More than wires - exploring the connections between energy, environment, and our lives
What does the cheeseburger say about our modern food economy? A lot actually. Over the last several years, Waldo Jaquith set out to make a cheeseburger from scratch, to no avail: Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch...
The U.S. is currently home to a suite of national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research. Throughout the country, this network of 17 labs (overseen by the Department of Energy) focuses on a wide array of basic science and engineering questions...
Things got ugly in the 1890s as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse entered into what has been referred to as the “War of Currents” over Edison’s direct current and Westinghouse’s newly discovered alternating current...
Everybody has something to say about electricity in the South. Duke thinks it needs to cost more; Duke, on the other hand, thinks there’s no reason it needs to be more expensive.
Saul Griffith likes kites - but not the kind that you might have flown during your childhood. I'm talking about kites with wingspans bigger than a Boeing 747 - kites that are capable of generating (several times) more electricity than today's stationary wind turbines...
I was reading one of my favorite link blogs and found a Kickstarter page for a gadget called Twine. Developed by David Carr and John Kestner from the MIT start-up Supermechanical, Twine is a small box loaded with sensors and a WiFi connection that hooks up with a web app that lets you set up and monitor the sensors so they can send you messages of your choosing.Out of the box, Twine comes with four sensors: temperature, accelerometer, magnetic switch, and a motion sensor that let you measure all sorts of things around the house like when doors are opened or when a room is occupied...
Keystone XL is the lesser of two evils. The other evil, is not building Keystone XL. This argument – to build, or not to build the transcontinental pipeline from Canada to the U.S.
Several readers sent word about this massive xkcd chart about money. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It is both massive and fascinating and is a handy way to compare the scale and breadth of everything from iPad's to the national deficit...
Well, from 350 km (~220 miles) up civilization looks like clusters of lights nestled in river valleys and practically overflowing into the oceans or other bodies of water.
In September, headlines erupted when the solar company, Solyndra, announced that it would be filing for bankruptcy just 2 years after the company received $535 million in federal loan guarantees under the Recovery Act...
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