At the beginning there are long shots where all that fills the frame are the faces of these offbeat caricatures. And it makes sense. Better to keep the focus on them because the story, for the most part, is joyless. It is simply about people chasing their desires and in someway or another not getting them. Perhaps thats the message. Perhaps the Coens want us to think the next time we start feeling selfish, but if their interviews are any indication, they couldn’t care less. And thats where I think ‘Burn’ lost me. This reviewer wants to be a little more engaged when he goes to the theater. As one friend noted, the movies cost a lot more now a days. We shouldn’t be paying a lot more for a lot less.

 

But on the more positive side, you have to respect the Coens for not following their Oscar winning ‘No Country’ with some pretentious art film or high intensity action film. They chose the route of the spy comedy, and what a little travelled path that is. As shallow and contrite popcorn fare, and yet somehow funny, this film succeeds. You won’t have to like the characters (Pitt is the only truly likeable character. Perhaps because he is the only one not motivated by greed.), you’ll just have to endure their silly antics as they chase cars around Washington D.C., go to the Russians to try to blackmail the CIA, and get themselves way over their heads. Its not a happy little tale, but it can be funny.

Shia LaBeouf stars as Jerry Shaw, a likable slacker who just wants to get by. Along with him is Michelle Monaghan as Rachel Holloman, a single mom who is too busy to remember where she put her keys. The pairing isn’t the most natural choice but that was probably done on purpose. When these characters first meet, they have nothing in common, they fight and fight eachother as they try to fight their way out of the trouble they’ve gotten into, eventually finding common ground.
The movie starts out emotionally, allowing LaBeouf to show his softer side, and then it kicks it into high gear as our main characters find technology acting against them. Its exciting. The camera swivels close to danger, just as the characters do, not letting you feel detached from the action. Its surprising to see a summer movie this far out of the summer season, but its welcome.

The movie does start to lag a little in the middle. For all the movie’s promise at the beginning, it never quite lives up to its high concept premise. The sets and locations are incredible. The intricate chase scenes make for some hair raising moments. But you never really feel like it was all completely thought out. All the differing elements do tie together at the end, but with a summer full of blockbusters that exceeded expectations, this reviewer hoped this one could send it out with a blast, only it never quite does. This is the kind of movie I would have loved in junior high and anyone under 15 will absolutely love it. In fact, I liked it a lot. It was a very entertaining movie. It just engages on one level. For a weekend night thats fine.

Why you should see it:
Because this is a fun flick that will send you on an adventure that could only happen in your local cineplex.

The big difference from other “hybrid” cars such as the “Prius”, is that propulsion is expected to be from the battery the majority of the time.  The battery can sustain travel for up to 40 miles, more than enough for most drivers daily needs (80% of Americans drive less than 40 miles in a day).  If needed, a gas engine is on-board as well, and by functioning as as a generator (a “GenSet”), it can increase the range for up to another 200 miles.    For the majority of Americans, that would mean eliminating gasoline for ever! 

Bob Lutz, GM’s 76-year-old vice chairman for global product development, and the force behind the project, say’s he’s shooting for a sales price of “$40,000 or less”.

Oh well, you can always wait for the end-of-year sale.

Officials decided they had to act lest the nation’s largest insurer file bankruptcy. Such a move would roil world markets since AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) has $1.1 trillion in assets and 74 million clients in 130 countries.

An eventual liquidation of the company is most likely, senior Fed officials said. But with the government loan, the company won’t have to go through a tumultuous fire sale.

“[A] disorderly failure of AIG could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance,” the Fed said in a statement.

The bailout marks the most dramatic turn yet in an expanding crisis that started more than a year ago with the mortgage meltdown. The resulting credit crunch is now toppling not only mainstay Wall Street players, but others in the wider financial industry.

So we have nothing short of the socialization (yes, theirs that dirty word) of financial risk, and the subsidization of big boys who play in that world.  Now these are “for profit” organizations, so I would assume, after these companies are turned-around, that we will all see some sort of distribution of profits each year, yes?   A dividend?  A tax break maybe? 

Hmmm, I wonder if the Feds would bail out the New York Philharmonic, or The Met, should THEY go under??

The gigantic solar towers were only “proposed” by Hahn & Hahn and each will be 1.5km tall and 280m wide, and the towers will be welcomed in Africa as at the base of them, people could grow crops. The base will measure about 37-square km and it will work as a greenhouse.

“One of the main reasons why commercial solar chimney power plants have not been built that they have to be very large to be economically viable,” said Theo von Backströmn from Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Well, as in Namibia the sun shines more than 300 days per year, the solar towers seem to be a great solution. The towers will produce energy by sending the heated air from the greenhouse through wind turbines which will also generate electricity. Being shaped like a chimney, funneling the heated air via the wind turbines will not be a problem as the hot air tends to rise.

