Clayton I-House. Not your parent’s trailer home

The prefab Clayton I-House is highly energy efficient, configurable, and sells for $75,000, ideal for first time home owners and those wanting a vacation house.

Inhabitat has more.

More proof the US is becoming a banana republic

Investigator: OTS regulators knowingly backdated capital injections

From Francois in the comments to the story at Clusterstock

That is what is bound to happen when you systematically gut the government of the best and leave in place ayatollahs of a fixed ideology for whom competence is for the birds.

Whether Americans like it or not, [...]

People get ready

California Supreme Court to rule on Proposition 8 Tuesday.

Pumped storage hydro

Voith Hydro pump used in Kopswerk II (Image credit: Voith Hydro)

Pumped storage hydro pumps water into a holding area using excess energy from the grid, then releases the water to power turbines when power is needed. A new pumped hydro plant in Austria can do both simultaneously and can generate 525 MW of [...]

What is hyperinflation?

Per Wikipedia:

Definitions used by the media vary from a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaching 100% to “inflation exceeding 50% a month.” [2] The definition used by most economists is “an inflationary cycle without any tendency toward equilibrium.”

For purposes of calculating foreign currency translation gains and losses, the IRS defines hyperinflationary [...]

Bank Failure #34: BankUnited, Coral Gables, Florida

A big one this time, and the FDIC couldn’t wait until Friday, the normal day for bank seizures. Hmmm.

Thoughts on the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers

Two problems with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers.

First, the Sri Lankan government has not addressed the lingering grievances of the Tamil minority and has done little to alleviate the systemic and institutional racism in the country. [The government has] won the war, but are fully capable of losing the peace. They must quickly [...]

Active house. Captures more power than it uses. Zero carbon.

The world’s first active power house not only heats and powers itself via solar (in Denmark, no less) it puts enough energy back into the grid that the designers say it will cancel the energy costs of building it within 30 years.

[...]

Six decades of child abuse and rape by Catholic institutions in Ireland

Will there be justice? Apparently not.

The findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions – in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report.

No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the [...]

A Voice for Peace

BBC photo: Dr. Jehan Perera

“At this time when attention has been focused on the last phase of war and on the humanitarian crisis in the north, there is another less publicised crisis that requires urgent attention. This concerns the breakdown of law and order and the spate of kidnappings, murders and extortions taking [...]