Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 08/20/10

Jonny's Not Rotten (Photo by Amado Garcia)

Dog Days edition of the Green Skeptic LinkFest.
So, I'll start with Sunday's cover story in PARADE magazine on the "Vick dogs" - the dogs that football player Michael Vick abused and Vick-timized in his Virginia compound. Some were forced to fight and some were traumatized for life. But most of them survived to be rehabilitated and have been given a second chance: Can You Teach a Bad Dog New Tricks?

Efficiency is finally getting it's due as investors are picking energy efficiency 'low-hanging fruit.'

Single malt or blended, sir? Yale360 reports on a New Whisky Waste Biofuel Developed by Scottish Scientists: Scotch Drink & Drive.

Sharon Begley in Newsweek writes about how we're "Green and Clueless."?

Energy China Forum (ECF) reports on how the U.S. and China Are Vying for Clean Energy Leadership.

Fisker's Karma plug-in hybrid is still a mystery, but it promises much: Fisker Do?

Eric Wesoff of GreentechMedia published a Greentech IPO Report: Past, Present and Top Ten IPO Candidates.

Fabian Pattberg listed his Top Five Sustainability/CSR Communication Examples.
 
And finally, A123 spin-off company 24M gets charged up by $10M from North Bridge + CRV for grid-scale batteries: 24M.

 
(Disclosure: I hold a long position in $AONE This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities. I also hold a long position in an adopted pitbull named Calvin and I do advocate that you do the same.)

Alaska: As Colonel Norman Vaughn used to Say, "Dream Big and Dare to Fail"

Last weekend while Twittering about my trip back to Alaska -- a place I left 10 years ago this August, one of my stalwart followers, globalgirl, revealed that she is the great niece of one of my heroes, Colonel Norman Vaughan.

For those of you not familiar with the man or the legend, Norman Dane Vaughan dropped out of Harvard in 1928 to pursue Admiral Byrd's Expedition in Antarctica. He was the chief dog driver on the two-year Byrd expedition and later Byrd named an Antarctic mountain in his honor.

He also mushed as part of a search and rescue unit in World War II, in the Olympics, and in the Iditarod, as well as in three Presidential Inauguration ceremonies.

On 16, 1994, Vaughan climbed his eponymous 10,302-foot peak, three days shy of his 89th birthday. National Geographic documented this trip in a film, Height of Courage

My encounters with Colonel Vaughan via my work with the Nature Conservancy in Alaska were inspiring and humorous. The humorous included bringing him to a TNC party in New York as part of an Alaska exhibit where he posed with a sled dog team from Long Island.

He was a man of tremendous courage, opinion, and drive. And he gave me three things that I still hold as inspiration: a zipper pull he had designed for clumsily shod gloved hands, which now dons my sleeping bag; words of wisdom he imparted to my young son when they first met; and a playing card he had developed bearing his face, bio, and motto: "Dream Big and Dare to Fail."

Vaughan died on December 23, 2005, 4 days after his 100th birthday. (Hear an interview with Colonel Vaughan from NPR, recorded just prior to his centennial birthday.

How wonderful to be reminded of Colonel Vaughan, and to be back in the Alaska we both once called home.

(Thanks to globalgirl for reaching out about her Great Uncle!)