Megabus, a low fare bus service offering wifi, debut a couple of years ago between Boston and NYC.  It was recently announced that they are now servicing between Providence and NYC with both free wifi and laptop chargers.

I found this PBN article somewhat shocking.  It says that since 2006 Rhode Island's largest export has been waste and scrap.  Yes everyone let me say that again.  Rhode Islands largest export is waste and scrap.  I am by no means an economic expert but to me there just seems something terrible wrong when waste and scrap is your biggest export.  I would have guessed that our largest economic engine was tourism; which I guess is not really something you can export.  There is probably a lot of economic theory and knowledge that I am lacking to fully understand this and to put it into perspective but this would be a very interesting discussion.

One thing I would add to such a discussion is the work of Ray Anderson CEO of Interface, an worldwide industrial carpeting company.  Mr. Anderson about fifteen years ago came to the realization that his company which he personally founded was polluting the earth, was unsustaibile and that business are the biggest pollutes and the ones whith the most power to change that.  He has since lead the company to reach the goal of being 100% sustainable. You can read about his effort in his book entitled "Confession of a Radical Industrialist". One thing he talks about his the company effort to reduce waste and how the saved signifigant money by doing so.

What ever your take on eviromental issues here is an example of reducing waste (and scrap) while increasing profits. So please help me to understand why waste and scrap is our top export?

Just a thought but I was interested in the idea of adding some sort of tweeter feed here to RI Nexus.  This may seem ironic coming from someone who doesn't use Twitter (I can give reason why not in another conversation)  but I do think of RI Nexus as a communications hub.  As such it seems like a good extension to add.

If anyone has a spare second can you check to see if you can access the RI Secretary of State website?  I've not been able to access it in some time. I've also tried a few different addresses

  http://www.state.ri.us/  (from Google search "sec state ri")

  http://www.sec.state.ri.us/ (from RI.govdirectory listing, from Google search "sec state ri")

 I did call there offices last week and they said they would check with their IT department but still no success.  Every time I m getting a network timeout response.  Can anyone access this site or have they changed their address and not told anyone?

 Ed

I'm seeing an error on the Recent Comments page, http://rinexus.com/comments.

The error ...

warning: htmlentities() [function.htmlentities]: Invalid multibyte sequence in argument in /var/www/vhosts/rinexus.com/httpdocs/sites/all/modules/rinexus_tidbits/rinexus_tidbits.module on line 834.

Of note I am viewing with Firefox 2.0.

Ed

Edward Tufte will be presenting his one day course entitled "Presenting Data and Information" in Providence on Sept. 22nd. Edward Tufte "writes, designs, and self-publishes his books on analytical design, which have received more than 40 awards for content and design. He is Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design." Those who attend his course will receive copies of each of his four books. Also for groups of 10 or more registering at one time (via phone) can receive a 25% discount.

I have not personally attend his course but know several people who have and have found it extremely informative. I do have three of his books and refer to them often.

For more information about the course see here. Also the RI Library system has several of his books if you are interested in seeing his work.