Tired of all that blood for oil? Roll up to your elected representative on your own home brewed biodiesel using any of these handy guides. (Diesel vehicle required.)

“E-democracy represents the use of information and communication technologies and strategies by democratic actors (governments, elected officials, the media, political organizations, citizen/voters) within political and governance processes of local communities, nations and on the international stage. To many, e-democracy suggests greater and more active citizen participation enabled by the Internet, mobile communications, and other technologies in today’s representative democracy as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges.”

Steven Clift has a nice list of E-democracy links. Check some of his own articles, too.

Found via VoxPolitics.

Search Google for “rural vaccine refrigerators” and all kinds of solar energy projects pop up. Most recently, in June 2002 Kyocera Solar Inc. announced “the worlds most economical solar-powered vaccine refrigeration system.” The refrigerators make it possible to expand the reach of vaccines to areas not presently served. Extra insulation keeps contents cool and improves battery life. Read the press release or download the PDF brochure.

From the New York Times:

“Four years ago that children’s television show began broadcasting an Israeli-Palestinian co-production, conceived in the afterglow of the 1993 Oslo accords. The collaboration produced 70 half-hour shows, each one containing Hebrew and Arabic segments.... Under a new co-production agreement, which now includes Jordanians, the project has run into difficulty. The name ‘Sesame Street’ has been changed to ‘Sesame Stories’ because the concept of a place where people and puppets from those three groups can mingle freely has become untenable. The original shows were built around the notion that Israeli and Palestinian children (as well as puppets) might become friends. Now, reflecting the somber mood in the Middle East, producers see their best hope as helping children to humanize their historic enemies through separate but parallel stories.”

The segreation strikes me as a failure. The article also mentions various travel restrictions that are hampering production.

Posters from the By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943. 908 posters from the collection of the Library of Congress. Read about the exhibit, check the massive subject listing, or skip straight to the highlights.

The New York Times reports on an experiment using flywheels to convert and store the braking energy of subway trains approaching stations and release it back into the electrical system in a regulated way. The system could save up to 20 million tax payer dollars a year in electricity costs and would help relieve a lot of the heat subways generate. Between Bloomberg’s budget cuts and the sweltering stations in July, this is a beautiful thing.

Found via Slashdot.

“Depleted uranium is created as a by-product of the processes used to convert natural uranium for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. NATO used ammunition and weaponry made of depleted uranium during its air strikes on Yugoslavia in 1999. Suspicious deaths and illnesses among Europeans exposed to the substance are prompting investigators to examine DU’s health risks. The United States has denied any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium.”

Read Trail of a Bullet, a series of articles from the Christian Science Monitor. Join the call to ban the use of DU.

“Veronica Webb’s eco-friendly electric car turned into a fire-spewing death machine the other night, burning down her Key West house and killing her beloved dog, Hercules.” Says Webb, “Electric cars and golf carts are always overloading their chargers and burning up, but no one knows about it.” From Page Six.

In February 2002, London’s Metropolitan Police initiated a three year test of two two-seater electric cars “to combat high traffic levels in cities and will be used for general purposes such as burglary reporting and house visits.” The cars are cheap to run and emissions free. Electric cars are exempt from the Mayor of London’s new congestion tax.

“13 months ago [Sugata Mitra] launched something he calls ‘the hole in the wall experiment.’ He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT’s headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company’s grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree. What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. The physicist has since installed a computer in a rural neighborhood with similar results.”