Community produced power is a national effort by citizens to help address the need to reduce carbon production. One of the examples, the University Park Solar Project in Columbia, Maryland (http://bit.ly/w8zBA5), is discussed in the last five minutes of the Jan 6, 2012 Marketplace Money episode: http://bit.ly/wSZ5n2. Makes you wonder how much power could be produced if the roof of every church in the United States was covered with solar cells while bumping up the church treasuries and returning a percentage of investment to parishioners who fund the ventures.

1. You may be able to do the same work, but in another country. I know a math major about your age who worked at a nuclear power plant and was sent to China last year to work as a consultant on a new nuclear plant being placed into operation. He's a black guy, not Asian. You often have to move within the US as a career develops, so why stop at the boarder. 2. For perspective and possible insight go to http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml and listen to any of the podcasts that look interesting. All of the speakers are specialists and experts on topics related to economic matters and no topics are dry or uninteresting. And speaking about perspective is what this TED Talk is about, which may also help: http://bit.ly/LDbj8M 3. Buy a copy of "What Color Is Your Parachute" at http://amzn.to/OfdaAs or check a copy out of the library. That book has been around and reissued/revised for at least 20 years. It can help you learn about yourself and perhaps create a new job, even in your present organization. Perhaps you can get $1 million or two from Kickstarter.org! Someone here mentioned folks fighting over the same piece of pie which reminds me of a comment about finding a way to grow the pie larger. 4. More perspective and ideas may come from a reading of "Reflections on Bullough's Pond" at http://amzn.to/LTNpZl . It offers insights and explanations about New England's economic development over the last 400 years that apply today and may offer ideas about your organization and career. 5. Further into left field is this: the Conversations Network is looking for editors of podcasts it offers for free via the internet. It pays a nominal amount for each description submitted and at any given time there are about 100 podcasts in need of being so described. What's neat is that it makes you describe the interesting work of a variety of people, so you have to do some creative thinking, some creative writing, and use your internet skills while learning about work in other fields. This is a non-profit organization, so a career with it won't be your goal. However, the exercise might be useful. Other members of your family, etc. might also be interested. Here's the link with information about how to apply -- a small exercise in job hunting, too: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/websiteEditorApplication/ Good Luck.

I only listen to podcasts and prefer retractable earbuds which don't get tangled up in storage. The only place I've found them is China via eBay at a cost $2 or $3 each, incl s/h. Cheap cost is important because I've not had any earbuds that didn't fail from separated wiring within a few months.

I live near a nuclear power plant that produces 1.9 Gw within a few miles of a large population center. Why can't spare batteries be charged there as well as any power distribution yards then trucked to distribution points just as fuel gets to gas stations? Nuclear plants produce surplus power at night and this one probably still uses its to pump water uphill to a reservoir that than runs water back down to hydro-generate power during peak periods. The new batteries may be a cheaper investment for a power company than additional transmission and distribution lines. Distributed power in batteries provide other advantages during power outages that gasoline in underground storage tanks at gas stations do not. Problems certainly exist, but if production and recycling costs are reasonable, this would be a great resource. Charged batteries pose hazards, of course, just like petroleum products, but can still be moved exactly the same -- train, boat, barge, truck, even planes -- and provide more opportunities by way of local charging from solar and wind. Maybe I can supplement my retirement in the country with a windmill that charges batteries I swap with neighbors? Wow!

Jasper Fford did an entertaining series that is best described as fantasy, but is a must for book lovers because it centers on libraries. Here's the wiki for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next .

Here's a link to a short article about podcasts which has a long list of web sites at the bottom with excellent podcasts where can find enough material to easily fill most flash drives and customize the material to the recipient: https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/speed-your-hearing.htm . (Full disclosure: I wrote the article.)

I have to make a big subject change because I just heard this Johns Hopkins podcast about Lucentis being used to stop and somewhat regress MD. This may be equally useful knowledge to having aids: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/audio/podcasts/ You have to scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for Lucentis to find it. There's a power point presentation on the subject, too.

Isn't the UV concern related to the lens of the eye which was replaced in this case, or is it also the cornea?