For the moment, we don’t know when the construction will start or when it’s going to be finished, however, we don’t even know if the Namibian government can raise so much money to build and to maintain the solar updraft towers.

There are an estimated 20,000-25,000 polar bears in the Arctic, but scientists from the US Geological Survey predict that two thirds of the world’s bears will disappear in the next 50 years because of a decline in the Arctic sea ice.

In a stark warning last year, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said that the total Arctic ice cover had melted to its lowest level in modern times, and that if melting rates continued the summertime Arctic could be ice-free within 80 years.

Sarah Palin, McCains new VP choice, is suing the Bush Administration over its decision last week to place the animal under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, claiming that climate models predicting the continued loss of sea ice - the main habitat of polar bears - are unreliable.

And we thought Bush was a science Grinch;  Ms. Palin promises to usher in a whole new era of ignorance.  Have a cold?  Just borrow my leeches for a week or so and you’ll be as good as new!

Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of “smart” charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan - unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go - all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They’d buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity - the minutes. 

There would be plugs in homes, offices, shopping malls. And when customers couldn’t wait to “fill up,” they’d go to battery exchange stations where they would pull into car-wash-like sheds, and in a few minutes, a hydraulic lift would swap the depleted battery with a fresh one. Drivers wouldn’t pay a penny extra: The ERGO would own the battery.

In 2007, Agassi quit his job at SAP. Many of Agassi’s colleagues from SAP joined him. They realized that what Shai was building was still essentially a software company. He needed a network that allowed cars to tell the grid how much charge they were carrying and how much more they required. The system had to know where the car was so it could tell the driver where to go to “fill up.” And it had to electronically negotiate with the local energy utility over when it could and couldn’t take power and how much to pay.

“For the car companies, we made it simple,” he says. “We separated the ownership of the car and the ownership of the battery. See, car companies don’t know how to assess the life of the battery. So they go through these complicated programs of testing them for a long period of time. And we told the car company, you know what? Just like you don’t sell a car with a card that says ‘Here is oil for the life of the car,’ you don’t sell cars with the batteries for the life of the car, because the battery is crude oil.”

Right now Agassi has a lot of venture capital, a company called “Better Place”, and an interest from the leaders of countries all over the world (not the U.S., of course).  It’s a novel and interesting idea.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this one might be the one to make it through the gauntlet.

“As the highly competitive fuels marketing business in the U.S. continues to evolve, we believe this transition is the best way for ExxonMobil to compete and grow in the future,” said Ben Soraci, U.S. director of retail sales for ExxonMobil.

Sorry Ben, I don’t buy it. Big Oil has been making record profits, have have more money floating around than they know what to do with. I realize that the retail end is different from the “manufacturing” component, but gas stations as a loosing proposition? I doubt it.

To me, this is good news. I think the big oil boys see something coming they don’t like, and want to get rid of their stations before a “certain something” is mandated by the Feds, or virtually “demanded” by market forces. I hope this “certain something” is something like: compressed air refill stations, hydrogen refill stations, and or biofuel pumps. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

the United States by late 2009 or early 2010, and better yet, it is expected to be for sale for less than $18k. One of the planned Air Car models, reaches 68 mph, and goes for a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units, and it should cost only around $2 to fill the car up with 340 liters of air!

Hmmmm. You know the saying, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. I can’t help but wonder what energy expenditure is required to compress the air. Electricity, I suppose, so that opens up that can of worms. But, hey, any candle is a bright light in total darkness. Lets keep our fingers crossed that this is real, and the developers of this technology don’t get run over (literally) by big oil. Rock on folks, and be sure to check under your hood before starting your car in the morning. Watch the video on the next page…

The plane, that got its certification in April, features a 5.6 kWh lithium battery with a projected life cycle of 1,000 cycles (before the battery needs replacing). The battery has a max weight of 78 pounds and can be custom-built to fit the available space in an airplane. It provides juice for a motor driving a 45-inch superlight propeller made of carbon fiber and glass fabric.

The plane cruises at 70 miles per hour. Top speed is 90 mph and the stall speed is 45. The plane can fly for 90 to 120 minutes before the battery needs recharging. When the battery needs charging, just plug it into any 110V outlet in six hours you are ready to hit the sky. With a 220V outlet you’re flying again in two hours.

The motor is nearly silent, and the dramatic improvement in “neighbor relations” — no droning engines to drive them nuts. Electric motors don’t produce soot or pollution, and overhauls are a snap. And by combining this motor with the ElectraFlyer’s slow turning propeller, you’ve got a flight that is practically vibration free.

The ElectraFlyer wont empty your wallet when its time to refill, at only $0.60 per charge you will be enjoying the sky a lot longer then those gas guzzlers.