Canadian Ski News Service – Whistler, B.C.: Extreme skier Brenda Spilker of Bellevue, Wash. says she is “extremely lucky to be alive” following a 50-second “head over heals” tumble down the Harmony Ridge glacier of Whistler Mountain. Spilker claims she was skiing in excess of 120 kilometers an hour at the time of the crash.

She says she was practicing for an appearance in the upcoming Warren Miller ski video – Over the Hill and Beyond.

“It was a beautiful run,” Spilker claims. “All of a sudden, I saw out of the corner of my eye what I’m sure was an orange whistler marmot. He was paralyzed with fear. All he could do was whistle at me. I swerved fast and went over a 50-foot cliff. If I had run over the little guy, he’d just be nothing more than a puddle of Hamburger Helper. I don’t remember what happened next.”

Dr. I.M Doughter of the Whistler Regional Hospital, who treated Spilker, says he’s never heard of anyone surviving an accident on that section of the ridge at those speeds. “Makes you wonder what really happened,” he says. “A most incredible story. What’s an orange whistler marmot? And what’s he doing out in the middle of winter—practicing for the bobsled team?”

Another skier challenged Spilker’s sketchy recollection of the accident. “I saw her go down one of the beginner runs,” says Bob Spencer of Calgary. “She collided with a six year old. Both were oblivious to the world. I mean they were both checked out. I didn’t know you could get hurt going so slow.”

Link to Technology Review: A Portable Refinery Powered by Garbage

Here’s something for the backyard…a machine that turns waste into electricity.

Researchers have built and tested for the military a portable machine that efficiently turns waste into electricity.

An energy-from-waste project led by researchers at Purdue University is giving new meaning to the term "military power." Scientists from the university’s department of agricultural and biological engineering have developed a portable machine that turns a variety of food waste and inorganic trash into electricity, reducing the amount of diesel fuel and garbage that soldiers in the field must carry with them. [More]

Some great photos of the Quebec City Carnival on Guy Kawaski’s blog. It’s something that we’d like to attend in the not-so-distant future. Always great to see the pictures of Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy, two of the greatest hockey players to play in Quebec City.

My Trip to Quebec

Continuing on from Minnesota, I went to Québec for the Garage Canada conference. The Winter Carnival was also going on at the same time. I thought Minnesota was cold, but it was downright balmy compared to Québec. Despite the -40 degree weather, I found many parallels between Québec and my native states of Hawaii and California.

T his really blows my mind. According to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory we have all the tools we need to solve the energy crises right at our hands. All we have to do is switch over to the plug-in hybrid vehicles. The power grid is robust enough to handle the load.  Wished we could get our Camry hybrid converted to a plug-in tomorrow.  Here’s what Mark Anderson writes about the issue:

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, managed since its inception as part of the Department of Energy by private contractor Battelle, released a report a week or two ago, which is so simple in its conclusions, and so amazing in its repercussions, that everyone interested in energy should be talking about it.

The report, in summary, says this:

There are about 220MM vehicles in service in the US today. IF all of those were converted to Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (a technology already available), the existing US electrical grid system has enough unused off-hours generating capacity to power 84% of US transport of cars and light trucks.

Today.

 

Link to Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » Solving the Energy Crisis, with No Energy Investment

I just posted some pictures that I took Friday of the aftermath of the wind storm. It’s so amazing that more people weren’t hurt.

Link to December wind storm pictures

I was really impressed this morning when I noticed that one of my favoroite bloggers — Loic Le Meur — had a nice summary of the Future of the Internet II Report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Loic, by the way, is the number one blogger in France.

Turns out that the Pew had a nice summary of the report, complete with byte-size bullet points. In essence, they did the bloggers’ work by making it easy for anyone to quote the report succinctly. The PR world has done this type of thing of years, and it works nicely. I’ve known a couple of reports who made decent livings by rewriting press releases.  As best as I can tell from Technorati, some 71 blogs have quoted the report.

The moral of the story–make it easy for people to use your stuff.

So here’s the summary, and let’s just say that at least 72 blogs have quoted the report:

• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
• Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
• People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Here’s a novel idea. Music portal Sellaband lets fans to buy shares in bands. Apparently, some 250 bands have signed up with the portal. One band hopes to raise some $50,000 to fund its next recording. I’m skeptical, but its an interesting idea.

Link to Springwise: Bands funded by their fans | Update