U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.

Here's the +5 slashdot comments.

great audrey hepburn paris boho dance scene from funny face commencing on tcm followed by a stanley donen interview and then charade with cary grant and hepburn.

This is a documentary premiering in New Orleans tomorrow and features three of M's "kids" on Dumaine, Jonathan, Joshua, and Mario. In the clip there is also a brief cameo of Fermin, sitting on steps with longish hair and white t-shirt. Produced, written, directed and edited by M's friend and former employer, Dr. Vince Morelli, who was very active on Dumaine after I left and opening first scene of Jonathan in clip is shot in front of, but looking across the street, from Dumaine house. Mario, I may have mentioned a couple of years ago, was shot five times while sitting on his stoop around the corner, and survived.

Food notes from NOLA:

Burton, who has since left the D.I.A., is not alone in his concern. Indeed, throughout the intelligence community, spies are beginning to wonder why their technology has fallen so far behind — and talk among themselves about how to catch up. Some of the country’s most senior intelligence thinkers have joined the discussion, and surprisingly, many of them believe the answer may lie in the interactive tools the world’s teenagers are using to pass around YouTube videos and bicker online about their favorite bands. Billions of dollars’ worth of ultrasecret data networks couldn’t help spies piece together the clues to the worst terrorist plot ever. So perhaps, they argue, it’ s time to try something radically different. Could blogs and wikis prevent the next 9/11?

kahlifornia

and more from the blather board.

New on der corner.

nice view, but what if you have to pee?

tcm has a woody this afternoon with a clever segue from a peter sellers morning with whats new, pussycat?

one of the few nice things to come out of the war is the association between tom friedman and f.u. (as in fuck you).

Crazy Morphosis skyscraper going up in Paris. I really liked that there weren't any really tall buildings. I thought it made the city seem very manageable considering it's size. I guess everything has to change though.

hendricks farms & dairy


im out in bucks co again for a couple of days. any one want anything from here?

weird, funny random photo

9 to 5 paintings creates images from the movement of your mouse during the day.

YouTube takes videos to mobile phones

I got a recommendation to eat at Bayona in NOLA.

Any other recommendations? (I will be travelling with D, a lacto-ovo-vegetarian who refuses to believe that the lower mollusks are hard to distinguish from plants.)

matt stoller from mydd is on c-spans washington journal right now.

cupcake bake shop

One Punk Under God

Jay Bakker, the only son of TV evangelists Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Messner, is the subject of this six-part observational documentary series from filmmaker Jeremy Simmons (“TransGeneration”). Veteran of a troubled adolescence, tattooed and pierced Jay now preaches God's grace and unconditional love to an alternative non-denominational congregation in Atlanta, which meets in a working bar.

How to carve a turkey.

party of joe

come back to the five and dime, robert altman, robert altman

Steve Allen, Jack Kerouac, interview / On the Road reading / piano noodling video.

Photo of Toronto in the clouds.

it was a word his mother used to use.