People are funny like that.....

Ferrari to build a Hybrid????

2008-07-08T17:28:00.002-03:00

Always at the leading edge of automobile design & development the king of the world has seen the light and accepted that the future for auto enthusiasts may well be a hybrid ... at least if they can successfully package a 'new' hybrid ... you know it will be powerful and FAST!!!

clipped from devicedaily.com

Posted on 08 July 2008

Ferrari Planning To Build A Hybrid Sportscar

I think that there is no need in reminding you that greenhouse gases are affecting the air which is more and more polluted. Due to this problem, car manufacturers are forced to design greener cars that will not have negative impacts on the environment.

We all know what Toyota managed to do as the Prius is the most renowned hybrid-car in the world. A while ago, the European Council came up with a new rule which will lead the automakers to manufacture cars with an 130g/km limit of the CO2 levels by 2012. This ruling would ruin the business of supercar manufacturers like Ferrari or Lamborghini.

In a recent interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said that they are planning to reduce CO2 levels by 40% before 2012. They will make it possible thanks to a new hybrid technology and Ferrari might build cars powered by turbocharged V6 engines which are smaller and more fuel-efficient.

Plug-In Hybrid Leads Toyota's Drive Beyond Oil

2008-06-16T18:50:00.001-03:00

By Chuck Squatriglia June 11, 2008 | 5:59:37 PMCategories: Hybrids

Toyota, rightly or wrongly, is widely considered the greenest automaker, and the company hopes to solidify its hold on the title and move beyond oil through a sweeping plan to produce cleaner, more efficient cars -- beginning with a plug-in hybrid it will produce by 2010.

It's no secret Toyota's been working on a plug-in hybrid to compete against the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt, but Wednesday's announcement sets a firm deadline and makes it clear Toyota has no plans of ceding the green mantle to General Motors. It also underscores how quickly the race to build a viable mass-market electric car is heating up.

The company's ambitious "low-carbon" agenda includes cranking out 1 million hybrids a year and eventually offering hybrid versions of every model it sells. In the short-term, Toyota says it will produce more fuel efficient gasoline and diesel engines and push alternative fuels like cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel. It's also pumping big money into lithium-ion batteries. With fuel prices going through the roof and auto sales going through the floor because of it, Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe says the auto industry has no choice but to move beyond petroleum.

"Without focusing on measures to address global warming and energy issues, there can be no future for our auto business," he told reporters in Tokyo, adding, "Our view is that oil production will peak in the near future. We need to develop power train(s) for alternative energy sources."

Watanabe's reference to peak oil echoes that of GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who in explaining the company's decision to shut down four truck factories said rising fuel prices and mounting demand for efficient cars are "structural, not cyclical." In other words, the two biggest automakers in the world realize petroleum's days are numbered.

That's not to say the wells will run dry anytime soon or the bulk of Toyota's cars won't rely upon internal combustion for many years to come. "People often ask us whether the vehicles of the future will be hybrid vehicles or clean diesel cars or electric vehicles," Watanabe said. "Our answer is that it will not be one technology because energy situations vary from one market to another."

Still, Toyota is betting heavily on batteries to increasingly augment gasoline. The world's leading producer of hybrids -- worldwide sales of the Prius recently topped 1 million, 10 years after its introduction -- wants to stay there by producing that many hybrids each year "as early in the 2010s as possible." Looking further into the future, Watanabe says Toyota will introduce hybrid versions of every car in its line-up sometime between 2020 and 2029.

Reaching those goals will require bringing down the cost of lithium-ion batteries, which currently cost $1,000 per kilowatt hour, according to Tom Turrentine of the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC-Davis.

Toyota is joining longtime battery partner Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. in launching a program to develop batteries it says will outperform lithium-ion batteries. It's assigning 50 engineers to the project, according to Reuters, and plans to begin producing batteries next year. Full production is slated for 2010, although Toyota isn't saying how many it might build. It also plans to continue building the nickel-metal hydride batteries it currently uses in hybrids.

