From the cat haiku page:
In deep sleep hear sound
cat vomit hairball somewhere
will find in morning.
Solar Parking Lots
Google is in the news for some energy innovation:
these asphalt acres are getting their day in the sun, with search giant Google joining other companies in planting groves of pole-mounted solar panels between the rows of Saabs and SUVs, generating clean power and providing a little shade at the same time.
Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters is getting a 1.6-megawatt solar system — enough to power about 1,000 homes — that will feed about 30 percent of the complex’s power demand.
I like the fact that someone realized that stringing together small arrays on roof-tops makes sense but should not be the limit, especially when you look out over a sea of perfectly flat parking spaces. I also thought of at least two benefits beyond those mentioned in the article:
- Shading the asphalt and cars, which reduces wear from the sun and may even provide some shelter from rain. How dumb are we as a civilization to park cars on black asphalt and then run cooling systems to compensate, when harvesting the sun would achieve the same result with additional benefits?
- Emergency-backup source of energy for business continuity.
Sharp decline in Aussie deaths after gun buy-back
The University of Sydney has announced that an Australian law that destroyed nearly 700,000 guns has significantly reduced the number of murders and homicides:
After 112 people were shot dead in 11 mass shootings* in a decade, Australia collected and destroyed categories of firearms designed to kill many people quickly. In his immediate reaction to the Port Arthur massacre, John Howard said of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns: “There is no legitimate interest served in my view by the free availability in this country of weapons of this kind… That is why we have proposed a comprehensive package of reforms designed to implement tougher, more effective and uniform gun laws.� As study co-author Philip Alpers points out: “The new legislation’s first declared aim was to reduce the risk of similar gun massacres. In the 10½ years since the gun buy-back announcement, no mass shootings have occurred in Australia.�
Enterprise Key Management in the news
A technical committee I’m working on, called Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure (EKMI), has made the news:
The OASIS key management standard, basically an API, would let you use a single key management solution on both platforms rather than try to manage separate key systems for each product that have different procedures and processes for the keys. This will make it easier to roll out encryption…