The Column, Reloaded

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Recommended movie for those who read my Apollo 11 article: Space Cowboys. I'm told the over-the-hill gang takes over.
~ E

40 years after landing, we need a spark

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Photos: The Command Module on display. Neil Armstrong, taken minutes after he took his otherworldly walk. Buzz Aldrin working by the Lunar Module (Eagle). Liftoff. (Photos from Wikipedia)

==================

I'm not all that big on anniversaries, especially when they remind me how old I am. OK, I'm in denial about a lot of things.

But it was 40 years ago this month when man left the Earth's friendly confines and set foot on another, unreachable hunk of real estate. Brought back rocks and soil samples and discovered that no, the cow did not jump over the Moon.

To me it's unreal that it's been 40 years. I could probably rattle off the blow-by-blow of what happened that day. If I think about it, I can still see the image of Neil Armstrong's left boot pressing down into the lunar surface for the first time. Most people can tell you exactly where they were when the World Trade Center was destroyed. Those who were alive can recall their lives when Kennedy was assassinated (I can), or when Pearl Harbor was attacked (I'm not that old).

Upstaging even the Angels

Although I'd been aware of some of the early two-man Gemini flights, I really started paying attention with the brand-spanking-new, three-man Apollo program. To be sure, I had an unusual view of the space program for a kid my age. At the time, my Dad worked as an engineer for North American Aviation (later known as Rockwell), one of the go-to suppliers for the space program.

I was 11 years old when I first saw the fuzzy black-and-white image of Neil Armstrong descending the ladder into history. In one bold stroke we fulfilled John F. Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon, and showed the Russkies what space flight was all about.

I was at a ballgame in Anaheim when the Eagle landed. This was during the first game of a doubleheader between my Angels and the Oakland A's (and Oakland started an unknown kid named Vida Blue for the first game). The landing was announced over the stadium PA system, people cheered, and my grandmother (who took my brother and me to the game), well, you can tell she was getting just a little misty. After that I was kind of hoping the doubleheader would be over quickly so we could highball back to Riverside, plunk down in front of the tube, and watch the astronauts. In my life then, that was one of the few things that could upstage the Angels.

Like everyone else, I watched the otherworldly pictures on TV. I listened to the communications between the moonwalkers and Collins, who piloted the mother ship alone in lunar orbit, and with Mission Control. I listened to President Richard Nixon cangratulate the astronauts in the mother of long-distance phone calls. And later, after the astronauts buttoned up the Lunar Module and got some rest, I stepped outside, contemplated the Moon hanging there in the sky, thinking that people were up there right now. Heady stuff.

For a youngster, I had an unusual perspective on what was happening in space. My Dad worked as an engineer for North American Rockwell, those folks that built several components (the command and service modules) of the spacecraft that would send these men to the Moon. Although Dad wasn't one to tell everything that happened in the office (and he couldn't, I found out later, because of security concerns), I knew I could get some technical aspects of the flight from the dinner table. Years later, when the Space Shuttle disintegrated during reentry, I picked his brain to find out what happened (the rigid heat tiles mounted on the flexible skin of the shuttle were the glitch in the system, he maintained).

Dad still has a medallion that was given to him at work. It contains some metal from the Apollo 11 spacecraft. "It's been on the Moon," he'd tell me. For years he kept it on a coffee table in the living room, signifying a high point for him.

Been there, done that

This was the pinnacle of NASA's efforts, and in effect the agency became a victim of its own success. We've sent other crews to the Moon, but with each one there was a bit more of a ho-hum, been-there-done-that aspect to it all. It really took a failure -- Apollo 13's aborted mission and high-wire space survival act -- that put the Moon back on the public's mind. The press paid little attention to that mission until an oxygen tank blew the side off the service module, leaving the ground crew scrambling for ways to bring the astronauts home alive. But even that mission was a stomping success, if for no other reason than to prove how vest-pocket solutions and duct tape can work in an emergency. Apollo 13 became the basis of a good book and an excellent movie, and to this day I have nothing but respect for those guys who ran things from the ground, in Mission Control.

(For the record, I continued to sit riveted to the television as each crew went to the Moon. The footage got immeasurably better, sharper, with each mission, and I really dug that little car the astronauts rode around in even if it wasn't particularly fast.)

