Barack Obama is naming nobel prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary. This makes me happy.

It makes me even happier that he’s said “ethanol is wonderful stuff, but I’d rather drink it.

(thanks to Luke Frankl)

Chu won his nobel prize for experimental work in cooling and trapping atoms via lasers. In recent years he’s been working in the area of biophysics at UC Berkeley and is director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He’s also been very active in the area of climate change, and advocating alternative energy and energy efficiency.