 4.3 million shares for the stock component of the company’s $568 million stock-and-cash purchase of Colorado’s WildBlue Communications, the high-speed Internet service provider. That deal was announced in October and closed Dec. 15.

In an interesting reprise of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” ViaSat named senior vice president Tom Moore to head the company’s new WildBlue subsidiary. Moore co-founded WildBlue in 1998 and served as the company’s CEO until 2005 and as a director until 2008.

ViaSat, founded in 1986, specializes in satellite-based communications and other digital communication products. The company has 2,100 employees and reported sales of $628 million in the fiscal year that ended in April. ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg has said the company’s acquisition of WildBlue, a longtime business partner, is key to helping ViaSat reduce the business risk of its planned satellite venture. ViaSat said last year it planned to build and launch its own $450 million communications satellite to provide high-speed Internet service.

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There are fourteen doors in my house. There’s the front door, back door, four bedroom doors, two bathroom doors, and six closet doors. With that many doors in the house, I don’t understand how my boys always zone in on which door that I’m behind. Whenever they see a closed door, they feel that it’s necessary to knock on it. I am partly to blame for this. I have always tried to teach my children proper manners. That includes knocking on a door and waiting for a response before trying to open the door. However, if I close a door that usually means that I need my privacy. It doesn’t seem to matter which door it is, there always comes a knock on the door before I’ve decided to open it myself.
If I’m in the bathroom, with the door closed, then I definitely want my privacy. It’s like these kids are drawn by some magnetic field to a closed door but repelled by an open door. Every time that I go into the bathroom to do my business, my business and nobody else’s business, there’s a knock at the door. There must be some mathematical equation for this. Closed door + mom= knock, knock, knock. For the last twelve years, I have not been able to go to the bathroom in peace.
Today, I entered the bathroom hoping, just once in my life, for two minutes of privacy. Lo and behold, what do my ears hear? Knock, knock, knock.
“What,” I yell from my throne.
“Mom, are you going to the bathroom,” asked Austin.
“No, I’m visiting with the Pope,” is my reply. “Of course I’m going to the bathroom. Why what do you want?”
“Never mind.”
“You mean to tell me that you couldn’t wait two minutes to tell me never mind,” I grumbled opening the door.
It’s always something that could have waited just two tiny minutes until I opened the darn door. The question or comment never comes in the form of a dire emergency. God forbid they have to wait two minutes, let alone two seconds, to aggravate me.
Earlier today, I went outside to smoke a cigarette and to get a few minutes of peace and quiet. Ha, that didn’t work. As I took the first drag of my cigarette and pondered what my next task of the day would be, my oldest son, Christian, knocked on the inside of the back door and peered out the window at me. With phone in hand, he opened the door letting the freezing cold winter air into the house and proceeded to ask me what his fathers’ phone number was.
“I don’t know! What do I look like, a phone book?” I asked with a scowl on my face.
I set my cigarette down on the railing and went in to find his dads’ phone number. He had called his dad several times within the last two days. It shouldn’t be that hard to find the number already in the phone. I then proceeded to show him how to gently put his finger on the redial button and keep pressing it until the area code for New Jersey came up. After all, that’s about the only number from New Jersey that is dialed on our phone. He kept pushing the redial until he saw his dads’ number. With a smile and a press of the talk button, he had learned something new. He was totally dumbfounded by his new found knowledge.
I left him to his conversation and went back outside to finish my cigarette. When I came back in, I had to dodge the dust balls floating across the floor as my husband chased them with a broom. Oh my God, he’s sweeping! Yes world, I said sweeping and not sleeping. Now that’s a first. It’s really nice of him to sweep even though I’ll have to go behind him and redo it after he goes to work. After all, he is a man. I went to my room and shut the door. Maybe this time I can get some quiet time. Usually, when I have my bedroom door shut that means I’m either sleeping or I just want to be left alone. As soon as I sat down on my bed, there came a knock on the door.
“What,” I yelled.
“Can I come in,” asked Christian.
“Yes.”
I waited for him to open the door but he didn’t. I guess it wasn’t that important. I shrugged my shoulders and lay down on my bed. Knock, knock, knock.
“What now?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yes! I told you two minutes ago that you could come in,” I screamed.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” he said opening the door.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to let you know that dad didn’t answer the phone,” he informed me.
“And you’re telling me this why,” I asked shaking my head.
“Cuz I wanted to let you know that I’m waiting for dad to call me back,” he replied sweetly.
Will there ever be a time, I wonder, when I can relax behind a closed door? Perhaps I need to start hiding out in the closets. I have yet to see the boys knocking on a closet door.

