With gasoline prices still at record highs, the search for alternative energy sources is taking on an increasingly urgent tone. And as the issue hits average people hard, popular magazines have jumped on the subject. Here’s a look at some of the best:
Popular Mechanics looks closely at an overlooked energy source – hydropower, suggesting that river turbines and the pipes in water-treatment plants are now poised to be tapped across the nation in the quest for clean-energy independence. Elsewhere, in an embrace of old-world and mostly low-tech individualism, the feature, “100 Skills Every Man Should Know,” suggests that “guys can’t survive on brains alone.” A “real guy needs to know how to do real stuff.” Stuff like steering out of a blowout, cutting down a tree, or . . . escaping a sinking car. Amen. But worth the price just for the tip on how to iron a shirt.
Wired picks an intriguing character for its cover-story profile: Shai Agassi, the top executive at software-giant SAP, who aims to create a worldwide network of electric-car charging stations. But while we get plenty of anecdotes about Agassi’s past speeches and chatting up of officials, there’s scant discussion of why he believes all cars will eventually go electric. While Agassi reportedly has impressed some auto-industry executives and Israel President Shimon Peres, doors have been slamming in his face all over Capitol Hill, Wired says. For us, that sets up a rather head-scratching conclusion – that everyone who meets Agassi “already believes he can see the future.”
Who’d a thunk that going green could be such a turn-on? The most recent issue of eco-friendly mag Plenty takes energy sustainability to another level: solar-powered vibrators. Comedy writer Liz Winstead authored the review of the gadget. The centerpiece is the debut of the Plenty 20 list, which focuses on individuals who are making the world greener. The magazine’s top 20 includes former vice president and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
While industry and government try to muster enough will to create a new-technology revolution, Scientific American is concerned with how much it will harm our privacy. Its cover story wraps up some of the newest chilling threats from Big Brother, including eavesdropping on our private genetic makeup in search of . . . heaven knows what. Also revealed: The brave new world of wiretapping is also spreading unchecked on the Internet, and then there’s the radio-frequency ID tag that you may not even know you’re carrying around.
As one might expect, coming on the heels of her triumphant vice-presidential nomination-acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has everyone talking. New York‘s cover story, “The Sixty-Day War,” has writer John Heilemann noting that Palin’s snarky attacks on Barack Obama revealed how GOP presidential nominee McCain intends to wage the fall campaign. That means “revving up and turning out the party’s base, around God and guns and abortion and family values, combined with a withering onslaught to render Obama unacceptable.” If this sounds familiar, it is: campaign guru Karl Rove used the same strategy on behalf of President Bush in the 2004 campaign.
In its coverage of this extraordinary election campaign, The New Yorker weighs in with a profile of Cindy McCain. McCain’s wife, the article notes, appears “pampered and brittle” but has “unusual grit, too.” She has taken up race-car driving and flying, and she has a long history of going on charity missions to Third World countries.
Newsweek‘s “Real Look At Sarah Palin” calls the GOP veep nominee the “anti-Obama” – not an introspective or intellectual type and “as riven with contradictions and complexities as the state itself.” And when she talks about complex political matters, she “sometimes speaks in religious terms.” Nevertheless, “her toughness – or to her critics, ruthlessness – was apparent from the start.” The story is most interesting when it talks about the issue likely to get the most press in the coming months – Troopergate, which concerns Palin’s former brother-in-law, and her alleged attempts to get him kicked off the state police force.
Time notes that “above all, Palin has proved to be a shrewd political operator who slyly fought her way upstream through her state’s cutthroat politics.” The mag calls her “more formidable than her image might suggest – and more than some in her own party are willing to acknowledge.” Elsewhere, there’s an article about how Palin’s life story represents the difficult choices many women face.