Inspirational and good news.
New York City yellow cabs are going green. They were having some problems with government red tape, but that seems all cleared up now. The cabs will be converted into hybrid cars to ensure much better fuel efficiency. Apparently 7 out 10 New York state citizens support a switch to hybrid vehicles.
Hopefully this will pave the way for more and more cars turning into green machines.
The BBC is reporting that the European Parliament has given a resounding NO to the proposed patent legislation. An amazing rejection vote of 648 – 14.
Here is a brief reason of what is wrong with software patent legislation. This is really good news for small software developers and the open source community.
Americans, Iraqis, British, people of all nations are dying in Iraq, this is not good. The situation in Iraq is nowhere near good, in fact things are only getting worse. So why does this post exist on a website that is dedicated good things?
The Palm Beach Post has provided a map of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another site Casualty-Maps shows conflict-related deaths. A third site is another visualization of deaths, but shown where the casualty was in Iraq.
The good thing that comes from these sites is that they are educating Americans (and others) about the cost of war. These maps are limited insofar that they show only American deaths and fail to represent Iraqi casulaties. By making the statistics easier to understand it allows for faster communication of a complicated issue. Support for the war is at an all-time low and these sites may help explain why.
I would like to see a an Iraqi death map to follow up with these maps. A site that provides graphs such as the financial cost of the war, the human cost, and the environmental costs all in a easy to read fashion would be great to send to all those pro-war people. Anything that proves that war is a negative thing is good to me – thus this post.
Direct civic participation in large democracies in the developed world is very hard. It is possible to find out how your elected representative voted, but it is hard to do. That is until now.
You can now find out how your elected official voted!
In the United States there is a great website that seems to have everything you need.
In Canada you can find out your MP voted.
In England your MPs work for you and you can also fax your MP.
It is great to see how elective representatives voted, transparency in governments are always a good thing.
University of Iowa librarians have a cool project on their hands. They are taking all those old outdated library card catalog cards and turing them into art. This is a really neat idea for otherwise useless cards.
From the article: “UI Libraries Assistant Conservator Kristin Baum, who oversees the art project, said about one million cards will be sent in the coming months to school children, book artists, poets, writers and other artists.”