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Beyonce attended Alicia Keys’ ‘The Element Of Freedom’ album release party in New York City last week. Check out a picture below of Beyonce workin’ it on the dance floor.

OK, this is it. Last day to buy stuff in a panic before Christmas. What to do?

I suggest the bookstore. Who doesn’t like books? And it just so happens I have a few to recommend.

Death from the Skies!
You may not know this, but I wrote a book. Nothing says holiday cheer like a trillion ton asteroid barreling down on the Earth at 45,000 kph. And it has a happy ending! The entire Universe dissolves.

This book may not save Christmas, but it might save your life. All your friends need copies. Even strangers. Buy 50.

Don’t Be Such a Scientist
This book, by Randy Olson, is a primer for how scientists and science-types should communicate with the public. As someone whose job it is to do that, I found it readable, funny, and of great use. I chuckled a lot reading it, seeing many people I know being described in its pages. Not specifically, of course, just in general.

At first I was thrown a bit by his comparison of science to Hollywood, but it soon became clear that the lessons Olson learned in Tinseltown really do need to translate to the way we talk about science, at least on TV and in movies. Books are still books, and blogs still blogs, but if we science supporters want to reach millions of people all at once, then we could do a lot worse than heed Olson’s advice when we’re on camera or in front of a microphone.

And if his name is familiar, it’s because he created the mockumentaries “Flock of Dodos” and “Sizzle, A Global Warming Comedy”. If you’ve seen those, you know what the book will be like! If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone and you’ve tried to explain something scientific, this book is a good one for you.

Unscientific America
Speaking of communicating science to the public, my Hive Overmind co-bloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote Unscientific America as a call to arms for scientists everywhere. This book doesn’t complain about how the public doesn’t get science, it actually has advice — good advice — for how people can take up this charge.

It’s aimed at science lovers, but also at scientists themselves. Chris and Sheril are careful to show just where things have gone wrong: a public with a short attention span, media all too willing to make that worse (and to screw up science every chance they get, through ignorance or greed), antiscience promoters, but also scientists themselves. I see a whole lot of scientists trying to communicate science, but honestly not that many are good at it. That should be self-evident, even to scientists themselves; some are theorists, some experimentalists, some field workers, and so on; the point being we all have our areas of expertise. Not everyone is good in front of a camera, and we need to find the ones who are and groom them.

Chris and Sheril took a lot of heat from scientists about this claim, most of which I found ridiculous and unfair. Scientists need to accept our share of the burden of blame for where we are in America right now — we do own part of it, folks — and we need to shoulder that blame and do something about it. Also, there is a section in the book taking the so-called “New Atheists” to task for fanning the religious flames in America. Although the situation is pretty complicated, I think there is truth to what Chris and Sheril wrote, and I also think that this part of the book should be read by skeptics and atheists very carefully. I won’t go into details here — I’ll save it for a lengthier post sometime — but I think what they’ve written is salient and should be considered by everyone.

Atheist’s Guide to Christmas
Speaking of which, this is a good book for the non-believer in your circle of friends and family. I’ll simply point you to my previous exhortations about it and remind you that all proceeds go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust, a secular group that provides information, advice, and support for HIV positive people in the UK.

[UPDATE: The outspoken ZOMGitsCriss has put up a video plugging Atheist’s Guide, and says very nice things about my essay in the book. Thanks Criss!]

Why Does E=mc²
Regular readers know about my friend Brian Cox, a particle physicist with CERN who has dastardly plans to destroy the Earth using the LHC is charming, funny, and an excellent spokesman for science. This book is a wonderful explanation of relativity, one of the best I’ve read. It was inspired by his awesome wife Gia, who asked him the title question one day.

You’ll need to think while reading this; it’s not a breezy beach thriller. But I found it to be a very enjoyable and fascinating primer on, exactly, why energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. It explains things in ways that hadn’t occurred to me before, and I found myself nodding my head as I suddenly understood concepts that had always bugged me (like, why do massless particles travel at the speed of light, and just why is that the ultimate speed limit of the Universe?). It’s a great book, and I highly recommend it.

