Bluematter.

Foreign direct investment (inbound): Good
Current account deficit: Bad
Trade deficit: Catastrophic
Capital account deficit: Not used. Presumably bad.

Weak national currency: Bad
Exports: Good
Imports: Bad

Rising house prices: Good
Falling house prices: Bad
Affordable houses: Good
Unaffordable houses: Bad

Free trade: Neutral
Unfettered free trade: Bad
Fair trade: Good
Outsourcing: Evil
Buying local produce: Divine

Pay rises: Good
Low interest rates: Good
Inflation: Bad

Communism: Very Bad
Socialism: Bad
Capitalism: Bad

More here. Jamaican Ghanja, Amsterdam Gold and Devil's weed are also on offer.

Fridge magnets for the internet age

Send self-destructing emails

A blog worth keeping an eye on: cutting edge architecture

This man can move anything (video). Watch the whole thing.

100 (video)

And two websites with something in common:

RYT Hospital: Pioneers of male pregnancy and creators of Clyven, a transgenic mouse with human cognitive abilities

Genpets: Genpets are living, breathing mammals. Bio-Genica is a Bioengineering Company that has combined, and modified existing DNA to create the Genpets lineup. Genpets have blood, bones, and muscle; they will bleed if you cut them, and die if mistreated just like any other animal. The electronic components are only in the packages and are for basic life support, outside of the packages the Genpets are wholly organic.

Using a list of countries generated by The World Factbook database, flags of countries fetched from Wikipedia (as of 26th May 2007) are analysed by a custom made python script to calculate the proportions of colours on each of them. That is then translated on to a piechart using another python script. The proportions of colours on all unique flags are used to finally generate a piechart of proportions of colours for all the flags combined. (note: Colours making up less than 1% may not appear)

Google 'recycling' and what you get is a series of articles quoting scary statistics about the amount of waste we generate every year, tips for more effective recycling and calls to join the 'green revolution'. Combine recycling with almost every other search term you can think of ('recycling statistics', 'recycling facts') and you still get pretty much the same picture.

There is, however, a unique combination that will yield quite different results: 'recycling costs'.

Recycling is expensive. Even without taking into account the demands it places on people's time (a valuable resource), I think it is fair to say that most recycling programmes are loss making operations. While I could go on and on naming one local authority after another, the fact that private recycling operations are nowhere to be seen - with very few exceptions - neatly settles the argument.

When you read about a recycling programme 'paying for itself', what you see in effect is a covert tax on residents. When you see a recycling programme losing money, what you are witnessing is a public subsidy to the tree-hugger in all of us.

All the while, and completely discounting current welfare ('financial') considerations, it is at best debatable that recycling lives up to its purported raison d'etre - saving the planet. The environmental costs of recycling may well be far in excess of simply dumping waste. Extra trucks are needed on the road to collect the recycled bins, pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. For many materials, the environmental cost of the energy used in recycling them is more than the environmental cost of simply tapping on nature's reserve to replace them.

Since the consumption of virgin materials or energy is not priced at marginal social cost, it is impossible to say with certainty whether a specific recycling operation is good for the environment simply by looking at the profit and loss account. For most materials, however, the available evidence seem to suggest that recycling is like shooting ourselves in the foot, all the while feeling we are doing the planet a great service.

Addendum: While looking at recycling, I came across this Wired article about GPI Atlantic's costing of the recycling programme in Nova Scotia. The headline finding was that Nova Scotia saved 'anywhere from $25 million to $125 million a year'. Here's more:

Simply adding up the costs of recycling and the revenue generated from sales of recycled materials would show that the program cost the province $18 million a year more than just throwing trash into landfills.

To get an accurate picture of the real value of Nova Scotia's recycling and composting program, the report considered a number of factors, including [...] the direct and indirect value generated from new employment in the recycling sector.