Who needs an Internet-Connected GPS?

In a few years after I've paid for someones college tuition - I think I'll need one of these (maybe 1 for each car).

Dash Unveils the First Internet-Connected GPS Device : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech:
". . . , the Dash Express along with the Dash Service do more than provide driving directions from point A to point B.
In fact, this is the first Internet-connected GPS system to provide you with interactive features that let you send an address straight to your system, conduct Yahoo! Local Searches, download RSS feeds of recommended destinations, and even plan alternate routes along with times of arrival so that you can skip traffic.
. . .
If you're on the road, you could easily have someone send your system an address, or you can send it straight from computer before you get behind the wheel. The possibilities are endless with this feature. Just imagine being able to send Evites in the future with a "Send to Car" address button that, when clicked, would send turn-by-turn driving directions to your guests' systems.
. . .
if you do a search for nearby gas stations, gas prices are also displayed to help you pick the closest gas station with the lowest gas price. If you're headed to the movie theatre, you can choose one based on movie times, and restaurants searches can be sorted out by a rating system
. . .
The Dash Express also provides you with up to three routing options along with traffic conditions and an estimated time of arrival so that you can select the fastest or shortest route. The latest updates are sent straight to your GPS system wirelessly thanks to AutoUpdate, so you'll always have the most current information"

It isn't cheap and the fancy stuff requires a monthly fee, but this looks like a service that could be worth the price to anyone who ever drives outside of their comfort zone. Look for it here

Update April 2008 - units are shipping:

Dash Express Review : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech:
"The Dash Express is rather big (4.8'W x 4.1'H x 2.8'D) compared to other GPS devices on the market, but that's due to a large battery, and three antennas inside that support Wi-Fi, GPRS, and GPS. The touchscreen display is a decent 4.3-inches, with a 480 x 272 resolution. There's a speaker on top of the device along with a touch-sensitive volume button on the left and a menu button on the right. The power button is located on the right side of the device, and USB connection on the left. The complete unit includes a mounting arm and cradle, a mounting arm extension, car power adapter, wall charger, and USB interface cable. What's nice about the device is that it can be mounted on the window or the dash.
. . .
Unfortunately, as a GPS device the Dash Express wasn't all that impressive compared to my car's in-dash system. The voice prompts are very computerized, sometimes incomprehensible, so I relied on the direction icons most of the time. I also thought the system was slow to update when it starts mapping your route, and sometimes while its on the road, which can be frustrating.
. . .
Overall, I really enjoyed the Dash Express experience. I like having that constant connection to the Internet, and being able to send RSS feeds, and address from my computer just makes you look at GPS systems differently. The Dash Express is currently available at Amazon for $399.99, which includes three months of free Dash Service. After that, you have to pay a monthly fee of $12.99 or $9.99 if you sign up for two years."

Tomorrow's technology - tires that warn you of problems

Some folks are already driving cars that continuously monitor the air pressure in each tire. These folks moved the smarts from the wheel to the tire itself ...

"Smart" tires can warn of impending flat - Yahoo! News:
"CHICAGO (Reuters) - An experimental tire can sense damage and warn drivers of a potential flat, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, offering the latest advance in 'smart' car technology.

Manufacturers already make tires that can warn drivers when tire pressure is too low but researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, have found a way to make the whole tire into a type of sensor.
. . . "

At least initially, it looks like this technology will get a pretty stiff markup:

"He said the technology would cost manufacturers about $1 per tire, translating into something like $50 per tire for consumers."

Social Networks - not everyone is a fan

I think John Dvorak is on to something here:

Why Social Networks Stink - Columns by PC Magazine:
"There's something annoying about the emergence of the now-ubiquitous social network. My displeasure reached a peak over the weekend when I was recording an edition of the Twit podcast in which Robert Scoble was ranking on the new Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle. His main complaint was that the product did not incorporate any social-networking structure. This was the last straw for me.

I mean, exactly how plugged into the community do you actually have to be nowadays to be okay with yourself?

Scoble's displeasure was somewhat understandable once he explained his idea. He meant that if one of his friends also had a Kindle, it would be cool to find out what books they had loaded on the thing and what they were currently reading. Personally, I'm thinking that this is yet another invasion of privacy."

"... What has been overlooked in the entire social-networking scheme is that at its core, it's not social networking but marketing. In fact, the entire MySpace scene is devoted mostly to selling music and keeping people up-to-date with their fav indie band. Sometimes events, such as a rave or a house party, can be announced on MySpace, although the real winner is still the indie band."

I'm not sure everyone would agree about these MySpace conclusions, but I'm certain most people who peruse one of these sites has wondered about the honesty of what they were reading. People are either marketing themselves or their products on these sites - they should be taken with a grain of salt, and not every new product is required to include a social-networking component.

BTW - The Kindle looks like a very good e-book reader, perhaps worth the price increase over the Sony. My concern is whether I really want another expensive device that can easily be lost, stolen, broken, or drowned.

The electronics will eventually be small enough to place inside a wristwatch - at that point, perhaps the electronic paper could be unrolled from a scroll the size of a pen, or perhaps replaced with a projection screen, possibly built into a pair of glasses.

Cell Phone freedom

It will be interesting to see what this does for rates . . .

Verizon Announces Plans to Unlock Network - News and Analysis by PC Magazine:
" Verizon Wireless marked a big change in its game plan today, by announcing plans to open up its network to 'Any App, Any Device.'

While company representatives insisted during a conference this morning that Verizon has long been open to innovations and shifts in the industry, users have long recognized the nation's number-two network as being one of the most restrictive--crippling features on handsets and refusing to open itself up to unlocked devices and third-party applications, while competitors such as AT&T have proven much quicker to adapt to changes in the industry.

Between the unprecedented success of the Apple iPhone and the recent announcement of the Android Open Handset Alliance (led by Google and 33 other companies including Motorola and T-Mobile, but not, for the time being, Verizon), there's been a crucial shift in the industry. "

Other markets (especially Asia) have long had more cell phones & features than the US. I wonder if this indicates that the networks are pretty much fully built-out and/or they now feel confident that they have the bandwidth to handle whatever we throw at them?

I know when my current cell contract expires, I'll be looking for a new provider - Verizon offers good availability in my area, so they'll certainly be on the list to consider.

Pragmatic Endorsement of Giuliani

Six months ago I casually predicted that in 2008 we would be picking Rudy or Hillary for president. Frankly I'm surprised that this still seems to be true. At this point, there is no time left to introduce new candidates - in fact Fred Thompson may have jumped in too late. We have to "run with what we brung".

Newsmax.com - Pat Robertson Endorsement Sparks Backlash:
"When the Rev. Pat Robertson endorsed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the presidency, he created a schism among evangelical Republicans – one that may cost the GOP the White House next year.
Since Robertson, the founder of the influential 700 Club, stood with Giuliani at a joint press conference on Nov. 7, a major backlash has been under way in the evangelical community over the endorsement. "

"... For purists, if you are not with them 100 percent of the time, you are their enemy,” he says. “It’s always been a problem"

For 2008, the Republicans need to win the election. Second place is losing - big time. As noted in the last paragraph of this article - "he'll do."

Lots of people have lots of issues with the Republican candidates - they need to remember that the alternative is "worse" than any of them.

Space elevator prize within reach

Space elevator prize eludes Saskatchewan team:
"A team of engineers from Saskatoon came within four seconds of winning a half-million-dollar prize in a NASA-sponsored competition to build a model of a space elevator.

For the third consecutive year, the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team placed first in Elevator: 2010, also called the Spaceward Games.

But for the third straight year, it appears they came a breath shy of reaping the reward.

Competitors had to build a robotic climber capable of ascending a strand of carbon-fibre ribbon suspended from an overhead crane. The climber had to use a wireless power source on the way up but descend in a controlled fashion on its own.

The team reached the top of the 120-metre ribbon in 54 seconds. The allotted time was 50 seconds."

Search for articles about beanstalks and you'll find that this is a technology close to reality - a space delivery system that provides vastly reduced risks and costs. There is still some fundamental science to be completed, but the bigger challenges may be political. Hopefully progress will continue at it's present rapid rate because low cost access to space will improve life on earth for everyone.

