by Rhona Mahony. The Better World Club (BW) is a new, do-gooder auto club. One co-founder, Mitch Rofsky, worked long ago for Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen. The other, Todd Silverman, started a big, successful travel agency. They believe in “socially responsible” business. They are the “eco-friendly” seller of towing assistance, travel advice, and insurance.

All I want from an auto club, though, is the telephone number of the nearest tow-truck operator when my car breaks down far from home. Soon, it seems to me, I won’t need to pay an auto club anything for that number. With a smart phone, and wider cell phone coverage, I’ll be able to get it from the Web even when I’m stuck in a lonely, Mojave Desert breakdown lane, watching the tumbleweed roll past the vultures sitting closer and closer ’round my dented Volvo station wagon….

I proposed, then, in an email to the Better World Club that they give away the phone numbers of their tow truck operators and networks of operators. Look ahead! Panache! Alas, I was disappointed.
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by Rhona Mahony. See the EV Finder. It lists cars, trucks, motorcycles, and three-wheelers. They include new vehicles, used vehicles, and hobbyists’ conversions. There are many more electric vehicles on sale today than most people know.

See Plug In America for lots of general information and recent news about electric vehicles.

by Rhona Mahony. The photos of people in the Caribbean and the Mississippi Delta suffering the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes are miserable. Climate scientists tell us to get used to it. They say that unpleasant weather is going to afflict us all more often: hurricanes, floods, and hot spells. Earthquakes are what I need to worry about. I live in central California, five miles from the San Andreas Fault. Its occasional rumbles sway my house. The Big One–when not whether–will be a hair-raising mess.

The best source of practical information about preparing for disasters that I know about is the book, When All Hell Breaks Loose, by Cody Lundin. Cody runs an outdoor survival school in Arizona. His book describes ways to keep safely warm or safely cool, store or find drinking water, get enough to eat, and find a substitute for the flush toilet that no longer flushes. He has tested every method himself. Every tool and technique comes with a photograph or drawing. I’ve taken classes with him. He is exceptionally experienced.
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by Rhona Mahony. Yes, the photos here are jagged and pixelated. I think that I have figured out how to do better. My new digital camera creates a huge file for each photo: seven megapixels. I’m going to try converting to RGB color and reducing the file size in increments, rather than all at once, to 25 to 50 kilobytes. See what you think of the photos posted here after today.

by Rhona Mahony. Today, September 8, is International Literacy Day. Cliff Schmidt would like to make every day literacy day for the one billion poorest people in the world who not only scrape by on less than $2 a day but who also, for the most part, do not know how to read. Not knowing how to read keeps poor people poor. His team of engineers has developed a handheld digital audio player and recorder. It will cost the user $5. So far, however, it costs Schmidt’s non-profit organization, Literacy Bridge, about $160 to make one. He needs to raise money to send 100 Talking Books to the Upper West Region of Ghana, to the villagers who will test them in November. Their experience and comments will help Schmidt refine the device. Big foundations are willing to consider supporting Literacy Bridge only after the field test in Ghana. After getting financing, Schmidt will be able to begin large-scale manufacturing, bring down his costs per unit, and sell millions of Talking Books in Africa, India, and beyond. A small donation to Literacy Bridge now might make a bigger difference than a donation to an established project.
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by Rhona Mahony. This Saturday, September 6, the Silicon Valley chapter of the Electric Auto Association (EAA) showed off scores of innovative, all-electric vehicles in Palo Alto, California. Companies brought their electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, and electrically-assisted bicycles. We could also take turns driving them around a test track in the Palo Alto High School parking lot. The biggest thrill was how sleek and colorful the cars were. The designers have a terrific sense of form and color. The second thrill was that these vehicles really were silent. It was eerie. It was a joy to see them rolling and to not hear them. The lesson that I learned was that there are many, many more electric vehicles on sale now than I have been hearing about. A little digging will reveal lots of options. A good place to start: the EAA’s Web site and its monthly newsletter.
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by Rhona Mahony. Barbara Olshansky, a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, spoke at Stanford on May 29 to describe her work on behalf of people who have been imprisoned as suspects in the "War on Terror." She did not hide her passion under a formal suit or polite legal terms. She wore her black, tightly frizzy hair long. Her red, Cat Woman eyeglasses had sparkley sequins. At times her eyes teared up, at others her voice cracked. Her colleague on the speakers’ panel, Marc Falkoff, described her as a force of nature. Yes! A ball of fire!

That night, Olshansky didn’t want to talk about Guantanamo. We know about Guantanamo. The domestic fuss, the international scandal, and the dismay of allied governments have worn down the Bush Administration. Now everyone, even President Bush, wants to close it. Olshansky was worried about the other prisons, places less famous and places completely secret, where a still unknown number of people are locked up without being charged, without access to a lawyer, and without trial.

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by Rhona Mahony. Marc Falkoff came to Stanford University last week, on May 29, to describe his Guantanamo clients. Like his colleague on the speakers’ panel, Anant Raut, he wore a fine suit and looked like a prudent member of the legal establishment. He is now a professor at Northern Illinois University’s law school. When he began to work for Guantanamo prisoners, he worked at an expensive law firm, Covington & Burling. I learned something immediately: Covington represented Fred Korematsu, the Japanese-American man whose internment during World War II was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944 in Korematsu vs. United States. Continue reading →

by Rhona Mahony. Anant Raut came to Stanford University last week, on May 29, to describe the men locked up in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. He is a lawyer, now working for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, who has represented five of the prisoners. He has been to Guantanamo and met his clients in person. Continue reading →

by Rhona Mahony.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared yesterday that an official state drought is parching California. We must cut back our usage of water by 20 percent. This afternoon, thinking carefully about how scarce water is in our state, and how many millions of dollars we spend to filter, chlorinate, pump, store, and argue about who gets which acre-feet of it, my question is, shall we continue to poop in it? Continue reading →