The third-generation Prius, due next year, will use NiMH batteries. The plug-in hybrid coming in 2010 will use lithium-ion batteries and will "be geared toward fleet customers in Japan, (the) United States and Europe," the company said. There's no word on when it might be offered to the rest of us, but Toyota promises to "accelerate development of small electric vehicles for mass production."

Toyota isn't giving up on internal combustion, though. It's already revamping its engines to make them more efficient, developing 1.3- and 2.5-liter engines that will propel much of its line-up by 2010. The smaller of the two is fitted with a start-stop system to maximize fuel economy. Toyota also plans to roll out a six-speed manual transmission this fall. It's also working with outside partners to develop cellulosic ethanol from yeast and diesel fuel from biomass. And, like everyone else in the industry, Toyota pushing hydrogen and its FCHV-adv fuel-cell vehicle.

Photo: Flickr user unumediastudio.

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What lies beneath Crimp’s scripts?

2008-06-01T16:59:00.001-03:00

Three actors from Angels and Heroes present three takes on dark comedies at Bus Stop Theatre
By ANDREA NEMETZ Entertainment Reporter sun. Jun 1 - 4:31 AM

Garry Williams, left, Ann Doyle and Stewart Legere perform in Fewer Emergencies, a series of three plays written by Martin Crimp. Richie Wilcox, Tara Patriquin and Tyler Foley each direct one of the dark comedies in the production, running Tuesday to June 8, at the Bus Stop Theatre, 2203 Gottingen St., Halifax. (Eric Wynne / Staff)

How much information is too much?

In Fewer Emergencies, being staged by Angels and Heroes at the Bus Stop Theatre, 2203 Gottingen St., Halifax, Tuesday to Sunday, June 8, both oversharing and not sharing enough come in for scrutiny.

Written by Martin Crimp, the series of three plays — Whole Blue Sky, Face to the Wall and Fewer Emergencies — were designed to be performed together, says Richie Wilcox, A&H co-founder.

""They are 20 minutes each, but Martin Crimp packs a lot into a small script. You get more out of it than a three-hour play.""

Wilcox, who has just finished up his master’s degree in theatre directing at Texas State University, directed Face to the Wall in Texas and loved it so much he sent the scripts back to Halifax.

""(A&H) co-founder Tara Patriquin suggested we divvy them up as we have three talented directors in our company and we thought it would be interesting to see three different styles in one night.""

The first piece, Whole Blue Sky directed by Wilcox, focuses on a failed marriage. The second, Face to the Wall directed by Tyler Foley, explores the questions surrounding a school-shooting massacre and the third, Fewer Emergencies directed by Patriquin, refers back to the family in Whole Blue Sky and focuses on their injured child.

The plays feature performances by Ann Doyle, Stewart Legere and Garry Williams, founder of DaPoPo theatre.

Legere, who starred in Antigone and Oh Dad, Poor Dad with A&H and Penny Dreadful with Zuppa Circus, for which he won a Merritt Award as Nova Scotia’s best supporting actor earlier this year, thinks working with the three directors is an awesome idea.

He’s worked with both Wilcox and Foley as directors before and with Patriquin as an actor.

""There was no way to say no,"" he says, over a late breakfast at Smith’s Bakery. ""With the limited time to put it together (two-and-a-half weeks) it’s a challenge. The commitment is huge, but exciting.""

""The plays are very open, just text. At the first reading it seemed very absurd, and hard to place a throughline or plot. But as you go along, you can really see what each is about.

""The plays are very character driven. Whole Blue Sky is about a woman and the difference between how her life looks and what really lies underneath the surface.

""The second one deals with a school shooting in a very frank but not gratituous way. It’s graphic, but discusses the events from a distance.

""Fewer Emergencies is the hardest, it’s a discussion about the state of the world and desensitization.""

Legere says because of the pace, the production is constantly engaging.

""It’s like how every song in a musical constantly advances the plot and character. Things are born and die within a little movement.""

It is interesting to see the same three actors play different characters, says Wilcox, who suspects the audience will make connections.

And he believes the writing is more important than the setting.

""It will translate to anywhere, it could be done in thousands of ways. . . in the Oval Office, in a diner, on Parliament Hill.

