Tattoo parlor honors woman who resisted

Remember Edith Macefield of Seattle, who wouldn't budge when developers wanted her home for part of a Trader Joe's?



A business in the neighborhood has created a unique product in her honor. Link

MIT's CityCar project

Proposed for an unidentified Asian city. Read about it at the Boston Globe.

Another great 'Clean Coal' spoof

This one from Joel and Ethan Cohen for the Reality Campaign:

More on Masdar

Check out this new article on Masdar in the March/April edition of MIT Technology Review. After a couple years of expansive conceptual descriptions and media speculation, this article serves as a good status report on what the Masdar City program is hoping to accomplish, and how it's going about achieving it. Representative clip:

...many experts are optimistic that the city can become a test bed for new approaches to the engineering and architectural problems involved in creating environmentally sustainable cities. Although architects have already designed and builders constructed many small zero-emissions residences and commercial buildings, projects involving large, multi-use commercial buildings have fallen short of expectations, using too much energy or failing to generate enough.

Alternative energy - why is the US so timid?

The rest of the world is moving ahead with lowering carbon footprints. My favorite is Abu Dhabi's Masdar, the planned zero carbon, zero waste city project. Cost: $20-ish billion. Construction on the city's first phase and its massive solar farm is well underway.

Yesterday President Obama went to Denver to visit a solar panel installation at their Museum of Nature & Science.

Wow.

The difference was so stark that on his daily Air America online show, pundit Marc Maron remarked that Obama ought to have gone to Abu Dhabi instead of Denver:


"Break Room Live" 2/17/09



So how about it -- why is America so timid on alternative energy? Is it entrenched interests? Severe aversion to "risk"? Our focus on short-term profit? Should Obama appoint a Secretary of Innovation?