We need new pioneers

NASA - Why Explore Space?:
" ... for the foreseeable future, space travel is going to be expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the United States, it is strategic. It is part of what makes us a great nation. And the report declared that if we are going to send humans into space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost, the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight program with no plan to send people anywhere beyond the orbiting space station certainly did not meet that standard.

President Bush responded to the Columbia report. The administration looked at where we had been in space and concluded that we needed to do more, to go further. The result was the Vision for Space Exploration, announced nearly three years ago, which commits the United States to using the shuttle to complete the space station, then retiring the shuttle and building a new generation of spacecraft to venture out into the solar system. Congress has ratified that position with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the land. "

Permanent populations on the Moon, Mars, & in the asteroid belt will one day improve life on Earth. This can come in part by moving some industrial processes off planet, but it will come mostly from the application of new knowledge - lessons we'll never learn if we aren't out there trying things - being pioneers.

Space Station's Newest Module; Harmony

SPACE.com -- Spacewalkers Outfit Space Station's Newest Room:
"Spacewalking astronauts primed the International Space Station's (ISS) newest room for orbital flight Tuesday as they prepare to host a visiting NASA shuttle next month.

Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Dan Tani spent more than seven hours wiring up about half of the power, heater and cooling lines needed to prepare the station's new Harmony connecting node for the planned Dec. 6 launch of a European-built lab. They will connect the other half during another spacewalk on Saturday. "

NASA isn't getting a great deal of news coverage for the great progress that has been made in assembling the ISS this year. Enthusiasts hear about it from sites such as at http://www.space.com/ & http://www.nasa.gov/, but I wonder if kids are hearing about it in school anymore. I hope so.

Jean Jennings' VileBlog - March 16 2007 - Bose Media System | Editors' Soapbox Blog & Discussions at Automobilemag.com Blogs

The intelligent use of technology - at last:

"We love the Bose people, and not just because they know math and we don't. It's because of what they can do with math in the name of making life more wonderful for the rest of us. This time, Bose has developed its first automotive infotainment system and it should set the industry back on its heels for some time to come.

It is a graphically pleasing and easy to grasp navigation system based on GPS and dead-reckoning technology, with all of the cues you need and want prominently displayed on a 6.5' screen. Adding a new destination or dialing up stored one is a snap. That's nice. But it's the music part of the system that will blow your mind.

...

It helps that the Scaglietti's sound system is acoustically customized for its cabin. Hearing Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" in there will make you weep. There's a built-in hard drive you can load through the player, or with a memory stick, and it'll store 30 gigabytes of tunes.

...

There is, of course, an iPod plugin, and a Bluetooth phone function that will download your contact list. And voice control that you just know works better than any voice control you've ever experienced, just because it's Bose."

This Bose system won't be available to most of us for a few years, but hopefully their principles will filter down to other manufacturers. A navigation system shouldn't be so hard to use that it puts you in danger if you try to use it. Good music can do wonders for a person's attitude, possibly improving driving and reducing road rage.

Ahmadinejad's NY visit

Columbia's president delivered the most damning introduction I've ever heard when he presented Ahmadinejad to his audience. This attack rolled off of Iran's leader like water off a duck. He apparently has no doubts about his course in life, and sees no reasons to apologize for his behavior or that of his nation's military forces.

Column One: Ahmadinejad's overlooked message | Jerusalem Post:
"During his visit to New York this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked every basic assumption upon which Western civilization is predicated. Ahmadinejad offered up his attacks while extolling his vision of Islamic global domination. Refusing to note his existential challenge to the Free World, the Western media concentrated their coverage of his trip on his statements regarding specific Western policy goals. His rejection of the UN Security Council's authority to take action against Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program; his championing of the Palestinian cause and Israel's destruction; his denials of Iranian support for terrorism, and his attacks against the US were widely reported. So too, his insistence that Iranian women enjoy full rights and that there are no homosexuals in Iran received banner headlines. Ahmadinejad gave two major addresses this week - at Columbia University and at the UN General Assembly. He devoted both to putting forward his vision for global Islamic domination. And while the Western media sought hidden meanings and signals for peaceful intentions in his words, the fact is that on both occasions, Ahmadinejad made absolutely clear that his vision of Islamic domination cannot coexist in any manner with Western civilization. Consequently, Ahmadinejad's statements were not negotiating stances. They were the direct consequence of the world view he propounds. As such, they are non-negotiable."

I watched the speech at Columbia and was disturbed that someone such as this has come to power over a nation of any kind. He has a purpose in his life that is not compatible with leading peoples to work together in a diverse world. In his mind, everything on Earth is intended to serve his goals.

"Speaking as "an academic," Ahmadinejad said that from his perspective, the role of science is to serve Islam and that any science that does not serve Islamic goals is corrupt. As he put it, "Science is the light, and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interests of humanity." Elaborating on this notion, he argued that Western scientists serve corrupt governments who reject the pure and pious path of Islam and therefore are used as agents for corruption."

. . .

"In his address at the UN, Ahmadinejad laid out his case for Islamic supremacy. He claimed that all of the world's problems are the consequence of two things. First, by his reading of history, after the Second World War, "The victors of the war drew the road map for global domination and formulated their policies not on the basis of justice but for ensuring the interests of the victors over the vanquished nations."

The second cause for the world's woes is the world powers' rejection of Islam. As he put it, "The second and more important factor is some big powers' disregard of morals, divine values, the teachings of prophets and instructions by the Almighty God... Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of God!"

Thankfully for Ahmadinejad, this "corrupted" world order will soon be swept away. Either the "corrupted" powers will "return from the path of arrogance and obedience to Satan to the path of faith in God," or "the same calamities that befell the people of the distant past will befall them as well."

Concluding his UN remarks Ahmadinejad pledged, "Without any doubt, the Promised One who is the ultimate Savior… will come. In the company of all believers, justice-seekers and benefactors, he will establish a bright future and fill the world with justice and beauty. This is the promise of God; therefore it will be fulfilled."

So much for religious freedom, tolerance & diversity - he's right and therefore whatever you think is inconsequential. This person and this attitude will have to be dealt with by the West eventually. It will probably mean war on the scale of the last centuries World Wars - diplomacy only works if both sides are interested in accomplishing something.

Throughout the world, Islamic ideologues are aggressively spreading their message of global domination. In mosques, on the Internet, on television, in schools, hospitals and prisons, Islamic preachers can be found propagating the cause of Islamic domination. And aside from Iran, no regime, including the Saudi regime, is immune from the pressures of the message.

Perhaps the central reason that Ahmadinejad's message, and the hundreds of thousands of voices echoing his call throughout the world, are so dangerous is because the Free World is making precious little effort to assert its own message. Indeed, rather than contend forthrightly with the challenge that men like Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden pose to the West, the West searches for ways to either co-opt their message by seeking out points of agreement or to show that really, the Islamic imperialists have nothing to fear from the West.

This is where we should be spending our education dollars - on spreading the Western view of the world throughout Islamic territories. If we're right, then they're wrong - diversity is nice, but not when it results in an education system that intentionally creates martyrs destined to destroy our way of life.

Israeli raid on Syria produces many questions

This article is worth reading, but it answers few of the questions it raises.

Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran? | World | The Observer:
"They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft."

Fundamentally, Israel has a right to exist (guaranteed by the UN even!) and an obligation to protects it's citizens & residents. Being very unpopular in a very hostile part of the world has forced Israel to become better at many things than most countries. Based on their very good intelligence, they attacked something that the Syrians haven't said much about. I suspect that when the true fact are known, once again most people in the West will support Israel's actions.

Here is another artcile about the raid:

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’ - Times Online:
"IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way. At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames."

Science Fiction gradually becomes practical technology

There's no telling whether this technology will scale up to the point where palettes of household goods can be easily moved around a warehouse (or the galaxy), but it is interesting to speculate about.

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation - Telegraph:
"Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists. In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible."

In general, practical technology scales up and/or the costs fall dramatically. This doesn't always happen at the same rate for every technology. For example, a modern car offers far more features for a lower portion of the average annual income than in the 1950s, but if the cost of cars tracked to the cost of computers, we could all afford a choice of cars to drive for every day of the week.