""At the centre of the scripts is the judgment of what society truly values presented in biting satire.

""It is pretty much all dark humour. One of the clearest manifestations of what I consider the mandate of Angels and Heroes to be. It’s absolutely silly and absolutely sublime,"" agrees Legere.

Wilcox, who will head to York University in Toronto this fall to take a PhD in theatre with a view to teaching and directing, says what sets Crimp’s scripts apart is that they are so theatrical.

""So many scripts that you read today can be translated easily to film, but these, on every level are theatrical.""

""They demand intensity. You need a clear idea from the actor and director or it falls apart,"" concurs Legere, who was also nominated for a Merritt for best supporting actor for Antigone (directed by Foley for Angels and Heroes).

While each of the actors in Fewer Emergencies plays more than one character, each of the three plays has one featured actor.

""I really have gotten to delve into my character in Face To the Wall,"" says Legere. ""He goes to some very dark places. We’ve all gone too far with something, or said something we might regret. This is a blown-up version of that and I can relate to it.

""We have to consider what is private and how responsible we should be for sharing our minds."

And while in Whole Blue Sky the audience finds out way too much information about the state of the woman’s marriage, in Fewer Emergencies the characters don’t say enough.

""It’s the opposite of oversharing. They allow themselves to be silence and do do violence to themselves in the same way oversharing does violence to other people.""

Tuesday is pay-what-you-can night. Wednesday to June 8 shows are 8 p.m. and June 8 there is a 2 p.m. matinee. There is no show Friday.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or reserved in advance by calling 223-5371.

( anemetz@herald.ca)

Facebook To Open Source Facebook Platform

2008-05-27T10:11:00.001-03:00

Michael Arrington

71 comments »

Sometime soon, perhaps this week, Facebook will turn the year-old Facebook Platform into an open source project, multiple sources have told us. The immediate effect will be to allow any social network to become Facebook Platform compatible - meaning application developers can easily take their Facebook applications and have them run on those social networks, too.

Bebo already licenses the Facebook Platform, which allows third parties to make their Facebook applications work on Bebo, too. With the new announcement, social networks won’t need to go through the hassle of doing a deal with Facebook. They’ll simply map their existing APIs to Facebook Platform (which isn’t trivial) and go. Expect to see the four major technical pieces of Facebook Platform - FMBL (markup language), FQL (query language), FJS (Javascript library) and the Facebook API to be open sourced and made available to anyone.

If they mirror the Open Social approach, third parties will be free to change the Facebook Platform components for their own use and deploy them on their own sites. To have those changes be incorporated into the official versions of Facebook Platform, however, would require Facebook’s approval.

This is a nearly inevitable response to Open Social, which is backed by Google, MySpace and Yahoo. Open Social is also an open source platform, run the the Open Social Foundation. Facebook has been looking more and more like a walled garden of late, and they are being regularly out maneuvered by competitors. Time to fight back.

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On February 4th, 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social network that was at the time exclusively for Harvard students. It was a huge hit, in 2 weeks, half of the student body… Learn More

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Eight Forbidden Delicacies

2008-05-18T13:41:00.001-03:00

By Alicia Coffman | Newsweek Web Exclusive -May 17, 2008 | Updated: 9:20 a.m. ET May 17, 2008

Foie gras is back on Chicago menus after a two-year ban, but it's not the only traditional delicacy that's been restricted or deemed socially unpalatable. Maggot cheese, anyone?

James Marshall / Corbis

Deadly Delicious: The potentially toxic puffer fish, or fugu, is a gourmet treat in Japan, where chefs must prepare it carefully to avoid poisoning diners

Chicago's gourmands got some good news this week when the city's two-year-old ban on foie gras was officially lifted. The repeal was a defeat for animal rights groups who pushed to ban the French delicacy because it is made from the fatty livers of geese and ducks that have been force fed. But the pricey dish is not the only traditional food that's restricted (or shunned) around the country because of health or political concerns. Here are some other controversial gourmet favorites, from maggot cheese to haggis, that you may or may not be able to find on a menu near you.

