Inspirational and good news.
Wired has a really good article on a new solar power initiatives in California.
From the article:
“There is a possibility with this project that solar energy could go commercial in a big way for the first time,” said Alexander. “It’s playing in the big leagues.”
Instead of using panels of photovoltaic cells — solar power’s mainstay technology for decades — Stirling Energy Systems uses 40-foot-tall curved dishes that focus the sun’s energy onto Stirling engines
Black Box Voting, the activist group who trained a chimpanzee to crack the Diebold voting machines back in 2004, have been hired by the libertarian party and the Secretary of State for California to test the very same voting machines.
The Diebold company became infamous in 2004 when they’re head, ‘Wally’ O’Dell was quoted saying he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
Massachusetts officials have worked out a deal with Venezuela that will provide cheap oil for the state’s poor. Hugo Chavez previously offered cheaper oil to poor Americans and Massachusetts is the first state to work out an official program to accommodate Chavez’s offer. The oil is to be sold at 40% below the market rate, the oil is also to be used for heating (not gas for cars).
The Bush administration despises the democratically elected Hugo Chavez, but a Massachusetts congressman said that the cheap oil agreement is “an expression of humanitarianism at its very best”. Talks are currently underway to provide poor people in the Bronx with a similar deal.
Rebel fighters in Nepal say that they are willing to lay down their arms if the government respects their demands. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist has been fighting the government for many years now (with civilians suffering from the violence) and it looked as if the fighting wouldn’t stop.
The demand that the Communists want is the ability to rejoin the political mainstream through official party status in the Nepal. They believe that, once combine, with the other political parties they can then overthrow the monarchy – the primary goal of the CPN-M.
Physorg.com is reporting that a New York technology start-up has developed a much cheaper and faster device to perform the PCR (polymerase chain reaction). PCR is a process used to amplify small bits of DNA so that it can be used for DNA fingerprinting and other important projects. The new device is able to cycle the temperature of the DNA much faster than traditional PCR, and this reduces the wait time for a successful amplification dramatically.