globeandmail.com: Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his job

OTTAWA — On the first day of his fourth-year physics class, University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt announced to his students that he had already decided their marks: Everybody was getting an A+.
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Firing a tenured professor is rare in itself, but two weeks ago the university took an even more extreme step: When Prof. Rancourt went on campus to host a regular meeting of his documentary film society, he was led away in handcuffs by police and charged with trespassing.
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Building on his science and society lectures, the self-described “anarchist” developed a popular course on activism at Ottawa U, which was cancelled by the university the following year, and started an alternative film society focused on social justice.

He made headlines after 10-year-old twins registered for his course with their mother – and he supported the filing of a human-rights complaint claiming ageism when the university said they couldn't stay. His research can be equally alternative: He has called global warming, for instance, a myth.

[Speed bump] Vampiric Regeneration | Coyote Blog

...But the article seems to be positing that towns could install these as flat devices –”virtually flush to the road” – that drivers would hardly notice. Power from these devices would help the town power its lights and other devices. But unless these guys have invented the perpetual motion machine, there is no free energy to be had here. In fact, due to that nasty old spoil-sport, the second law of thermodynamics, there has to be a total system loss. The device might only steal the equivalent energy of a thousandth of a gallon of gas from each driver, so the driver of each car won’t really notice, but the total system expenditure of the thousands of drivers who power the device will still be there, just hidden. This is a new stealth tax on drivers, dressed up in green clothing.

Next up: Britain proposes to put windmills on the roofs of electric cars as a power source. After all, when you are driving at 60 miles per hour, all that wind energy coming past your car is just lost, right? Once you got the car up to speed, it would just generate its own electricity. LOL. I shouldn’t laugh, there is probably a billion or so for this in Obama’s stimulus bill.

Sunspot Update - February 2009 « Digital Diatribes

As for observed averages, the 12-month, 24-month, and 36-month average sunspot numbers are all the lowest values since 1914, 1914, and 1915 respectively. The 48, 60, 72, and 84 month averages are lowest since 1935, 1936, 1936, and 1937 respectively. The 96, 108, and 120 month averages are the lowest since 1979, and the 132 and 144 month averages are the lowest since 1946.