1. Casu Marzu Maggot Cheese Yes, you read that right: maggot cheese. This is one delicacy that's both an acquired and a forbidden taste. Casu marzu is a runny white cheese made by injecting Pecorino Sardo cheese with cheese-eating larvae. The cheese can pose various health hazards, such as an intestinal larval infection or even the risk of larvae jumping into your eye. Because of these threats, casu marzu can't legally be sold in Italy, though farmers on Sardinia and in northern Italy's Piedmont and Bergamo areas still produce it for their own clandestine consumption. United States regulations don't even address this particular type of cheese—perhaps because no one has been brave enough to put it on an American menu.

2. Puffer Fish The eyes and internal organs of this fish are highly toxic, but the meat is a delicacy in Japan and Korea. Japanese chefs are specially trained to prepare fugu, as the dish is known, so as not to kill their customers, but it's a tricky business. Your life is in the chef's hands. The animal contains tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin that damages nerve tissue and for which there is no antidote. Puffer poisoning can result from touching incorrectly prepared puffer soup, chiri, or from raw puffer meat. Saxitoxin, the cause of paralytic shellfish poisoning, can also be found in puffers. Adventurous diners can find the dish at top Japanese restaurants in some American cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and L.A., though harvesting puffers is forbidden in Florida.

3. Raw Milk Cheese Don't get caught driving cross-country with a ripe hunk of unpasteurized French brie; it's against FDA regulations. The FDA says you can't transport raw milk across state lines, and you can sell unpasteurized cheeses only if they have been aged at least 60 days and stored at a frigid 35 degrees Fahrenheit—treatment that would likely be considered by the French to be cruel and unusual punishment of an innocent fromage.

4. Absinthe This green liqueur, which was reputed to produce hallucinations and act as an aphrodisiac, became popular in France in the 1850s. In July 1912 the Department of Agriculture banned absinthe in America for its "harmful neurological effects." Federal authorities now permit the sale of absinthe only if manufacturers can prove that thujone (the ingredient that produces the neurological effects) levels are almost undetectable and if they added a qualifier to the word absinthe. But recently a team of scientists analyzed samples of the original preban 19th-century French absinthe and found that it didn't have enough thujone to be mind-altering, but that at 70 percent alcohol the drink was about 140 proof, which may account for some of those hallucinations.

5. Sassafras The dried root bark of the sassafras tree native to North America has been used for centuries for making tea, as a painkiller and as a seasoning for Creole soups and stews. The bark contains an oil called safrole, which the FDA banned for use as an additive in 1960 because studies linked the consumption of safrole to liver cancer in rats. Since then the United States has banned the sale of any ingestible product that contains more than a small amount of safrole. The root bark extract and leaves are now treated commercially to produce a safrole-free product that provides sassafras flavor without the health risks.

6. Haggis In 1989 imports of this traditional Scottish dish made from the internal organs of sheep were banned from the United States due to concerns that it could carry bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a.k.a. mad cow disease. British authorities dispute these concerns, and haggis is widely sold in Scottish supermarkets. Recipes vary, but the pungent delicacy usually contains sheep lung, liver and heart minced with onion and then boiled in the animal's stomach, though modern versions sometimes use artificial casings.

7. Lobsters The organic supermarket chain Whole Foods stopped selling live lobsters in 2006 in response to PETA and other animal protection groups that said the store could not guarantee that the crustaceans were handled humanely in transport. Other supermarkets have followed suit, but there hasn't yet been a widespread removal of the creatures from seafood counters. According to the Lobster Liberation Web site, created by PETA, lobsters can feel pain, and they suffer when they are cut, broiled, or boiled alive. (In fact, boiling lobsters alive is illegal in Reggio, Italy.)

8. Foie Gras Chicago foie gras fans may have gotten a reprieve this week, but now Californian fans may have to look for the rich treat far from home. The sunshine state has passed a law banning the French delicacy as of 2012 because of animal cruelty concerns. (Ducks and geese are force fed up to four pounds of food a day though metal pipes down their throats. The dish is then created from the enlarged liver.)

