Monday, April 12, 2010

Simple Sustainability

Wow. I just came across this site linking from an article I read on Slashdot. Sort of a place to post modern ideas on resource and energy efficiency. Just a couple of articles on inhabitat.com were awesome enough that I wanted to share the site immediately.

A pretty awesome eco-integrated concept building, I would love to see actually get built. Could we get some financing for projects that will reduce our energy footprint, and pay themselves back?

And this one about chemical sniffing phones is an awesome idea. What if everyone was just assigned random chemicals to have their phone sense? I think we could justify getting sensors for industrial waste, and other problem pollutants as well.

This story about paint on connected solar cells is pretty interesting too. They comment that it's not yet commercially proven, but a pretty awesome concept.

All posted today ?!?

Monday, April 5, 2010

Toyota Redux

OK. So we all knew SOME people were making shit up when they claimed their prius, or other toyota behaved strangely. Still you gotta figure SOME other people were telling the truth. Right?

I guess Toyota is looking at criminal negligence charges for not investigating the incidents, and writing them off as driver error. Then I read this, and if these stats are the naked truth. I am now suspicious:
 These incidents were highly correlated with three things:  being elderly, being short, and parking (or leaving a parking space)
Wow. So we all know old people can't drive. We (I know directly) also know that young people can't drive well. Yes there are exceptions to every rule. The point is now I think it was mostly a bunch of hype. I read a few articles saying Toyota was still denying that anything was wrong, and I believe it will stay as such until we have a root cause.

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July 14th Update.
Preliminary results from DOT testing (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834604575364871534435744.html)
indicates that the Toyota "acceleration" problem appears to be operator error, as backed up by the information presented early on above. It's almost depressing.