DeSmogBlog has just received the 2007 statement of political expenditures for a recently formed astroturf group calling themselves "Kansans for Affordable Energy" (KAE).

The document is attached to the end of this post.

According to the report, the KAE received $145,400 in total contributions. Of that amount, $120,000 came from the world's largest coal company, Peabody Energy and another $25,000 came from Sunflower Electric Power Corporation. In other words, all but $400 of the money provided to this group of Kansans "concerned" about "affordable energy" came from Big King Coal.

An astroturf group if there ever was one.

You might remember the November, 2007 story about an organization calling itself "Kansans for Affordable Energy" (KAE).

In a nutshell:

Shortly after the Kansas Heath Board turned down and application for the expansion of a coal-electricity plant, the KAE ran state-wide ads claiming that Venezualean leader Hugo Chavez, Russian President Putin and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were smiling because canceling the coal plant expansion plan would mean increased natural gas imports from their countries.

The KAE forgot to mention that two-thirds of natural gas imports to Kansas come from Canada. They also forgot to mention that their ad campaign was bought and paid for by coal-giant Peabody Energy and Sunflower Electric Power Corp. (the company who lost the Kansas expansion bid).

Presumably, the idea behind the KAE advertising these ads, as opposed to the coal companies was to create an image of "concerned citizens," as opposed to "concerned multi-national coal giant." Instead, all sides in this little PR spin campaign end up looking bad and the people of Kansas should be outraged at Peabody, Sunflower and the KAE for this blatant attempt to deceive.

If you like this story, please consider voting for it on Digg.com. 

Garry Barker has been a journalist for over 50 years and in that time has had a range of amazing experiences, some of which he shares with me in today’s show. These include working for Rupert Murdoch in 1955, meeting Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in 1962, working in the White House Press Corp during the JFK years, meeting Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and his time as a war correspondent in VietNam.

You can catch Garry every week on TPN’s Take Two podcast where he interviews senior Australian business executives with his fellow journalist Leon Gettler and provides insight and analysis into the week’s business news.

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I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

The United States Marine Corps has a long standing legacy of producing some of the United States most renowned leaders. Since 1775, countless governors, senators, astronauts, athletes, entertainers, and business executives have served in this elite branch of the United States military.

The U.S. Marines are known and respected the world over for their leadership ability. How do they do it? What do they know that enables them to be such successful leaders on active duty and then in the civilian sector? Well, there are universal leadership principles that people respond to.

Our featured guest in this episode of Small Business Trends Radio is Wally Adamchik, Founder and President of FireStarter Speaking and Consulting. Wally reveals the essential characteristics that make up the foundation of successful leadership.

For instance, did you know that:

Wally has written a book titled: NO YELLING: The 9 Secrets of Marine Corps Leadership You Must Know to Win in Business. In this episode, Wally Adamchik shares the essential universal leadership characteristics used by the U.S. Marines to enable you to become the successful, natural born leader, you are capable of becoming.

Gain access to Wally’s insights by clicking the player below to listen to the full interview.

Hosts: Steve Gibson with Leo Laporte

More on the privacy threat from the Phorm system.

Guest: Alexander Hanff, UK technologist and activist.

Audible pick of the week:
The Black Hole War: My Battle to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (Unabridged) by Leonard Susskind, Narrated by Ray Porter. To sign up for you free book, visit AudiblePodcast.com/securitynow.

For 16kpbs versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Security Now is brought to you by Astaro Internet Security.

Bandwidth for Security Now! is provided by AOL Radio.

Running time: 1:01:49

At Microsoft’s remix event in Melbourne yesterday I caught up with Brian Goldfarb, Group Product manager, UX Platform and Tools Strategy, Microsoft Corp. Brian’s group is responsible for Silverlight , their new product for developing rich content delivered through a browser, and Popfly, their Yahoo Pipes-like mashup creator.

To check out the “Top Banana” demo that I was so blown-away by, go to the Silverlight site and click on “Silverlight In Action”.