Facebook Can Be Fun, But It's Also Useful

2008-05-07T19:43:00.000-03:00

Techdirt Daily Email for Wednesday, 07 May 2008

(Click here to visit the site)

Facebook Can Be Fun, But It's Also Useful ((Mis)Uses of Technology)

by Timothy Lee from the social-density dept on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 @ 11:13PM

Mathew Ingram argues that Facebook is about fun, and that it's not that hard to turn a profit on a platform that's oriented around fun and games. He's certainly right that fun and business aren't incompatible, but I think it's a mistake to discount how useful it can be. In my experience the most useful features are not the add-on applications but the basic features built into Facebook itself. These features aren't as glamorous, but I think they're enough to ensure Facebook won't prove to be a fad like Friendster did

First there's Facebook's groups feature. Twenty years ago, people who wanted to organize to achieve a common goal—whether it was supporting a political candidate, protesting a company's bad customer service, or finding other fans of a favorite TV show—frequently didn't have a cost-effective way to do it. The phone and email were just too cumbersome and expensive. Even ten years ago, group formation required setting up a website or creating a mailing list, something that still required a non-trivial amount of work and often had limited functionality. In contrast, groups on Facebook are incredibly easy to create and maintain and they have a ton of useful features. The modest improvements in ease of use aren't amazing from a technical perspective, but they've made a big difference in peoples' ability to quickly form groups and find people with shared interests or goals.

Second, the photos feature on Facebook is incredibly useful. Of course, sites like Flickr have done photo sharing for years. But having its photo application embedded in a broader social network gives Facebook key advantages that its competitors can't match. If my friends have Flickr accounts, I don't know about it, but I can easily see which of my friends have Facebook pictures. The pre-existing social network also allows Facebook users to mark themselves or their friends in photos, which causes them to show up in their friends' photo albums.

Finally, I've been noticing that Facebook is beginning to displace Evite as the preferred vehicle for party invitations among my friends. This is another case where having a pre-existing social network is a huge advantage. With Facebook, I can create my guest list simply by running through the list of friends and checking the ones I want to invite. With Evite, in contrast, I have to dig up the email addresses of all the people I want to invite. And many people are already visiting Facebook regularly, so it's less annoying to RSVP there than on a site that only does party invitations. Adding an invitation feature to a site people already use creates a lot less friction than asking them to sign up for a totally separate invitations site.

All of which illustrates a point Clay Shirky has made: really interesting social changes are the result not of new technology, per se, but of social density: a networking site that 90 percent of your friends use is vastly more useful than a site that 10 percent of your friends use. Very little of Facebook's functionality is new from a technical perspective, but Facebook (and MySpace) are the first sites to reach a point where almost everyone in certain social groups use them. And that fact dramatically increases their value. I don't know if Facebook is worth $15 billion, but it's certainly not a flash in the pan, and its appeal isn't limited to Scrabulous.

Beer, Blogs And Bias

2008-04-26T10:30:00.001-03:00

Beer, Blogs And Bias (Say That Again)

by Michael Masnick from the i'll-drink-to-that dept on Friday, April 25th, 2008 @ 7:40PM

The Wall Street Journal has an article focusing on a blog set up by Miller Brewing Company called Brew Blog. There are a few different, interesting points worth discussing here. First, the blog isn't used as a blog about what's going on at Miller Brewing. Instead, Miller hired an experienced reporter, and told him to just cover the beer industry as if he were a beat reporter. In other words, it's reporting news -- and even breaking stories on the competition. In fact, it revealed that main rival Anheuser-Busch was planning a new beer before A-B was able to make the announcement itself. This is certainly a recognition of how content is advertising. The blog clearly isn't "advertorial." It's full-on reporting about the industry, in a way that's interesting and relevant to those in the industry.
What may be even more interesting, though, is what the article says about journalism. In an age in which journalists are whining that their jobs are disappearing, here's yet another example of where suddenly there are new types of jobs for journalists appearing every day. But, even more interesting, is a quote at the end of the article highlighted by David Card. It's from Harry Schuhmacher, the editor and publisher of a fee-based trade publication on the beer industry:

"I tell Miller you're subsidizing a free publication, and it hurts the trade press," he says. "But they don't care."...Mr. Schuhmacher adds that he writes fewer positive pieces about Miller than he once did because he knows Brew Blog will always publish the same stories.

