The Google Suggests feature is usually spot on, but sometimes it spits something at you that just doesn’t make much sense. The technology takes other people’s searches, caches them, and then predicts what you’re typing in the search box. The Huffington Post has asked readers to grab an image of the most inappropriate things Google has “suggested.” I guess I’m not the only one who thinks Sarah Palin’s a bad person.

Cars, fuels, and internet-based power management for your home: our green tech finds for the week…

• Beyond carbon emissions: Clean Production Action and ChemSec have released a new report focused on “the advances that seven electronics companies have made when it comes to eliminating hazardous materials from their products.” (via ZDNet GreenTech Patures)
  
  
• It’s an honor just to be nominated: The LA Auto Show has announced the finalists for its Green Car of the Year Award, which will be presented at the show in December.
  
  

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When two crooks in the Dutch town of Groningen decided to separate a teenager from his bicycle last September, they had the misfortune to do it when a Google Street View car was passing by. The Sydney Morning Herald has a great slide show of the moments before the theft. The images allowed the police to identify the thugs.

Okay, not to oversell it, but Ji Lee really is an insanely awesome designer. He is currently the Creative Director of Google Labs at…uhm, Google, which you may have heard of. If not, I suggest visiting the Internets.

His freelance and independent projects, many which are topical, have captured a lot of buzz from his DIY street art “bubble thought” stickers a few years back to the apropos photorealistic image for Conde Nast Porfolio’s cover.

Most recently, he created this business card which seems so obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of it first. Check out the other cards in his amusing calling card series.

Link:

Welcome to Eco-mmunity. This website aims to connect people to all the green resources in the world. One of those resources is environmental events and important environmental locations. Creating event and location markers in Eco-mmunity is a great way to create awareness about ways to lessen damage to the environment, and also to protect special areas of wildlife, so that the ecologic system of our planet can continue to exist.

Step One(Can be skipped if you already have an account with Sundance Channel) – Create a membership with Sundance Channel. Once you have logged in to your membership, click “My Profile” (in the upper right corner of the screen) whenever you want to access your membership, subscribe to newsletters, or add/edit map markers on Eco-mmunity Map.

Step Two – Create your first map marker for your event. This map marker will allow people to learn about your event, discover when the event will take place, and also a place for people to get contact info about the event. If you are making a location, like “Yellowstone National Park,” then you would be helping society remember the value and importance of these parks. On your “My Profile” page click the link called “View/Add Green Map Markers.” The first question you are asked is what type of marker you should make. Select “Event Map Marker.”

Step Three – Filling in data about your event or location.

- Title

This is the most important piece of data in the marker, as it is the first thing people will see when they open your marker. The name of the event is a great place to start but you may want to add a dash and use one to three words that describe the purpose of your event. Examples might be, “Picking Up The Trash Day 2009,” “Green Groceries – Sustainable Shopping Workshop” or “Solar Power and Coffee – Power your notebook with Solar Energy.”

- Marker Address

This is the location on the Google Map where your marker will exist. It should represent the location of your event so that your marker is in the correct location on the map. If you are making a location, like the Grand Canyon, then just pick a close city in Kansas, you can always drag the map marker over the map manually later on.

- Display Address

This is the public address that you can put so that people will know where the event or location is.

- Contact Information

Email and/or Telephone information for the event can be listed if there is any.

- Website

This crucial piece of information allows people on Eco-mmunity to navigate to your website, which should be directly related to your event if at all possible, most locations of environmental importance do have some type of website, you might be able to find it if you decide to make a map marker for something like the “Florida Wetlands,” which is a threatened ecosystem in the great gator state.

- Date and Time of Event

Self-explanatory.

- Event Description

This is your first spot to write a well-written and hopefully enticing description of why your company is great. Try to keep this section direct, assertive and short, about three to five sentences. Make your event sound awesome but do not get overly wordy, you only have a few words to make an impression before people get bored.

- Marker Keywords

It is utterly crucial that you enter a few keywords into this field, as they will help people find your event or location when they search Eco-mmunity Map. Separate them with commas. Try selecting words that relate to your event’s main purpose or general objectives. For locations, put as many keywords as you can think of that relate to that location, it could be the type of animals that live in that location, there could be water there, there could be an old mining site there, it could be a superfund site, the list is long. If you pick a handful of keywords it will help people to find your marker.

- [b]Select An Icon For Your Marker[b]

Pick a picture for your marker and click “Update Marker.”

Congratulations, you have listed a new resource on Eco-mmunity and people will now be able to learn more about how they can be an integral part of preserving our beautiful planet.

