Wind and solar, unlike coal, do not produce power at the same rate at all times. If they are adopted at scale, the grid infrastructure and the meters like this one will have to be much more flexible than what we built 100 years ago. Power generation has been centralized since the very early days of the industry, but now, wind and solar open the possibility to generate power right on or near your home. But to make economic sense, we need meters and grid tie-ins that can easily accomplish this type of "reverse billing"... So, we find ourselves in a new era of electric meter innovation. A host of companies is trying to find just the right mix of features that will satisfy utilities and provide consumers with more flexibility in how they make, buy and use power. Like everything else in the internet age, electricity-billing systems are about to make the transition from a centralized, one-way mode of operation to two-way systems that are connected to the internet. In addition to the back-end differences, the next generation of meters has received a facelift that will let consumers see their energy usage in near real-time. Of course, people have been talking about "smart meters" for years. But after years of delayed rollouts, utilities finally appear ready to scale them up. This electronic meter [pictured above]from Tendril is slated for a massive rollout with five major utilities that the company says will reach 2 million homes.

The Olympics are perhaps an odd battleground for Chinese patriotism. They are a Western invention, as are many of their sports. Yet staging the games has long been a Chinese dream, a way of showing that the country is a respected member of the international community and of showing off that it has become a sporting giant. If, on August 24th when the games end, China is not at the top of the medal table and Westerners are seen as ungrateful for China's hospitality, expect a lot of sullenness... The opening ceremony at the bird's nest this evening is spectacular, but with touches of the authoritarian. Zhang Yimou, a filmmaker who once pushed the boundaries of artistic freedom in China but is now an establishment favourite, directed the spectacle. The display begins with 2,008 soldiers dressed in traditional (civilian) gowns banging in unison on drums. It sets an uncomfortably martial tone (more than half of the 14,000 performers this evening are troops). The uniformed goose-stepping soldiers who raise the Olympic flag do not help alleviate this. Neither do China's leaders, who watch impassively from a podium in the sweltering heat dressed in near identical suits. Performers move in perfect unison or in regimented choreography in a way that would make North Korea, a master of such extravaganzas, envious. China is missing its chance to smash stereotypes: the opening ceremony displays a nation marching in lockstep. It avoids overt political references, but does little to refute Mr Ai's criticisms that the Beijing games are, for China, about politics. A normally vibrant city feels stifled. Dissenting voices are subdued.

Georgia was once the jewel of its empire, and Russia has never psychologically accepted it as a sovereign state. Nostalgia for the Soviet empire has long been the leitmotif of Russia's ideology. This month it re-enacted its fantasy with aircraft and ground troops... The fact that Georgia is backed by the West made it a particularly appealing target. In fighting Georgia, Russia fought a proxy war with the West--especially with America (which had upgraded the Georgian army). All this was a payback for the humiliation that Russia suffered in the 1990s, and its answer to NATO's bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and to America's invasion of Iraq. "If you can do it, so can we," was the logic. Russia was also drawing a thick red line on the map of Europe which the West and NATO should not cross. And, as in any war, there were powerful subjective reasons in play. Mr Putin's personal hatred of Mr Saakashvili, and his ability to deploy the entire Russian army to fulfil his vendetta, made war all but inevitable.

While its forces were dropping bombs on Georgia, the Kremlin bombarded its own population with an astonishing, even by Soviet standards, propaganda campaign. One Russian deputy reflected the mood: "Today, it is quite obvious who the parties in the conflict are. They are the US, UK, Israel who participated in training the Georgian army, Ukraine who supplied it with weapons. We are facing a situation where there is a NATO aggression against us." In blue jeans and a sports jacket, Mr Putin, cast as the hero of the war, flew to the Russian side of the Caucasus mountain range to hear, first-hand, hair-raising stories from refugees that ranged from burning young girls alive to stabbing babies and running tanks over old women and children. These stories were whipped up into anti-Georgian and anti-Western hysteria. Russian politicians compared Mr Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein and Hitler and demanded that he face an international tribunal. What Russia was doing, it seemed, was no different from what the West had done in its "humanitarian" interventions. There was one difference, however. Russia was dealing with a crisis that it had deliberately created. Its biggest justification for military intervention was that it was formally protecting its own citizens. Soon after Mr Putin's arrival in the Kremlin in 2000, Russia started to hand out passports to Abkhaz and South Ossetians, while also claiming the role of a neutral peacekeeper in the region. When the fighting broke out between Georgia and South Ossetia, Russia, which had killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in Chechnya, argued that it had to defend its nationals. But as Mr Bildt argues, "we have reason to remember how Hitler used this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack substantial parts of central Europe." In the process of portraying Georgia as a fascist-led country, Russia was displaying the syndrome it was condemning.