Think about this for a bit. People complain that when you have a company-sponsored publication it will inevitably be biased -- but the sponsorship of that site is totally open and in the clear. The site's content stands for itself. Yet, at the same time, a supposedly "objective" traditional journalist is admitting that he writes fewer stories about Miller because he's upset that it's competing with his own publication. From that, it would certainly seem like the Brew Blog is a lot more credible (it's biases are out in the open), while this fee-based trade pub admits that story choices are sometimes based on personal vendettas.

3 Comments

Technorati Tags: TechDirt,Michael Masnick,Miller Brewing,Beer

Maybe Starbucks Shouldn't Be in the Music Business

2008-04-26T10:25:00.001-03:00

And On Second Thought, Maybe Starbucks Shouldn't Be In The Music Business (Culture)

by Michael Masnick from the core-competencies dept on Friday, April 25th, 2008 @ 1:03PM

We've chronicled Starbucks' successes and failures as it tiptoed into the music industry over the past few years. The ubiquitous coffee shop was trying to position itself as a "lifestyle" brand. After successes in selling the albums it regularly played in stores, the company went so far as to set up its own record label. While we noted that this was an interesting play, it seemed like it would really only work if the the company didn't try to become a normal record label. Unfortunately, it seems like that's exactly what it did. It focused on selling albums, rather than the wider musical experience, and pretty much relied on the Starbucks connection to boost sales. That just wasn't going to cut it -- so it should come as little surprise that the suddenly struggling company is handing over the record label to someone else to deal with. Starbucks will continue to look for music to sell in its stores -- it just won't be producing albums anymore. This makes plenty of sense since Starbucks never really seemed to have much of a plan to do anything really innovative in the music business, and right now it probably has a lot more important things to concentrate on.

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Technorati Tags: TechDirt,Michael Masnick,Starbucks Music

Keep Your Pussy Off The Keyboard

2008-04-17T01:10:00.001-03:00

Keep Your Pussy Off The Keyboard April 13, 2008

Who's the bad guy here????

2008-04-12T08:25:00.002-03:00

by Michael Masnick from the this-again? dept
Friday, April 11th, 2008 @ 5:46AM

Cities Caught Illegally Tampering With Traffic Lights To Increase Revenue Of Red Light Cameras (Scams)

Just last month there was the latest in a rather long line of reports noting that red light cameras tend to increase the number of accidents because people slam on their brakes to stop in time, leading to rear-ending accidents. Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there's a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there's a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite! Jeff Nolan points out that six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and increasing revenue. This is especially disgusting. These cities are actively putting more people in danger of serious injury or death solely for the sake of raising revenue -- while claiming all along that it's for safety purposes. Is it any surprise that one of the six cities is Dallas? Remember, just last month Dallas decided it wasn't going to install any more red light cameras because fewer tickets had hurt city revenue.

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2008-04-08T21:11:00.000-03:00

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

I May Be Wrong, But I'm Not Confused

2008-03-28T00:42:00.004-03:00

One of my fellow Nametags Authors is Ben Casnocha who writes on entrepreneurship, books, writing, current affairs, and intellectual life. His Blog today crossed my screen and I've reposted it for your pleasure .... I agree with the sentiment of the blog I know that feeling......

http://ben.casnocha.com/

Recently, a newly-hired VP of Marketing briefed the board of directors on his marketing plan for the year. He demonstrated a strong grasp of the the company's goals, market openings, competitive landscape, etc.

Everyone was impressed.

Since this was a technology start-up, everyone also knew that anything could happen. The world could change overnight. The company had a high chance of failure no matter how good the strategy -- this was a start-up, after all.

The VP of Marketing concluded his presentation with a line that acknowledged this uncertainty: I may be wrong, but I'm not confused. In other words, I'm placing bets, they might not pan out, but it's not because I don't understand what's going on or aren't aware of the various options.

