A recent survey suggests that consumers aren't that price sensitive to electric vehicles. The majority of 'green' consumers are willing to pay 30% more for a 'zero-emissions' vehicle, but they aren't willing to compromise of features or performance.

But predicting the death of the internal combustion engine is a bit premature. There are many new strategies to develop environmentally conscious fuel for combustion. One such process--diesel derived from algae that breaks down plant matter--took an important step towards prime time.

It's important to remember that pure electric strategies really work best when you can use manufacturing techniques to significantly reduce the weight and shape of the vehicle. In the case of commercial and industrial vehicles, this is very challenging. So finding new sources of diesel fuel is critical to ensuring the viable operation of our infrastructure.

A clever concept that takes advantage of the relative speed of a camera flash and the shutter, the Flugurator exploits this lag to project an arbitrary image onto the subject of the photograph.

I was arguing to a friend recently that I found it persuasive that the high price of oil must be due in part to some market manipulation. When I looked at the behavior of consumers--U.S. drivers have cut their mileage by 30 billion miles since a similar period last year--I felt that the demand was not very elastic. People seem to be willing to change their usage due to prices, which should relieve some of the supply/demand pressure.

Yet prices continue to rise. But wait, Paul Krugman makes some strong arguments that speculation isn't to blame. His most persuasive angle is to point out that dramatic price inflation exists in markets where speculation isn't technically possible. I'm not sure I'm sold--for instance, I don't know what the supply looks like in these other markets--but it's an article that gives us conspiracy folks pause.