Quite useful – great job, Shane.
Monthly Archives: October 2005
Getting Oil from Shale a Complex Process
Outside Vernal, Utah, officials with Oil-Tech Inc. say they have perfected an older technology of baking oil from shale in a furnace and wants government approval to mine 1,600 acres of state land plus access to 30,000 tons of shale left outside an abandoned mine on federal land.
WiFi Benefits All Madison Residents
Sarah Howard makes the case.
World Dairy Expo (“The Art of Dairy”) Arrives in Madison
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My father emailed these photos from Tuesday’s World Dairy Expo. More pictures here.
Oil Shale: Back to the Future
Living in Denver during the mid 1980’s, I learned quite a bit about that era’s oil shale collapse. Paul Foy takes a look at the growing interest in this potential 1 trillion barrel reserve (4X Saudi Arabia’s holdings):
Shell believes it can make its technique economical as long as crude oil stays above $30 a barrel, but it is five years away from proving the technology or deciding whether to build a commercial-scale operation, said Terry O’Connor, a company vice president for external and regulatory affairs.
Outside Vernal, Utah, officials with Oil-Tech Inc. say they have perfected an older technology of baking oil from shale in a furnace and wants government approval to mine 1,600 acres of state land plus access to 30,000 tons of shale left outside an abandoned mine on federal land.
Grand Palais Evening VR Scene
Eric Rougier published a gorgeous night vr scene of the Grand Palais in Paris.
Your DNA or Else! (Feingold & Kohl are on this Senate Comittee)
The Violence Against Women Act may be about to do violence to Americans’ right to privacy.
A U.S. Senate committee (Judiciary, which includes both Wisconsin Senators: Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl – contact them on this issue!) has adopted an amendment to the VAWA legislation that would add the DNA of anyone detained by the cops to a federal DNA database called “CODIS.”
Note that it doesn’t require that you’re convicted of a crime or even formally arrested on suspicion of committing one. Mere detention — might a routine traffic stop eventually qualify? — will be sufficient for CODISification. (Current law only authorizes blood or saliva swabs and entry into CODIS for people convicted of a crime.)
Senator Kohl is up for re-election in 2006. I think Kathleen Falk would make an excellent candidate!
Anthropologists Help Explain Consumer Behavior
Instead of poking around tribal villages in Papua New Guinea or Amazonian rain forests, cultural anthropologists are invading suburbs and cities to find out how people use products while eating meals, working in the office, and even while driving. “We live in a culture where knowing your customers one by one as individuals is more important than ever before,” said Ross Goldstein, a researcher with the BRS Group. “Large mass demographic trends are no longer as predictive as they once were because the marketplace is too diversified.”
Healthia: Comparison Shopping, Online, for Health Insurance
This looks like a useful idea. California only, for now.
At Healthia, we are tremendous believers in the consumer driven healthcare movement sweeping America. Our goal is to provide America’s first comparison shopping and research portal for consumer driven healthcare, enabling businesses and their employees to choose health plans and ancillary health benefits objectively and transparently.
At our beta launch today (2005-Aug-11), we serve the California market with a strong emphasis on HSA compatible plans. We also enable any user across the nation to compare over 50 leading HSA products.
David Cowan has a useful summary of the movement behind this: “Consumer Directed Healthcare” or CDH. Cowan also references this CDH study.
Connected, Constantly
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Walking a bit on campus and State Street this evening, I was struck by the extent to which we’re connected all the time. These photos are a small snapshot of the scene, which included cell phone use everywhere, ipods and wifi computers.