Great line.

(as told to me by someone on the board)

Unzip American Sexuality and What Do You Find? Tech

2008-03-15T13:37:00.000-03:00

Sex Drive Commentary by Regina Lynn Culture : Lifestyle

Unzip American Sexuality and What Do You Find? Tech

By Regina Lynn 03.14.08 | 7:50 PM

Brian Alexander investigates how Americans have sex in his new book, America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction.

When journalist Brian Alexander set out to investigate how Americans have sex, he didn't expect to be studying it through the lens of technology.

"I knew I was going to find that digital culture has changed the way people get sexually involved, but I surprised even myself at how true it really is," he says.

Alexander's new book, America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction found that you can't write about contemporary sexuality without bumping into technology.

Virtual worlds, chat rooms, social networking and Catholics using birth control -- sex is infused with tech at every turn.

Alexander is the Sexploration columnist at MSNBC.com and a contributing editor at Glamour magazine, and it sounds like his inbox looks a lot like mine. Like me, he noticed a shift in what readers were asking in the past year or so. More sophisticated queries ("Where can I learn more about safe ways to use electricity during sex?") were replacing questions about the basics ("If my husband wants me to put my finger in his ass, is he gay?").

Unlike me, he pitched a multimedia investigative series to find out why. The result is America Unzipped, which includes articles, online videos and discussion forums in addition to the book.

Alexander traveled all around the United States, delving into smaller communities and conservative regions as well as sexually progressive cities like Seattle and San Francisco, to uncover what we're really doing under the covers.

It turns out that Americans are not nearly as Puritanical, frightened, angry or perturbed as the religious groups and politicians waging the war on sex would have you believe.

We’re not even terribly bothered by the notion that technology has become an integral aspect of sexuality. In fact, "love and let love" is a much more widely held philosophy here than is generally assumed.

In the South, Alexander found that faith and sexual freedom can blossom side by side; plenty of Southern Baptists and Catholics see no conflict between their relationships with God and their choices to use birth control, sex toys, pornography or to have sex outside of marriage.

He tried his hand as a sex educator/retail clerk at an adult store in Tempe, Arizona for a week. ("The longer I worked there, the more I realized it's a very middle-class bourgeois thing to do, going to an adult store.") And as a Passion Parties assistant in the Midwest, he learned that mothers, daughters and sisters can sit comfortably around the living room to shop for arousal-enhancing gels and vibrating cock rings.

In Maryland, he spent time with a couple that uses Craigslist to find other people for group sex. "In five minutes she opened the laptop on the kitchen table, found responses to ads they'd placed, and decided who to meet up with," he says. "While it's not news that people can do that, to see people do it so easy and so quickly was almost startling to me."

Over and over again, Alexander's subjects told him that the internet had opened their eyes, dispelled their fears, given them new avenues for pleasure, and provided support as they figured out what they really wanted from sex.

(In the book, he confesses to reaching a point where he simply refuses to allow one more person to gush about the internet. "Isn't it possible," he muses, "that we're just bored?")

After touring the Adam & Eve toy factory in North Carolina, attending a fetish conference in Florida, watching a hardcore BDSM porn shoot in San Francisco, and taking in an all-kinks-welcome sex party in Seattle, Alexander concludes that while this explosion of sexual exploration is not hurting American culture, the culture that enables it may actually be hurting sex.

"I think we are living in ever more disconnected times without great senses of community, family, belonging," he says. "People go looking. Some turn to fundamentalist religious views. Some turn to phony tribalism -- I mean, really, white boys with Maori tribal tattoos? Come on.

"Turning to sex is at least as rational a response as religion. Maybe more so, because at least it is a connection with another human being. Sex is believable in a world which offers us very little to believe in anymore.

"But sex gets hurt when this response leads to a loss of subtlety, of romance and sex as an art form, a dance, a work of imagination."

And yet, by definition, we lock the investigator out of those subtle, romantic, imaginative spaces. The dance he speaks of may be too subtle for an observer to notice (especially amidst the sensory overload of a fetish ball or the extremely cerebral work of sex in virtual worlds). If you haven't experienced the subtleties, the art, the works of imagination that are particular to sex tech, can you learn to see them in others?