It will be interesting to see if the levitation technology depends on rare metals and compounds or if like computers the cost is primarily intellectual property . . . Remember Jerry Pournelle's observation that "steel is expensive, sand (silicon) is cheap".

Who brings what to WW-IV?

This review of a new book contains some sobering thoughts:

WORLD WAR IV? - Yahoo! News:
"Begin with our military superiority, which would appear to make victory inevitable. 'Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?' A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:
'-- A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
'-- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
'-- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
'-- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians.
' Add to the above 'a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived.'"

If we're going to win the war on terror, then we have an interest in how the Muslim religion is taught & spread. Currently, the Saudis finance more Islamic churches & schools than any other group, and in this, they're subsidizing some of the most radical clerics out there (the Wahhabi sect). Now that they're feeling some pain back home, they're beginning to address the problem of radicalized young men, but they still need to change what is taught in their schools & services.

Islam isn't likely to be transformed by a Christ-like messiah anytime soon, so it needs to be transformed by the clerics and the Muslims themselves. We need to find ways of making moderate beliefs more attractive, while at the same time casting the radical beliefs in a bad light. Perhaps if the media reported terror attacks as failures by the Muslim world instead of failures by the Western world it would help.

The "Poor" in America. We really need to get out (into the world) more.

Wow! 43% of the poor are homeowners!

How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America:
"The following are facts about persons defined as 'poor' by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:
* Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
* Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
* The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consump­tion of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernour­ished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II."

I have a friend who says " ... poverty is a industry in the USA. If your definition of poor does not garner enough votes then change the definition." We certainly have succeeded in doing that during the last couple of generations.

Americans who travel need to ensure that they see "the real world" and not just tourist spots - most of the world's poor would love to be poor in America.

"...
There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year — nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

While work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to require work and encourage marriage, poverty among children would drop substantially."

This represents the impact of governmental social engineering, particularly since Lyndon Johnson's administration. Society was managing things better before the government stepped in to "help" us.

IBM mainframes central to 'Big Green Linux' initiative

Much like COBOL, The imminent death of the mainframe computer has been predicted "really soon now" for at least the last 20 years. The efficiency of putting massive amounts of computing power together with enormous communications bandwidth is once again being revealed in the search for more energy efficient computing.

IBM launches 'Big Green Linux' initiative - ZDNet UK:
"The 'Big Green Linux' initiative is part of the wider Project Big Green, launched in May, which is specifically aimed at helping IBM and its clients reduce data-centre energy consumption. IBM kicked off the new initiative at the opening of the LinuxWorld and Next Generation Data Center trade shows in San Francisco, accompanied by Novell and the Linux Foundation.
The initiative doesn't centre on any one product announcement, but instead highlights several new IBM systems and projects aimed at Linux-based energy efficiency.
. . .
IBM said last week it would take its own advice, with a plan to consolidate about 3,900 of its own servers onto about 30 System z Linux mainframes, cutting energy consumption by about 80 percent in the process."

Why the Fairness Doctrine is a bad idea

As discussed in this blog below, the main stream media (MSM) is widely represented and largely liberal in political bias. Despite that, they've targeted talk radio for their "Fairness Doctrine" legislation because most successful talk radio shows have a conservative political bias. As noted here, such legislation, if applied fairly, would also decimate some popular liberal talk radio, such those heard on NPR.

Pajamas Media: The Talk-O-Sphere: Why the Empire is Striking Back with the Fairness Doctrine:
"Two other key members of the media establishment—National Public Radio and Manhattan-based book publishers—are on the fence when it comes to talk radio.

While NPR doesn’t have a “Rush Room” in its sprawling Massachusetts Avenue headquarters and its executives probably don’t drive home listening to Mark Levin or Michael Savage, the network knows that bringing back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” will not be good for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” let alone some of its liberal lions like talk show host Diane Rehm. Would NPR really want to air a “responsible opposing view” for every stray comment on its airwaves?

NPR, by the way, is proof that the old saying that “liberals can’t make it on talk radio” is dead wrong. It is just that liberal radio audience already tunes it to NPR; they don’t need another network.
. . .
For what it’s worth, Air America, the ultimate attempt at lefty talk radio, is against the ‘fairness doctrine.’ Air America Radio personality Thom Hartmann writes in “CTA Aircheck,” an industry publication:

“The “progressive has failed” frame is simply wrong. In just three short years, our format has gone from a small handful of progressive stations to 10% of the talk radio content of this country. If I’d started a soda pop business in my garage and in three years had taken 10% of Coca Cola’s market, my picture would be on the cover of Forbes! Nobody thinks of Apple as a failure, but they only have 4.8% of the U.S. computer market, and that’s taken them 20 years! What if a new music format had taken 10% of the radio market in just three years? Everybody would be talking about it . . ."

Why in 2007 are we talking about limiting freedom of speech? If you don't like what you're hearing, change the channel, hit the power button, or go surf the Internet.

If you don't like what other people are hearing, then you might consider moving to a country where freedom isn't a priority - there are many choices available.

As usual, your choices are criticized by those who think they know better

For electronic journalism, the main stream media (MSM) consists of the news departments of at least ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, Ganett newspapers, and their various feeds from the networks to local TV & radio stations. Many people believe that the MSM broadcasts a consistently liberal spin on all news and have turned to FOX and it's affiliates for an alternative. As evidenced by this article, some folks can't stand even a little heat in the ktichen:

Liberals Pressure Fox News Advertisers - washingtonpost.com:
"Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network.

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.
. . .
"It's a lot more effective for Sam's Diner to get calls from 10 people in his town than going to the consumer complaint department of some pharmaceutical company," Gilliam said.
. . .
Groups like the Sierra Club have targeted Home Depot because they believe it's inconsistent for the company to promote environmentally friendly products while advertising on a network that has questioned global warming.

The groups seem particularly angry at Fox's Bill O'Reilly, who has done critical reports on left-wing bloggers. On July 16, O'Reilly said the DailyKos.com Web site is "hate of the worst order," and sent a reporter to question JetBlue Airways Corp. CEO Dave Barger about the airline's sponsorship of a gathering run by DailyKos.

He'll never ride on JetBlue again, O'Reilly said.

Fox said JetBlue has since asked that its name be removed from the DailyKos.com Web site.

MoveOn.org is campaigning against Fox because it says the network characterizes itself as a fair news network when it consistently favors a conservative point of view, said Adam Green, the organization's spokesman."

What may be really bugging these folks is that FOX gets ratings - it usually has more viewers than any 3 of the MSM network news shows - perhaps an indication that some folks aren't prepared to swallow the liberal message without getting at least a glimpse of an opposing view.

The media's tired script - rerun the '70s

Some excerpts from an excellent article . . . If you're curious as to why we appeared incompetent & beaten at the end of the Vietnam war, you should click on the link and read the entire article and some of it's links.

American Thinker: The Surge Succeeds:
"God looks after children, drunkards, and the United States of America
- Otto von Bismarck

It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.

They're going to be ignored.

They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard 'I can always backtrack' Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.
. . .
The Coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to discover the proper strategy in any war. A cursory glance at 1943 would have given the impression of disaster. Kasserine, in which the German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent American GIs running. Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence. Salerno, where the Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea. But all these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 1945.

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match ("Getting inside their decision cycle", as the 4th generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.

The surge is more of a refinement than a novelty. Earlier Coalition efforts were not in error as much as they were incomplete. American troops would clean out an area, turn it over to an Iraqi unit, and depart. The Jihadis would then push out the unseasoned Iraqis and return to business. This occurred in Fallujah, Tall Afar, and endless times in Ramadi.

Now U.S. troops are remaining on site, which reassures the locals and encourages cooperation. The Jihadis broke (and more than likely never knew) the cardinal rule of insurgency warfare, that of being a good guest. As Mao put it, "The revolutionary must be as a fish among the water of the peasantry." The Jihadis have been lampreys to the Iraqi people. Proselytizing, forcing adaptation of their reactionary creed, engaging in torture, kidnapping, and looting. Arabic culture is one in which open dealings, personal loyalty, and honor are at a premium. Violate any of them, and there is no way back. The Jihadis violated them all. The towns and cities of Iraq are no longer sanctuaries.
. . .