Lopez Lomong, one of the Sudanese "Lost Boys" and a member of the anti-genocide group Team Darfur, has been chosen by his 595 U.S. Olympic teammates to carry our flag on Friday. What, we couldn't find a Tibetan monk on the team? ...Just hours before U.S. team captains met to decide on the flag carrier, Chinese officials rescinded the visa of Joey Cheek, a speedskating gold medalist who carried the U.S. flag at the Closing Ceremonies at the 2006 Winter Games and later co-founded Team Darfur. After that slap at Cheek, U.S. athletes here had almost nothing to say on the topic. One even referred to the subject as "the question they warned us about." Perhaps they didn't answer individually. But the entire U.S. team gave its answer -- as a group and in capital letters -- with Lomong's selection. You jerk Cheek's visa. We put Lomong in your face. And do it proudly. You have to hand it to the Chinese Communist Party: They certainly know how to muzzle Americans. Cheek, a Princeton grad, might have held a seminar. Four billion people around the world will see Lomong carrying our flag. Far more than that, untold millions of people, in the next few days, will hear Lomong's life story, in his own words. In a half-hour monologue here on Friday, just 10 hours before he was to carry the flag, Lomong told a tale of grief, endurance, redemption and almost unimaginable hardship that captures in human terms every aspect of the Darfur tragedy. And without Lomong saying a single "controversial" political word, he highlighted China's culpability by cynically supporting the Sudanese regime as partner in the vast oil company PetroChina.

• Foreign Policy and National Security advisors
• Foreign Economic Policy advisors
• Environment/ Energy advisors (currently only for Senator Obama, though reports suggest that economic advisors for Senator McCain seem also to be advising on environment/energy issues).

So who really has the best energy policy? Well Paris Hilton, of course, writes Newsweek's Howard Fineman. "Paris's message: don't stress, don't dis each other's ideas, let's just try everything! It doesn't get any smarter than that," Fineman writes. John McCain and Barack Obama "by contrast, are engaged in a phony war that refuses to accept the Hiltonian point: we need every tactic in this new energy war. We need all the production, conservation and research strategies we can imagine. Nothing should be belittled, or dismissed; everything should be attempted. We can't afford to think otherwise."

It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip. The clearest example of this is when one of the (between two and six) commentators on any given story provides their "analysis". This comprises of showing a video clip and then talking with the assumed voice of the person in the clip. So, for example, Barack Obama gave a press conference. A clip of around four or five seconds of what he said is shown and then the TV studio people take over. News anchor: "So what he's saying is 'Hey, I'm the guy in charge here - I'm the person who decides what to do, not you.' Is that right?" Commentator: "I think what he was saying was: 'If I become president, then I'll be the person that calls the shots.'" Commentator Two: "I don't agree. He's saying: 'I am going to listen to others - that's what I'll do - but make no mistake I'll be the person who makes the final decision.'" This goes on and on with people making up dialogue and pretending to be Obama (or John McCain or anyone else that comes to mind) rather than broadcasting what was actually said.

