friday lost and found: saturday morning edition

Meet Goldendale, a small town with a population of about 3,000 that has seen economic growth and education opportunities from wind power. The dirty fuel industry likes to talk about how they create jobs and that every coal plan that gets shut down puts men and women out of work. So, it’s good to remember that there are energy sector jobs out there that don’t involve being killed in a mine explosion where it takes 22 hours for anyone to even know you’re missing.

***
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler has been all up in Facebook’s grill this week. He’s written about the social network’s photo sharing app; it’s not-so-secret plans/hopes and dreams — Code Name: SPARTAN! — to move away from native mobile apps in favor of the more open (ie, Facebook-controllable) space of HTML5; and the fact that it is finally rolling out a damned iPad app. Then he wrote about how annoyed and pissed Facebook’s PR people are at him for writing all this stuff and called it a war.

Say what you will about Siegler — and people have a lot to day about him, just check his comments — but the dude is a good blogger. He comes at you with an upfront point-of-view and when he gets his teeth into something he goes after it and covers every minute detail. He’s done this with Apple and Google (sometimes to the point of absurdity) and it looks like he’s getting into Facebook now. For those of us who care about this sort of thing, we’re well served by the parislemon.

***
In news from the big city, New York City police stopped and nearly ticketed a Dutch girl (seriously, she was) for riding her bicycle in a skirt. Washington DC is the most sexually active city in the country according to a study by Trojan. However, it turns out that DC residents aren’t enjoying all of that sex. The Trojan survey reveals what much of Congress already knows: Washington is full of self-loathing pervs.

In related news, New Belgium Brewing Company will be bringing its signature Fat Tire beer and lesser-known Ranger IPA to DC before Labor Day. And there was much rejoicing.

***
Finally, as we gear up for the do-or-die US v. Jamaica Gold Cup match today (I’ve got a bad feeling about this one) you can rest assure that Major League Soccer is doing all it can to bring high-priced, over-the-hill Europeans into the league at the expense of less-expensive players with more upside. The latest: AS Roma legend Francesco Totti to Los Angeles Galaxy (of course).