Designer Andrea Ponti has devised a laptop computer powered by the sun. It has solar panels behind the screen and under the keyboard, is made of clear polycarbonate, and weighs four pounds. Fujitsu is said to be interested.
Image (“Blogging Au Plein Air, after Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The U.S. Army might send pack mules to Afghanistan. The logistics of supplying patrols in that rugged terrain are complex and costly, and new experimental cargo robots aren’t working out.
Denmark has banned Marmite – not because it’s made from British brewery waste, but because it’s artificially fortified with vitamins to back up dubious health claims. Danish authorities have also banned Ovaltine, Special K, and Rice Krispies for the same reason.
Denmark’s reasons don’t matter in the UK, where the yeasty brown gunk is an iconic product, a cherished symbol of the Empire. The British are responding with anger if not fury.
Sarah Palin is spending her summer vacation just like you, on a simple family trip funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations. Mrs. Palin, along with her parents, sullen pre-teen daughter Piper, and husband Todd (Alaska’s former First Thug), is motoring between historic East Coast sites in a chartered luxury coach with her name painted on it.
Is the trip a vacation or presidental campaign tour? Mrs. Palin won’t say, to the consternation of the media. The bus is being tailed by reporters and news crews as it meanders along its secret itinerary. Far from keeping the trip private, the “magical mystery tour” aspect merely spurs the media frenzy. Where will she be next?
Disposable plastic bags just sit there, clogging our landfills and oceans, but their manufacturers aren’t so passive. Three of them are suing a reusable bag maker for saying … that plastic bags clog our landfills and oceans. They claim such talk has ”irreparably harmed” their business.
“At the rate of last month’s dismal job creation, it will take more than 15 years for America to replace the 7 million jobs that vanished in this Great Recession. The awful new job numbers — just 38,000 in May when economists say the country needs at least 244,000 new jobs per month if the United States is to ever climb out of its hole — are the latest sign America is beginning a new brutal phase of the endless crisis.”
– “Nation Needs To Replace 6,955,000 Pre-Recession Jobs; 38,000 Created Last Month,” Ken Layne, Wonkette
The Republican geniuses responsible for the global crash have an answer: pull even more money out of America’s economy.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Image (“Pasha Berlusconi and His Harem, after François Gabriel Lepaulle”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain has demonstrated business savvy. After all, he saved Godfather’s Pizza. But America isn’t a chain of pizza parlors. And neither was Aquila Energy.
Mr. Cain was on the Aquila board when the firm screwed employees out of tens of millions of dollars in retirement funds. Like Enron, but with extra cheese.
“Herman Cain’s Enron-esque Disaster,” Andy Kroll, Mother Jones
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The space shuttle Endeavour landed in Florida early this morning. The 20-year-old space heap was cobbled together out of spare parts from the 1984-model Discovery and 1985 Atlantis shuttles. Endeavour’s next trip? It’s going to a museum.
So is another spacecraft. George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic Mothership is headed to the Smithsonian. Not the original 1976 stage prop – it went to a junkyard in Maryland — but a mid-Nineties version. That’s right, Endeavour is about the same age as the Mothership.