• Unfair comment: The analysis of what someone has said is clearly bent by the reporters themselves along ideological lines. • Tail-chasing and navel gazing: The media reports constantly on itself. • Never let the story get in the way: The focus is entirely on the back story, and the actual news is given lip-service. • The Jerry Springer school of journalism: There is never a neutral statement - it is always an extreme perspective. • The gold(fish) rush: There is absolutely no effort to provide historical context. • When did you stop beating your wife? Coverage is deeply cynical in the sense that people are assumed to have a hidden and planned agenda even when the connection drawn would have been impossible to predict as it doesn't follow logical reasoning. • Fight! Fight! Fight! There is no effort to reach a greater understanding.

One reason for the orphan status of behaviour change is that it is seen as slightly unscientific. Dr Gayle and her colleagues are trying to change that. They have been looking at research in the field and discovered a lot of trials that attempt to borrow the methodology of medicine by using control groups. These trials quantify everyday experience and, in the round, suggest that campaigns to promote condom use, to curb promiscuity and to promote the use by drug takers of clean needles can reduce infection rates in the groups they are aimed at by 20-30%.

John McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam when a captor showed him unexpected mercy, which affirmed his faith. Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago when a black church helped him embrace faith despite his serious doubts. Religion & Politics '08 now offers in-depth profiles that tell the candidates' faith stories and explain their views of how religion should impact public life.

...For someone who believes that U.S. interests are served by investing in global poverty reduction and economic growth and applying the lessons we have learned about investing in well-governed countries that can own and drive their own development, it makes little sense to kill -- or "pause" -- the one experiment we have. Despite language in the report that suggests good intent and support of the MCC model, pausing the program for a year will send a signal to countries that have worked hard to meet the eligibilty criteria and design credible programs that the U.S. doesn't follow through on its commitments. A $1 billion appropriation would at least have saved face. And language that suggests the MCC should reprogram assistance to "countries important to U.S. interests" takes the poverty focus of the MCC political, thereby casting doubt on the degree of real support for the model. And, finally, the larger question: what are the chances of reaching a grand bargain between Congress and the Executive Branch on 21st Century foreign aid reform that would embody what we know enhances development effectiveness -- multi-year strategic budgeting, long-term commitment to economic growth and poverty reduction, country-ownership, attention to impact results not disbursements -- when the one model we have is being sacrificed?

McCain is a figure from an old-fashioned America that is out of fashion in our most cosmopolitan precincts -- the America of "Gunsmoke" and Gary Cooper, not "The Daily Show" and George Clooney. For McCain, "Duty, Honor, Country" isn't patriotic pablum but a credo to live by. And he has worked out a way to apply the credo to politics. He summarized it in a commencement address at Johns Hopkins in 1999, when he gave the graduates this advice: "Enter public life determined to tell the truth; to put problem-solving ahead of partisanship; to defend the public interest against the special interests; to risk your personal ambitions for the sake of the country and the ideals that make her great. Keep your promise to America, and you will keep your honor. You will know a happiness far more sublime than pleasure." "That's what it's all about," McCain said in the interview. But such high-mindedness can be difficult to sustain, and when he fails to do so, McCain's self-criticism can be devastating. --- "I think his mind is visceral," [Former Senator Gary] Hart said, "driven less by thought and more by feelings. This doesn't mean he's totally reactive or without logic or thought processes; it just means he's a fighter pilot. He reacts to circumstances." --- McCain has repeatedly lambasted Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for failing to understand the Iraq war. McCain was asked about Obama's warnings in 2002 that a war against Iraq was a bad idea that would require a U.S. "occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." Wasn't Obama more prescient than McCain, who gave repeated prewar assurances such as "the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators" and "we will win it easily"? McCain replied: "I think that's a legitimate question." Then he added: "But the fact is, we did win easily. It was terribly mismanaged." --- "What he really enjoys, although the witnesses seldom do, is to put opposing witnesses on the same panel, and sit back and watch them fight, and see who has the best argument," [longtime friend and biographer Mark] Salter said. The Senate Commerce Committee chaired by McCain did this in 2001-02 during hearings on global warming, convincing the chairman that the scientific debate was settled -- the Earth is warming. Learning from conflict is a method McCain happily defends.