One day last year, my musician friend Jonathan drove up in a Mercedes. This was odd, since Jonathan is so resolutely counterculture that he once tried recording an album in the woods, without electricity.
His car’s exhaust smelled faintly of french fries, and therein lay the explanation: The new Jonathan Richman tour vehicle — an ’84 300D Turbo — was running on vegetable oil-derived biodiesel fuel as he and his drummer crisscrossed the nation in it, a deep fryer on wheels.
I was intrigued: Biodiesel comes from renewable resources. It’s made from soybeans, corn or other oil crops, saving America’s farmers. Or it comes from recycled kitchen grease, saving America’s sewers. It pollutes remarkably less than petroleum fuel, and could potentially make the U.S. energy self-sufficient, freed from bargaining with dictators and terror-sponsor states.
Daily Archives: March 30, 2006
Google’s WiFi Privacy Ploy
What this means is that Google and Earthlink plan to use online files (known as cookies) and other data-collection techniques to profile users and deliver precise, personalized advertising as they surf the Internet. (Earthlink is working with the interactive ad company DoubleClick, which collects and analyzes enormous amounts of information online to engage in individual interactive ad targeting.)
Not everyone is enthused by the Google/Earthlink model. San Francisco was advised by a trio of privacy advocates to develop policies that would respect personal privacy. In letters to the city, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged the adoption of a “gold standard” for data privacy (pasted in below from http://epic.org/privacy/internet/sfws22106.html), insuring that its Wi-Fi system would “accommodate the individual’s right to communicate anonymously and pseudonymously.” The groups also suggested that the city require any Wi-Fi company to allow users to “opt in” to any data-collection scheme. [Full disclosure: I rent office space in Washington, DC, from EPIC].
10 States Hardest Hit by the AMT
has released Who Pays The Individual AMT: State-by-State Estimates for 2006. Wisconsin ranks #6 – ouch!