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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

Another week, another Talking Tech podcast with Mark Evans, Kevin Restivo and Duncan Stewart. The tech landscape was dominated this week by an alliance between NBC Universal and News Corp. that will apparently be a challenger to YouTube. (Mike Arrington has a lengthy analysis that suggests YouTube has littleto worry about - at least in the short-term). Duncan and Stewart both believe that while the to-be-named joint venture’s prospects uncertain, its creation is yet another attack on the YouTube empire. Duncan adds he’s intrigued by the fact no one has jumped on the legal bandwagon after Viacom’s copyright infringement lawsuit was recently filed.

Of particular interest to Duncan are Motorola’s financial troubles, which could the mobile device market is quickly becoming a low-margin, low-profit commodity. After all, if you can buy a Razr - the coolest phone in the world not so long ago - for US$49, the margins can’t be that healthy, right? For us Canadian commentators, the obvious question is whether the Blackberry will also fall victim to the commodity trend. The answer - for now - is probably not because most Blackberrry purchases are businesses willing to pay for its reliability and security.

Finally, we take a look at why Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Google’s growth plans “insane” . Does Ballmer have a point given Google’s habit of tossing out new services that failed to gain much, if any, traction. Or his statement simply a reflection of Microsoft’s growing concern about Google’s inevitable march into the office productivity market - and perhaps the browser and OS markets?

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Rodney Brooks is Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Chief Technical Officer and sits on the Board of iRobot Corp. From July 1, 2003 until June 30, 2007, he was director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; prior to that, he was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

He chatted with me this morning about my deep-seated obsession to have a humanoid robot and HAL-like AI.

Prof Brooks will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in California next month. Get your tickets here.

For more reading about the current state of robots:

Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.

Add me to your Twitter account.

Do me a solid and digg the show.

Get the TPN version of Particls.

Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line - +613 9016 9699.

You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.

If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!

The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ - Robert Steele presented the Keytone address at Gnomedex, 2007.

Robert Steele is a former Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer for twenty years and was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992. Steele is a former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the founder and CEO of OSS .Net as well as the Golden Candle Society. Steele also was a member of the Adjunct Faculty of Marine Corps University in the mid-1990s.

From Robert himself:

“Your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to help create the Earth Intelligence Network. Make it your own. This is the new printing press, you control what, when, where, and how. This is a non-profit meant to augment human capacity and preserve the commonwealth. The only strong suggestions I have is that you focus on reality, that you integrate real-world budgets, and that you think about Serious Games with truthful data sets as the next big leap in understanding and blogging in time and space for results.

I think of bloggers as the Paul Revere’s of our time, digitally sounding the alarm, making sense, connecting dots. Bloggers can both discern, and disseminate. You are all, as are Hackers, pushing the edge of the envelope. You have the right stuff. We need more of it. In my view, up to this point you have been the militia, lurking in the woods and working often alone. The time has come to organize. I challenge you to do for public intelligence what LINUX has tried to do for open source software.”

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EVENT: Charles Ray, who is thirty years deep in the art world, will be at the New School tonight for a Public Art Fund talk. The leader of the "conceptual realism" movement with a "lively, self-deprecating sense of humor" will discuss his "virtuoso craftsmanship" and his depiction of "familiar elements of everyday life and modern art in disarmingly altered ways."

6:30pm // The New School, John Tishman Auditorium [66 W 12th St] // $5

SCIENCE: "Mysteries of Science: Frogs Are Dying: What Does It Mean for Us?" is the topic on hand at the 92nd St Y tonight. Frogs react quickly to ecological changes, so this does not bode well for us. We also hope someone brings up the bees at this discussion!

7pm // 92 St Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall [Lexington Ave at 92nd St] // $30

MUSIC: In 2005 we brought Ghostland Observatory (pictured) up for their first New York show. My, how times have changed for these Austinites...tonight they headline Bowery Ballroom. They've got a deejay opener that will get you in the mood to dance...dance...dance!

Listen: Piano Man.mp3

8pm // Bowery Ballroom [6 Delancey St] // $15 (tickets at the door)

THEATER: Previews start tonight for The Living Theatre’s highly anticipated return to the Lower East Side after many years centered in Italy. The political avant-garde theater collective, founded in 1947 by Judith Malina and the late Julian Beck, is famous for a confrontational performance style intended to radicalize audiences. They’re inaugurating their new space at 21 Clinton Street with a revival of The Brig, an in-your-face play about the brutality of military prisons, written by a veteran who was incarcerated in a U.S. Marine Corps Brig in the 50s. The Brig was a hit in 1963 at their space on 14th Street – until the IRS shut them down. - John Del Signore

8pm // 21 Clinton St // Wednesdays are Pay What You Can nights, no reservations

Photo via Ben Brown's flickr.

