Los Angeles-based fans of the Chevrolet Volt will be pleased to learn the highly anticipated extended-range electric vehicle is in Tinseltown for a few spins around the City of Angels and a whirlwind tour of activities leading up to the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show. The Volt will be popping up all over town, mingling with the stars and generally showing off to consumers and media alike. The Volt  even visited a local middle school for what could possibly be the world’s largest show-and-tell.

Unfamiliar with the Chevrolet Volt?  The Chevrolet Volt is an electric vehicle that can be charged at home overnight to run on battery power alone for shorter trips up to 40 miles, but which also benefits from a range-extending gasoline engine that kicks in to charge the batteries when additional electricity is required for longer trips. Those whose daily commute is under 40 miles roundtrip will use almost no gasoline and contribute no greenhouse gasses as a result of their driving. A full charge can be obtained from a 110-volt outlet in about six hours, or from a 220-volt outlet in as little as three hours. Regenerative brakes also help recharge the vehicle’s batteries.

Today, Monday, November 30, kicks off a series of live video webcasts, embedded below, and also available on ChevroletVoltage.com as well as the Chevrolet and Chevrolet Volt Facebook pages.

Volt started its tour with a live assembly from Harvard-Westlake Middle School this morning. There, more than 800 students and staff learned about the basics of electricity and how this common energy source can be used to transform the way we drive. Middle school teachers and students from across the country were also invited to participate in the live webcast.

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Honda created an impossibly complex Rube-Goldberg-like machine using pieces and parts from its Accord station wagon to produce this amazing video with the punchline “Isn’t it nice when things just work?”

The sequencing was so incredible, that many people thought it was computer-generated or must have utilized digital tricks, but actually it took 606 takes over the course of three months and cost six million dollars to create. Each time something tiny went wrong, the crew would setup the entire sequence, and start over again.

It’s always great when we stumble across one of those things that makes you say “How the heck did they do that?” So, enjoy this Guinness “Slide” commercial we found at Metacafe,  which gives a new spin on a complicated idea. I haven’t found any background yet that explains how they did it, but for now, I’m just satisfied watching the fresh pint of Guinness slide its way across New York City!

Guinness: Slide – Check it out at Metacafe.com

If there is one thing that Americans do a lot of, each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is spend money. Last year, according to an recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 19 billion cards, letters, and packages were delivered during that period. The Census Bureau also reports that, during December 2008 alone, $28.2 billion was spent in department stores. While all that spending, giving, and receiving may be good for the economy, it wreaks havoc on the environment.

“A lot of resources are being used, and a lot of trash is being produced,” explains Gary Null, an award-winning talk show host, notable author, and the founder of Progressive Radio Network (PRN). “We know the devastating effect that this has on our planet. It is important to do our part to try to keep the holidays as environmentally friendly as possible.”

With a population of 308 million in America alone, if each person tossed one extra piece of garbage, this holiday season, the additional waste would be quite alarming. There are things that we can do to achieve an eco-friendly holiday. Start by keeping the following tips in mind: (more…)

Have you ever wondered why most plastics are marked with a number from 1 to 7 inside a recycling symbol? The simple answer is that each number represents the type of resin made to produce the plastic. Because each resin is different, these numbers influence how that product can be recycled, though the most popular today are clear plastic drinking bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) #1 or milkjugs and soap bottles made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) #2 plastic. Plastics with codes #3 through #7 might be accepted as part of your recycling program, but these products are not easily recycled, and are often sorted out and incinerated. (An excellent chart explaining the differences between the types of plastics can be downloaded from earth911.com)

The first PET bottles were recycled in 1977, and since then, plastic bottle recycling has increased to more than 2.4 billion pounds annually. In fact, according to earth911.com,  more than 80 percent of communities across the nation collect and recycle plastic bottles, and in recent years, the number of U.S. plastic recycling businesses has nearly tripled. More than 1,600 businesses are now involved in recycling post-consumer plastics.

Recycling 1 ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60-watt light bulb for up to six hours. And recycling one pound of PET plastic bottles saves approximately 12,000 BTUs (British thermal unit) of heat energy–that’s enough energy to bring about eight gallons of water 180 degrees from freezing to boiling. And, producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than is required to make products from raw materials! (more…)

Thanks to @MarkShepard, for sharing this video,  and introducing us to Oren Lavie and his lovely music. The stop motion video for “Her Morning Elegance” is created from more than 3200 photo stills shot using a camera hanging from the ceiling over the bed.

It took four weeks to create an animated computer-generated storyboard for the video, using 3D dummies for the characters, but it only took two days to shoot the live actors frame by frame to create the 3.5-minute final sequence.

This video has become an international sensation with over 8 million hits on YouTube to date, breaking YouTube’s most highly rated video record. The song can be found on “The Opposite Side of The Sea,” Oren’s debut album, released on his own label, A Quarter Past Wonderful.

According to his blog, Oren is a “songwriter, director, and a writer of funny books for sad children,” who likes to “create dreamy visuals from realistic elements…squeezing big worlds into small spaces.” The gorgeous redhead in the bed is Israeli actress and model Shir Shomron.

“Her Morning Elegance” was also featured in a Chevrolet Malibu television commercial (found here on YouTube).  The songwriter, who has never owned a car, says could not stop giggling for days, though he continues to take the bus.

I already love to eat Kettle brand chips. Ironically, I never even enjoyed potato chips until earlier this year when I absentmindedly snacked on a bag of Kettle Tuscan Three Cheese chips at a media event I was attending: From that moment on I was hooked. Since then, I’ve sampled many of the flavors in their line, always delighted by their wonderful crunch and delicious flavors.

Only recently, I happened to notice verbage on the packaging that drew my attention to the company’s sustainability efforts and was pleased to discover the company supports a variety of eco-friendly practices. In fact, green building, renewable energy, habitat restoration, recycling, and reuse make up the pillars of Kettle Foods’ environmental initiative! Awesome practices contribute to their awesome chips!

The new 73,000-square-foot Kettle Foods factory in Beloit, Wisconsin, is the first food manufacturing facility in the U.S. to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)  Gold-level certification for green building. On top, the building features 18 wind turbines that generate enough energy to produce 56,000 bags of Kettle Brand Potato Chips every year – or approximately 28,000 kilowatt hours.

The Kettle Foods headquarters in Salem, Oregon, is home to one of the largest commercial solar power arrays in the Pacific Northwest. As a producer of renewable energy, Kettle Foods’ 616 solar panels generate 120,000 kWh of electricity annually – enough to make 250,000 bags of Kettle Brand Potato Chips each year, and reduce Kettle Foods’ annual CO2 emissions by 65 tons.

When Kettle Foods’ headquarters moved to Oregon in 1999, the company set out to restore a federally designated natural wetlands on the company grounds.  Invasive non-native species including Himalayan blackberry bushes and Scotch Broom were removed and the grounds were replanted with native plants such as Aster, Camas, Red Alder, Lupine, and Sword Fern in addition to aquatic plant species such as Wapato and Marsh Pennywort which enhance biological diversity in the wetland pond. (more…)

The entire effort of great magic is to make the watchers wonder “How the heck did he do that?” The magician knows he’s hooked the audience based on their response to his illusion. Do they gasp? Murmur? In this YouTube video, the watchers SCREAM in fright, and you know that, regardless of how Criss Angel did it, we all took the bait: hook, line, and sinker.

With gas prices continually in flux, interest in domestically produced bio-fuels like ethanol (E85) is on the rise. These flex fuels have been gaining popularity not only for their lower cost, but also their lessened impact on the environment. Flex Fuel vehicles that can run on gas, E85 or a combination of both, are already available from Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge, and GMC.

Helping to lessen the impact on the environment even more, Coskata Inc., a leading developer of alternative bio-fuels, has just announced the successful start-up of “Project Lighthouse” its semi-commercial flex-ethanol facility. We first heard of Coskata when General Motors announced their partnership with the energy company at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. It’s a suitable partnership, since General Motors has built 5 million of these Flex Fuel vehicles to date, and has committed to making 50 percent of its fleet Flex Fuel compatible by 2012.

Unlike other technologies and facilities that often rely on one primary source of feedstock, the company’s flexible ethanol facility will be producing ethanol from numerous sources, including wood biomass, agricultural waste, construction waste, and even household garbage.  They expect to produce about 100 gallons of ethanol per dry ton of biomass material. That’s energy out of trash, people! (more…)