Jobs in the clean technology industry are growing twice as fast as the national average. So that's where the jobs are. Walletpop spoke with Ron Pernick, co-founder of West Coast-based Clean Edge and the author of The Clean Tech Revolution, to find out what these jobs are, how to land one, and, most importantly, how much they pay.

Here are some highlights from Clean Edge's recent report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, which I highly recommend you read if you want to know if this industry is for you. There are lots of resources for clean tech job trainings, education and job search engines, after the jump.

According to the report, jobs vary from accountant -- there's one we've heard before -- to wind turbine technician. From the report, here's a sample of jobs and their salaries:

• Hardware Design Engineer, Smart Grid $87,700 Mid-Level; requires Engineering Bachelor's
• Welder, Cutter, Solderer, or Brazer, Wind Power; salary: $50,300 Mid-Level; requires: High School/Associate's Degree
• Wind Turbine Technician, Wind Power; salary: $52,600 Entry-Level; requires: Bachelor's Degree
• Construction Superintendent, Wind Power; salary: $74,000 Senior-Level; requires: Bachelor's Degree
• Field Service Engineer, Wind Power; salary: $62,400 Mid-Level; requires: Engineering Bachelor's Degree

But can these jobs be outsourced?

Nelson George, executive producer of Chris Rock's controversial documentary now out in theaters, "Good Hair," talks about how the film exposes the global business and religious resources behind popular black hairstyles. Watch the video interview with George, an esteemed cultural critic, to find out why Beyonce has a religious ceremony in India to thank for her hair extensions.

George is also busy launching BlackAtlas.com, a new site funded by American Airlines that provides tips and personal insight about touring the world, from an African-American perspective. BlackAtlas highlights the hottest destinations in the world, pointing out stores, hangouts, beauty salons (for the good hair) that black tourists should be aware of in planning their trips.

Sure, you can grab a hot dog or slice of pizza in New York for cheap, but a balanced meal for $10 or less? In Manhattan? That's the idea behind the new site CheapEatery.com.

At first it seemed too good to be true. When Daniel Lyu, a former producer for The Food Network, told me about launching CheapEatery as a database ranking and profiling affordable restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn, we had to put him to the test. Can you get a balanced meal for $10 or less in the city that boasts some of the world's most expensive restaurants?

The opening scene of the new movie Trucker, about a tough, single female truck driver confronted with motherhood, will grab you. Not because it's a woman having an orgasm, or that the woman is sexy, girl-next-door Michelle Monaghan, but that it looks incredibly authentic.

Throughout the 93-minutes of Trucker, you can watch it on mute and still feel the gritty transition that Monaghan's character is forced to go through. Her acting is just that raw. (Oscar time!)

If you're like me, you like to eat Nutella at your desk, out of the jar and offer your spoon to any busybody co-worker who walks by, looking disgusted.

On one such blissful occasion, I smeared a dollop of Nutella on my desk, to see if the desk wanted some. OK, actually, I was running a consumer experiment testing leading brands of paper towels, investigating which one gives you the easiest clean-up and return on investment. Let's meet our three challengers:

Everyone's favorite satirical news source, The Onion, is coming out with a brand new book, Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, And Moral Rectitude From America's Finest News Source, just in time for the holidays.

The book shows you vintage Onion, going back to 1988, to the satirical paper's University of Wisconsin-Madison days, in black and white. With an introduction by NBC's Brian Williams, funny beyond the anchor desk, Our Front Pages has timeless headlines like "Panhandler Strike Enters Third Week," "Secondhand Smoke Causes Secondhand Coolness," and "War! Come On, Let's Have One!"

In Walletpop's Big News Podcast, I talked with editor-in-chief, Joe Randazzo, and web and politics editor, Baratunde Thurston about the political divisions in America today, and stupid people. In our discussion, you'll find out the do's and don'ts to landing a job at The Onion. Happy headline writing, y'all!

What do you get if the 1960s and a banker on Wall Street had a baby? Social entrepreneurism. Though it has a long history, it's been a buzzword since Muhammad Yunnus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for lifting people out of poverty through microloans.

Social entrepreneurism isn't charity; it's business as usual, tailored to those in high-need, and the subject of an upcoming documentary, The New Recruits: Can Capitalism Save the World?

"There's been this thing called charity, that as long as I can remember was the approach to helping those in need," says Jeremy Newberger, one of the film's directors and producers. Charity, says Newberger, has shown us it can't be the only solution. "There's still poor people, there's still suffering."

Newberger and his partners in Ironbound Films, Seth Kramer and Daniel A. Miller, wanted to understand this growing phenomenon of a market driven Peace Corp, so to speak. So with their video cameras, they shadowed three out of the nine 2009 fellows of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund, as they tried to build businesses in some of the world's most volatile regions.

"You're experiencing offices in the developing world," says Newberger, who calls the film "Apprentice meets Slum Dog Millionaire." Playing on this theme, The Office's Rainn Wilson is the narrator, which infuses the film with his dry humor.

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Hawaii and New York have absolutely nothing in common, except for making Bette Midler the Eco-Diva she is today.

This Friday, October 30th, Ms. Midler is throwing her annual Hulaween Ball, a lavish Halloween wonderland in the Waldorf Astoria, with a little hula-flavor--a nod to her Hawaiian roots. It is the most important event of the year for her non-profit, The New York Restoration Project, an organization determined, among many other things, to plant a million trees in New York. It's up to 250,000 trees planted, and counting.

The organization, which raises most of its funding from Hulaween, works hard to ensure that every nature-starved New Yorker lives within walking distance to a "green space." Other greening initiatives include youth education programs, building community gardens and events in low-income neighborhoods.

I spoke with Midler last spring about "rough" New York in the 1970s, when it was dangerous to step foot in Central Park at any hour of the day.

If we can't count on the government to keep us safe from the the Madoffs, coal ash spills that swallow up entire houses, arsenic in our tap water, or E. coli in our hamburger meat, then it's nice to have American D.I.Y.-ness to hold big business accountable.

Meet The Yes Men, two wacky guys who pose as regular corporate executives and say in public the things they wish corporations would. They do this by setting up websites cloned to look like the multinational corporations they want to prank, then wait to get invited to big industry conferences. When the invitations roll in, and they do, it's gloves off.

Their recent acts of hilarity include posing as Exxon Mobil execs and giving a morbid keynote speech on climate change to 300 oilmen at Canada's largest fuel conference. They also stopped by the Wharton School of Business as representatives of the World Trade Organization to tout new exploitation strategies for Africa.

"You learn the difference between right and wrong when you're very young, and somehow most of us forget it when we go out to work. Because we've set up a system where corporations are rewarded for bad behavior as long as they're making a profit," says Mike Bonanno, one half of the key duo of The Yes Men's operation.

Now their exploits have been captured in a movie, "The Yes Men Fix the World," which shows their activist sword-wielding. It is now hitting the road--you can look for a screening near you here.

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Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project is at it again. The non-profit, which works to revitalize parks and public spaces throughout New York City, built a community garden in one of New York's toughest neighborhoods, in the Bronx.

The garden, which looks like something out of Vanity Fair, opened October 6 and will also host cooking demonstrations, gardener workshops, summer concerts and community movie nights.

Designer and television host Sean Conway, author of the simply fabulous Cultivating Life: 125 Projects for Backyard Living, created the gardens by consulting locals on their needs and wishes. Most of the plots of land will go to school children at neighboring P.S. 73 to learn about gardening.