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PopMatters Culture Feature | The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair

Link: PopMatters Culture Feature | The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely.

Rolling Stone : Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters

Link: Rolling Stone : Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters. (Via MeFi.)

Tesla Motors - the Tesla blog

Link: The Tesla Blog is a mine of useful information about their car and electric vehicles in general. For example this great piece on the problems with ethanol sums up one of the reasons why I've come to feel that the current mania for bioethanol is a dangerous mistake (the other being that even taking sequestration into account, its overall CO2 balance is barely better than regular gas.)

This excerpt from the initial post really explains why I like these guys...

If electric cars are so great, why have they failed? Over the next few months, I will talk a bit about what has changed on the technology front – and indeed, technology is a key component of the answer. But today I want to focus on Tesla’s different attitude.

My observation is that most electric cars were designed by and for people who fundamentally don’t think we should drive. Ideally, we should walk or take public transportation; EVs are a necessary evil for when these don’t work. This mentality has lead to dozens of unappealing electric “punishment cars”

Shame I can't afford one of their cars or somewhere to plug it in. One of these days...

The Joy of SOX

Link:

Apple's alleged 802.11n enabler fee: blame Enron etc. | Reg Hardware .

The Queen, La Reine

Link: Telegraph | News | The Queen, La Reine. Forgive me for posting links to the Telegraph, but this story about recently revealed discussions of a merger between Britain & France in the 1950s is too freaky to not post.

The Ultimate iPhone Frequently Asked Questions - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog

Link: The Ultimate iPhone Frequently Asked Questions - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog.

To save some time, it can be summed up as follows...

Does it XXX? NO!

It still want one...

sunk-cost fallacy

Link: sunk-cost fallacy.

When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can’t
stop now, otherwise what I’ve invested so far will be lost. This is
true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in
the project.

(Via Freakonomics)

Less astroturf in our future?

Link: Exxon Turns Off Disinformation Tap (TreeHugger).

Exxon continues to stress the modeling is imperfect; it is "helpful to an analysis, but it's not a predictor," he said. But he added, "we know enough now -- or, society knows enough now -- that the risk is serious and action should be taken."

Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier with 7K1000 - Engadget

Link: Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier with 7K1000 - Engadget.

My dream of a complete, lossless iTunes library gets more practical by the minute...

Weight, the final frontier

Link: How long until we get one? A short history of the ultralight RMI Hypercar - AutoblogGreen.

Just 15–20 percent of the fuel energy reaches the wheels, but due to the great mass of a modern vehicle compared to the driver, around 95 percent of this fuel energy reaching the road just moves the car, leaving one percent of the original fuel energy to move the driver. Hypercar vehicles are designed to minimise these energy losses, increasing by tenfold the fraction of the final energy that actually moves the driver.