schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger: a man, myth, and a soon to be animated legend?

Stan Lee, the brilliant mind behind many famous Marvel superheroes, has unveiled the first facepalming trailer for a new animated series called "The Governator." The three-minute video shows off a souped up '90s throwback cartoon TV show that features ol' Arnie at the end of his eight-year term of governor of California. After resigning, he declares "I won't be back" and fades away from the public eye--until robots overrun the world.

In true Stan Lee fashion, the main protagonist has a secret; Arnold … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments in Schwarzenegger v. EMA, a case that challenges California's 2005 law banning the sale of "violent" video games to minors. The law has yet to take effect, as rulings by lower federal courts have held it to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

There's little doubt that banning the sale of nearly any content to adults violates the protections of free speech, including, as decided last year, video depictions of cruelty to animals.

In … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--So a British billionaire, a Hollywood action hero, and an unusually good-looking city politician walk into an airport terminal.

That would be Virgin Group CEO Sir Richard Branson, California governor (and erstwhile Terminator) Arnold Schwarzenegger, and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who were all on hand at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday morning to kick off Virgin America's inaugural flight from San Francisco to Toronto. It's the three-year-old Burlingame, Calif.-based airline's first international route.

"To get Virgin America established, we had many battles," Branson said in the press conference, sounding more like … Read more

Fuel tech start-up Cobalt Biofuels launched a California plant on Tuesday that will produce biobutanol from forestry byproducts.

Biobutanol, butanol made from biomass as opposed to fossil fuels, already has approval for use in fuel blends for vehicles under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

Cobalt and others have claimed that biobutanol has an advantage over ethanol, which has been known to have corrosion issues in some older fuel systems and pipelines and is conventionally used in fuel blends and in newer cars with ethanol-ready engines. Biobutanol can be used as a standalone fuel even in conventional gasoline car engines, … Read more

Among the budget cuts California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to health care, prison, environment, and other parts of the state budget, there's one area that has a good chance of actually getting a budget increase: open source in IT.

According to a policy letter (PDF) issued last week by California CIO Teri Takai, "the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in California state government [has now been formally established] as an acceptable practice."

It's about time.

California faces a $20 billion budget deficit, a gaping void that open-source software, no matter how aggressively used by … Read more

Google Earth and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday that Google is developing a tool to map out disturbing scenarios of how California can be affected by climate change.

The project comes out of a collaboration with the California Natural Resources Agency, Schwarzenegger, and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), an organization funded by the California Energy Commission and Google.org.

"There is a serious bottleneck in delivering relevant information, much of which is map-based, to decisionmakers in a manner that allows them to turn climate change research results into effective climate change adaptation decisions and policies," according to … Read more

As more government officials choose to publicly answer questions submitted by Internet users, they're encountering a new phenomenon: marijuana activists intent on forcing answers to the would-you-legalize-pot question.

In March, President Obama's first virtual town hall took a detour when questions about legalizing marijuana were voted to the top of the "financial stability," "jobs," "budget," and (of course) "green jobs" polls on WhiteHouse.gov

On Wednesday, it was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who was put on the spot. Digg.com users propelled a legalize-marijuana question to the No. … Read more

By her own admission, Maria Shriver is not techy.

Confusing hardware for software and feeling like a fish out of water while speaking at the Adobe Max conference in San Francisco, California's first lady is seemingly more comfortable talking about education and history--anything other than technology.

Regardless, Shriver has lent her name and efforts to a rather sophisticated online educational tool for students of state history called "The California Legacy Trails." In my brief one-on-one interview with her, we talked about her inspiration for creating the program (Boston's Freedom Trail); who it's targeted for (the … Read more

SAN DIEGO--Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered a surprise speech at the Solar Power International conference here Monday night, saying that a sustained commitment to clean technologies can aid the country's economic recovery.

After touring the conference floor, Schwarzenegger spoke to solar industry professionals at what organizers are calling a "historic" solar power conference, which has shot in attendance from 6,000 people last year to an expected 20,000 this year.

The governor touted his state's environmental policies, which in many cases, have become models for other states and even for national policy, such as the … Read more