There was an interesting piece on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning about No Impact Man, a guy and his family ("10 legs and a tail") who live in Manhattan and are trying to live the next year with no net impact. There is also an interesting piece in the New York Times about him. There's a bit of the "Super Size Me" self-promotional aspect to the whole thing, but it's obviously a worthwhile message.

A few examples of difficult it is:

electricity (my computers!): bad
biking: good
fruit from South America: bad
locally-grown food: good
trash (take out containers): bad
shitting in a bucket: good
etc.

I'm most interested in it as a guide to some useful ways I can reduce my own impact. Particularly, in buying locally grown food. I've been pushing a lot in my house recently to reduce the amount of trash that we generate, which I think is way too much as it is. I'm willing to allow myself some luxuries, if I can manage to reduce my consumption considerably.

Anyway, it's a interesting read, with lots of good food for thought.

Given the looming energy crisis, the increasing popularity bio feul, and human blood lust, its sort of hard to believe that it's taken this long for someone to make gas out of dead animals. This German inventor has been making batches of bio diesel out of, among other things, road kill cats (oh yes the irony is not lost on me).

Although I can't imagine it would ever be very efficient to husband animals for fuel (uh, wait, did I just say that?), if we, as humans, were ever able to move beyond the mental sophistication of pond scum, I think we could probably power a lot more than cars with all of the dead humans, especially considering the impending population explosion. OR, with no need to move beyond pond scum AND taking advantage of our blood lust, maybe we can fuel our roving armies by just rolling over the slaughtered. Man, wouldn't THAT be efficient. I can just imagine future humvees outfitted with inverse cattle catchers that just suck up the bodies as they plow through the battle fields. Now that's what I call progress.

This article (warning: pdf) from Tissue Engineering suggests that vat-grown meat may become actually feasible for human consumption.

There's an organization set up now to promote the concept, too! Check out their FAQ.

i've always said that i'd be fine with eating meat, so long as

1. i could grow it in a vat, and
2. it was seeded with cells taken from myself (as opposed to another animal who might rather do other things with their biomass)

Maybe one day i can eat meat again...

Electric bikes are thriving in China. They're also being attacked by industry competitors, including the auto industry and government mass transit officials, who fear erosion of their customer base. Some interesting quotes from the article:

[Consumers prefer electric bicycles over public transit] when it comes to health concerns: the overcrowded transit system is feared for its potential to spread disease. Liu says Crown's sales spiked during the SARS epidemic that emerged in China in the spring of 2003.

So I've just come across two interesting car-related alternative energy updates.

The first has to do with biodiesel, which is a very cool advance that's gaining a lot of momentum. A Cambridge, MA based company is trying to make systems of algea that turns power plant emissions into biodiesel. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! (no offense, Daniel). I love this shit. My only worry is that any technology that reduces the impact of environment-destroying plants will make it harder to kill these antiquated beasts since people will think they can justify them.

The other news is that a Welsh company has made a totally new kind of electric engine that doesn't use magnets and produces butt-loads of torque. These are really cool kinds of inventions that make me excited. Now all we need is fusion...

Jean's discovery the other day of the solar-powered restaurant in Brooklyn got me thinking again about the feasibility of small scale alternative energy systems here in the U.S.

Last year I remember reading about a program run by an NGO in Bangladesh that had installed hybrid systems in a number of villages without any grid connection at all. I've lost the reference to the article, but these were solar/wind systems, with a small solar panel and a micro wind turbine mounted on the roof with a single pole. They must've have been relatively cheap, as I don't think there were any government subsidies and were essentially donated.