7th Son
J. C. Hutchins is a science fiction writer and podcaster. He’s among the new group of writers who serialize their fiction and give it away as audiocasts. Once an audience is built up, they can then turn their serialization into book form. I won’t give away the plot of the book, but it’s an engaging read involving some fun science fiction concepts. My only complaint is that he needs to write the sequel yesterday. Too bad it’s not a time travel book!

If you’re curious, Hugo-winning author John Scalzi has a blog post up about J. C. and the book that’ll entice you, too.

There are lots of other books I could recommend, but I’ll cut it off here. Do you have ideas? Post ‘em in the comments! I’m sure we all have books we love and would recommend. Tell us!

Filed under: Concept Cars, Classics, Coupe, Performance, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, GM, Toys/Games, Design/Style

Having trouble deciding which of America’s three latest muscle cars is right for you? Well, at least you’re not alone. We ourselves at the Autoblog HQ have had lengthy debates on the merits and drawbacks of each model, and the expected ongoing series of improvements to the Camaro, Challenger and Mustang are sure to drive a wedge between GM Gearheads, Ford Fanatics and Mopar Maniacs until the end of time.

Or, as seen above, you could go a slightly different route and combine all three ponies into one model, which we’ve taken the liberty of christening the Challarostang. A Vulcan Mind Meld between the front fascia and hood of a Challenger, the bodysides of a Camaro and the hind end of a Mustang, it actually doesn’t look nearly as crazy as you might imagine. In fact, we kinda dig it.

According to Robert D, the Challarostang’s modeler, the automotive ménage à trois seen here took four months to complete. Next question, which drivetrain do you choose? Click here for a description of the build process from the modeler himself.

[Source: Model Cars Magazine Forum via Carscoop]

Challarostang? Enterprising car modeler combines three ponies into one originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Motorsports, Technology, Toys/Games

We give thumbs up to Cruden’s reason for building a $191,500 F1 simulator: “Snooker rooms, swimming pools, gyms and cinemas have been done.” So there. If you’re over waiting for Codemasters to release F1 2009 on a real platform, or waiting for GT5 to ever show up and you have enough money to buy an SLS AMG and several weeks of track time, the Hexatech is waiting for you.

The fully-suspended system can be tailored to provide feedback based on the chassis setup, wheelbase and track, tire and suspension settings, drive train (engine, gearbox, differentials), aero loading, aero draft (slip streaming), steering, brakes and driver aids such as traction control, ABS, and more. It even has seat belt tensioners. And it isn’t just for F1: the sim does NASCAR, WRC, and 24-Hour racing, too. Three 42-inch screens, or a projector and a room with at least a 10-foot ceiling will keep you in the action.

If you want one but you don’t have that kind of dosh, there’s still time to make a wish and be extra nice before Santa makes his final decision. Or you could ask Ferrari if you can borrow theirs…

[Source: F1 Fanatic]

When F1 2009 won’t do, try the $191K Cruden Hexatech simulator originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A partir de hoje a Rede de Blogs WebTuga conta com mais um elemento, o GlobPT, tornando assim os assuntos discutidos nos nossos blogs mais amplos.

Como podem reparar, o WebTuga há já algum tempo que tem uma categoria chamada “Random Stuff” que engloba uma variedade infinita de assuntos. O GlobPT é de certa forma um projecto que tem esse objectivo, ou seja, discutir assuntos aleatórios e diversos num único local, tendo como principal blogger o carismático João Silas.

O GlobPT apesar de só agora integrar a rede WebTuga, não é novo por estas andanças do blogging, sendo já subscrito por mais de 400 leitores via RSS e marcando presença nas redes sociais como o Twitter (@globpt).

Para além da entrada na rede WebTuga, foi criado também o novo logótipo do projecto que será integrado em breve no site, quem sabe também com uma nova aparência.

Está portanto assim oficialmente oficializada a oficialização oficial da entrada do GlobPT para a Rede WebTuga.

Esperamos que todos tenham gostado da surpresa natalícia que vos reservamos e pedimos que fiquem atentos porque em 2010 haverá mais!

WebTuga – GlobPT reforça Rede WebTuga!

Surprise! The BBGeekcast is a day early this week because of tomorrow’s holiday. Come celebrate with us as we run down the big news from the past week, including the two outages which have outraged the BlackBerry world.

So click on over here to hear the BBGeekcast (7 min, 48 sec)

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss future episodes!

You can also subscribe to the BBGeekcast in iTunes.

Highlights include:
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