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From the Associated Press: electric companies in the southeast USA are growing concerned over possible summer droughts. Nuclear power plants require tremendous amounts of water for cooling. Reservoirs, rivers and lake levels in some areas may fall below the intake pipes. If that happens, nuclear plant operators have no choice but to shut down their facilities and pray for rain.

Electricity produced for the grid cannot be stored on a massive scale. It’s consumed within a second of production.

Yesterday I mentioned Sun’s acquistion of MySQL, a leading open source database company. BusinessWeek published an article about Oracle’s acquistion of middleware vendor BEA Systems. That deal has been in the works for a year, according to IT-Director.com.

Shane Schick’s follow-up on the Oracle deal is a nice overview of why CXOs should care about middleware. Middleware is a translation layer that helps data move between different software packages and computer systems. Without middleware, e-commerce just doesn’t work very well.

Many companies have to link heterogenous information systems within their value chain. Even more companies have to link their value chains with those of their suppliers and customers, which means even more heterogeneity.

Oracle has a healthy chunk of the financial services middleware market. BEA provides access to other sectors, including telecommunications,where Oracle has not been competitive.

However, Oracle will have to spend time pruning and consolidating the combined product lines. Time may not be on their side, given the growing signs of economic recession in North America.

Amidst all of these developments, we should not forget that middleware and database software are important parts of data security. Cory Doctorow has described his radical view that data breaches are as bad as toxic waste and nuclear accidents. He has a good point – the effects might last for decades, and the companies that leaked the data might not bear the true costs.

Wired has an article about solastalgia, a condition that Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht describes as a loss or yearning for accustomed environmental cues. This web site has more information and articles about the phenomenon.

January in Honolulu means that the winds and surf get rougher while the air gets cooler. It’s not cold weather – no one is freezing to death here.

Yet the local weathercasters tell viewers to break out the blankets and jackets. During my sunrise run, I see other people wearing mismatched sweatsuits, hats, and gloves. They’re shivering and miserable, while I’m wearing my usual tank top and shorts.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is encouraging consumers to recycle their old mobile phones, according to the New York Times. E-waste or electronic waste has become a greater problem as mobile phone and computer consumption increases worldwide. Mobile phone batteries contain high levels of heavy metals.

EPA’s new “easy call” campaign will let consumers drop off their mobile phone at participating stores, or return the phone with a prepaid mailer.

Of course, consumers can always resell their old phones on eBay or a dedicated site. There are campaigns to collect old mobile phones for soldiers, crime victims, and others who may only need a lifeline or limited connection.

Consumers seem more likely to return their old phone when they purchase a new one. Some mobile phone stores offer to transfer address books and files to a new phone, and keep the old phone for recycling. I try to erase or wipe my old mobile phones before I retire them, just for the sake of my own privacy.

World: Yahoo! News - Nuclear Industry Still Haunted by Chernobyl - U.N.: “The nuclear industry is still struggling to overcome the damage done to its reputation by Chernobyl, even though nuclear power is an ‘environmentally superior’ energy source, the U.N. atomic agency said Sunday. ‘Despite the array of measures that have been put in place since Chernobyl to offset the possibility of a severe accident, these risks can never be brought to zero and they continue to weigh heavily on public perceptions,’ International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said. ”