On Monday, February 26 Cambrian House hosted our first Cambrian Lounge event. Check out the video below!!

We hope to use it as a launching pad for further networking events that will bring together people from the business, tech and investment communities to support entrepreneurial spirit, network, talk shop, and pitch and grow ideas.

The first event was held in our home town of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We invited Don Tapscott, best selling author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, to speak to members of Calgary’s tech and business community.

It gave us a chance to tell Calgarians about Cambrian House, and get them excited about crowdsourcing. Moving forward, our goal is to host Cambrian Lounge events all over the place and invite our community members to drive the topic, speakers, etc. But, one step at a time, as they say… We’ll keep you in the know, I promise.

Don provided loads of information about Web 2.0 and why traditional businesses need to accept the reality that consumers are taking on a more active role; and that opening up to the crowd beyond your building’s four walls can result in major successes.

As he believes in the freedom of information in our “collaborative” world, we’ve made the entire presentation available. Check it out (it’s 83 minutes, but we’ve provided a breakdown below for ease). Be sure to pick up the book too.

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If you have difficulties playing the video, please contact us.

00:00:00   Opening titles while JR interviews Don Tapscott. “Companies that figure it out like Boeing, Proctor and Gamble and Gold Corp. are the ones that are succeeding, and those that don’t are starting to be the ones that fail.” 00:01:13   Sean Wise the host of Dragon’s Den, introduces Don Tapscott. “If the 90s were all about outsourcing, the new millennium will be about crowdsourcing.” 00:05:18   Don Tapscott. “Cambrian House is a company I’ve been following since its inception. 00:07:05   This is becoming a new mode of production. The new web is beginning to fundamentally change the deep structures and architecture of the corporation. 00:07:51   4 big drivers causing a perfect storm. Technology advances. 00:07:51   4 big drivers causing a perfect storm. Technology drivers: “The Thing”, high speed, geo-spatiality, true multimedia, web services and integration. 00:18:35   Net Generation. Growing up Digital. School enrollment demographics. “Time online is not time taken away from playing with your friends, its time taken away from television.” 00:33:26   Social Revolution. “Its how the old HTML website that viewed the web as being about presentation of information was eclipsed by the XML based community that harnessed the power of self organization.” 00:36:17   Economic Revolution. Crowdsourcing as natural extension of decreasing transaction costs which have been steadily dropping ever since industrial age. Industrial Age. Extended Enterprise. Business Webs. Mass Collaboration. 00:41:11   Naked Corporation. “Fitness is no longer an option.” 00:42:10   Sharing. 00:44:13   Think Global, Act Global. 00:46:10   Digital Conglomerates. 00:47:35   Gold Corp. Rob McEwen publishes his geological data to allow peer review. 00:50:05   Peer Pioneers. Wikipedia. Spike Source. Top Coder. Zopa. Marketocracy. Ideagoras. Prosumers. Second Life. The Grey Album. 01:00:00   Sharing of Science, the Science of Sharing. 01:01:07   Open Platforms. Amazon API. Pikspot. Boeing. Chinese motorcycle industry. 01:03:40   Wiki Workplace. 01:04:49   Crisis of Leadership. “Leaders of the old paradigm are often the last to embrace the new.” “Leadership can come from anywhere.” 01:07:41   Crowdsourcing, Google Maps and Katrina. 01:09:26   Questions and Answers. Politics. Clinton Whitehouse. Week long discussion on The Digital Divide which never happened. 01:12:40   Tagging. XML. Spam. Angelina Jolie. BS detection. 01:16:06   “How are we going to keep out the bad guys?” Craigslist. Intellipedia. 01:20:16   Sean Wise on IdeaWarz, the Cambrian House idea filtering mechanism. 01:22:08   Brian, Shelley, Martin and Michael. “Bar is now open, please begin your mass collaboration.”