Human Feces Powers Rwandan Prison

02:00 AM Jul. 16, 2005 PT
Wired News
by Cyrus Farivar

Imagine eating food that was cooked using natural gas generated from your own human waste. Thousands of prisoners in Rwanda don’t have to imagine it — they live it.

Prisoners’ feces is converted into combustible “biogas,” or methane gas that can be used for cooking. It has reduced by 60 percent the annual wood-fuel costs which would otherwise reach near $1 million, according to Silas Lwakabamba, rector of the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management, where the technology was developed.

Last month, the Rwandan prison biogas facilities received an Ashden Award for sustainable energy. The award, which comes with a prize worth nearly $50,000, is given by the Ashden Trust, a British charity organization that promotes green technologies.
Read more“Human Feces Powers Rwandan Prison”

Dear Hotel Owners :

Let’s say you’re like the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA, where my parents and I are staying this weekend. And let’s say that even though your guests are paying a bunch to stay at your hotel that you’re charging them $10 for 24 hrs of WiFi access. When you’re deciding what third party businesses to put in the lobby of your hotel (Starbucks, etc) — you might not want to put a business (say, Panera Bread) that prides themself on providing free WiFi access. So instead of making me a happy customer because you don’t offer free WiFi from anywhere in the hotel, I’m forced to go downstairs and sit in their cafŽ to use the Internet. Lame.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us.

SF Chron, via Slashdot :

I did another LexisNexis search for Valerie E. Wilson in Washington, D.C. This confirmed she lives at the same address as Joseph C. Wilson. It also took me the next step.

“Former name: Plame, Valerie E.”

I now had the identity of a covert CIA agent (who was using her maiden name as part of her cover as an energy-industry analyst working for a firm called Brewster Jennings & Associates, now known to be a CIA front company).

It took me less than a half-hour to identify her.

I then went back to Google and got a map of Plame’s neighborhood and directions to her home. Google also allowed me to study a high-resolution satellite photo of Plame’s house.

I could see that the property appears to be in a quiet residential community and looks approachable from all sides. It also offers ready access by car to major thoroughfares.

Greetings from DC, where it’s 75 deg. and pouring

I write this from the Soho Tea and Coffee, famous for its late hours, being near Dupont Circle, and free WiFi, natch.

I’m staring out at P St. where the water is running down the street and flowing into 22nd St., and the thunder is pounding, and when it does loud enough, the six people in here with laptops kick up their heads and start paying attention to what’s happening around them.

I’m here this weekend for a family wedding (my second cousin Leila, who lives in Bethesda, MD, and whom I barely know). But I’m using the trip as an excuse to visit some DC folk that I know, like Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh, Tom Randall, Jennifer Weiss (who is driving down from NJ!), and Rachel Balsham. I’ve been trying to arrange plans to see all of them. I just came from having lunch with Rebekah at a place near Dupont Circle that purported to be “Authenic Persian Cuisine”, but which much more resembled a decent Indian lunch buffet at that.

I must say, though, Tom takes the cake for reasons why he might not be able to see me — he might be on Presidential press pool duty (he’s an intern at Reuters) on Sunday morning, going to church with the Bush Family. “Assuming nothing newsworthy happens, I probably can have brunch with you.”

Soho is playing The Decemberists on their stereo. +5 cool points.

Thursday Afternoon Update

So when I’m not a journalist, I occasionally moonlight as a web designer. This started way back in 1997, when I worked on the Ch‰teau de Bossey webpage when I was 15 and living in Switzerland. (My Aunt Heidi was the director of Bossey at the time.) My design for that page was so good that they haven’t changed it in eight years — ok, either that, or they’re lazy.

My latest web design gig is for Mark Kohut, a publishing consultant in New York. I found Mark via Dave Feldman (of Imponderables fame). I’ve just finished the first iteration of his personal page, markkohut.com, and its sister site arcscommunity.com (ARCs, for those of you not in the book biz, are “Advanced Readings Copies”, sometimes known as “galleys” — pre-release copies of books) are now up and running.

Feedback is welcome.

On another note, I’m off to DC for the weekend tonight. Back late Sunday, and I start work at Macworld on Monday. 🙂

Something tells me I’m not on the short list.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, July 13 – President Bush said today that his nominee for the Supreme Court may be someone who has never sat on the bench before.

“Would I be willing to consider people who had never been a judge?” Mr. Bush said. “And the answer is, ‘You bet.’ “

Metafilter on Muslims

Muslims are speaking out against terrorism to anyone who will listen

and from the comments:

UK Fatwa to Call Bombers Unbelievers, If Proved Muslims:

CAIRO, July 10, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) Ð BritainÕs top Muslim scholars are drafting a fatwa stripping those behind the grisly London blasts, if proved Muslims, from the right to call themselves Muslims, a leading British newspaper said Sunday, July 10.

Signed by dozens of prominent Muslim bodies, mosques, Islamic scholars and community groups, the religious edict will brand the attacks as a breach of the most basic tenets of Islam, reported The Independent.

“If these bombers are found to be Muslims, we will make it clear we utterly dissociate ourselves from them – even if they claim to be Muslims or are acting under the mantle of the Islamic faith. We reject that utterly,” said the official spokesman of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

The White House Under Fire

White House Press Conference, July 11, 2005, 10:06 am Pacific:

Q Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.
Read more“The White House Under Fire”

Fun with Referral Logs

Within the last 24 hrs, I’ve had readers from:

Australian Trade Commission
Disney
Yale University
Mogadishu, Somalia (via a British ISP?)
Norway
The Netherlands
Canada
Belgium
Chile
France
Poland
University of Utah

and a bunch of people from somethingisawful.com, which I’m too cheap to buy a membership to. If someone wants to buy me a membership, I’d be eternally grateful.

Jen Weiss Asks: Where are the Women in Journalism?

My j-school classmate, totally r0x0r piano player and songwriter, and all-around kickass journo Jennifer Weiss writes in the latest issue of CJR about a dirty secret of journalism — where are the women?

by Jennifer Weiss

Bylines in the nation�s top intellectual and political magazines are heavily male, as shown by these ratios (male/female), calculated using the ProQuest database from October 2003 through the end of May. At several magazines, women writers were occasionally shut out of entire issues.

  • National Review 13/1
  • Foreign Affairs 9/1
  • The New Republic 8/1
  • Harper�s Magazine 7/1
  • The Weekly Standard 7/1
  • The Atlantic 6/1
  • The New York Review of Books 6/1
  • The New Yorker 4/1
  • The Nation 3/1
  • National Journal 3/1
  • CJR 2/1