Is this the fastest kettle in the world?

The British Steam Car just unofficially broke the 103-year-old speed record for steam cars and it now poised to do so officially. It did 137 mph, is built to do 170 mph, and burns “23 cups of tea per second.”

[...]

California’s pension powder keg

LA Times editorial

The state’s obligations are outstripping its ability to pay. Now is a good time to put reforms back on the table.

CalPERS estimates this year’s losses at close to 30%. Meanwhile, costs for the current fiscal year are expected to reach $3 billion, of which more than half is to come [...]

Tango. The world’s fastest urban car

You’re smirking, aren’t you? That silly little electric vehicle is fast? Yes. The Tango does 0-60 mph in 4 seconds and 0-130 in one gear. Plus, it’s thin enough to lane-split like a motorcycle.

Barney Frank shows how to deal with nutcases at town hall meetings

Socialism for the rich. Capitalism for the rest

Goldman’s new ‘American Socialism Manifesto’

8 ways ‘The Conspiracy’ is destroying our American democracy

In “Bailout Nation,” hedge fund manager Barry Ritholtz summarizes this clandestine takeover of the great American democracy, led by Paulson and the Goldman Conspiracy juggernaut. In less than a year America has become “Socialism for the Rich! Capitalism [...]

Peace and Freedom Party starts national campaign

While I applaud the Peace and Freedom Party, the only socialist party in California with ballot status, on their plans to go nationwide and get left candidates on the ballot everywhere, their press release announcing this is inept and makes the usual leftie mistakes.

Harsh words? Then consider the following, the opening paragraph of [...]

Search engine wars heat up

Battle lines are drawn for the war of web search dominance Facebook buys Friendfeed. Their real target is Google, not Twitter. Twitter vs. Facebook: Who will win in real-time search? Comparison of their search engine features.

Because it’s all about search. Real-time search. Google doesn’t have that yet. Facebook now has 300 million users and [...]

More big solar farms for California

First Solar photo

First Solar will be building two solar farms for Southern California Edison in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. They will be capable of powering 170,000 homes (550 megawatts totals) with a planned completion date of 2015. Now we’re starting to scale up!

[...]

Regulators were told of Stanford fraud, ignored it

Not only did the SEC and other regulatory agencies ignore warnings as early as 2003 that Allen Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme, their primary reason why they couldn’t investigate him was bogus. They said the money was offshore and thus hard to trace. But apparently virtually no money went to Antigua. Instead it [...]

Solar SunFlowers, An Electric Garden. Austin art installation

Photo by David Newsom

They have LEDs and light up at night too. Good Magazine has more, inluding photos.

Comprised of 15 flower-shaped photovoltaic solar panels that line a pedestrian and bike path on the greenbelt between a retail lot and highway I-35, SunFlowers was unveiled on July 30. In such close proximity to [...]