'nother blog, yo

Adam Rung and I will be collaborating on a new blog, ECO MADE, so I'll probably be concentrating my efforts over there. Check it out.

California High Speed Rail

I picked this up from The Illadelph. The Acela line has always been too compromised to be truly useful. Who wants to spend twice as much money to shave a mere 15 minutes off of your standard Amtrak trip from Philadelphia to New York?

I'd love to see a new golden age of rail travel. Air travel is too resource-intensive and produces too much pollution to be truly sustainable. Air travel is also inconvenient in many cities because of the distance between airports and the urban centers they serve.

woah - heavy...

So, I can't believe that I've had this blog for a whole Summer and I've barely posted a thing. Lame, yo.

Anyway, what's everyone thinking about the Russians and this whole Georgia fiasco?

Obviously, a power play to exploit:
A: American impotence
B: our lame duck head of state

The response to this "threat" (I use quotes, but the posturing of the Russian government could be construed as nothing other than threatening) could be the critical issue of this election season.

Obama sounded pretty rousing this evening, especially in his determination to advance the economic and security interests of the USA. Let's hope that the Russians' plan isn't to scare the American public into the arms of the Republicans (although if I was a paranoid Russian ex-spook, bent on advancing the interests of a resource-rich corporruptocracy, that might be just what I'm a-thinkin').

Sorry to bring you all down on this most glorious pre-autumnal holiday weekend. Let's end this on an up note, people ("God bless America / Land that I love"):


P.S. Did anyone read the Mikhail Gorbachev op-ed in the NY Times? Is this pure propaganda?

green vehicles 2: electric scootaloo

This is what I'm talking about:
This seems fairly do-able. I'd need to do something slightly different to accommodate the drive train of the scooter, but I might get slightly better performance from the scooter because it should be lighter than the Kawasaki used in this project.
Ben Nelson's Electric Motorcycle via engadget.

beachward bound

I'm so glad that we're starting our summer with a long weekend at the shore. My mom, her mother, my sister Mimi, and our niece Julianne were down at our cottage earlier this week.

The photo above is from a trip to Sea Isle City in 2004.

filler

The greatest web publishing effort of ALL TIME may have been suck.com. Filler was its crowning glory. I admit to being completely non-objective about it.

The combination of Heather Havrilesky's snark and Terry Colon's retro doodles made me desperate for Wednesdays.

Fortunately, the Filler archive is still available. The navigation links to certain dates are broken, but you can access them by tweaking the dates in the URL. Some of the themes are of their moment, but a few achieve a certain timelessness.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) now writes for numerous media outlets. For some reason, I have the idea that the Veronica (aka Angry Little Squirrel) character is based on (television critic and writer) Virginia Heffernan. I wish I could find some documentation on that.

obamania

I'd like to give a big shout out to the Obama people in the house. Good for you - you're making the change happen. Check out the latest issue of The Economist for the roll call of Obama's brain trust:

Austan Goolsbe

• "[His] record suggests neither the hostility towards globalised capitalism nor the desire for large-scale redistribution that conservatives...might fear"
• "a problem-solver who favours such unsexy proposals as altering American tax forms"

Jason Furman

• "His presence rebuts criticism that Mr Obama's team has too little policymaking experience."
• "staunch free-trader"

Tony Lake

• Noted as one of the "seasoned foreign-policy practitioners who also disapproved of the invasion [of Iraq]"

Susan Rice

• "wants more done to end killing in Darfur"

David Axelrod

• "the man who made 'change' into a campaign theme"
• "he can deliver a punch"

David Plouffe

• "disciplined and parsimonious"
• "amass[ed]... the biggest political piggybank ever seen"

As the snippets above might lead you to believe, the magazine seems fairly smitten with the Obama crew. Of course, being the "Tory rag" that it is, the editorial staff can't leave off without a few daggers thrown in the direction of the progressive candidate:

"The lynchpin of his campaign has been a faith, almost messianic, in his personal excellence. If that fades, then the whole operation could collapse in frustration and disillusionment."

photo courtesy of flickr user eCitizen Tchao (who seems to have no compunction about posting the work of other people to flickr).