Looking through some pictures for landscapes, I found this one. It’s at the Minnesota / South Dakota border where one finds plenty of wind.

I am a woman incapable of building or fixing things.  I fear hammers as I fear Jenga towers, which I inevitably bring down upon first touch.  My boyfriend often mocks my attempts to build coffee tables or fix toaster ovens, watching my futile attempts as one would watch a monkey with a plunger.  “No! I can do this!” I shout back, hopelessly gripping a set of pliers that I have mistaken for a wrench. “But WHAT do these Ikea instructions MEAN??”

So imagine my shock when I stumbled upon the story of William Kamkwamba, who is affectionately called “the boy who harnessed the wind.” At the age of 14, William was forced to drop out of his school in Malawi because his parents could not afford the tuition. Frustrated, William visited the local library, where he found a book that described how windmills are used to harness energy.  William wanted his family to have electricity so that he could read at night, so HE BUILT A WORKING WINDMILL OUT OF TRASH FROM THE  LOCAL DUMP.  He literally used items like bottle caps, broken bicycles, and hangers to create a structure that created enough electricity to power 4 lights in his house!  UNBELIEVABLE!  To read more about William, check out: http://gizmodo.com/5370752.

I study my broken toaster with shame and disbelief.  What an incredible kid.  I’m linking to a video of his interview with Jon Stewart.  Highlight moment: when William describes using google for the first time and seeing that thousands of websites explain the construction of windmills.  He says, “All I could think was, where was The Google when I was building my windmill?”

<table style=’font:11px arial; color:#333; background-color:#f5f5f5′ cellpadding=’0′ cellspacing=’0′ width=’360′ height=’353′><tbody><tr style=’background-color:#e5e5e5′ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.thedailyshow.com’>The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</a></td><td style=’padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; text-align:right; font-weight:bold;’>Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c</td></tr><tr style=’height:14px;’ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’ colspan=’2′><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba’>William Kamkwamba</a></td></tr><tr style=’height:14px; background-color:#353535′ valign=’middle’><td colspan=’2′ style=’padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; width:360px; overflow:hidden; text-align:right’><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#96deff; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.thedailyshow.com/’>www.thedailyshow.com</a></td></tr><tr valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:0px;’ colspan=’2′><embed style=’display:block’ src=’http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:251740′ width=’360′ height=’301′ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ wmode=’window’ allowFullscreen=’true’ flashvars=’autoPlay=false’ allowscriptaccess=’always’ allownetworking=’all’ bgcolor=’#000000′></embed></td></tr><tr style=’height:18px;’ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:0px;’ colspan=’2′><table style=’margin:0px; text-align:center’ cellpadding=’0′ cellspacing=’0′ width=’100%’ height=’100%’><tr valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes’>Daily Show<br/> Full Episodes</a></td><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.indecisionforever.com’>Political Humor</a></td><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.thedailyshow.com/videos/tag/health’>Health Care Crisis</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

EVERY time Resources Minister Martin Ferguson makes an announcement regarding geothermal energy he likes to quote the statistic that just 1 per cent of Australia’s geothermal resources could power Australia for 26,000 years.

But does he really believe it can even power Australia one time over? The pace and quantum of the government funding for geothermal suggests he is not entirely convinced.

He wouldn’t be the only one.

Continue Reading at TheAustralian

Sat in the diner
and watched windmill legs go past
on huge flatbed trucks.

You may be surprised to learn that we are slowly but surely depleting our energy resources. Then, how serious is the situation really?

We need more gasoline to to drive our cars, more natural gas to heat the homes in winter time and more electricity to cool our houses in the summer. The problem is fairly obvious. We use more energy than we can supply. This is why we import energy from other countries to maintain our power consumption. So is it possible for this world to run out of its standard energy resources?

Yes, it is. Geophysicists from the U.S Geological Survey predicted that 90% of all oil and gas will be gone by 2035, and approximately about 90% of all coal will be depleted by 2300. You may think that it is a long time from now, but the reality is, that day will eventually arrive, and that day is coming close.

Don’t panic just yet, as experts believe modern technology will enable us to make use of alternate energy power. These are the energies we can produce from the sun, the wind, the water, and they are not only renewable but clean. Mean while, we should also do our parts in conserving energy.

In the end, this is our world we are trying to save, our world where we belong, for the future of our children and so on, so forth.

I know I seem a little obsessive on wind energy, however it is with good reason. Yes, Israel has lots of sun and lots of companies attempting to harness it, but i still strongly believe that we should also be looking at other alternative energy sources like wind. There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post entitled “Draft tender published for Negev wind farms”. This article discusses the latest initiatives being worked on to develop wind farms in the Negev.

Today Israel has one Wind facility in the Golan which produces 6 MW and two more in the works to produce another 22MW.

The article also talks about the efforts to measure the wind flow in Israel and how it has taken years of labor to achieve this.  It also mentions israeli start-ups involved in developing methods of harnessing electricity even at low wind speeds. These are all interesting topics that I will hopefully delve more into over the next few months.

I would really like to see Wind power succeed in Israel and would be willing to invest efforts in this direction.

This might more accurately be titled the first a/b/c/d/e split.

In website parlance, a/b splits are an extremely common way of testing two versions of a page or design and testing which one better produces the desired result.

Back in 1982, Thomas Dolby may have unintentionally performed one of the first known music a/b splits – and on what I consider to be one of the greatest albums ever made (not top 10 or anything, but certainly higher on my list).

The original version of Thomas Dolby’s first album – Golden Age of Wireless – which is best known for the songs “She Blinded Me With Science” and “One of Our Submarines,” didn’t even contain either one of those songs. In fact, there were three songs on the original pressing which didn’t even make it on to the second.

The first pressing, in England, contained the song “The Wreck of the Fairchild,” but neither of the two hits. In fact, the second release (and first U.S. release) also didn’t include the two hits, though it included two different songs – “Urges” and “Leipzig.”

However, after the single for “Science,” with the “Submarines” B-side became hits in the UK. They pressed a third version of the album with those two songs, but dropping “Fairchild,” “Urges” and “Leipzig.”

With every pressing, the albums sold more copies and received more positive buzz. But that wasn’t the end. Dolby released another version of the song “Radio Silence,” that went on to the next pressing. This version also ended up on the first CD release.

Finally, there was one more version with the same 10 songs, but another new version in the mix.

I’ve never really heard of a case where an album was continually tweaked and re-released with this frequency. But I’m more fascinated that it worked so well.

And it ended in a culmination of all the songs involved with a recent, 2009 deluxe release of the album with all of the songs included.

As mentioned above, I really think this is one fantastic album, when considered holistically. It was groundbreaking when it came out. It certainly stands the test of time. It creates fantastic atmospheres and sound scapes, and it straddles the line of great music and great pop.

Take a listen to one of my favorite songs from the album (which for me is hard to pick). “Airwaves”

As an aside, Dolby toured a few years back, and it was one of the most fascinating performances of music combined with art that I’ve ever seen. He filmed everything he was doing with a series of cameras that really involved the audience in a clever and unusual way.

You can see what I mean with this video performance of his song “Leipzig”