Between travels, internet outages and so on, I’ve been way behind in my reading and writing, so let me take a few moments to catch up on interesting things going on online and provide additional commentary.

World Changing, a blog that I really enjoy, has a couple particularly interesting articles up right now. One is Turning Emissions Into Fuel With Algae. The idea is to harvest CO2 emissions and grow algae which could be used as a biofuel. Well worth the read.

Another interesting article they have is New Tool for Making Vaccines. The idea here is to use the Tobacco Mosaic Virus ‘to introduce new genes to tobacco plants without using transgenic modification’. The purpose would be to quickly to make large amounts of usable antigens for the creation of vaccines.

At the DeStefano campaign we often talk about one of Connecticut’s greatest resources being Yankee Ingenuity. It isn’t any surprise that we have so many pharmaceutical firms in Connecticut. We don’t often talk about another product of Connecticut, tobacco. In 1921, there were 31,000 acres of tobacco being grown in Connecticut. That number has dropped down to 4,000 acres by 1997. Could Yankee Ingenuity, its strong pharmaceutical ties and great tobacco production position the state to be a leader vaccine production? It would be pretty cool if it could.

Another blog that I like to read regularly is Grassroots.org. They often list cool sites worth checking out. For example, recent posts have highlighted Kids Voting USA, a non-profit ‘working to secure the future of democracy by preparing young people to be educated, engaged voters.’ Those who have read some of my posts about Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community know my concern about generational voting patterns and the importance of getting people civically involved at an early age.

Related to that, they are supporting a site, lobbyists.org to find out more about lobbying activity.

Another cool site they recently highlighted is BiologyBrowser. Being the husband of a molecular biologist, and the father of two girls who are currently taking biology classes, this site caught my eye.

Over on the Health Care for All blog, I found this interesting comment: “Approximately one in four donated hearts in the U.S. comes from the ranks of the uninsured. But, in a sad twist, the uninsured or poor are usually not allowed to receive an organ transplant, since most transplants centers demand that any potential recipients have a proven way to pay for the surgery.”

I’ll let that stand on its own for you to ponder.

One final post that I want to highlight for right now, Christine writes about how online content has re-emerged after the Internet bubble of a few years ago. She talks a little about Jibjab and Machinima. It is a long post, but worth the read.