The software of life

Genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, speaking at the 2008 Going Green conference, discussed the efforts of his firm, Synthetic Genomics to invent organisms that can solve dozens of problems that face our growing world. By digitizing DNA, and inventing numerous techniques for manipulating organisms to accept their designer DNA, his firm seeks to invent synthetic [...]

Adoption risk and ‘optionality’

VC legend Vinod Khosla (right) gave a keynote this morning in which he outlined the green investment philosophy of his firm, Khosla Ventures. He feels its important to focus on large scale businesses like building materials, construction, automobiles, fuel and other constituencies that deal with very large quantities of materiel and energy. He especially [...]

Agriculture

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Scientific American editor John Rennie hosted the Agricultural Revolution panel this morning as conference-goers came and went on the pleasant patio adjacent to the conference center. Topics raised by panelists included the tight connection of food to both water and energy, the resulting economics (high food prices create hardship for poor buyers, but give farmers [...]

Water

Christopher Gasson moderated this morning’s ‘Abundant Clean Green Water’ session, which focused on a number of topics, thusly:

The low cost of water discourages investment both in new technologies and existing infrastructure
Energy and water are tightly linked - it takes a lot of energy to move water
The world has abundant water, but it is not efficiently [...]

150 MPG, 130 MPH, $108,000

Three of Commuter Cars Corporation’s Tango electric cars were parked in front of Muir Hall at the Cavallo Point Hotel, site of this year’s Going Green conference this morning. The 150 MPG, 130 MPH vehicles, which seat two and can park almost anywhere, will cost $108,000 when they go on sale in 6 months. The [...]

Going Green 2008

Tony Perkins, CEO of AlwaysOn, kicks off the 2008 edition of Going Green this evening. Genomics pioneer Craig Venter is among the featured presenters: he’ll be talking about using genetically-engineered ’synthetic life’ to create fuel, clean up toxins and otherwise help preserve the planet. Other topics include the confluence of genomics, nanotech and information science, [...]

Live from Fort Baker

We’ve moved gulker.com World HQ about 50 miles north for a couple of days - we’re at the brand new Cavallo Point Hotel, which is on the site of Fort Baker, a historic Army preserve near the north end of the Golden Gate bridge that’s been converted to public land and some private use. Our [...]

A very full weekend

I woke up this morning with a full-blown cold - just what I need with the 2-day Going Green conference coming up tomorrow. This after a weekend that included friend Cathy’s 60th birthday bash and a visit to our church the following morning by Bishop Marc Andrus (Linda has pix of the above), during which [...]

Back in the hometown groove

So, I’m sitting in the Menlo Park branch of Le Boulanger, the chain bakery-cum-sandwich-shop and my favorite local WiFi hotspot, blogging away on my trusty, Linux-based EeePC. I’m having lunch (the ‘Vegetarian’ sandwich) after making a tour of local shops (Debbie’s cleaners, the Wells Fargo branch, Walgreens, Village Stationers and Ritz Camera).
A man about [...]

Woo-hoo!

Here’s a picture of a slice of my brain from a MRI made this morning at UCSF’s Parnassus radiology facility, an image created after about 30 minutes in an (upgraded) 3 Tesla GE Signa MRI machine. The faint brightness in the lower left quadrant shows the current state of my stage 3 glioma. (you can [...]

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