After Apollo, the space program went into something of a standstill. There was Skylab, which I found interesting, and the Shuttle, which I didn't. Somehow spending 25 years messing around in low Earth orbit seemed pretty small potatoes after the Moon.

"Nobody ever told us we couldn't"

Even today, with the Space Shuttle (and proposed Orion project), there is not nearly the love affair we once had with space. The astronauts today -- well, if I think about it I can name maybe a couple of them.

Tom Jones, who flew on four Shuttle missions, advises Barack Obama in an open letter (recently published in Popular Mechanics) to retire the Shuttle as scheduled, push forward with Orion, and try to regenerate some excitement about space.

"Use your bully pulpit to explain why space exploration will continue to be an American trademark," Jones urges. "Tell the public that space is not just about science -- it's about exploring for resources and energy, creating new industries, and finding economic opportunity. You should drive home the message that investment in space technologty will keep our scientists keen and capable ... look our young people in the eye and tell them that we need explorers -- doers -- who are citizens of the most forward-looking nation on Earth."

On the surface, you'd think this would be the worst time to think about space given our wobbly economy. But that's not necessarily so. It's times like this when we need some brilliant minds running amok. Our space efforts gave birth to a whole raft of new technologies, from the simple (think Velcro) to the complex (like this computer I'm typing this blog on) to the downright fun (the Super Soaker, which revolutionized the water fight, was designed by NASA scientist Lonnie Johnson while he was working on something else). Rather than baffling us with BS, this is a real good time to dazzle us with brilliance.

Even if we put in the same level of effort and excitement into the space program that we did in the 1960s, it certainly won't be the same. I like how Sy Liebergot, who served as electrical, environmental and communications officer (EECOM) for one of the Mission Control teams for Apollo 11 put it recently in a retrospective piece in Popular Mechanics:

"We were young, and we were fearless and, after all, nobody had ever told us young engineers that we couldn't successfully land humans on another planet. So we did it."

When NASA started the Manned Space program (and the first astronauts were chosen 50 years ago), about the only thing anyone knew about our rockets was that they blew up a lot. Through the Apollo project the program itself consisted of swashbuckling test pilots and a bunch of hotshot engineers that had little choice but to make up their own rules as they went along. These guys made "thinking out of the box" a viable modus operandi, an art form long before anyone attached a catch phrase to it.

Although NASA was, as it is now, a govermnental agency, there was very little of the bureaucratic nonsense and turf protection that you saw creeping in later, during the days of the Shuttle. There wasn't room for it then.

Of course I'd read some of the great books of the period, Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" and Chuck Yeager's autobiography. These books probably did more to capture the mindset of those involved in the space effort, and I highly recommend both.

(Footnote: Yeager never received consideration for astronaut status -- didn't meet the educational requirements -- and the idea of riding in something controlled from the ground didn't excite him that much. Hey, chimps were the first passengers in Project Mercury, and he famously said he didn't feel like sweeping up monkey crap before sitting in the cockpit. He did tell how Armstrong -- then with the old NACA X-15 program -- got their plane hung up in a dry lake bed while trying a touch-and-go maneuver against Yeager's advice. "We touched, but we sure as hell didn't go," Yeager wrote of the incident. "The wheels sank in the muck and we sat there, engines screaming, wide open, the airplane shaking like a moth stuck to fly paper." Chuck Yeager is one of my heroes.)

I'm only half joking when I suggest staffing a new Manned Space Program by calling the old gang out of retirement. OK, they'll be getting on in years, and many of the pioneers (I'm thinking of two of my favorite old-school astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Shepard here) are no longer with us.

Dad's past 80 now, and he's enjoying his retirement so he's probably not interested in a comeback. Liebergot is probably taking it easy these days. Former Mission Control flight director Gene Kranz, who did more than anyone else to keep things together when Apollo 13 threatened to become a real aerial cluster, is likewise unavailable. Oh, well.

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:34:00 +0000

Walter Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America," dies at age 92.
~ E

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:05:00 +0000

American Medical Association (AMA) endorses Obamacare. Not a good sign ...
~ E

Etiquette in wired world is different

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:28:00 +0000

I found these new etiquette rules for the digital age to be real interesting -- and yes, being wired and connected every which way does make the new rules necessary. Like, do you leave your wireless Internet open? Is it OK to send text messages from the head? What to do when your cell phone service drops a call? Should you ignore your ex on Facebook?

