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In February 2002, London’s Metropolitan Police initiated a three year test of two two-seater electric cars “to combat high traffic levels in cities and will be used for general purposes such as burglary reporting and house visits.” The cars are cheap to run and emissions free. Electric cars are exempt from the Mayor of London’s new congestion tax.

At the airport in New York, two beefy guys stand akimbo in full camoflague gear, semi-automatic weapons casually slung. How very funny to see them decked out in green jungle camouflage against the commercial white interior and cheap gray carpet. In fact, it’s pretty clear the camo gear is not to conceal, but to be unavoidably present. Like the machine guns which may or may not be loaded, it is a loud signifier of military-ness, a show of force, a warning and reminder of the presence of power.

On July 9, a Paris judge ordered Greenpeace to stop using a parody of the Esso logo in its StopEsso campaign in France, pending a full hearing of the case.

“Stephanie Tunmore, Greenpeace climate campaigner said, ‘This court case is just another attempt by Esso to use its money as a means of continuing its dirty business unhindered.’ Esso claimed that the dollar signs Greenpeace has used in place of the “SS” in the logo linked the company to the infamous Nazi “SS” and damaged Esso’s reputation. Appropriately, the French judge Justice Binoche categorically rejected this claim. And although Esso was seeking 80,000 Euro per day if Greenpeace did not comply, the judge reduced this sum to 5,000 Euro per day. The judge also rightly ruled that Greenpeace can continue to use the term ‘StopEsso’.... StopEsso is a coalition of groups, including Greenpeace, campaigning around the world to stop Esso from sabotaging international action to address climate change, such as the Kyoto Protocol.”

Exxon had also asked for Greenpeace to remove all the meta-tags from their site because the StopEsso campaign site was coming up third when you searched for “Esso” on Google. They should have read the FAQ. Because of all the interest in the court case, StopEsso is currently the number one search result.

“The banned Falun Gong spiritual movement jammed one of China’s main television satellites for eight days and briefly beamed a video into millions of homes during last month’s World Cup soccer finals.... [Falun Gong] has survived a three-year campaign of repression; it also marked the most sophisticated challenge so far to the Communist Party’s control of the media.”

See the Washington Post.

According to the 2000 Census, Eldorado, New Mexico has the nation’s highest percentage of homes heated mainly by solar power: 13.2 percent. The numbers are pretty dismal: “According to the census, the number of U.S. homes heated primarily by solar energy fell from 54,536 in 1990 to 47,069 a decade later. Federal and many state tax credits for solar homes have long since dried up.” As of 2000, Eldorado had 317 solar homes. Also of note, 8 of the 10 cities are in Hawaii.

“The purpose of this website is to provide information related to the ongoing work of the U.S. House of Representatives in relation to the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Under the direction of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the House Committee on Administration, the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House have worked together with the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office to create Document Type Definition files (DTDs) for use in the creation of legislative documents using XML. As this is an ongoing project, it is important to note that the DTDs presented here have not been finalized, and may change over time.”

“The web is providing a way for women in Iran to talk freely about taboo subjects such as sex and boyfriends. Over the past few months there has been a big jump in the number of Persian weblogs which are providing an insight into a closed society.... ‘I could talk very freely and very frankly about things I could never talk about in any other place, about subjects that are banned,’ said one of the first women to start a blog in Iran.”

From BBC News.

“I’ve just come across a weblog for summaries of recently issued West Virginia Supreme Court opinions. This is the power of weblogging in action. Why is this so exciting? Well, weblogging provides a simple mechanism for a court clerk to publish summaries, using an off-the-shelf software package (Radio), requiring little (if any) technical knowledge. More importantly, it provides RSS feed, which would allow a (say) a law firm to trivially track new posts, and to syndicate the contents to the lawyers throughout the firm.”

Found via Column Two.

“Hemp car is an alternative-fuel project car that utilizes hemp biodiesel for fuel. Industrial hemp would be an economical fuel if hemp were legal to cultivate in the United States. Industrial hemp has no psychoactive properties and is not a drug. Hemp Car demonstrates the concept of hemp fuels on a national level and promotes the reformation of current law.”

“For the first time ever, the UK Parliament is taking online consultation on a piece of legislation. The Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Bill is collecting public comments on the Draft Communications Bill via e-mail, and an online forum will publish the comments from June 10.... The public can now read the bill online, watch the Committee hearings in a webcast, and comment on the draft. As Julian Glover notes in [the] Media Guardian, pre-legislative scrutiny itself is rather novel for Parliament, so this online forum is quite a leap.... One potential problem seems likely to arise in the moderating of the e-mailed comments. All comments will be screened and summarized before being presented to the Committee, and that gives the moderator quite a bit of power as gatekeeper.”

From Andrew Stroehlein, E-media Tidbits.