Getting Greener, Environmentally And Financially

To be honest I can't recall if Euro's come in green.  But the little central Italian village of Tocco da Casauria is making a pretty penny with it's new green power installations, and it's also drawing international attention.  It was great to see this article as the above the fold front page lead in the NYT yesterday...

Apparently the NYT has it set up so that I can't embed the photo here, instead of pulling it down and putting it back up, I'll just say that it was a neat little article.  The residents of the town have embraced the renewable power and since the excess power is being purchased for the grid the local taxes for trash removal and some other city services are being paid for.  All in all, it is a small but remarkable and promising success story.

No you didn't miss the link, if the NYT doesn't want to share the artwork for the story then I won't link to it.

A History Lesson

Of sorts I suppose...



Kottke was right, this was the best thing I saw today.

A Bigger Boat

Well, NOAA has one now.  Actually they've had the R/V Henry B Bigelow for a while now but she's just making her way to Woods Hole, the ship's putative home port. 

The Cape Cod Times has a nice little rundown about the new ship and her capabilities, automated fish species sorting anyone?  Flat screens that prompt researchers to sample specific fish based on research requests and associated printers that run off id bar codes for the samples? The Bigelow is the boat for you.

I also enjoyed the mention that since the Bigelow is bigger than her predecessor and therefore trawls more slowly 630 side by side trawls were performed in order to construct a conversion matrix so that the newer records would remain compatible with the older data.

You can see the official NOAA specs here.

The Cape Cod Times ran a nice graphic as well...

You're An American, Act Like It

Fresh from the wilds of the internets comes this great Uncle Sam poster...

HTWW had this little nugget up the other day, but they couldn't find it's original source or creator.  Be sure to let them (or us) know if you have the info.

Read This Now - Getting Raw

Tony Bourdain has a new book out, or maybe it's been out for a while but I just heard about it.  I thoroughly enjoyed Kitchen Confidential and after this rambling, eviscerating, and ultimately redeeming review from another of my favorite food writers (Michael Ruhlman), Medium Raw is on my reading list.

Ruhlman closes it out thusly, be sure to check out how he gets there:

But the facts are these. In the same way that great food writing is about more than just the food, so too is Medium Raw commentary on matters well beyond the incestuous world of restaurants and cooks. This book of memoir, travel writing, food writing and reportage is entertaining, informative, thought provoking, and genuinely artful in its structure and satisfactions.  He would surely lose what little respect he has for me were I to say this to his face, but Bourdain proves himself here to be the most insightful commentator on food and restaurants and chefs writing today.  By far.  By a mile.  I seriously hope this is the last book he writes.  He’s a freak of nature, and somehow it’s just best that way, that he remain untouchable.

One Hundred And Fifty Nine Seconds

Of delightful hand dancing to help brighten your mood...



Yes, the internets really are quite something.

(via CMW)

Way Outside The Box

We're going to need ideas like this to pull off a livable and fun word in the future...



Yep, asphalt is another one of those things that depends on fossil fuels, they are literally everywhere.

(via Ebert)