Diesel Civil Trust
One of the most pivotal moments in world and United States history came in 1953 when the CIA and British intelligence forces staged a coup in Iran, overthrowing the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh, a national Iranian hero who was named Time’s Man of the Year in 1952. That coup led directly to the Iranian revolution of 1979, which launched an era of Middle East anti-Americanism whose repercussions have since been felt in deadly ways.
Mossadegh earned the adoration of his people and the scorn of Britain for nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which controlled Iran’s oil reserves, shared little of the revenue and kept its workers in slave-like conditions. Anglo-Iranian became British Petroleum.
BP’s role in Iran’s descent into tyranny is no trivial historical coincidence. To this day, it is not difficult to find an Iranian living in America who refuses to buy gas from BP.
There was one primary purpose of the coup that overthrew Mossadegh and installed the Shah: To reclaim BP’s domination of Iranian oil.
Mossadegh’s government had attempted to negotiate a resolution, but BP’s executives flatly refused any compromise. BP’s stubbornness led to the most extreme policy move — full nationalization. Their failure to negotiate led Dean Acheson to coin what has become an oft-repeated analysis applied to varieties of bad actors: “Never had so few lost so much so stupidly and so fast.”
Non-profit groups fault a joint program by Brazil and the European Union to develop biofuel production in Africa as bad energy and development policy.
HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP PLC’s critical pressure test on its stricken Gulf of Mexico oil well shows no evidence of damage since the wellhead was sealed shut on Thursday, a company executive said on Friday.
Malamud has taken it upon himself to see that all public information — from court decisions to financial disclosures to Army training tapes — is actually, well, public. Malamud, 51, has worked as a network administrator, run technology startups, and taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab and in Japan. He has written for Wired andComputerworld, and on one memorable day in the early 1990s, he hooked up the first White House Internet connection. Since 2007 he has devoted himself — and his bank account — to using technology to open the government to the people. He’s the sole employee of an organization, Public.Resource.org, dedicated to that purpose.
These days Malamud lives just outside of Sebastopol, a small town near San Francisco. When I met him in January, he was in New York City to make a presentation at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy about his latest project, a proposed government-run online platform that would allow anyone to easily access all of the laws in the United States, from towns and cities all the way up to the federal level. Nearly everyone I’d talked to in Washington described Malamud as tireless, and he quickly proved them right. We talked nonstop for two hours.
The work of freeing government information often carries the connotation of exposing secrets about nefarious policies or officials’ bad behavior. Malamud, a technologist through and through, approaches it from a different angle, one that can be more palatable to the political class. His art is in figuring out how to free documents that aren’t restricted by secrecy but by the fact that the government has failed to put them online. The conventional wisdom about making all such information publicly available is that it would be too difficult, too invasive, too expensive. Malamud has made it his monumental task to disprove that. It’s a simple idea: If those materials affect people’s lives, they can and should be easily and freely accessible. Citizens must be empowered to see how the government machine works, and especially in the Internet era, there’s no excuse for keeping them in the dark.
Given Obama’s reputation as a our most tech-savvy president to date, and one whose election was due, in part, to online organizing, Malamud is betting that he can get this administration to see the wisdom in open-source government. His success or failure will speak volumes about whether Washington will reap the benefits of the Internet age — or whether the current celebration of technology culture will simply fade away.
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration on Monday issued a new order banning most new deepwater-drilling activities until Nov. 30, setting up a fresh round of conflict with the oil industry over when it will be safe to drill again offshore.
If there had ever been a competition for world improvement, Sweden would have won hands-down. Even among their fellow European do-gooders, the Swedes have always strived to be more social, more peaceful, and more environmentally friendly than the rest. As if Abba, smörgåsbords and Ikea furniture hadn’t delivered a sufficient contribution to the greater good of humankind.
Taggle keeps tabs on your cattle
Periodically - at intervals that can range from five minutes to an hour, depending on the application - the eartag emits a faint signal.
The signal is picked up by the base stations, each of which time-stamps the signal to the nanosecond, and then transmits the information to a remote computer.
Using the minutely different time stamps, software triangulates the location of the signal to within 5-15 metres, and turns that location into a dot on a computer map.
A single British broker moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high while drunk. After placing $520m worth of oil trades Steve Perkins sobered up enough to realize what he had done and desperately tried to dump the trades with as little loss as possible before finally coming clean, losing his job and being banned from trading for five years after which he might be allowed to trade again if he stays sober.
The investigation also shows that he was able to trade huge volumes with very little cash up front and no position limit, exposing how it easy it was for a single British broker on a bender to cause chaos in the oil market.
Our economic systems are just fine. We won’t end up like Iceland or Greece (or soon Spain and Italy). Nothing to see here. Move along.
“We have to remember,” Trent said, quoting Marshall McLuhan: “we are not passengers on spaceship Earth, we are the crew.” - Best quote I’ve heard all day, practical application pictured above, described below.
Via mohandasgandhi
How the OMEGA system works.
Supported by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and the California Energy Commission, the project’s goal is to demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of OMEGA with respect to the biology, engineering, and economics, and to insure that its environmental impact remains beneficial at the large scale needed to replace our dependence on fossil fuels. The hope is that, based on this demonstration, people worldwide will realize the potential of OMEGA, and adapt and develop versions of OMEGA for the good of all.
NASA Develops Algae Bioreactor as a Sustainable Energy Source
The OMEGA system consists of large plastic bags with inserts of forward-osmosis membranes that grow freshwater algae in processed wastewater by photosynthesis. Using energy from the sun, the algae absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and nutrients from the wastewater to produce biomass and oxygen. As the algae grow, the nutrients are contained in the enclosures, while the cleansed freshwater is released into the surrounding ocean through the forward-osmosis membranes.
NASA Envisions “Clean Energy” From Algae Grown in Waste Water
When the process is completed, biofuels will be made and sewage will be processed. For the first time, harmful sewage will no longer be dumped into the ocean. The algae and nutrients will be contained and collected in a bag. Not only will oil be produced, but nutrients will no longer be lost to the sea. According to Trent, the system ideally is fail proof. Even if the bag leaks, it won’t contaminate the local environment. The enclosed fresh water algae will die in the ocean.
The bags are expected to last two years, and will be recycled afterwards. The plastic material may be used as plastic mulch, or possibly as a solid amendment in fields to retain moisture.
“We have to remember,” Trent said, quoting Marshall McLuhan: “we are not passengers on spaceship Earth, we are the crew.”Another reason why I really, really, really love NASA. This is a brilliant alternative and so incredibly simple.
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
If oil sands were a country, they would be poised to overtake the US’s leading crude suppliers to become Washington’s top source of imported crude this year.
WASHINGTON — In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.
The race is on to develop refrigerator-size reactors that could power small towns or plants.
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