Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America. Also via MeFi.

Tuesday night.

* Early review of The Fantastic Mr. Fox at the Rushmore Academy.

* Van Gogh's ear actually cut off by Gauguin? Now I don't believe in nothing.

* Carbon taxes vs. cap and trade. More at Kevin Drum.

* Advocate torture? That's a disbarrin'.

* Mexican legislature votes to legalize small quantities of narcotics.

* Maine legislature votes to legalize marriage equality. DC: ditto.

* And this map at Wikipedia claims the entire energy output of the world could be provided by six very large solar energy facilities operating at just 8% efficiency. Via MeFi.

Just a few links.

* I'm only going to say this once, media bloodsuckers: Leave Bruce alone.

* Pink Tentacle has your vintage alien landscapes from Kazuaki Saito.

* The Dollhouse situation and what Joss Whedon should do next.

I would like to see what kind of wonderfully dense, risk-taking project Whedon would come up with when he is not hampered by the current conservative climate at the networks, which these days want most story lines to wrap up by the end of the hour. Can you imagine what a Whedon show on HBO, Showtime, FX or AMC would look like?

...

My point is this: Whedon needs to make his next show on cable. End of story.

Ironically, this is also what Joss should have done this time, and the time before this one.

* Florida Power & Light and a real estate developer have announced that they will build the first solar-powered city in the U.S., a community of 19,500 homes, offices, retail shops, and light industry whose electricity will come from the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant. The new city will be called Utopia Prime Future One Alpha City Babcock Ranch.

A few more.

* Wikipedia is doomed. Doomed!

* Storage closets of the American Museum of Natural History. With awesome slideshow, via MeFi.

* Tim Morton makes the simple but necessary point that as the only sentient agents in the area—the only beings with "response ability"—we are "responsible" for climate change whether we are "causing" it or not.

* Biggest solar deal ever announced. The article goes on to say "When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco — though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely."

* Washington Monthly tries to suss out Judd Gregg's erratic behavior.

* Legalize it? The real question is why haven't we yet.

* And Krugman (via Ezra Klein) says we may just be screwed.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.

Toyota secretly developing solar-powered green car. We're saved!

Nuclear power isn't even all that carbon-friendly.

Potpourri!

* MetaFilter has a post on gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold elective office in the U.S. and subject of a new Sean Penn biopic, assassinated twenty-seven years ago this week.

* Also via MeFi: the Star-Tribune has an online database of 600 challenged ballots in the Franken-Coleman race. The vote totals on the main page don't look especially good for Franken's chances, nor does the early word from elections guru Nate Silver:

The vast majority of challenges on both sides are frivolous, often utterly so. Perhaps 1 in 10 challenges -- maybe slightly more than that -- actually required a judgment call of some kind.

For what it's worth, Silver's projections now slightly favor Coleman, though "projecting" anything at all strikes me as a significant overreach on Silver's part on garbage-in-garbage-out grounds. Until we know something real about the character of challenged ballots vis-a-vis nonchallenged ballots, there's just no way of projecting what the final vote total will look like.

* In twelve-country poll, 43% see climate crisis as bigger problem than economy. Technological civilization is the chain-smoker who has also broken his leg: they're both big problems, one's just slightly more immediate at the moment.

* Bush is still president, but local leaders are getting the message: the mayor of Los Angeles has proposed a major solar initiative. Good on Villaraigosa, but the depth of our civilization's chain-smoking becomes evident when you read the fine print:

This massive solar proposal is nested in a larger commitment to reduce Los Angeles’ greenhouse gas emissions by 35% below 1990 levels by 2030.

35% below 1990 is a fairly decent number for a single initiative, but 2030's a long way off—the bad stuff is already starting to happen right now.

* The Dr. Horrible DVD is available for pre-order and coming out before Christmas. I'd also be remiss if I didn't link to Buffy! Movie! News!, but come one, there's absolutely no way.

The morning news.

* The bailout has cost more than "Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*!" But think of all we have to show for it!

* Related: Alternet's ten worst corporations of 2008. How did they limit themselves to just ten? Via MeFi.

* Marginal Revolution casts some cold water on wind farms, points (where else?) to nuclear energy instead. Isn't the problem here our poor energy infrastructure? The sort of redesigned, rebuilt grid Obama talks about would make these wind farms much more efficient than just about any other source of power, including, I'm given to understand, solar.

* Because of the downturn, colleges aren't hiring. Ugh.

* Cory Doctorow is looking to change the world.



* Confidential to Mac users: an update for Handbrake has been released.

* And Wendy Whitaker is today's poster child for obscenely stringent sex offender laws: because she had oral sex with a 15.9-year-old boy when she was 17, she's a sex offender for life and is currently being forced to vacate her home because it is too close to a church that runs a daycare service. A judge, unbelievably, just upheld this order. Via MeFi.

Adding electricity from the wind and the sun could increase the frequency of blackouts and reduce the reliability of the nation’s electrical grid, an industry report says.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation says in a report scheduled for release Monday that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid. Via Dot Earth.

The person I'd most like to see with a cabinet-level position in the new Obama administration is Al Gore, who should be made all-purpose Eco-Czar. Here he is in the New York Times laying out an energy agenda for the next ten years.