Welcome to Eco-mmunity. This website aims to connect people to all the green resources in the world. Listing your business here is free and it can only help spread the word about the sustainable value of your goods and services.

Step One – Create a membership with Sundance Channel. Once you have logged in to your membership, click “My Profile” (in the upper right corner of the screen) whenever you want to access your membership, subscribe to newsletters, or add/edit map markers on Eco-mmunity Map.

Step Two – Create your first map marker for your business. This map marker will allow people to find your business when they come to Eco-mmunity Map. On your “My Profile” page click the link called “View/Add Green Map Markers.” The first question you are asked is what type of marker you should make. Select “Business or Organization.”

Step Three – Filling in data about your business.

- Title
This is the most important piece of data in the marker, as it is the first thing people will see when they open your marker. Your company name is a great start but you may want to add a dash and then a one to three word description of your business. Examples might be, “Sustainable Hardware Store,” “Green Groceries” or a full title might be “Big Mirror Solar Power – Supplying Nevada.”

- Marker Address
This is the location on the Google Map where your marker will exist. It should represent the location of your business so that your marker is in the correct location on the map. If your business does not have a physical location, you can put a general city, state location, like “Chicago, Illinois.” This information is private and cannot be viewed by any Eco-mmunity Member.

- Display Address
This is the public address that you can put as an easy reference for people in your area to find you.

- Contact Information
Email and/or Telephone information for your business

- Website
This crucial piece of information allows people on Eco-mmunity to navigate to your website, which should be directly related to your business.

- Please Tell Us About Your Business
This is your first spot to write a well-written and hopefully enticing description of why your company is great. Try to keep this section direct, assertive and short, about three to five sentences.

- What Kind of Green Products/Services Do You Offer?
This is a great place to start with a list of product/service categories which your business offers. Try to keep the categories broad. You may also wish to list one or two examples of your premier goods/services, and provide a moderate amount of textual description of them. Try not to write beyond three paragraphs if at all possible as you really want people to visit your website or contact you by phone/email.

- Marker Keywords
It is utterly crucial that you enter a few keywords into this field, as they will help people find your business when they search Eco-mmunity Map. Separate them with commas.

- [b]Select An Icon For Your Marker[b]
Pick a picture for your marker and click “Update Marker.”

Congratulations, you have joined Eco-mmunity and people will now be able to do business your company.

Polls just closed in Virginia, but this is not the end to what we’ll be hearing about this state. The get-out-the-vote slogan here should have been “Rock the Vote (but not too much!)” Polls were not prepared for high voter turnout in the state this election. Voting machines broke down in northern Virginia (but that’s okay, ‘cause it’s not real Virginia. [ap.google.com] anyway), forcing people to use back-up paper ballots and wait out in the rain for hours. Some were waiting for five to seven hours [www.cbsnews.com], and even when the lines calmed down, they were still two hours long.

To prolong voting further, John McCain filed a lawsuit [thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com] yesterday to ask the state to count military ballots from overseas until November 14.

As of now, if Virginia goes to Barack Obama, the election is over. But all the delays caused by the election chaos in the state could also delay a win.

–Jamie Wong

Aarrgggghhh! Murphy’s Law has struck again. Here we are in the home stretch of this historic election, four days from the finish line when every narrative of the last 10 months is reaching a high-pitched whine, and my most crucial research tool is on the fritz. This is seriously vexing.

I’m talking, of course, about my Wingnut 3000 Craze-O-Matic. Really an indispensable device for someone like myself who keeps track of the various nutty rumors and memes that clog the intertubes. I imagine it shorted out from overuse, as this election cycle has brought epic levels of crazy from all corners of the blogosphere. I normally leave it active on my desk, hooked up to my computer. With the exception of the brief periods where John McCain was leading in the polls, it’s been running hot non-stop since Jeremiah Wright. It’s usually quite accurate, better than Google’s blog search, Technorati or even Memorandum for tracking down all the latest bits of rightwing insanity. But this morning I awoke to the faint smell of burning copper, only to find my Wingnut 3000 acting all funny. It was definitely on to something, something BIG, but whatever it was, the stupid was too highly concentrated and overloaded the device. All I can get from the readout is “Obama” and “family.” Bear with me, then, as I do this the old fashioned way.