To help out, Brad Pitt addresses issues ranging from inter-Rock Band dynamics to choosing a ringtone for Wired. Here's an example: Your World of Warcraft wife might actually be a guy. Pitt's solution: "If it's good, don't check under the hood."

British media: LAPD treats Jacko death as homicide

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Michael Jackson appears in London in this March 5, 2009, file photo. (AP Photo)

==========

The investigation of Michael Jackson's death is sure bringing up a lot more questions than answers these days. The British press is having a field day with the whole thing.

It's a circus, I tell you.

Some excerpts:

Though it’s not yet official, the Los Angeles Police Department is treating Michael Jackson’s death as a homicide, law enforcement sources tell TMZ. The anesthetic Propofol looks to be the primary cause of death, and police are focusing on Dr. Conrad Murray as the person who likely administered the drug ...

and ...

The Jackson family confronted the singer about his prescription drug addiction, brother Tito tells the Mirror. “We went into one of his private rooms and had a discussion with him. Some of us were crying,” he says, but Michael denied using.

and ...

Michael had to lighten his skin because a disease, vitiligo, made it blotchy, Tito Jackson adds: “He had no choice in the matter, otherwise he would have looked like a spotted animal or a cow with spots all over him.”

Eventually we'll find our way past all the BS. Or not.

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:39:00 +0000

Understand Nevada lawmakers are considering a $5 tax on all prostitution transactions, legal & *illegal.* D'oh?
~ E

Justifying your tax dollars ...

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Sign from the People's Republic of California. That's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger standing in front of one of the signs.

========

They used to have signs up around some road projects, "Your tax dollars at work." And, after seeing one of those signs in my travels I always felt like I'd stepped in it. Or something.

Now, the bigger the snow job, the bigger the effort to BS the public. It's almost a requirement. This is from FrontPage Magazine:

An excerpt:

The Obama administration is so eager to make Americans believe its economic stimulus law is working, it is erecting signs proclaiming each new road repair or construction project is funded by the stimulus law. The Federal Highway Commission said in a sign-guidance statement: "President Obama made the commitment that all projects funded by the American Recovery and Investment Act (ARRA) will bear a recovery emblem to make it easier for Americans to see which projects are funded by the ARRA."

Sotomayor: Roe v. Wade is 'settled law'

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:06:00 +0000

SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor gives an idea of where she's coming from during her confirmation hearings.

From Newser:

Sotomayor: Roe v. Wade Is 'Settled Law' - Politics News Briefs | Newser

Shared via AddThis

At least she wasn't chewing gum, too ...

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Texting is enough of a handful without trying to drive, walk, chew gum, pass gas ... Photo through Honda/Getty, New York Daily News.

========

Much as I hate the idea of laughing at other folks' misfortune, I'm having a terrible time trying not to laugh ... I'll be OK.

This is from the New York Daily News.

A Staten Island teen trying to text while walking fell into an open manhole - and city officials have launched an investigation ... Alexa Longueira, 15, was walking with a friend along Victory Blvd. on Wednesday when she suddenly dropped underground ...

It it the coffee, or the little man in my head?

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Known in some circles as "mother's milk." Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

After reading this article from Scientific American, I don't know whether to give up the coffee or brew another pot ...

Here's an excerpt:

Have you ever heard a song when none was playing, clearly seen someone’s face when no one was there or felt the presence of a person, only to turn around to an empty room? If you’ve consumed a lot of caffeine—the equivalent to seven cups of coffee—you are three times more likely to hear voices than if you had kept your caffeine intake to less than a cup of coffee ...

(Caution: Annoying popups. Unless I was imagining them.)

Americans want health care benefits, but not the costs: No surprise in poll

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Americans speak out in a poll on health care and costs. Either it's by USA TODAY/Gallup, or the University of DUH ...

An excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Most Americans want a big health care bill passed this year, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, but they are less enthusiastic about paying for it.

And while a majority of respondents say controlling costs should be the legislation's top goal, more than 9 in 10 oppose limits on getting whatever tests or treatments they and their doctor think are necessary ... the findings underscore the difficult path ahead for the White House and Congress as the health care debate enters crunch time.

