China, the USA, competition for resources

China eyes increased energy cooperation with US - Yahoo! News

It's interesting to watch as China's per-capita energy demands begin to approach those of the US. Latest development: China's top economic planning body recommends increased cooperation with the US on energy issues.

I should go read the details before posting this :) but it's encouraging that the Chinese govt are trying to plan ahead rather than wait until we are in direct conflict.

China has a chance to play leapfrog in technology for energy production and conservation, and in transportation. That's where the real opportunity lies for the US: in sharing the costs, and results, of improving energy efficiency. Worst of all worlds would be for us to be stuck with our current energy infrastructure while other nations move ahead.

Bush's Snoopgate - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

I agree.

If we could just trust this president, or any president, then we wouldn't need the Congress and the courts.

Our executive branch has long kept secrets from its citizens -- classified documents, "black" military programs. The risk to the country in permitting the government to operate in secret, without accounting for its actions, is much greater than the risks which those actions are supposed to mitigate. The risk is that, once the habit of government secrecy is established, the ability of the country to detect and act against dangerous concentrations of governmental power will be lost.

Honda plans to mass-produce solar cells

According to the article production will start in 2007. Once it reaches full capacity Honda will be producing enough solar panels each year to power 8000 homes.

"Honda said its solar cells would be composed of non-silicon compound materials, consuming half as much energy and generating 50 percent less carbon dioxide during production when compared with conventional solar cells made from silicon."

How will their efficiency compare to those of other types of solar panels? Dunno.

They're targeting the Japanese domestic market first.

Javascript Animation: Tutorial, Part 2 - Schillmania.com

Look here for some clues on how to do animation, in JavaScript, without expensive page reflows.

The tutorial also describes ways to animate more efficiently, using a single timer. This evokes the realtime "executives" I used to see when I worked with flight sims in the aerospace industry.

The Straight Dope: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?

"Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St. George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realize they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal."

Mom has wondered from time to time whether or not Grandpa's leukemia had anything to do with his filming venues. She has mentioned a filming location, fallout, and the names of a few actors who died of cancer after working there. But I could never remember the place names. This link which my girlfriend provided seems to point to the right places.

Treehugger: Vulgarity and Nature: Chapter from Robert Grudin's Upcoming Book - American Vulgar

One of the things that drove me out of Ohio was the local attitude toward "growth" – it was considered good, progress, an improvement. All Icould see was the suburbs of Cincinnati and Dayton growing together along the I-75 corridor.

One of my friends and co-workers had this view of development. He was proud to live in one of the development communities that was spreading out over what had been farm land. (The community, whose name I have since forgotten, was featured a couple of years later in a National Geographic article about urban sprawl.)

Couldn't help thinking of my friend and his McMansion while reading this excerpt from Robert Grudin's "American Vulgar":

Growth is not just a cultural obsession. Growth has become a theoretical model for economists, executives and even civil servants. The idea is that economic entities[...] cannot remain robust unless they keep growing, and that this growth imperative has no chronological limit[...]The most colossal and preposterous of all vulgarities would be a civilization that, in the course of its busy, growing ways, paved over its environment and destroyed its only source of sustenance.

LAMP vs. Java

This year I joined a team which is building web apps to teach cheminformatics. We do use a little Java because one of our vendors implemented its toolset in Java. (And those tools include 3D chemical structure depictors.)

We got started in the springtime, shortly before the appearance of TurboGears. But we're using a similar set of tools: PostgreSQL, Python, CherryPy and CherryTemplate, jsolait, and a fair bit of custom JavaScript. And HTML. And CSS 2.1. And R, at least for prototyping. And we're managing it all, to the extent that we're managing anything :), with subversion and Trac.

As the Businessweek article suggests, this set of tools works well. I don't see any reason to use any more Java than we absolutely must.

Wired News: Cut Emissions and Pump More Oil

Some good news for oil, for a change?

Just how much CO2 is produced during oil refining, anyway? The article claims that pumping the gas back into oil fields in Western Canada alone could reduce "CO2 emissions to the tune of pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year".

The lifetime of the field where testing has occurred has been extended for another 20 years. The subsurface rock in that field is sedimentary; the article claims that, if the technique were tried in basalt fields, the re-injected gas would be converted to calcium carbonate in less than 18 months. From volcanic rock to chalk -- who knew.

Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1EX | Digital Camera Review

Will Sanyo make HD video affordable?

Next in the Xacti VPC line: 1270x720x30fps, MPEG-4 format, 5MP digital imager, 10x optical zoom, recording to SD memory cards.

New Mexico to be Virgin space hub | CNET News.com

Las Cruces will be moving up in the world.

Weeping Eye

The Weeping Eye, a feature in Upper Antelope Canyon.

Okay, this is really just a test of Flock on Mac OS X. Flock integrates web browsing, blog editing and (Flickr) photo management/reference.

technorati tags: antelope_canyon, weeping_eye