Alexander is skeptical about critics who suggest personal experience may be necessary to present a truly balanced chronicle of contemporary sexuality.

"It's called journalism," he says. "If I'm going to cover a war, I have to kill people? "

See you online,

Regina Lynn

- - -

Regina Lynn unzips at reginalynn.com.

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GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com

2008-03-12T00:08:00.001-03:00

By Kevin Poulsen March 11, 2008 | 8:42:42 PMCategories: Censorship, Cover-Ups

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, "Oops!!!", which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

"Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there," Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television affiliate KGO.

Since undercover officers aren't in the database, and the site has no personal information like home addresses, that fear seems unfounded. Chief Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, voices what sounds like a more honest concern: that officers will face "unfair maligning" by the citizens they serve.

Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more prominently. Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn't pass constitutional muster in any court in America.

Unfortunately for the startup, the company it chose for hosting is known to be quick to censor its customers. In January of last year, GoDaddy took down entire computer security website -- delisting it from DNS -- to get a single, archived mailing list post off the web.

On that occasion, at least, it gave the site's owner 60 seconds notice. GoDaddy notified Seto by posting its "Oops!" message to his public website.

"You put on my website for me to call you, when you have my phone number?," says Sesto.
A GoDaddy spokeswoman says the company can't comment on the RateMyCop takedown due to its privacy policy. Sesto says he's already arranged hosting elsewhere, and hopes to have the site online Tuesday night.

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Technorati Tags: Wired,GoDaddy,RateMyCop.com,K.Poulsen

First Ford Racing FR500S cars reach customers' hands

2008-03-07T23:31:00.001-04:00

Posted Mar 7th 2008 3:57PM by Alex Nunez
Filed under: Motorsports, Coupes, Sports/GTs, Ford

Click image for a high-res gallery of the Ford Racing Mustang FR500S
Nineteen Ford Racing FR500S Mustangs are now in the hands of their owners. In case you've forgotten, the Mustang FR500S is the $75,000, 325-horsepower racing car introduced at SEMA and offered directly to customers by Ford for use in the new single-make Ford Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup series. Starting this May at Road Atlanta, a series of eight Challenge races will take place in support of larger Grand-Am, HSR and NASCAR regional events, culminating with a September doubleheader at Miller Motorsports Park, for which the series and trophy are named.
Last weekend, the FR500S owners made a pilgrimage to the racetrack in Salt Lake City, UT where they attended performance driving school, participated in seminars about the series, and, most importantly, took delivery of their racers. Kudos to the pair of drivers who strayed from the norm, opting for black and red cars instead of the white chosen by everyone else. Once all the talking ended, the group headed out to the track for open practice sessions in their cars. May's not that far off, and the next time this group of racers gets together, they'll be competing for championship points. If you want to see the cars in action, we've pasted the Mustang Challenge schedule after the jump.

Gallery: Ford Racing Mustang FR500S

[Source: Mustang Challenge]
SCHEDULE:
2008 Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup
Date / Venue / In Support of

May 2-4 / Road Atlanta / HSR
June 13-15 / Mosport / NASCAR (Canada)
June 20-22 / Mid-Ohio / Grand Am
July 18-20 / Barber Motorsports Park / Grand Am
August 15-16 / Lime Rock / NASCAR (East)
August 29-21/ New Jersey Motorsports Park / Grand Am
September 19-21/ Miller Motorsports Park / Grand Am

Tags: ford racing, FordRacing, FR500S, miller cup, MillerCup, mustang challenge, mustang FR500S, MustangChallenge, MustangFr500s

Technorati Tags: ford racing,FordRacing,FR500S,miller cup,MillerCup,mustang challenge,mustang FR500S,MustangChallenge,MustangFr500s

What The Hell Is This Shit!?

2008-03-07T01:59:00.001-04:00

I think they are athletes or something?
LOL - Japanese TV

clipped from s59.photobucket.com

People are funny like that.....

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GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com

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What The Hell Is This Shit!?