An interesting proposal to turn the soon to be replaced Bay Bridge into a floating apartment and park complex. Really great idea even if it doesn’t come to pass it should make us consider what we can do with older pieces of infrastructure. Photo via BLDGBLOG: The Bay Line.

So here we have a nicely delimited study of available research with rigorous standards and a fairly worded conclusion, all publicly available to download and read on the FSA website.

Well if it’s so publicly available and downloadable then why can’t you take the time to link to it? The author (web editor?) took the time to go through and link to such blogs as Food Politics, Matthew Yglesias, and more but linking to the study that the article centers around? No, that’d be too much to ask.

Oregon’s Painted Hills on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

http://www.youtube.com/v/VGJt_YXIoJI&hl=en&fs=1

• China Outlines Plans for Making Electric Cars (NY Times) – An article (4/10/2009) from the New York Times about China’s push to create electric car technology. It’s interesting and could actually see more success in China than other countries. They make the point that since many Chinese are still buying their first cars they have less of a preconception about what a car is and what a car needs to do. Seems as though Americans might be too stuck in their 200+ HP mindset to accept electric cars for a long while.
• django-newsroom – Google Code – An interesting project to create a newspaper-friendly install of django. Sounds like it has some interesting concepts behind it. Seems to be more appropriate for news than a WordPress install. Note to self: learn django and write a theme for it. (via @danielbachhuber)
• Thousand Yard Stares: Ruins and Ghosts of the Battle of Peleliu – A great piece written by someone who traveled to Peleliu recently. The island was the site of heavy activity during WWII and only became fully independent in 1994. Apparently the South of the island is still littered with pieces of WWII gear and equipment. The photos look incredible.

Unfortunately, there’s an underlying problem that still needs fixing. In offering the leases for sale in December, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was simply acting in accordance with the new resource-management plans for its lands in Utah. These plans, which the Bush administration rushed to complete before the end of last October, leave about 80 percent of the BLM’s 11 million acres in Utah open to energy development. If the BLM continues to manage its Utah lands according to these guidelines, which are supposed to last for 20 years, then this week’s environmental victory will only be a temporary one. Conservation groups are challenging the management plans in court, and their lawsuits may well be successful. But the Obama administration needs to start drafting replacement plans that take into consideration the sensitive nature of Utah’s red-rock country by putting more of it off-limits to drilling.

I would love to see the Obama administration expand federal protection through not only Utah but much of the other semi-protected federal lands in other states. Traveling through Southern Utah during my Freshman year here at Whitman was simply amazing and truly created a new sense of environmentalism in me. I only wish that the lands stay pristine so that others can have the same experience that I was fortunate enough to have.

Link via Utah Drilling Stopped. But For How Long? – Environment and Energy .

Found this on Flick this evening when I really should have been doing homework, but oh well. I love images like this that create texture through the trees and their leaves. The contrast between the dark wood and bark and the light greenery is just fantastic. Enjoy.

There is no way that enough photos can be taken of the Grand Canyon. When I went backpacking through it for five days I took over 600 and still feel like there’s shots that I missed out on.