“Obama” and “family,” huh? Let’s start with what we know. There’s wife Michelle and two daughters, Malia and Natasha. While there’s nothing even remotely controversial about the two little girls, other than they may exceed some states’ legal levels of cuteness, perhaps there’s some bit of new malarkey about Michelle? Alas, a quick search reveals that the long-rumored “whitey” tape [www.noquarterusa.net] continues to not materialize, as does the supposed audio recording of her personally calling some 4th rate “African news” blog based out of Norway and making incendiary comments in broken English, as the transcript clearly shows [africanpress.wordpress.com]. While I highly recommend any Republican readers to literally hold their breath in anticipation of what will surely be the imminent release of these election-shattering tapes, these are old-crazy. Nothing new here. Moving on.

Maybe the Wingnut 3000 is referring to extended family? I recall the story of Obama’s half-brother George [www.telegraph.co.uk], who was supposedly poverty-stricken and living on a dollar a day in some Kenyan shantytown. Why did Obama refuse to help his own flesh and blood? Conservative bloggers trumpeted this revelation as evidence Obama didn’t really really care about the poor if he was unwilling to throw a few scraps to poor brother George. Sadly, George Obama was not nearly as destitute as they’d hoped and the reports of his supposed poverty angered him. The younger Obama was learning to be a mechanic and working with youth groups in his community and did not want any help from his American brother, of whom he was proud [www.cnn.com]. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff. Perhaps disappointed that brother George did not derail Barack’s candidacy, the Citizen Journalist Brigade then hunted down Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, living modestly and working as a health advocate in the South Boston public housing complex where she lived. Again, Obama’s refusal to give away his own wealth to the rest of his family who neither wanted nor needed it was somehow an indictment of his character, despite the fact that the family members in question seemed insulted by the suggestion that Obama, not particularly wealthy and newly so at that, should provide for them. Aunt Zeituni even made a few small donations to Obama’s campaign. Color me skeptical, but I just don’t get the feeling these are the leads the Wingnut 3000 is trying to point me towards.

But if it’s not his wife, his half-brother or his aunt, what’s left of any relevance? His father? Barack Obama Sr. died years ago and, while perhaps not a model father figure, is hardly in a position to………

Oh……Oh my……Sweet fancy Moses, what have we here? [atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com]

” Obama Jr. has never produced records of his supposed parent’s marriage or divorce most likely because they don’t exist……”

“HIS FATHER WOULD BE PROUD”

Ho-lee crap. In an approximately 850,000-word diatribe, John Bolton’s biggest fan and one of America’s Ten Dumbest People, Pam “Atlas Shrugs” Geller, plumbs the depths of her and her readers imaginations to craft a web of intrigue involving every African radical she can think of, throwing in Bill Ayers to boot and comes to the stunning conclusion that Malcolm X is Barack Obama’s father.

No wonder my Wingnut 3000 went kerflooie! I just don’t think it was designed to handle something like that. Oh well. Guess I’m stuck with the regular methods of search, discover and weep for our collective sanity during these last remaining days. These Craze-O-Matics cost a pretty penny to have fixed, so I may just buy the new model. The Wingnut 4000 says it not only finds all the latest crazed rightwing conspiracy theories, but even predicts what the next ones will be.

I gotta get me one of those.

– Michael Turner

University of Iowa Professor and author of the book, How Voters Decide [books.google.com], David Redlawsk has broken down how voters make decisions into four categories of voters: confirmative, fast & frugal, intuitive, and rational.

Confirmative: These voters vote along party lines. The look for any additional information they gather to further confirm their beliefs.

Fast and Frugal: They are looking for a quick fix, an easy way our, a way to bypass all the nitty-gritty and cut to the chase. These voters make up the smallest population among the four types. They choose a couple of issues that are important to them, such as abortion and gay marriage, and vote according to those issues only. They don’t bother looking for the nuance or larger picture of the candidate’s platforms.

Intuitive: These voters make decisions from a gut feeling. They do not feel the need to gather all the relevant information They’ll only collect information until they feel they have reached the right decision. Again, these voters are looking for the path of least resistance, using their intuition as their guide.

Rational: These voters are what people usually consider educated voters and they tend to be the most valued by politicians. They are the voters who learn everything they can about a candidate before making a decision. They appreciate information and do not rely merely on their feelings to guide them/

So which type of voter makes the decision that best befits the voter? The Rational Voter and the Intuitive Voter.

Redlawsk found that, despite conventional wisdom that the rational voter is the best, the intuitive voter has equal success in decision-making.

–Jamie Wong

Dave the Dentist, Tito the Builder, Joe the Florist, Phil the Bricklayer and Pam the Republican Teacher are just a few of the characters John McCain has met in his own great schlep through Central Florida the critical battleground states of Ohio and Florida. While Sarah Palin is running around spouting keywords like “terrorist” and “god” to appeal to her base, McCain is reaching out to blue-collar workers, which McCain seems to have turned into the corny nickname demographic.

