Daily Archives: May 22, 2008

FFR: The Best of Sunday Night Music, vol 1.

FFR Best of Sunday Night Music 1.JPG

Every week Phil and I enjoy wrapping up our FastForward Radio show with a podcast-safe tune from an indy band or solo artist. My criteria for choosing the music is simply – “does it sound good to me?”

If it sounds good, I’ll download it, play it Sunday night, then put it on my iPod.

Most of those songs get played once or twice more, then put aside. But a few others have become some of my favorite songs. This is stuff that should be huge hits on the radio, but… so far… aren’t.

I’ve assembled eleven of these highly re-playable songs in a compilation album. And, unlike our podcast, you’ll be hearing them in all their stereo glory. And Friday before a holiday weekend is a great time to publish a fun project like this.

Enjoy:

FFR: The Best of Sunday Night Music, vol 1.

Please remember to support these artists. They are:

Happy Memorial Day.

Algae Economy, Part 2

For the last couple of days the Drudge Report has had a red link at the top of the page to this news story:

‘Squawk Box’ Guest Warns of $12-15-a-Gallon Gas

In a television interview (which you can watch at that article) energy expert Robert Hirsch stated that a $12 gallon of gas is “inevitable.” I think he’s wrong.

It’s true that oil production has remained flat, but Hirsch is only counting oil that we can pump out of the ground. Biofuels are not part of his thinking.

I think $5 and $6 per gallon gas may be inevitable. But as the pain increases, the money flowing toward alternatives will increase. And we have some very promising alternatives. Plug-in hybrids will be hitting the market in the next couple of years. At $5 per gallon for gas those hybrids will sell much faster than the automotive industry will be able to make them. The energy consumption patterns will change overnight in this country. Perhaps we should be a little more concerned about the electricity infrastructure. Nuclear energy has to be part of our thinking.

But we’ll still need liquid fuel. And here’s the most promising new source:

Important statistics from this story:

  • 100,000 gallons of biofuel per year per acre for algae crops. This compares to 20 to 30 gallons of biofuel per acre for corn crops.

  • If we used 1/10th of the state of New Mexico for this Vertigro system, it could supply all the transportation fuel this country needs.
  • The most ideal place to grow algae is in the desert. No farm land is sacrificed, no food crops are sacrificed.

In the last video I posted on this guy, he explained that different algae species could be used to make different fuels. You’d could develop a jet fuel algae, a diesel algae, and a gasoline algae.

UPDATE: For convenience, here’s that first video: