At Marginal Revolution, technology without understanding.

Turmeric: what it cannot do?

Make a laser out of a gin-and-tonic: very cool in theory, though the gin-and0tonic may have even more inspirational applications.

The technology of Antarctic research stations

Cool! But we all know that the best part of Antarctic research is bringing your tuxedo.

More algae economy, again with the 10% of New Mexico idea. I'm not categorically against this idea, in fact I think it's really worth pursuing. But my concerns about water remain unanswered. This is not the first energy magic bullet I have seen whose advocates blithely neglect hydrological considerations. The oil shale everyone's so fired up about in Utah and Colorado requires substantial amounts of water for processing. Those happy Canadians have a great, big, mostly unallocated river to work with; Utah and Colorado have literally zero water to spare. And one must also consider the water needs of everyone who will move to the area to work on such a project. Perhaps the algae technology can be rigged to conserve its water; but it's an engineering issue which seriously needs to be addressed.

Update: As Jack comments below, apparently the system can work entirely on brackish water. Popular Mechanics lists freshwater usage for the process as zero. Excellent!

"...we could grow all the fuel the United States needs using 1/10th of the land space of New Mexico..."

By covering that 10% into fancy algae incubators. It might not be the worst use for a tenth of New Mexico, provided it's the right tenth. I'd definitely nominate Roswell, Artesia and environs, which have no discernible charm to lose by being converted into algae. I'm sure the stuff also smells better than Artesia does currently.

Seriously, though, I assume the chappy in the link was using New Mexico largely just as a land-area comparison. While southwestern states possess certain recommendations for such a project, viz. lots of sunlight and available open space, they have one major negative: there's no water. None. It's all spoken for. One commenter to the linked post asks, "I wonder what portion of the total area of the state of New Mexico is currently dedicated to growing corn for ethanol. 50%? 75%? 100%? More?" Actually, the state's entire harvested cropland represents only about 1.1% of New Mexico's acreage; irrigated cropland about 0.8% (figures from 2002; these numbers are trending significantly downward, I expect because agricultural water rights are being diverted to residential development). These aren't typos, easterners; we are not Iowa. People from other parts of the country really can't imagine how little water we have around here. The video doesn't address whether the water in these algae tanks can be conserved and reused, but if not, that's a deal-breaker in most of the West. Lots of brilliant ideas for using our open spaces and unexplored resources seem not to consider this inconvenient reality.

Further developments in inimical technology.

Ark Trading Inc, an Osaka-based trading company, has started selling the NANDA Clocky, an innovative alarm clock that runs and hides from its sleepy owners as they attempt to turn it off.

Is this the sort of behavior we really want to encourage in our fledgling AIs?