Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.  That is very good news and a good first step.  Of course, since Congress has never been anything close to providing leadership in the areas of alternative energy and climate change, the comparison to past non-action doesn’t mean much.

The other action last week that was a good first step was the announcement by President Obama that a deal had been made with auto manufacturers to impose new mileage and emissions standards for all cars and truck sold in the …

The mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is a magnificent and historically important event.  The images coming to us from space as the astronauts work on repairing the telescope are beautiful, up close and personal and once again instill awe in those of us that watch.

For most of my life the increasingly incredible pictures and videos that have come back from space have taken we humans out of our planetary realm and realities and lifted up into the cosmos.  The world literally stopped and listened on transistor radios when John Glenn orbited earth in the early 1960s.  The whole …

The Great Recession of 2008-2010 in having a profound effect on the way we all live.  Yes, there is much hardship, there is much pain, there is much loss, there is a sense of damage we all feel.  That said, there are changes in the wind that point to profound long term benefits when we finally emerge into a new growth period in 2011.

First, as I predicted last fall “thrift would become the new extravagance, thrift will become the new cool”.  This has clearly become the case.  In recent months, the media is full of stories of how people are …

Last week G.E. announced an incredible breakthrough in storage technology.  This breakthrough allows the equivalent of 100 DVDs of content to be put on one disc.  This is another dramatic step in the on-going revolution of storage of the last decade.

As long time readers of this blog know I have consistently written about this revolution for three years.  It is one of the most profound yet least discussed technological transformations to occur in this decade.  Almost three years ago I wrote this column about the staggering development of a 1 gigabyte flash drive, up from the128mbs flash drive …