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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Big, Green, and Chilly

Back into normal weekday form folks!  That means technology, politics, science, funny news and hopefully a little engineering while we are at it!  Also make sure to vote on the poll that way I know what kind of subjects you are primarily interested in!

See the post, after the jump!
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First news of the week that I think truly matters is that the government is going to announce that 2.5Billion dollars is going to be available for development of high speed rail.  Most of this money is going to go towards California and Florida which seems like a good plan with additional money going to Michigan(don't understand), Virginia, and other sites.  I love trains and I do love that our government has actually started improving our infrastructure instead of infrastructure that we destroyed in the past decade.

Source and Article
In this sort of green tech line of thought, a few days ago I read a neat story about  the UAE's plans to develop a carbon neutral, waste free city.  This sounds wonderful however I am not super hopeful this is really going to happen in any sort of reasonable or true time span.  To imply no waste is a bold statement.  There are all sorts of waste that human's generate like garbage, emissions, extra light and sound, and others that aren't directly associated with the city(such as allocation of goods).  I can commend them on having a plan, all the U.S. seems to be doing is allocating money for projects that don't make sense, like putting in expensive, large scale solar in Pennsylvania.  Just to note, it would literally be more beneficial to build a solar plant in Seattle, with it's larger insolation value, than in Pennsylvania.  Sometimes we need to step back and think about what exactly the returns are, is a lawmaker just pushing for this so that way they can say they brought money into the state, or are they using the nation's money in the way that will serve the greatest utility?


So another article I noticed over the weekend was an interesting piece on Japan and India, teaming up, in light of the recent problems between Japan and China.  Essentially what the deal would mean for both countries is that Japan could export their nuclear technology and India would be able to have nuclear technology that they didn't develop(which if you have ever looked at Indian infrastructure is certainly  a good thing).  Also India would begin exporting rare earth metals which are crucial to the tech firms based in Japan.  Lots of interesting economic pressures being applied to all of those countries. 


Now I know that I haven't been delivering on my cool engineering piece as much as I should so today you get something that a lot of folks never realized worked/was used.  Acoustic cooling, basically a method of utilizing cooling effects caused by acoustics without the use of refrigerants.  Check out a fun, if slightly older article about Ben and Jerry's using it to make their ice cream.
and on that note, keep the moment positive

49 comments:

  1. High speed trains ftw. We Brits are almost there, we've got a few going on. France have really gone for them though.

    Also, I study sound technology so that acoustic chiller is AWESOME to me :p

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  2. In my country still slow trains -.-

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  3. well .. let's hope the trains are worth the cost

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  4. I liked this post. Fook yeah trains.

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  5. High speed train sounds awesome. I really hate flying and would be nice to have an efficient alternative.

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  6. Well at least they aren't spending the money on war or some stupid shit like that.

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  7. haha, epic picture the first one :D i like it

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  8. The Tea Party down in Florida, with funding by Big Oil, has been really fighting against the rail development. 'Cause you know, driving our cars around is indeed the better way to ween us off foreign oil and the need to intervene in the Middle East for energy security reasons. =\

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  9. it's about time that we got high speed rail

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  10. n1 on the info about india and japan. good to hear stuff like that, might turn out to be an intersting partnership, one that should be followed closely,

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  11. always love to come check out you blog and learn a little bit. fascinating stuff.. keep up the good work.

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  12. this just made me...WOW

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  13. Acoustic cooling? Wow, that's pretty cool!

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  14. where is the landing ramp for the car? lolz

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  15. man, I saw an article today about trains that cost $12 to ride, but take you 126 miles in 45 minutes. We need that kind of crap in the US.

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  16. I could use some ice cream right now

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  17. FUCK YEAAH high speed rails!. btw nice blog, yes including the random fabric-esque background that reminds me of a kilt.

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  18. It's about time we work on catching up public transportation in the US.

    Also, a big heck yes to Ben and Jerry's for being generally awesome!

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  19. crazy photo that must have been a nightmare to co-ordinate

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  20. good to hear that the states are getting more transportation services. i would most definitely take that train to florida.

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  21. I wonder when they'll have those high speed trains up and running and open to everyone. I would absolutely love to ride one.

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  22. lovin this blog man, keep it up

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  23. Very nice read! I voted as well ;) Love high speed trains! Love Ben and Jerry's too ;P The other post was a nice read as well..

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  24. A new carbon free thingy? Thats not going to be easy. Must captcha more train.

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