Last week, the Department of Transportation released a slew of new rules that will affect the air travel experience. One of the more interesting changes? Getting bumped is now going to get you a lot more money than before.

To cheer up exhausted parents with an over-energetic child or collicky baby, Akashic Books will publish “Go the F*** To Sleep in October.

What do you think? Author A.J. Jacobs called it “the most honest children’s book ever written.” Adam Mansbach (The End of the Jews) wrote the book and Ricardo Cortes illustrated.

Here’s more from Amazon: “a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing off to dreamland. Honest, profane, and affectionate, Adam Mansbach’s verses and Ricardo Cortés’ illustrations perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night, and open up a conversation about parenting in the process.” (Via Buzzfeed)

We’ve invested $168 million in an exciting new solar energy power plant being developed by BrightSource Energy in the Mojave Desert in California. Brightsource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) will generate 392 gross MW of clean, solar energy. That’s the equivalent of taking more than 90,000 cars off the road over the lifetime of the plant, projected to be more than 25 years. The investment makes business sense and will help ensure that one of the world’s largest solar energy projects is completed.

We need smart capital to transform our energy sector and build a clean energy future. This is our largest investment to date, and we’ve now invested over $250 million in the clean energy sector. We’re excited about Ivanpah because our investment will help deploy a compelling solar energy technology that provides reliable clean energy, with the potential to significantly reduce costs on future projects.

Power towers, which have been successfully demonstrated in the U.S. and abroad at smaller scale, are based on a relatively simple idea. The technology works by using a field of mirrors, called heliostats, to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a solar receiver on top of a tower. The solar receiver generates steam, which then spins a traditional turbine and generator to make electricity. Power towers are very efficient because all those mirrors focus a tremendous amount of solar energy onto a small area to produce steam at high pressure and temperature (up to 1000 degrees F). Think about burning a tuft of grass with a magnifying glass, only multiplied by thousands (or the original application: Archimedes’ heat ray that allegedly used mirrors to burn enemy ships!).

Several large solar projects are in the works in the sunny Southwest (and around the globe), but Ivanpah will be the first solar power tower system of this scale. The Ivanpah Power Tower will be approximately 450 feet tall and will use 173,000 heliostats, each with two mirrors. The project is being constructed by Bechtel, a major engineering firm. Construction began in October 2010, and is projected to finish in 2013.

The Ivanpah project will also be financed by NRG and with clean energy technology loan guarantees provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. We hope that investing in Ivanpah spurs continued development and deployment of this promising technology while encouraging other companies to make similar investments in renewable energy.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations

We recently invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world. Shepherds Flat is currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore., and when completed in 2012 will produce 845 MW of energy. That’s a lot of wind—enough to power more than 235,000 homes.

This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. Though the technology has been installed outside the U.S., it’s an important, incremental step in lowering the cost of wind energy over the long term in the U.S.

Shepherds Flat will help Oregon continue to be one of the top wind producing states in the nation, while providing significant direct economic benefits to the state. The project will also benefit the region by helping California meet its aggressive renewable energy goals with a cost-effective and clean wind resource. The electricity produced at Shepherds Flat will be sold under long term agreements to Southern California Edison.

We look forward to joining a project with strong experienced partners such as the developer, Caithness Energy, and GE, which is an early investor in Shepherds Flat as well as the turbine manufacturer and operations and maintenance supplier. Our co-investors are Sumitomo Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, and Tyr Energy, a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation, both of which have deep experience in power projects.

This project brings our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million, including our most recent investments in a German solar photovoltaic plant and in the BrightSource Ivanpah solar power tower—the largest solar energy project in the world. We’re excited about helping deliver clean energy to the grid and we hope this latest investment encourages other companies to think about ways they can help accelerate the deployment of more renewable energy. We remain on the lookout for more projects that make business sense and will help all of us take advantage of clean, renewable energy.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations

then and now

Everyone likes a good novelty flash drive, as long as it’s the right kind of novelty. Photographers will enjoy these little 35mm film canisters converted into 2GB and 4GB drives — at $19 and $24 they’re not too expensive, and there’s a choice of many different film types, so you can pick one he or she might have actually used.

No T-Max 400, though, that was my jam. Check ‘em out over at Etsy.

[via The Awesomer and New Launches]

The House of Lunduke BBS launched October 19th, 2010 (just a few short months ago)… and we have just passed the 4 thousand call mark.  Which rules.

(You can connect to the house of Lunduke via telnet at bbs.lunduke.com or via the Flash terminal.)

To celebrate, I’m doing a few new things on the little BBS that could:

1) We’re going to have our first TradeWars 2002 tournament.  The start date is set for April 25th.  If you want to influence the tournament settings at all, head on in to the BBS and make your requests in the “TW” message base.

2) I’ve reset the current TradeWars game to be a 5,000 sector game with no turn limits.  None at all.  This instance of the game is run completely independently of the upcoming tournament and is designed to run very long term.

3) I will begin hosting files in the file area of the BBS.  These will be files specific to running and connecting to BBS’s.

4) RetroNet.  I’m looking at starting a BBS message network.  Want to join your current BBS?  Want to start a new BBS and join up?  Jump on in to the House of Lunduke and head in to the “RetroNet Discussion” message base.

Why am I doing all this you ask?  Because it’s a blast.  See more of my thoughts on the matter here.