Al Gore just spoke to a packed Daughters of the American Revolution hall and challenged America to use 100% renewable energy by 2018. It was a good speech (Full speech text here) and it’s an audacious goal.

Gore argues that a ten year national goal has proven to be the perfect balance of long-term thinking and short-term immediacy. He points to the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway System, and of course, the Apollo Project as examples of bold goals that America was able to achieve in a decade or so.

But there are two rather formidable challenges.

The first is a combination of extremely powerful vested interests mixed with the legitimately glacial nature of changing our energy infrastructure on such a massive scale.

The second is that our broken political system allows already-powerful vested interests - we’re talking coal and oil companies here - to run the system. Gore acknowledged this and blamed it for the “baby step policies” that succeed only in not offending special interests, but he fell short of prescribing any political changes that need to happen.

I’d love to think that a few million people on a grassroots email list could make completely upend our energy sourcing, infrastructure, and consumption habits, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more. That’s why I’m working for publicly funded federal elections. I believe that we need to attack the root of this (and many other problems): an electoral system that lopsidedly favors vested interests.

So the question is: Can America still be bold? Can we still achieve an ambitious goal if we put ourselves to it? Moving first on this issue is in our own national interest.

Some fun facts and quotes:

We send $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil.

One OPEC official noted that “the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones”

Gore drew the most applause in ridiculing the notion that drilling for more oil and giving more money to oil companies is going to do anything to alleviate our pain at the pump. He said only a dysfunctional system would suggest such a “solution” and that the best way to bring gas prices down would be to stop using gas. The real driver of energy costs is increased energy use by China, India, and others, and this isn’t going to slow regardless of whether we stop funding our own infrastructure with a $0.14 tax.

Some related Onion fun:

We’re Investing So Much In Alternative Fuels, Sometimes We Almost Forget To Pump Oil!

By Tony Hayward
CEO, BP

The National Intelligence Council recently addressed Congress to discuss the security threats that need to be considered in the face of global warming. What risks are expected to be aggravated by global warming?

In yet another sign that Facebook has assimilated much of the MySpace demographic, Facebook is down and I’m putting my money on the free Slurpee gift causing traffic spikes. Facebook has had a number of promotional gifts recently, but this one ties in with an ACTUAL FREE SLURPEE, which is apparently enough to take down some pretty powerful server farms.

My half-hearted attempt at an information diet has been thwarted by Nicco’s latest project, News Junk (http://newsjunk.com). It aggregates the day’s political news from a bewildering variety of sources. But what makes it great is that they eschew the Google News approach and rely on humans to choose which stories get posted. That way the same AP release doesn’t show up 95 times. Prepare to be addicted.

Also, for syndication they’ve got RSS, Twitter, FriendFeed, and you can embed the headlines on your site.

Picasa is Google’s terribly underrated and until recently, completely unknown photo editing software. Which means the number of people who knew about Hello had to number in the hundreds. Hello was a great way to send photos to friends. You could carry on an IM conversation while flipping through photos, and you could even auto-follow your friend’s view so you could be on the same page. They got the full size pictures without any right-clicking or decompressing nonsense, and I’ve never met someone who couldn’t immediately figure out how to use it. My mother (and Kodak) lament that as cool as digital photos are, no one ever prints them, and as a result, the bonding time looking over a photo album has been replaced by hunching over a laptop screen (if that).

Google says they’re discontinuing Hello so they can focus on Picasa and Web Albums. Both are neat, but I’m not sure they’re going to fill the void.

Maybe this is all so Google can use the blue chip domain name Hello.com for something more worthwhile, especially now that Apple scored me.com.

Goodbye, Hello.

Am I the only person under 40 who looked at coupons? As I enter my fifth year as a grocery-shopper, I’ve come to realize that the coupon inserts in the Sunday paper exist primarily as a vehicle to advertise new and/or improved products rather than to save you money. The amount you save with almost any coupon in the insert is less than the amount you save by simply buying the identical store brand version of the product.

But like everything else, the Internet makes it better. Online coupon codes actually can save you some decent change, or at least get you free shipping. I saved about $100 by Googling ‘Helio coupon codes’ before buying my phone last year. But now you don’t even have to do that.

Install this Firefox plugin. Then when you go to buy something, it will display a little notice at the top of the page if a coupon is available for that store.

Or if you can’t figure that out, go to http://retailmenot.com when you’re about to buy something and type the store into their search box.

If you want to thank me, one-click me some MarioKart.

When I signed up for this triathlon, I expected fundraising $4,200 to be the biggest challenge. Or learning to swim a mile. And while neither of those were a breeze at a picnic, the most difficult thing has just been getting to a pool that’s a) open b) open for lap swimming and c) ideally, free.

But I can’t blame my still-mediocre swimming ability on pool access, because I’ve accrued a nice list of pools I can go to depending where in the city I might be that day. Sleeping over the girlfriend’s and want to spend $6 (which includes access to a water slide)? Hit North Bethesda. Feel like taking two trains and a bus to practice with the rest of the Team? Go to Georgetown Lab School (the only one on this map that probably won’t let John Q. Public in). Grabbing coffee in Eastern Market and not afraid to change in front of some real characters? Rumsey Aquatic Center is right around the corner.

So being the nerd and Google fanboy that I am, I made a map of these pools and their hours. I’ve referred to this constantly since I made it, so maybe it will be handy for you, too.



View Larger Map

Link

Special Summertime Note: The pool in East Potomac Park (aka Hains Point) is outdoors!

Text restaurant name and menu item to 34381 for instant nutritional stats. Who knew Dunkaccinos had 10 grams of fat??

OK so in lieu of blank empty space, I’m going to feature a few online tools that are awesome and that you should use.

First up (forgive me if this is terribly old news) is Hulu.

I originally wrote Hulu off when it came out because I assumed the traditional media players behind it would mess it up, and I hated the name, which is a pretty forced attempt at sounding like a scrappy startup. But Hulu’s pretty amazing. The ads are short, although I do wonder why companies like Priceline intentionally show you the same terrible William Shatner ad 4 times in 22 minutes. The site includes Arrested Development and The Office Season 4, as well as some full length movies, like The Big Lebowski. Finally, the player is very usable, with prominent links to embed, go full-screen, or dim the rest of the screen.

Better than tvlinks?

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Opening Day Japan

6am EST

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Taste of the Nation

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