You will look long and hard to find any of this in the legacy media. Apart from a handful of exceptions (such as John F. Burns of the New York Times), it's simply not being covered. Those operational names would come across as bizarre to the average reader, the gains they have made impossible to fit into the worldview that has been peddled unceasingly by the dead tree fraternity. What the media is concentrating on - and will to continue to concentrate on, in defiance of sense, protest, and logic, to the bitter end - is peripheral stories such as the Democrat's Senate pajama party, reassertions of the claim that the war has "helped" Al-Queda, and the latest proclamation from the world's greatest fence-sitter.
. . .
And what do they want, exactly? What is the purpose of playing so fast and loose with the public safety, national security, and human lives both American and foreign?

Generally, when someone repeats a formula, it's because they want to repeat a result. And that's what the American left wants in this case. During the mid-70s, American liberals held political control to an extent they had not experienced since the heyday of FDR. The GOP was disgraced and demoralized. The Democrats held the Senate, the House, and the presidency. There was absolutely nothing standing in the way of their maintaining complete power for as long as anyone could foresee... until Jimmy Carter's incompetence proved itself, which caused the whole shabby and illusory structure to fell apart in a welter of ineptitude and childishness.

The American left wants a return to the 1970s -- without Jimmy Carter. (Okay, without disco, either.) They want a cowed GOP. They want control of the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint of Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing predominance will continue for a generation or more.

Will they get it? That's a question worth some thought. Because as it stands, neither of the program's necessary elements is coming to fruition. The war is not being lost, and their great political scandal has fizzled.

The other half of the equation was Watergate. Vietnam would not have been anywhere near as much a disaster without it. Watergate paralyzed the Nixon administration. It turned Nixon himself from an odd, unlikable, but incredibly capable politician to a half-crazed ghost sobbing in the Oval office in the middle of the night. It transformed his last great triumph -- the Paris peace accords that ended the war on an acceptable standoff -- into ashes. The left wing of the Democratic Party, shepherded by people like George McGovern and Mark Hatfield, proceeded to undercut the settlement as quickly as they could manage. Two separate appropriations acts passed in June 1973 cut off all further aid to the countries of Southeast Asia. (A third such act passed in August 1974 has gained more attention but it only duplicated the effects of the first two.) From that point on it was a matter of time. Nixon resigned a little over a year later. Less than a year after that, in April 1975, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell.
. . .
And that, in case you were wondering, is what Plamegate was about. The Democrats needed a scandal - and not merely a run-of-the-mill, everyday scandal, but a mega-scandal, a hyper-scandal, something that would utterly cripple the administration and leave it open to destruction in detail. The targets were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, held by the MoveOn crowd to be the actual brains behind Adolf W. Chimp. When nothing at all could be dug up on the administration principals, the scandal was effectively over. Knocking off a vice-presidential aide might cause excitement within the Beltway, but nobody in the real world could be expected to care.
. . .
People like John Conyers are trying to create a conflagration by blowing on the embers of the attorney firings and the vice-presidential subpoenas. To no avail. Scandals, like forest fires, occur only when conditions are perfect. Through their failed efforts, the liberals have in effect set a backfire, surrounding the administration with wide barriers of burned-over ground. The Democrats themselves have rendered Bush unassailable, and all the slumber parties, the empty votes, and the rhetoric are intended to camouflage that fact. Bush will have hard days yet, but he will not be Nixonized. He will be able to fight his war as he sees fit.

That means a continuation of the surge, and of the strategy of General Petreaus. Will that be enough? It's impossible to say. But the past few months have been the most surprising in the entire Iraq saga to date."

American Thinker: The EU Constitution Arrives by Stealth

Magazines from Britain often print letters complaining about the loss of sovereignty and the increasing regulations that are part of joining the European Union. It looks like those complaints are falling on deaf ears.

American Thinker: The EU Constitution Arrives by Stealth:
"The new EU 'Un-Constitution' will centralize foreign policy making in Brussels -- along with military, police and executive control -- without any voter input. It will dissolve two dozen historic nations, and empower Brussels' dictocrats to issue arrest warrants to incarcerate Irishmen in Dublin. A dozen Eurocrats have openly admitted the constitutional fraud in the press, including Giscard d'Estaing, the author of the old, superfatted Constitution that was solidly voted down in France and Holland, the last time the voters were asked to give their humble opinions. They are not being consulted this time around because they dared give an answer the eurocrats didn't like.

This is the continent that gave us Nazism, Prussianism, Stalinism, Francoism, Petainism, Napoleonic Gaullism, Serbian genocide, and welfare Socialism in the last century alone. It has originated nearly all the major international wars of the last 200 years. It has silently enabled genocide in Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, China and Kosovo. It is currently being penetrated and infiltrated by the third major totalitarian ideology of the last hundred years, oil-fed Wahhabi Islam, resulting in years of car-burning riots in France, subway bombs in London, and a reign of terror on college campuses from Spain to Norway. Europe is not just Switzerland, folks, with a strong and stable government. It is a continent with an endless history of turmoil and bloodshed.

So if you're a European and know you're being massively lied to about the most important political choice in your lifetime, would you just turn over on your couch and go back to sleep? Because half a billion Europeans are doing exactly that. It's stupefying.

Last week, the London Telegraph started an internet petition against the fraudulent constitution-by-stealth. How many signatures did it get? Less than 2,000. The Prime Minister's office at 10 Downing Street has a petition for a referendum on the "Un-Constitution" that is running a little over 10,000. But that's about it: we're talking about five hundred million people from Ireland to Ukraine.

Apparently Europeans want to be suckered. Or else they are so supine that they are allowing themselves to be suckered. It makes no difference in the end. Even though some three-fourths of the voters don't like this historic fraud.
Why the passive surrender by half a billion people?

We can imagine a lot of answers. Many Europeans don't think of constitutions as permanent. That's a distinctively American concept. Constitutions change all the time. This is just another one. Ho, hum.

But is that true? Not if you listen to the EU itself, which sounds like a long term Napoleonic enterprise. The EU has never backed down on any up-ratchet in its quest for power, even if the voters were dead set against it. And it is so corrupt that it has never even passed its own annual audits."

NASA spinoffs - helping in Darfur

In buried lake, hope seen for Darfur - Yahoo! News:
"Scientists have discovered the underground remnants of an ancient lake in Sudan's arid Darfur region, offering hope of tapping a precious resource and easing water scarcity, which experts say is the root of much of the unrest in the region.

The researchers hope to drill at least 1,000 wells in the dusty territory and pump the long-hidden water to ease tensions among communities living there — and strengthen efforts to restore peace in Darfur.

Decades of scarce water and other resources have stoked low-intensity local conflicts that eventually led to a devastating civil war.

The four-year conflict has killed more than 200,000 people, displaced more than 2.5 million others and sparked a regional humanitarian crisis after feeding instability in neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.

'Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages,' said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, which led the effort that discovered the massive lake in northern Darfur using radar data from space."

Education, science, literacy - whatever you call it - works whenever it is tried. Unfortunately, many of the petty tyrants around the world would rather keep their people down and steal from international aid than to lift them all up (including themselves) to become equal partners with the Western world.

The true test for international aid will be how many wells are actually drilled and how the citizens of Darfur get access to the water.

Good News from Iraq - a surprising source

If you have time, click the link and read the comments on this blog - a lot of good information and not a lot of pettiness.

Britain and America: BBC reports that US tactics in Iraq may be beginning to work just as Washington prepares to give up:

"The BBC has not been a supporter of the Iraq war so it is quite something when its World Affairs Editor John Simpson concludes that America might finally be pursuing the right tactics in Iraq. Mr Simpson made his conclusion at the end of a report on BBC1's main evening news bulletin. After interviewing General David Petraeus, the Commander of US troops in Iraq, the BBC journalist said that the real battle was no longer in cities like Baquba which American troops had just liberated from Al-Qeada but in Washington where patience was running out.

