I had a realization while I was driving to work this morning…one of those points where you experience something and think, “This is going to be important later. I need to mark it.” Since this web log is my place for recording stuff like that, you (my 5 readers) are about to get an “earful”. 🙂
The following started as an email reply to a good friend who offered the sincere belief that time spent around friendly people I know at an activity I used to participate in would be a “cure” for depression. The more I wrote, the more I realized it should probably be shared with anyone I know who cares to read it. So, here goes…
This post is a rant about what I think is a pretty decent idea gone pretty badly wrong. The idea is something called “Wi-Fi Protected Setup.”
Wow. Tonight is just a treasure trove of car-related stuff for me to point and laugh at. 🙂
I’ve heard of stuff like this before, but I’ve never actually seen plans. Behold: “PRELIMINARY PLANS TO RUN YOUR CAR ON TAP WATER!” (emphasis most definitely not mine). edit 17 March 2021: I replaced the original link with an archive.org version.
Of course, we all remember how easy it is to show that this won’t work, right?
…and you might find a link to this CNN story. (archived copy on archive.org)
For a long time now, I’ve been fairly annoyed with the media and political hyperbole surrounding the future use of hydrogen. Most of the attention I’ve seen seems to revolve around the (admittedly worthy) advances in the devices (fuel cells, mostly) that help us convert hydrogen into energy for use in cars, consumer devices, etc. That’s great as far as it goes, but it’s not the whole story.
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. The story behind it is a bit old now, but I’m just now feeling motivated enough to actually write it up.
Here’s the fundamental question behind this post: why are people surprised when they are fired for bad-mouthing their employer and co-workers on their web sites?
I spotted Revenge of the Sith on the HBO schedule a little while back. Since I didn’t watch it in the theater and had never bothered trying to get my hands on the DVD, I figured I would go ahead and have TiVo grab it for me. I finally finished watching it tonight. The verdict? It pretty much lived up to my expectations. I’ll warn you now, a lot of you won’t like what’s beyond the “more” link.
You know, I’m not sure why I bother, but for some reason I just can’t help myself. When I’m in the truck and the local NPR affiliate is playing something I’m not interested in, I’ll sometimes flip over to a talk/sports radio station out of Birmingham. Inevitably, I end up turning the radio off in disgust (if not full out anger) within about 15 minutes. The people I hear on the air on this station represent possibly the most consistent collection of what I call “determined ignorance” that I know of. On the way out to lunch today I flipped over there, and this one was so bad I decided I had to post about it when I got back.
This is truly frightening. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today (link defunct) that a city can seize private property for private economic development.
From the article:
Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.
Wow. Five justices really believe that? That, in effect, says not “They can take the land in this narrow instance,” but “We don’t want to touch this issue. Don’t bother us again.” That truly surprises me. I’ve been hearing about cases like this for a couple of years now. I always assumed that if a case was heard by the Supreme Court, they would side with the property owners. I guess I was wrong.
Side note… I admit that I have not studied the rulings of the 9 justices in detail, but I have the distinct impression that I’m siding with the ones that I would normally disagree with on this one. O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas shared the dissenting opinion.