Obama may adopt Israeli electric car

Obama may adopt Israeli electric car

Dec. 18, 2008
David Horovitz , THE JERUSALEM POST

The incoming Obama administration is “closely monitoring” the innovative electric car project being developed by Israel’s Better Place company, “and may be adopting it,” Idan Ofer, chairman of Better Place, has told The Jerusalem Post.

Heralding a potential private transport revolution, a leading US car manufacturer is also now “putting together a team” to work on the project, Ofer said. Renault-Nissan agreed 18 months ago to build the first cars, and will be mass-producing hundreds of thousands of the electric-powered vehicles by 2010, he noted.

Ofer said the electric car was a natural fit for the Obama presidency as it prepares to grapple with the global financial crisis, environmental concerns, a dependence on oil supplies from unfriendly countries and a collapsing conventional car-building industry.

The crisis afflicting Detroit was underlined Thursday, when the Bush administration said it was seriously considering “orderly” bankruptcy as a way of dealing with the desperately ailing auto industry.

“There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about,” said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.

The comments came a day after Chrysler LLC announced it was closing all its North American manufacturing plants for at least a month as it, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. await word on government action. General Motors has also been closing plants, and it and Chrysler have said they might not have enough money to pay their bills in a matter of weeks.

Ofer said he was anticipating “the electrification of America” as Barack Obama’s logical instrument for rescuing the industry, as well as promoting environmental responsibility, enabling reduced oil dependence and underpinning economic revival.

“This is very dear to the heart of the Obama administration,” he said, noting that Obama’s newly announced choice for energy secretary, Nobel physics laureate Steve Chu, “is a huge advocate of alternative energy. He says we must get away from oil.”

Ofer said that “America spent somewhere between $500 [billion] and $700b. on imported oil in 2008.” The incentive to shift away from that kind of dependence was overwhelming, he said.

When “you hear announcements” from the incoming administration about reviving Detroit with electric cars, job creation in battery factories and modernizing the national electricity grid, said the Better Place chairman, “you’ll know that it will have come from us.”

The Post was awaiting a response from Obama’s officials at press time.

Obama officials said this week that the president-elect was laying the groundwork for a giant economic stimulus package, possibly $850b. over two years. Like public works projects of the depression era, they said, Obama’s plan would feature spending on roads and other infrastructure projects as well as new and renovated schools. It also would aim for energy-efficient government buildings and development of environment-friendly technologies.

Better Place, established 14 months ago by entrepreneur Shai Agassi, aims to switch cars worldwide from the pump to the plug, using battery-powered electric vehicles that would recharge at parking meter-style “charging spots,” on a grid powered by renewable energy.

Israel, Denmark and Australia are formally committed to the idea. Earlier this month, the Japanese government invited Better Place to work with its local car manufacturers on a first electric car venture. The state of Hawaii signed up to a pilot program last week.

The Renault-Nissan vehicles will cost about the same as conventional cars for now, but will ultimately be cheaper, said Ofer. He said they have comparable acceleration, can reach comparable speeds (of 150 to 180 kph) and can run 150-200 kilometers on a single battery.

Plane hits cow on emergency landing

Plane hits cow on emergency landing

Pilot: ‘She went rolling away but seemed unhurt and carried on grazing’

The Associated Press

updated 8:23 p.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 17, 2008

LONDON – The pilot of a vintage biplane says he ran into an unusual hazard while making an emergency landing — a cow.

Rob Wotton says he was trying to land his World War II-era Tiger Moth after the engine stalled just after takeoff southwest of London on Sept. 14. He was about to touch down in a field when the animal wandered into his way.

An onboard video camera —the footage of which has been posted on YouTube — shows the brown-and-white cow being knocked to the ground by the plane’s lower left wing. The two-seater was damaged but landed safely.

“I had to put the aircraft down straight away and spotted a likely field where I could see there were cows. They were all on my right hand side except one on my left. I narrowly missed a fence and touched down and then the silly cow ran across to join her mates on the other side of the field,” Wotton was quoted as saying in the Telegraph newspaper.

“I clipped her and she went rolling away but seemed unhurt and carried on grazing. The aircraft was very slightly damaged.”

Wotton and his passenger were also unhurt.

Wotton says he might paint a cow on the plane to mark the event. “I have to say it is the first cow I have ever hit in 22 years’ flying.”

 

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28284759/?gt1=43001

6 signs that aliens might exist

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28148553/?GT1=43001&pg=1#Tech_6SignsofAlienLife

“Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.”

Pope cautions against blurring lines of religious differences

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI praised collaboration with other faiths in pursuit of common social goals but cautioned against dialogue that could lead to blurring of religious differences.

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnspremiumtext/comments/pope_cautions_against_blurring_lines_of_religious_differences/

Yes of course—all the religions came from the same God to the same human race but at different times of history, so of course we should not blur the lines of when in history they each came!  Would you want to blur the lines between third grade and sixth grade? Thank you for reminding us of this difference!

Posted by Shastri at 2:36 pm

These mice need to read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Killer mice endanger albatross

Rime can be found at:
http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html
Posted: 11:01 AM ET
LONDON, England (CNN) — Predatory mice are critically threatening the albatross population on a remote South Atlantic island and have caused the birds’ worst nesting season on record, a British bird charity said Thursday.

The research from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds indicates bad news for the Tristan albatross, whose only home is Gough Island in the middle of the South Atlantic. House mice not native to the island are threatening the Tristan albatross with extinction, the RSPB said.
The mice are also threatening the native population of bunting, one of the world’s largest finches, the RSPB said.

“Without removal of the mice, both the albatross and the bunting that live there are doomed to extinction,” Grahame Madge, a conservation spokesman for the RSPB, told CNN.

Amazing article in the Financial Times

A merkit friend of mine sent me this article from the Financial Times.  The article is interesting but what is more amazing are all the comments posted in response.  Take a look and see what you think.

And now for a world government

By Gideon Rachman

Published: December 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: December 8 2008 19:13

 I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1