General Petraeus said that the kind of counter-insurgency operation now underway usually took nine to ten years but his hearts and minds approach to building security in Iraq had only just begun. Mr Simpson contrasted the liberation of Baquba where 'only' eleven Iraqi civilians had been killed with the situation in Fallujah where large-scale civilian casualties had hardened Sunni opinion against the coalition. The people of Baquba had also grown tired of the suffocating rule of Al-Qaeda and welcomed the arrival of the Americans."

Good news from Iraq is important - we're not getting it.

The mainstream media is so consumed with their Bush derangement syndrome that they're now endangering Iraqi civilians by failing to report our military success to the American public.

TCS Daily - How Al Qaeda is Winning Even as it is Losing:
"In Iraq, the administration has empowered a general and officer corps capable of winning the war on the ground. Now it must develop the media corps that can win the war on the airwaves. June 2007 saw a dramatic turnaround in our military fortunes, with the insurgents in headlong retreat in Anbar, Baghdad, and Diayala. But al Qaeda continued to dominate its chosen battlefield: America's living rooms.

The War on the Ground

In the first month of full implementation - June, 2007 - the 'surge' strategy of General David Petraeus resulted in a 32% decline in Iraqi deaths. An anti-al Qaeda alliance of Sunni chiefs, Coalition forces, and the Iraqi Army drove the insurgency out of most of al Anbar, and much of Baghdad.
. . .
But in the flush of battlefield success, public perception of American military progress continued its calamitous decline. According to Pew Research, the percentage of Americans who opine that America's military operations are "going well" slid from 38% in May '07 to 34% in June; those who believe our military operations are "not going well" increased from 57% of respondents to 61%.

The same Pew poll found that only 30% of the public could identify General David Patraeus and only 27% could identify Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. 59% of respondents were unaware that Shi'ites constitute the majority religious group in Iraq. Precise knowledge of the war's progress is obviously scarce. Yet 95% of respondents have defined opinions on the success of our arms.

What explains the downtick of confidence against a backdrop of success?

Since mid-2005, al Qaeda has aimed not to defeat the Coalition militarily, but to drain American public support politically. The strategy was forced on the insurgents by a string of failures in 2004 and 2005. The Baathist groups and their al Qaeda allies planned first to establish a geographic base of control within Iraq; second, to block Iraqi elections; and third, to prevent the establishment of the Iraqi Security Forces. They failed to achieve any of these goals.

. . . al Qaeda's largest harvest from "random slaughter" strategy was realized in America. Through acts of indiscriminate violence transmitted by the media, insurgents brought their war to America's living rooms. The atrocity-of-the-day is the principal informational input most Americans receive. This forms their knowledge base. The public does not live in the villages and mahalas of Iraq. Patterns of recovery, of normalcy, are not evident.

This is the essence of 4th Generation Warfare. And al Qaeda is clearly winning it."

A cute retro car from FIAT

Crave: The gadget blog - Posts in Cars:
"Fiat's launch of its new 500 model will make fans of Italy in the 1950s, those who dream of Sophia Loren riding a Vespa, as happy as the new Mini made Anglophiles. Fiat combined the new trend toward city cars and retro design to come up with this new version of its iconic car. The original Fiat 500 was launched on July 4, 1957, and the new 500 was launched exactly 50 years later. Fiat takes a page from Mini by offering the 500 with all sorts of cosmetic accessories, including checker patterns for the roof. "

This is probably a more reliable car than the original, but that may not be saying much. Don't look for one of these in the US. Fiat failed in the US market years ago.

One reason why we're all going to HDTV

How about a show of hands - raise your hand if you didn't know that all of us citizens own the frequencies used to transmit TV, and that the government is selling them for us.

New Rules Could Change Wireless Forever - Yahoo! News:
"You buy a cell phone, load any software you want on it, then choose your carrier. This vision of expanded consumer choices in the wireless world might be a little closer today than it has ever been, especially with reports that the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is circulating an 'open platform' proposal for the upcoming auction of the 700-MHz band.

FCC Chair Kevin Martin told USA Today on Monday that 'whoever wins this spectrum' will have to provide a 'truly open broadband network -- one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services to the consumer.'
He said an open network would mean a consumer could 'use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions,' except for illegal or malicious software.
. . .
The auction for bandwidth, scheduled for later this year, is gearing up to be epic. The sale will include spectrum in the 700-MHz band that has been used for analog television since the beginning of that medium, as U.S. TV is going completely digital by mid-2009.

The 700-MHz spectrum is particularly valuable because it penetrates walls and various obstacles more effectively than other frequencies, and the FCC is now developing the rules for the auction.

A 108-MHz block of bandwidth will become available after the analog TV stations complete their transition. Of that 108 MHz, 60 MHz will be auctioned in January 2008, public safety officials will receive 24 MHz, and 24 MHz already has been sold."

That block going to public safety officials is hopefully going to be used to unify their communications so different agencies can communincate with each other after a disaster. Governments may move at glacial speeds, but they do eventually move.

If you don't want to upgrade your TVs, you can get your fix from cable or satellite (I'll bet you do already), or there may be converter boxes sold to use older TVs with the new digital signals.

Technology marches on - rent movies with your remote

TiVo, Amazon to sell movies straight to TV sets - Yahoo! News:
"TiVo upgraded the 'Amazon Unbox on TiVo' service to allow customers with high-speed Internet connections to select one of about 10,000 movies, shows or other video, using the TiVo remote control.

The programs, priced on average at about $4 for a movie rental and about $2 for a television show, will be viewable after it downloads to the TiVo set-top box.

Amazon and TiVo first announced the service in February, and at that time required users to select the video on a PC."

Those of us without TiVo will just have to settle for old fashioned movie rentals - oh well, that 3 block walk to Blockbuster might do us some good.

BTW - does it seem to you that their price for a TV show is excessive compared to the price for a movie?

The end of British sovereignty draws near

'Don't tell British about the EU treaty' | International News | News | Telegraph:
"The new European Union treaty will mean 'transfers of sovereignty' from Britain and Gordon Brown is right to hide the fact from the public, an EU leader admitted yesterday.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members, spoke out as the Prime Minister faced rising calls for a referendum on the treaty drawn up following the rejection of the old EU constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Mr Juncker said he supported public debate on the treaty - except in Britain.

'I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries,' he told Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

'Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?'

Mr Juncker, a supporter of a United States of Europe, described the June 23 deal signed by Tony Blair as an 'objective success' for friends of the EU constitution."

The EU constitution has been voted down by the public twice (in France & Holland), so of course now they're trying to put it into effect without a vote, and without publicity if possible. People in Europe need to let their representatives know how they feel about that.

Britain gets lucky - they need to get realistic

Terrorism isn't a good arena for the practice Political Correctness (PC)- emphasis added:

American Thinker: London Calling:
"Two car bombs were found in London, professionally placed, the first discovered not by police but an ambulance crew. Evidently the bombs were triggered (by cell phones) but failed to go off.

Then, only hours later, an attack was attempted on Glasgow Airport by two goons a little crazier than strictly necessary. Failing to breach the terminal, at least one of the terrorists leapt out of his incendiary-packed SUV, poured gasoline over himself and set it ablaze. (One of those actions that informs us that we are dealing with people truly unlike us.) Once again the citizen element prevailed - when the police were unable to subdue the blazing terrorist, he was tackled by a passerby who brought him down in short order.
. . .
The London Telegraph states that MI 5 is now monitoring no less than 30 ongoing plots involving up to 1,700 individuals, "an increase of 100 since November". While it's good intelligence procedure to allow a conspiracy to mature under close watch in order to bag as many participants as possible, 30 is a very high number, and 1,700 terrorists is simply too many to keep an eye on. Allowing ten agents for each terrorist (the number would actually be higher), including at least two drivers, technicians, and replacements, gives us a requirement of 17,000. Now multiply that by three shifts. Does the MI 5 have that many field agents? Does the FBI? Does anybody, in this post-Cold War epoch?
. . .
None of this would have occurred in the U.S. Over here, we bag them.

Many of the Jihadis arrested in this country over the past few years - the Lodi group, the Miami group, the would-be New York subway bombers, the Lackawanna group -- committed no actual violent acts. What they were doing was conspiring. They were talking big, making connections and inquiries, scouting targets. In Britain, this would make them eligible for a control order. On this side of the pond, it gets them locked up in ugly concrete structures for a long, long time."