Years, nay decades, back I read about gamblers who wore rose-colored glasses to read marked cards. Tinted contacts were substituted in later years. Perhaps there are clear fluids that now have a 'color' to you! Expect to soon see spinoffs in CSI, The Fringe, Alphas, etc.

I'd like to add that downloaded lectures can be played at high speeds in video or audio on PCs if you can keep up.

I use Google Reader to gather data from any rss feed of interest and also download weekly about 60 podcasts from various sources each week using the Feedreader aggregator. I have to plug, in particular, podcasts (or videocasts) from This Week in Virology, This Week in Parasitism, and This Week in Microbiology, all available via a starting point of www.twiv.tv . (If you think Parasitism is not interesting, listen to TWIP 22.) The Naked Scientist based in Britain offers a nice weekly collection of news gathered from that area. The Australian Broadcasting Network at www.abc.net.au/radio/ offers podcasts about technology oriented towards that part of the world. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the BBC also offer podcasts which include new developments in all areas, but don't allow you to specialize in one area, such as medicine or computers. Futures in Biotech ( http://twit.tv/FIB ) has produced some terrific interviews in that area and Leo Laporte and his This Week in Technology does a few podcasts that offer more than his usual troubleshooting genre. http://www.podnutz.com/ is strictly computers, but three podcasts in particular are of interest as trendsetting. They are 274, 302 and 316. They deal with the development and growth of Lisa Hendrickson's career. She's a female computer troubleshooter who is rapidly building a large business that repairs computers remotely and worth watching and learning from as an example of how to grow a new business in the US. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute produces podcasts and videocasts about advancing technology Do a search for NIH Videocasts for presentations by this organization. Econtalk may not be strictly technical, but has outstanding interviews about developments and history that disproves that idea that economics are dry and boring. I've been saving a list of Best Podcasts for over a year and they number now about 90, but amount to over 2GB, so are not readily posted. I also have the addresses of podcasts that are plugged into the Feedreader aggregator that I'll try to add here in case that's of interest if the moderator agrees to include them. Several of these were worth noting, too, like NY Times Tech Talk and RadioLab: http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/ppq/56641.xml http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-5/asunto-del-dia-en-r5/SASUNTO.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/clickon/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cyberspeak http://feeds.feedburner.com/diffusionradio http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510030 http://feeds.feedburner.com/GlobalChallenges http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/healthc/rss.xml http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/HHMI_Lectures.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://www.materialstoday.com/rss/podcasts/ http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/oneplanet/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/acs/scienceelements http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/scia/rss.xml http://www.sciencemag.org/rss/podcast.xml http://www.fundadvice.com/soundinvesting.rss?option=com_podcast&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1 http://feeds.feedburner.com/twim http://feeds.feedburner.com/parasitism http://media.acponline.org/feeds/annals.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://leoville.tv/podcasts/twit.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/microbeworld http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/ideas.xml http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/north.xml http://www.theworld.org/rss/tech.xml PRI the world, technology http://leoville.tv/podcasts/kfi.xml http://leoville.tv/podcasts/fib.xml http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_podcast.xml http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/quirksaio.xml http://www.clinicalpodcast.com/xml/basic/conversations_in_medicine.xml http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/rss.xml http://leoville.tv/podcasts/leo.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/MedicallySpeakingPodcast http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/lancet.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laninf.xml http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/digitalp/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/podnutz http://www.fundadvice.com/index2.php?option=com_podcast&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1 http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/mh/rss.xml http://feeds.datadoctors.com/feeds/RadioPodcast.xml http://www.theworld.org/feed/ PRI the world, gen, I think http://feeds2.feedburner.com/twivmp3 http://community.acs.org/journals/acbcct/cs/Portals/0/PodCasts/podcast_source.xml http://podcast.cell.com/cell.xml http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Distillations http://feeds.feedburner.com/medicinepod101 http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510289 http://www.patientpower.info/patientpowerrsslive.asp http://feeds.feedburner.com/regenerativemedicinetoday http://feeds2.feedburner.com/sciencepodcasters http://feeds.twis.org/twis/science http://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab http://feeds.feedburner.com/brainsciencepodcast http://feeds.nature.com/nature/podcast/neuropod http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510202

Here's a simple experiment to do in the summertime at any parking lot. Touch the hoods/trunks/roofs of white cars and black cars and feel the difference.