Jon Stewart interviewed this kid last night on The Daily Show. With no training or experience, he built a working windmill in his village in Africa. It’s quite an inspirational story.

YouTube – Meet the Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser.   Of course, you remember in Star Trek IV, Scotty traded the formula for  ‘Transparent aluminium’ to get the plexiglass needed to store the humpback whales in the Klingon Bird of Prey.  But the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

“What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,” said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. “Transparent aluminium is just the start…which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.”

Transparent aluminium is ‘new state of matter’.

Hard on the heels of the health care protests, another “citizen” movement has “spontaneously”  ignited…this one fueled by Oil companies whose bottom line is threatened by proposed legislation that would set limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

While polls show that a majority of Americans support efforts to tackle climate change, Big Oil is manufacturing outrage and disappointment by sponsoring rallies in cities in southern oil-producing states, bussing company employees to eat hot dogs, listen to high school marching bands and show their bestest angryface on Fox News.

One oil exec even went so far as to defend the use of busses, saying “If we all drove in cars, it wouldn’t look good.”

In related and yet equally disturbing news, a  pro-coal industry group is being investigated for sending fake letters to members of congress, posing as the NAACP and Hispanic organizations, opposing new climate change laws.  Nice work.

The House bill seeks to reduce greenhouse gases in the United States by 83 percent by 2050.

via Oil Companies Back Public Protests of Greenhouse Gas Bill – NYTimes.com.

Diggz, Michelle, and Ryan talk about Ryan’s recent appearance on SomaCow, token females, geothermal heating and religion, plus Ryan discloses the contest rules to win his Mophie.

CS 63: Religulous Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I was actually reading about how the Navy is spending $33 million to develop hybrid drive ships that use electric power for low speed maneuvering (like a Prius or Ford Escape Hybrid) when I stumbled upon this sentence:

“Hybrid technology isn’t as wild looking as adding football-sized kites to big ships, like the Beluga SkySails ship does, but it could do the job.”

Holy Ben Franklin?!?  Here ya go….

YouTube – SkySails bring windpower to container ships!!.