As the folks in our governments frequently say - "they only have to be successful once - we have to be successful every time."

Besides supporting our governments (federal, state, & local) in their efforts to provide some homeland security, we need to think about our own security. Avoid crowded places or be very alert when in them. Lay in a little extra food & water, and think about getting a generator. Get fresh batteries for the flashlights, first aid kits, etc. Besides having these at home, think about carrying them in your car. Many folks can work from home - that saves gas and removes them from office buildings that might be targeted.

In other words, think about your personal protection and about civil defense.

To help others, take a CPR class, get in shape, and stay up on current events.

If you're inclined to keep firearms, take a safety class, a concealed carry class, or a tactical shooting class, depending on your level of experience. Stock up on ammo, and most important be fanatic in drilling yourself to lock up the weapons when you're not home to use them.

Vacation in Space - sooner than you think

NASA is finally getting the competition it needs to ensure that the exploration & commercialization of space continues.

Bigelow's Second Orbital Module Launches Into Space - Yahoo! News:
"A privately-built space station prototype launched into orbit atop a Dnepr rocket Thursday from a Russian missile base, SPACE.com has learned. The space shot kicks off the second test flight for the U.S. firm Bigelow Aerospace.

Genesis 2, an inflatable module laden with cameras, personal items and a Space Bingo game, rocketed spaceward from a silo at Yasny Launch Base, an active Russian strategic missile base in the country's Orenburg region.

The spacecraft is a near-twin of Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 1 module, which launched in July 2006 and remains operational today, but carries a series of enhancements and additional cargo, the Las Vegas, Nevada-based spaceflight firm has said. Both spacecraft are prototypes for future commercial orbital complexes that Bigelow Aerospace, and its founder and president Robert Bigelow, hope to offer for use by private firms and national space agencies."

Instead of launching hard structures that resemble earth's buildings, Bigelow uses structures that take advantage of the unique environment in space. They send up a small package and inflate it. This approach may well be the key to building large structures (like hotels) before we have large scale mining & materials production facilities in space.

By using a Russian launch vehicle, they also help keep alive another competitor to our government's space program. Hopefully, they will soon have cost effective commercial choices for launch services.

Is this why political discussions become bitter arguments?

It seems to me that during my lifetime, much of American society has lost the ability to discuss controversial issues without getting highly emotional and storming off in a huff. This article presents some ideas on why that might be.

American Thinker Blog: Free speech is unfair to losers:
"James Lewis
Several of my liberal friends have a funny conversational tic: Whenever the talk wanders into certain topics, they abruptly switch off --- change the subject, or urgently go off to do something else. We're friends, so I never try to push them back to that dangerous little 'Eeeek!' moment. But it's just as if they have a little thermometer in their heads, and when things get dangerous, the red line goes way up and all that mercury threatens to squirt out of the top. You can practically see it happening right in front of your eyes.

That's what Sigmund Freud called 'signal anxiety' --- or mentally going 'Eeeek!' --- there's danger up ahead! Don't let your thoughts run that way! Because, of course, liberals are horribly afraid that they might be wrong --- about abortion, or the war, or whatever secret doubts they harbor in their hearts. It's why they have to shout so loud to drown out other voices.

All that is tremendously ironic. The Left has controlled the media at least since the 1970s, and actually even back to the 1930s. As a result of their monopoly they have lost the ability to compete intellectually --- to persuade by logic and evidence. Instead, they think that just stating their often bizarre and simply false opinions is good enough. But it's not. It is the conservatives who have been forced to think hard, to justify their ideas over and over again. Practice makes perfect, and many (not all!) conservatives have now become very skilled in stating their case to the American public. Liberals are thrown back on using personal insults, because they no longer know how to state their case; and they are afraid to think freely, for fear they might have to change their minds.

When people become afraid of following a thought to its logical conclusion, they can no longer think.

Free speech is unfair to intellectual losers. That's why the "Fairness Doctrine" is raising its Medusa head again. Liberals want government-enforced equality because genuine intellectual opposition scares them. Quick, turn on NPR! (Phew, that was a close one!)

The fear of free speech is the fear of skepticism. All stagnant orthodoxies fear doubters, just as Pope Leo xxx feared Galileo, --- who was a feeble old man when he was sentenced to compulsory silence. It's interesting that the censorious Pope was a close friend of Galileo, and he may have privately agreed with him. But as Pope, he protected the Church of Rome by silencing the greatest scientist of the age. The Church has paid the price for its censorship ever since."

Emphasis added.

Random Numbers in Banks & iPods

It is sometimes interesting to see how much thought has gone into a seemingly simple feature in an everyday device - like the ability to shuffle songs on a CD or MP3 player.

The Numbers Guy - WSJ.com:
"Earlier this week, Mads Haahr ordered a customized iPod with 'God Plays Dice' engraved on its back. Mr. Haahr -- a random-number enthusiast, lecturer in computer science at Trinity College in Dublin and keeper of the Web site Random.org, a popular source of random numbers -- intends to answer a question that has long bedeviled users of Apple's popular music player: Does the shuffle function really play users' songs in random order?

Since Apple Computer Inc. added the shuffle function to the main menu of iPods two years ago, the question has been raised by the New York Times and Newsweek; debated on Slashdot and other Web sites; and inspired a regular feature in the Onion.

... strategies, which must detect and analyze natural processes, serve up numbers too slowly for high-volume consumers of randomness. Banks, casinos and others generally must rely on computer algorithms, meaning they're on the hunt for programs that can best mimic true randomness"

We hope that banks need random numbers for their encryption algorithms and not to compute balances ...

Supreme Court takes away some freedom of speech

Top US court rules against 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus':
"The US Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a school that suspended a student for brandishing a banner proclaiming 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus,' in one of the more bizarre recent free-speech cases.
. . . in a five-three decision, the Supreme Court found that schools 'may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use.'
. . .
Frederick was 18 when he displayed his huge banner just outside the school grounds at Juneau, Alaska in front of television cameras as the Olympic flame passed in front of a crowd.

Principal Deborah Morse was not amused by Frederick's linkage between Jesus and a bong, a pipe used to smoke marijuana. She took away the banner and suspended Frederick from school for 10 days.

Frederick took his case to court, arguing that his free-speech rights, protected under the First Amendment, had been violated, and demanding damages from Morse."

This one surprises me - they're saying that the freedom of speech of an adult standing off of school grounds can be infringed because they happen to attend the school. This stupid banner was intended as a joke, but got treated much more seriously.

Supreme Court gives back a little freedom of speech

Court allows issue ads near elections - Yahoo! News:
"The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.

The court, split 5-4, upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections. The law unreasonably limits speech and violates the group's First Amendment rights, the court said. "

This some of the legacy of the McCain Feingold law that limits our political speech 60 days before an election (in other words before people start paying attention . . .) - one of the reasons I'm not likely to vote for him in any future elections.

Freedom of Speech isn't Easy

Here in the US we generally practice advanced liberty with regard to freedom of speech (except in schools & colleges). In other parts of the world, our example isn't taking hold - in fact some ground is being lost ...

Pajamas Media: Free Speech Is No Offense:

"Unfortunately, too many people do not understand the serious consequences of misplaced respect for offended religious feelings. A prime example – the United Nation’s Human Rights Council’s passage of a scandalous resolution condoning state punishment of speech deemed insulting to religion, which helps regimes that silence criticism and crush dissent."

“The only right you don’t have in a democracy is the right not to be offended.”

Here’s what Mohammed ljaz ul-Haq, the religious affairs minister of Pakistan -our ally in the war on terror- had to say about Sir Salman’s knighthood: “If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?”
. . .
The late president’s son was later forced to soften his attack on Rushdie, but his line of “reasoning” exposes the problem in a nutshell: he is absolutely sure that blasphemy and terrorism are comparable crimes. And he can find many arguments for this perverted logic in the reactions among people in the West to the fatwa against Rushdie after the publication of “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, which was denounced blasphemous for its depiction of the prophet Mohammed.