McCain has continued his attacks by framing Obama as a “Socialist” because he believes it’s good for everyone to “spread the wealth.”

“Let’s be clear who John McCain is fighting for. He is not fighting for Joe the Plumber. He’s fighting for Joe the Hedge Fund Manager,” [ap.google.com] Obama said.

Is anyone else sick of this ridiculous rhetoric?! Have we just run out of things to talk about? I feel like this election has turned into one of those parties that has gone way past it’s prime, and people are just kinda lingering around because they don’t want to go home, and they’re drunk and high and tired and don’t really know what else to say so they start doing things making each other laugh with farts. Then there’s that guy who really has nothing to say, but he’s trying to keep the conversations going and make some friends, so he starts making up nicknames: “hey it’s little fart-a-lot Francis over here! Hey Stingy Sarah, pass those chips! Oh, what a surprise, Political Penelope going to an Obama meet-up tomorrow!”

It’s cute at first, but this gets old.

The issues are out there. We know the candidates’ policies, we know their daemons, we even know tiny of their medical history [www.nytimes.com] (which is personally enough for me. I get the gist—Biden had an aneurism, McCain has recurring melanoma has suffered from PTSD and is likely to kick the bucket within the next decade, Palin gave birth to four or five kids and Obama has excellent abs. This is more than I know about my friend’s bodies. It’s enough).

–Jamie Wong

There’s been recent talk in the blogosphere about “Peak Wingnut Theory,” [blogsearch.google.com] that moment when the lizard brains that still believe Obama is a not-so-secret Muslim plotting with Louis Farrakhan to steal white people’s precious bodily fluids reach the apex of incoherent insanity. Any and every crackpot conspiracy theory will be thrown against the wall to see what sticks, and each one, no matter how illogical, repugnant or beeble-beeble-beeble-beeble-hoo-hah crazy will be treated as God’s honest TRUTH by people that should (and in most cases do) know better.

For example, the aroma currently wafting from RedState, the self-described “leading blog for right of center online activists,” an A-List rightwing blog read by Republican members of Congress, suggests this season’s batch of wingnuttery is almost at full flower. Take it away RedState Chairman-of-the-Board-Editor-in-Chief-Grand-Poobah Erick Erickson [www.redstate.com]:

“The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

This post is not intended to spread that rumor. Frankly, if Obama wins, we’ll have our hands full around here making sure folks don’t develop Obama Derangement Syndrome.”

!^#@%/o#! and the the horse he rode in on.

Not just because the Enquirer article in question makes no suggestion that the relationship between Obama and Davis was sexual – Erickson does that all on his own; nor that Erickson’s post, while claiming it is not intended to spread that rumor, is clearly designed to do just that…….

“Underage, gay affair with a pedophile.”

Hey, @$$#0!&…..Normal people call that “being molested,” and only someone whose moral dipstick is several quarts short of bone dry would characterize it as anything else. “Obama Derangement Syndrome?” You’re soaking in it.

I’ll give Erickson credit, though. Accusing Obama of being inflicted with The Gay is a new one I hadn’t seen before. Baby-killing, Jew-hating, terror-plotting, Sharia-enforcing…but underage, gay affair? How neuveau chic. Meanwhile the Big Kahuna Rush Limbaugh, who’s nearing peak form himself, is keeping himself busy with the classics [crooksandliars.com]:

”We thought that it was just liberal welfare policies and all that that kept blacks from progressing while other minorities grew and prospered, but no, it is these wackos from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to other anti-American Afrocentric black liberation theologists with ACORN, and Barack Obama is smack dab in the middle of it, they have been training young black kids to hate, hate, hate this country, and they trained their parents before that to hate, hate, hate this country. It was a movement. It was a Bill Ayers, anti-capitalist, anti-American educational movement. ACORN is how it was implemented, right under our noses. It has been a movement, it has been a religion, and Obama and Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers were all up to their big ears in it.”

Rush Limbaugh works in racist bloviating the way Michelangelo worked in paints and clay. The Oxycontin King may have his Sistine Chapel with this latest rant, tying together Ayers, Wright, ACORN, black militancy, terrorism, communism/socialism, and a Manchurian Candidate-like conspiracy plot into one giant Gordian knot of racial bigotry.

There are still three weeks left until Election Day. What other exotic flowers of anti-Obama putrescence will bloom in the conservative garden before then? What presidentially disqualifying bits of “news” will the right focus on as they approach Peak Wingnut?

Make your own suggestions in the comments, and I’ll whip up a post for the best one. Here’s something to get the ball rolling.

– Michael Turner