Obama Signs Major Land Conservation Law | 44 | washingtonpost.com

The good thing about the financial crisis is that nobody's paying attention to this stuff, and it sneaks on through:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/30/obama_signs_major_land_conserv.html?wprss=44

Financial Safety Net of Nonprofit Organizations Is Fraying, Survey Finds - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26charity.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

If you build it, they will come

Shai Agassi, former SAP exec, thinks if we build a whole bunch of electric car charging and/or battery swap stations, then the electric cars will show up.  Big bet, pretty cool, and probably a durable technology - maybe not the battery swapping stuff, but electricity isn't going away.  And the cool thing is that you're paying per mile.

Although I'm curious if that will affect driving too much.  If I actually start thinking about my per-mile charge, I might start to get really annoyed.  Easier to think about buying one tank of gas every week or so - even if it works out to the same thing.

From the Desk of David Pogue - Electric Cars for All! (No, Really This Time) - NYTimes.comhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/technology/personaltech/19pogue-email.html?_r=1&8cir&emc=cira1

Solar Dish

Way better than normal solar panels, hopefully much cheaper and definitely easier to install... Friend at Sempra Energy said this is real;

MIT prototype solar dish passes first tests - MIT News Office

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solar-dish-0618.html

Blackberry Battery Life

My blackberry curve 8330 seemed to no longer be holding a charge, after about 8 months of use.  No crazy apps running or anything, the WSJ reader is about the most data intensive that's open.  It got to the point where it wouldn't last a half-day, even lose a bar overnight when it was only receiving e-mail.

I called Verizon, hoping to get a new battery, which incidentally is warrantied for one year, so that's good to know.  But the nice helpful woman gave me a bunch of ideas, the simplest being: pull the battery out, wait a little while, and put it back in.  And whaddyaknow, it worked!  After the reset, suddenly it seemed to be back to a long-life battery.

Why in the world this works, and why the blackberry would be confused about the battery life, I have no idea... but it worked!

Smart Roads. Smart Bridges. Smart Grids. - WSJ.com

Spend the stimulus on smarter, more intelligent infrastructure?  Probably not, it's not quite shovel-ready... but would put us back on top of R&D.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123447510631779255.html?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.099142:b0

World Air Traffic Over 24 Hours - Video

No idea what the source of this is, but pretty cool to look at the way the airplanes move over the earth.  And clearly the world doesn't sleep enough.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2235978/world_air_traffic_over_24_hours/