. . . the Labour Government in Britain was delivering ammunition to this kind of policy when back in 2006 it put a lot of effort into passing a law against religious hatred. It failed by one vote. Salman Rushdie fought this law. In an essay “Coming After Us” for the anthology “Free Expression Is No Offense” he wrote:

“I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until religion came after me… At that time it was often difficult to persuade people that the attack on The Satanic Verses was part of a broader, global assault on writers, artists, and fundamental freedoms. The aggressors in that matter, by which I mean the novel’s opponents, who threatened booksellers and publishers, falsified the contents of the text they disliked, and vilified its author, nevertheless presented themselves as the injured parties, and such was the desire to appease religious sentiment even then that in spite of the murder of a translator in Japan and the shooting of a publisher in Norway there was widespread acceptance of that topsy-turvy view.”

This is in reaction to Queen Elizabeth knighting Salman Rushdie.

Most young people in the western world have never heard of him and don't know what the fuss is about, but it seems Muslim fanatics never forget.

Islam has accumulated 700+ years of grievances against us - we should be careful about giving away our rights to pacify them - it won't work.

Honoring Britain's Veterans of the Falklands War - 25 years ago

Scroll down in the text of this article to see some good photographs of the British military on parade and some pictures of Margaret Thatcher & Tony Blair greeting veterans along with princes Charles & Andrew.

TigerHawk: "The spring of 1982 was a barren time for the West. The capitalist economy was in a shambles, the Soviet Union was resurgent, America had not yet recovered from the indignities of the Ford and Carter years, and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had not yet established themselves as the great leaders we now know they were. The Falklands War was therefore quite possibly the most essentially rejuvenating foreign policy moment between Israel's recovery of its hostages in Uganda in 1976 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Finally the West had stood up to a tin-pot dictator and given him his comeupance."

Several years ago I was in Buenos Aires while the Argentines were putting the finishing touches on their memorial to the same war. They also honor their veterans, and obviously view this conflict differently. We didn't get to know the locals well enough to discuss politics, but I got the impression that most people thought it was unimportant old news.

IBM patents external memory technology

I don't want to rain on their parade, but this seems to be a pretty unlikely product. As the cost of RAM approaches the cost of the plastic & sand (silicon) required to manufacture it, sharing such cheap components seems unlikely.

TG Daily - IBM patents external DRAM box:
"IBM is pitching the invention as a technology that could provide a cheaper and more flexible way to temporarily upgrade the available memory in computing systems ranging from PDAs to servers. According to the description of the patent, the technology includes three separate parts - a connector, a container to hold RAM as well as a cable that couples the connector to the container.

IBM says that the connector can be inserted into a DRAM slot just like a common memory module, allowing the memory installed in the external box to be addressed by the motherboard as another bank or DRAM. When there is no external RAM module plugged in, no memory is recognized by the motherboard's memory addressing unit, the patent claims."

IBM's people create more patents annually than any other company in this industry (perhaps any industry), and they have more patents inside your PC than any other company. Perhaps someone sees an opportunity here that I'm missing. Certainly if people start replacing hard drives with RAM, then they would use much more of it . . .

Tips I could have used before graduation night ...

I ended up with pretty blurry photos of a graduation ceremony (low light & long lenses aren't very compatible) - some of these tips would have helped, but my faithful mono-pod (a tripod with only 1 leg) would have been even better.
instructables : How to take AWESOME night photos WITHOUT a tripod:

"This instructable will teach you how to use the normal digital camera you already own to take night photos that are not blurry, and without a tripod. "

D Day - June 6th, 1944

American Thinker Blog: D Day plus 63 years:
Thanks to American Thinker for these links to D-Day history:

"Here are links to information about the D-Day contributions of the Army, Army Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard.

http://www.worldwar2history.info/

http://www.d-daymuseum.org/education/factsheets_history.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq109-1.htm

http://www.aero-web.org/history/wwii/d-day/toc.htm

http://www.uscg.mil/history/h_normandy.html

http://www.uscg.mil/history/Normandy_Index.html
"

"for evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing"

American Thinker: Boycotting Decency:
I try to keep up on events in my homeland England and also in Europe - this article makes it clear that these are places I could no longer live ...

"the British college teachers union just voted to boycott Israel's universities and colleges.

Why would England, home of the 'Mother of Parliaments,' support the destruction of a small and besieged country that has managed to maintain the only true democracy in the most treacherous neighborhood in the world? Why would professors and teachers, who are presumably dedicated to free speech and thought, be opposed to the free exchange of information with such a democracy?

Ten years ago Europe was appalled over ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Today the British vote to open the door to ethnic cleansing in Israel. "

It has always surprised me that college professors are blind to the fact that their lifestyle is supported by the freedoms they so often attack. Apparently, they've learned nothing from the history they dispense and equate life under Pol Pot as equivalent to, or better than, life under Churchill or Reagan.

"The boycott move shows the powerful return of the anti-democratic Left in Britain, very similar to the Stalinist Left that did so much damage to Britain and the West in the 20th century. It also shows the new power in British academic institutions of Islamic fascists. A major fact is that the same UCU board that voted to deligitimize Israel also voted to block police inquiries about Islamist recruiting on university campuses. The message is clear. The academic Left will protect Islamofascists on campus."

Simple self survival ought to discourage the growth of fascism & terrorism in our midst, but apparently the allure of Political Correctness is more powerful than the realities of their own lives.

"Viciously slandering Israel and of course the United States has become socially acceptable in Europe today, and Britain is no exception. Both of those hatreds are very selective: no such superhuman standards of moral conduct are applied to Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, or Zimbabwe, or France for that matter. Politically Correct intimidation governs British society, which is as frightening in its own way as Cromwell's witch-hunts four centuries ago. The spirit of the witch-hunt is alive today, and Britain's academics, and for that matter Britain's Jews, seem to be frozen in fear. Given the dark history of Europe this is another throwback to a mad past."

Perhaps Dark Ages & Inquisitions are part of the natural cycle of life in Europe - I will attempt to live where I'm a member of the audience, not a a participant.

The future of our civilization may be in doubt

American Thinker: The Mickey Martyr Club:

"Hamas, the Islamofascist party that now controls half the Palestinian population, is giving the world an important object lesson on civilization; or rather, on the crucial difference between civilization and barbarism. In a West that has dulled the edge of its moral sense after years of "all cultures are equal" propaganda, it is high time for us to learn again what seemed so simple and obvious to previous generations: That civilization is better than bloody, vengeful barbarism, both in war and peace.
. . .
the world has been introduced to the Mickey Martyr Club (Music please, Maestro!). Here come the kids marching in. Palestinian toddlers are being taught the glories of suicide-killing the Jews of Israel, using a Mickey Mouse rip-off on Hamas TV. Walt Disney's cartoon mouse is now Mickey Martyr, on his way to paradise-after-death in a thousand bloody shreds.
. . .
war raises the most agonizing moral questions, starting with the decision to kill, because other options have simply run out. Clear thinking about morality is the essence of civilized warfare, and civilized warfare is the only justifiable kind.

Given these considerations, what are we to make of the Mickey Martyr Club on Hamas TV? Has any cause ever discredited itself so completely?

What makes Hamas TV indoctrination of the very young even worse is that Hamas could have a peace agreement with Israel tomorrow. Don't believe that Hamas doesn't know that. They know perfectly well that the great majority of Israelis aspire to peace, and they despise them for it. Hamas represents a profoundly reactionary, fanatical, religious martyrdom creed, straight from the clan vendettas of the desert, twelve centuries ago.

Those tiny kids on Hamas TV could have a good life. They could grow and thrive, if only they were taught to accept their neighbors. All it takes is a decision by the adults, their mothers and fathers.

For Westerners who fastidiously turn their eyes away from Islamic primitivism, the time to take a stand is coming. Soon, no one will have the luxury of sitting this one out"

This rather long article has a good discussion of "just war" on it's way to this disturbing conclusion. It is worth reading in it's entirety at the link above.

Don't make the mistake of believing that Hamas is the only barbarian group and Israel the only victim. They're funded very well by people in other middle eastern countries, including some countries that pose as our allies. Techniques that work in this corner of the Middle East will be used again in Europe and eventually here in the US unless we have the will to stop them in the only way possible - with force.