Here’s what we can do — now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing 19th-century energy technologies that depend on dangerous and expensive carbon-based fuels with 21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth.

What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

With carbon in the "danger zone" and humanity increasingly running out of biocapacity to exploit, Obama comes into power at just about the last possible second to save us all from the eco-apocalypse—I hope.

We're saved, part 2? Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new way of storing energy from sunlight that could lead to ‘unlimited’ solar power.

(Here, I suppose, was part 1.)

No joke, we may actually be saved this time:

Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun's visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be "siphoned off" as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy.

Thinking of the days when this blog wasn't about the presidential election 24-7—just sixteen long days to go—here are a few links to more traditional gerrycanavan.blogspot.com fare.

* Life on earth may have originated in volcanic eruptions.

* Invest in solar, says solar industry.

* 'Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death.' Via MeFi.

* Atomic explosions. Lots.

* Buy your own deep shelter underneath London.

* How British police foiled the IRA by opening a laundromat.

* Mad Men will be back for a third season, but showrunner Matthew Weiner may not be: he wants more money.

* Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.

Eco Friday.

* Ben Bova is agitating in The Washington Post for a massive orbiting solar array that would beam energy down to earth in microwaves. More at Treehugger and Wikipedia.

* The Vatican, too, has gone solar.

* Barack Obama would regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. presidential candidate’s top energy adviser said.

* And a new alt-energy economy may be blooming in the U.S., with big infrastructure investments in California, Texas, and elsewhere.

More politics updates.

* That "overheard projector" John McCain was talking about last night? A projector for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Sounds like a reasonable expenditure to me.

* How will Obama save the economy and the planet at the same? As Matt Yglesias mentions, it's a two-fer: a green recovery plan that creates jobs modernizing the nation's antiquated energy infrastructure. We're getting closer and closer to the point where a truly solar economy is possible—there were two major solar innovations just this week, cheap, more absorptive panels and light, more flexible panels—and frankly it's all happening just in the nick of time.

The miracle of an Obama presidency reminds me a bit of the old Bismarck line: "God protects fools, drunkards, and the United States of America."

* The language of "Green Recovery" also provides the necessary "crisis" rhetoric required for an massive expenditure of this nature, as if the ecological and energy crises weren't already reason enough. Because apparently they aren't.

* And the polls all show the same thing: Obama is winning big.

Renewable energy providers will reap an immediate benefit from the raft of new incentives in Washington's financial rescue package. Better late than never.

The Senate is now voting on their version of the bailout bill.

UPDATE: Looks to pass, 74-25. Like most facing tough races, NC's Dole votes against it.

UPDATE 2: The Politico details some of the almost $100B in "sweeteners" in the Senate version of the bill.

To calm voters fearful of bank failures, the $100,000 cap on federal insurance for deposits would also be raised to $250,000—a concession backed by both parties but also aimed at community banks who can be helpful in building small town support for the larger bill.

With each permutation, the bill has steadily grown in size. Treasury’s initial plan was about three pages long. The House version, which failed, stretched to 110. The Senate substitute now runs over 450 pages. And tucked away in the tax provisions is a landmark health care provision demanding that insurance companies provide coverage for mental health treatment—such as hospitalization—on parity with physical illnesses.

...The biggest single piece in the package is an extension of protections for millions of middle class families who would otherwise find themselves exposed to the higher levy under the alternative minimum tax. This alone accounts for about three quarters of the cost or $78.8 billion in 2009. Almost $14 billion more can be attributed to a variety of tax break extensions important to business, including the R&E credit worth about $8.4 billion in 2009.

The rural school aid is smaller —about $3.3 billion over the next five years— but has great importance for many Western communities and could be important then in the House.

The languishing solar energy provision I was unhappy about earlier was tucked in as well.

Evening linkage.

* George Bush's disapproval rating has hit a historic low of 70%—worse than any president since Gallup changed the wording of this question in 1938.

* Google, amazingly ten years old, is letting people search 2001's Internet.

* The 50 things that every comics collection truly needs.

* Matt Yglesias has your banking collapse brackets and your Galaxy-class starship military tactics.

* Stephen Hawking says it's time to go back to space.

The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

* George Will: Palin is "obviously not qualified to be President," he remarked, describing her interview on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as a "disaster.

* And solar legislation continues to stagnate in Congress. This is an inexcusable failure of leadership.

More good news on the solar front: Oregon launching first solar highway in the U.S.

Surprisingly busy today, but I do have some links:

* As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince delayed until July.

* The market for sport utility vehicles is starting to look a lot like the housing market, spreading pain to consumers, automakers and dealers.

* ...but SUVphiles should take comfort that it's not yet looking like the housing market in Detroit:

The fact that a home on the city's east side was listed for $1 recently shows how depressed the real estate market has become in one of America's poorest big cities.

And it still took 19 days to find a buyer.

* Out: the carbon crisis. In: the oxygen crisis.

* Good news on the solar front: two large solar projects are being announced in California, which when completed "will produce as much energy as a small nuclear reactor or a large coal plant."

* And yet another airline not to fly: American.

Federal regulators announced Thursday they will seek fines totaling $7.1 million against American Airlines over maintenance issues and problems with its drug- and alcohol-testing programs.