Last weekend was a big weekend for my biodiesel production project. Friday I pulled a 220 Volt/30 Amp circuit to the reactor in the basement. A friend who is an electrician emailed me instructions for what breaker and wiring to get, after I explained the project. So I cut the power, plugged in the [...]

Wal Mart is throwing the towel in Germany! Looks like they’ll sell their 85 German stores at a loss of $1Billion to Germany’s largest retailer Metro. I despise Wal Mart, and I find an odd sense of satisfaction in the news that German stubborn attitudes brought Wal Mart, the death star of retail, to its [...]

Ah – hark the master of the moral high ground: the chief ethical executive from Royal Dutch Shell has spoken:
Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s top marketer of biofuels, considers using food crops to make biofuels “morally inappropriate” as long as there are people in the world who are starving, an executive said on Thursday.
Shell Says [...]

No, biodiesel is not much of a spectator sport and provides only little entertainment value to most people. But when Lyle talks about biodiesel he is really funny and quite entertaining. Lyle’s humorous and insightful stories from the epicenter of the North Carolina biofuels movement made yesterday’s book reading at the Regulator Bookstore in Durham [...]

Mexico’s presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or AMLO), unlike Gore or Kerry, is not about to give up his fight for democracy and justice in his country. In light of evidence of blatant ballot-stuffing by the ruling party PAN, and considering that nearly one million votes have not been counted, the PRD’s candidate has [...]

President Bush is visiting (de) Angela Merkel’s home district in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The cute, historic town of Stralsund is under siege: all cars had to be removed to lots outside the town, gutters are welded shut, mailboxes sealed, stores cannot open, and residents are even prohibited from opening their WINDOWS in July! [...]

The German Football Federation announced (de) that assistant coach Joachim Löw got a 2-year contract as national trainer, after Jürgen Klinsmann elected not to renew his contract after the Worldcup. Löw hails from Schönau (de) in the Black Forest, and I find it intriguing to see a fellow Badenser and former player at SC Freiburg [...]

Germany’s biggest loss of this Worldcup came today – two days after the closing ceremony, as the German Football Federation (DFB) confirms Jürgen Klinsmann’s decision to quit. Considering his commute and the amount of abuse he had to suffer before the Worldcup, his decision does not come as a total shock – just as a [...]

Busy, hot day today at the Eno Festival – but lots of fun! The festival was well attended and we had a constant stream of people with questions about biodiesel: “Can I use it in my car?” – “Where can I get it?” – “How is it made?” – What do you do with [...]

The BBC’s Newsnight published an interviw with Joseph Kony (left), the leader of the so-called “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA), which is responsible for the genocide on the Acholi people of Northern Uganda. This is the first-ever interview with Kony, who is wanted by a UN court for war crimes. The BBC also posted an [...]