Diabetes drug Avandia is latest FDA Scandal

Latest drug scare shows need for FDA overhaul - Yahoo! News:

"On Monday, The New England Journal of Medicine rushed out an analysis by prominent cardiologist Steven Nissen of data about patients taking Avandia. It suggests they have a 43% higher chance of suffering a heart attack.

The exact numbers aren't known and may be quite small. Glaxo says that the analysis is flawed and that its own studies show the opposite. Either way, users of the drug have a problem. If Avandia boosts the risk of cardiac disease, that is particularly frightening to diabetics, two-thirds of whom die of heart problems. On the other hand, if Glaxo is right, patients would increase their risk by quitting the drug. The FDA isn't helping them make that choice.

Only as the report came out did the FDA acknowledge potential problems and advise people on Avandia to consult with their doctors. It stopped short of warning against taking the drug. It said it was reanalyzing data that Glaxo had provided 'recently.' Recently would be last August, a full nine months ago.
. . .
The Vioxx scandal should have forced big, quick changes at FDA. It hasn't. Last year, the
Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog arm, issued a scathing report describing an agency hobbled by turf battles, insufficient resources, poor management and passivity in tracking adverse reactions once drugs are approved.

The FDA is convening an advisory board of experts in September to look at all the evidence it has about Avandia. But it shouldn't have taken alarm bells from an independent analyst to prompt one - and the September date suggests a disturbing lack of urgency."

This is what happens in bureaucracies - they start out with the best intentions and end up squabbling about internal politics. We taxpayers are not getting the protection we're paying for, and we're not getting the medicine we're paying for either. Perhaps big government solutions are actually part of the problem ...

One key question to always ask your doctor - "does this prescription increase or reduce mortality rates?" In other words, find out if it is proven to make you live longer, or just masks symptoms your doctor doesn't like seeing in your lab tests.

Also, you can always do your own comparisons for interactions with other drugs, vitamins, & supplements you take, One web-site for comparisons is Medscape from WebMD, but there are many others to be found with a simple Google search.

Is Ethanol ready as an alternative fuel?

Hidden costs of corn-based ethanol | csmonitor.com:

"Policymakers and legislators often fail to consider the law of unintended consequences. The latest example is their attempt to reduce the United States' dependence on imported oil by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop – corn – to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, ethanol will do little to reduce the large percentage of our fuel that is imported (more than 60 percent), and the ethanol policy will have ripple effects on other markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it will be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) during the next 10 years, which would require almost a fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use, to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative.

American legislators and policy­makers seem oblivious to the scientific and economic realities of ethanol production. Brazil and other major sugar cane-producing nations enjoy significant advantages over the US in producing ethanol, including ample agricultural land, warm climates amenable to vast plantations, and on-site distilleries that can process cane immediately after harvest.

Thus, in the absence of cost-effective, domestically available sources for producing ethanol, rather than using corn, it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently."

Lets see, we'll double the cost of food so we can produce fuel that is more expensive per mile than the oil we have sitting in the ground? Sounds like government planning to me.

OpinionJournal - Potomac Watch:

"It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates--who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest--are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade--a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan."

Note: 60% of corn production has been used to feed animals in the US - those costs have doubled also...

Have you switched to Vista?

KFYI - "The Valley's Talk Station":

"Dell, which is tied with HP as the largest computer maker in the country, quietly announced it was going to offer Windows XP again on models in two of its lines, the Inspiron and Dimension.

This follows an intense series of posts on Dell's 'IdeaStorm' blog, which was designed to allow direct feedback from consumers and end users to Dell's management.

(Dell, if you have not been following the company, has been hammered of late for poor management and terrible customer service.)

'We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,' said Dell on its blog.

Why is this significant?

This is a clear shot across the bow of Microsoft and sends two messages I think are really interesting:
1. you shipped Vista before it was ready and without any compelling, must-have features and
2. Windows XP is good enough for most people and we don't really care to learn a different way of doing things."

I'm not planning to use Vista for at least a year - Win XP is working fine, and I even have Win98 on some computers. The only person I've talked to who knew someone with Vista said that laptop couldn't connect to their home LAN, despite the best efforts of several computer savvy folks who were strongly motivated to get it working.
Gateway decided to keep offering WinXP earlier this year.

A Cure for Tennis Elbow - Robotic Bagpipe Player

McBlare - Robotic Bagpipe Player:

"'McBlare' is a robotic bagpipe player. It plays an ordinary set of bagpipes using an air compressor to provide air and electro-magnetic devices to power the 'fingers' that open and close tone holes that determine the musical pitch. McBlare is controlled by a computer that has many traditional bagpipe tunes in its memory."

OK - it has nothing to do with Tennis Elbow. I found this at Dave Barry's site: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/

Happy Friday

Not your father's GTI

Video: Unveiling a W12-Powered Volkswagen Golf GTI:

"There's fast and then there's uber fast. The 200hp Volkswagen GTI is pretty peppy in its own right, but the German carmaker was far from satisfied. Thus, they created the Golf GTI W12 650 concept vehicle at Worthersee 2007 in Austria. They're saying that this is 'the ultimate GTI in every way', with its 0-62mph time of just 3.7 seconds. Keep the pedal to the metal and this rabbit on steroids will keep going and going until it tops out at around 325 km/h (201mph)."

Actually a 200 HP GTI doesn't sound too bad - 650 is just a bit over the top ;-)

Seven Stages of Legal Activism

Eliot Spitzer's Pro-Abortion Zealotry | Redstate:

"Most of you should be familiar by now with the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism:

1. It's a free country, X should not be illegal.
2. The Constitution prohibits X from being made illegal.
3. If the Constitution protects a right to X, how can it be immoral? Anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
4. If X is a Constitutional right, how can we deny it to the poor? Taxpayer money must be given to people to get X.
5. The Constitution requires that taxpayer money be given to people to get X.
6. People who refuse to participate in X are criminals.
7. People who publicly disagree with X are criminals."

Regardless of how you feel about the rest of this article, these 7 stages of activism deserve some consideration.

A key question I sometimes ask pastors is whether they want their religious beliefs expressed as the law of the land. If they do, then I walk on - the same should be applied for some of these social issues.

There is an enormous difference between living in a country where abortion is permitted, and living in a country where discouraging abortion is a criminal act. The same is true of many other issues.

I would much prefer that my government not have an opinion on an issue, than have my government regulate what my opinions should be.

Jerry Falwell - RIP

Jerry Falwell -- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan! by Ann Coulter - HUMAN EVENTS:

"No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that 'All men will hate you because of me' than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates [Ann Coulter's] warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN."

All the reporting I've ever seen about Falwell has been very one-sided. His fans speak of his generosity & his faith - on balance, I prefer to believe them. The rest of Ann Coulter's column quoted above illustrates how the media frequently does a 180 when conservatives comment (as Falwell often did) on their sacred cows.

Compact Fluorescent Lights contain mercury - get over it.

American Thinker Blog: If you break a CFL light bulb...:

"A quick calculation shows that the 5 mg of mercury in an energy-conserving CFL is enough to fill an average size room (100 cubic meters volume) with the 0.05 mg/cubic meter vapor concentration that is considered hazardous for long term chronic exposure. Since this is the rule for laboratories, it probably does not account for people who might be especially sensitive, including infants, small children and pregnant women. As with allergies, different people can have vastly different responses to exposures to toxins.

The admonition to open the window for 15 minutes after a CFL break does not account for the various sizes / shapes of rooms, placement of windows (or absence thereof) and whether there is adequate cross-ventilation. And of course, it is not so convenient to ventilate a room thoroughly with outdoor air during the dead of winter in a northern clime."

Mercury is a useful element that happens to be harmful to humans. Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) are made overseas and contain mercury. I have seen both of these facts cited recently as reasons to avoid using them. I disagree - CFLs emit good light and much less heat while using less energy and lasting a very long time. If those attributes are useful to you, then try some.

If you're worried about mercury, you could avoid breaking them and save used ones for your local hazardous waste collection, or get LED bulbs instead.

The desire to limit energy consumption doesn't always have to be linked to social causes - sometimes, it is just a matter of saving money.