Extreme Pogo

Don’t try this at home,kids…

Compressed air car for India

It has a range of 185 miles, re-uses the very cold expelled air for air conditioning, and only requires one quart of vegetable oil for lubrication. However, the frame is held together with glue not welds, which is a teensy bit unsettling.

It would make a great city car, and of course it has [...]

Feds found Manning-Assange chat logs on laptop

This is hugely damning against Manning and maybe Assange too. Even worse for Manning, in a chat with someone else, he admitted leaking the Apache attack video.

The data was in unallocated sectors. The logs had been deleted and someone had used security software to overwrite the unallocated sectors, but only overwrote them once. This [...]

Americans Elect gets ballot status in California

From an Americans Elect email press release

55 electoral votes now up for grabs Californians will have a third choice for president in 2012

Well, um, no, Californians will now have one more choice as the Green Party, Peace and Freedom, American Independent, and Libertarian parties already have ballot status in California.

While [...]

Belgium slashes Dexia guarantee

Belgium and France have decided to halve the guarantees that they provided for Dexia’s bad bank. The bad bank was created to group all Dexia’s problematic loans when the group was dismantled last October.

Journalist Andy Carling in Belgium tells me on Facebook, “This is what’s likely to bring down Belgium…”

[...]

50 economic numbers almost too crazy to believe

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

#3 If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” [...]

“They are going to get the biggest riot the South has ever seen”

The Jefferson County AL bankruptcy was triggered by predatory Wall Street thugs and rampant corruption. Some residents now have water / sewage bills of $300 a month. Poor residents are getting porta-potties while wealthier ones are installing septic tanks. But with prices like that and the county owing huge amounts they can’t possibly pay, [...]

Desertec. Solar power from Africa to Europe

Click to open PDF

Desertec is a set of plans for a massive network of solar and wind farms stretching across the MENA region and intended to connect to Europe via high voltage direct current transmission cables (which are supposed to only lose 3% of their electricity per 1000km, or 620 miles)

This mammoth [...]

Corsine belongs in prison

Bottom line is that Top 0.1% golden boy and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine appears to have used customer funds to pay off the firm’s losses in bets made with its own money.)

Americablog has much more.

World’s largest tidal power farm to open in France

Openhydro

OpenHydro is supplying the four 2-MW turbines, 115 deep off the coast of Paimpol-Bréhat. The turbines are each 72 feet in diameter and are anchored along the seabed.

This is clean, renewable energy being produced on a completely reliable schedule. Unlike solar and wind, we know precisely when the tides are coming.

[...]