Using high-tech clipboards, ballpoints

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:10:00 +0000

Psion Teklogix's 7530 is a Windows CE .NET-based handheld that combines an ultra-rugged flashlight terminal with the flexibility and large screen of a Windows CE PDA. This is a fairly large and heavy (over two pounds) handheld that's engineered for extreme ruggedness, according to the manufacturer. This particular model is no longer available, but I use it at work.

============

You've got to love this high tech stuff. For the most part, I sure do.

But this past week I've relearned some of the pitfalls that come with putting so much reliance on fancy toys.

I have one of those wonderful nonessential jobs that really should be civil service. I work at an intermodal (truck and railroad) yard, and my task is to keep track of all those trucks that come in. Or maybe it's shipping containers. One of 'em, anyway. It's equal parts security and inventory work, and whatever the job actually is, I do it well enough to fool the boss.

On the job, I keep track of all incoming and outgoing shipping containers, chassis, and truckers. We do this by computer, and my own unit is a Psion Teklogik handheld, model 7530. It's not a half bad rig, for one that's been discontinued for a few years. Runs on Windows CE, which was the OS of choice for the old Pocket PC. Connects with the main system via wireless. Bluetooth connection to the printer hanging from my belt. And it's built tough. According to the manufacturer's website, you can run this thing in the rain, drop it from six feet up, or work it in a freezer. I've dropped this a few times (whenever you do, always make it look like an accident) and run it in tropical storms and freezing weather. I've also thought of using this unit as a hammer, crowbar, or occasional argument-stopper -- all in the interest of beta testing, creating a better product. Of course.

The system is not that well maintained, and sometimes it's temperamental. Bogs down. Takes forever to print. Some of our units have issues with the display. The alphanumeric keyboard is not designed for a full-sized hand, and although I'm fairly quick on it (using the index and middle fingers on my left hand), it's really best if you're used to thumb typing -- which I'm not.

On Wednesday I came to work, clocked in, made coffee, and fired up my handheld. And it froze up. I tried a hard reset. I tried a different handheld. I tried dropping it again. I tried a different battery, then a different handheld. Forget it. All our mobile units were dead in the water. And already a few trucks were lined up, waiting for me to open the place.

Fortunately, we still have a box of the old two-part forms hanging around, leftovers from the days this work was done by hand. It took a few minutes to familiarize myself with the forms, and soon I was good to go. The three of us -- me, coworker Michelle, and supervisor Elaine -- worked out some of the bugs, smoothed out the operations, and pretty soon we were able to do as good a job on the old forms as we did on the handhelds. Michelle and I would fill out the forms and pitch them to Elaine, who typed them into her desktop. It went very well, with very few glitches. When the computer system was back up shortly after noon on Friday, we could not help but feel good about what we accomplished.

And now we know what to do next time the system goes down, which it will.

A revelation here: Although we were a bit slower with the forms (always an issue with many of our truckers who want everything yesterday), we were probably more accurate. But there's more.

The job became simpler.

Really.

As I explained this point with one of the truckers, the job suddenly had all the fat trimmed off of it. Rather than go through a bunch of keystrokes (it takes about 20 keystrokes to do the simplest task, to check in a trucker who is not pulling anything; just bobtailing), just dash it off on the form, get a signature, and give the driver a copy. And, writing the stuff down on the form, many drivers were impressed we actually knew their names; on the computer they're just a six-digit code.

Yeah, sometimes I bring a sardonic sense of humor to the job. "How you like our giant technological leap forward?" I asked some of the drivers. But I was only half kidding.

OK. I love technological toys. Got to have my computer, Internet, cell phone, mp3 player, and all the goodies. I know how to use them, and I also know how to get under the hood and tweak things for higher performance. Tech is convenient. Tech is fast.

What high tech does not do, though, is make your task any simpler. If you think it does, you're fooling yourself.

I keep my budget on a spreadsheet. It's pretty intuitive now, but it took hours of fine-tuning to get it the way I wanted it. Honestly, a ledger and plenty of black (and for me, red) ink is every bit as good. And if the computer geeks out? Forget it. You'll send for some guy who can barely speak English. But he'll baffle you with BS and charge you big bucks for the privilege.

While the Internet speeds up the research process, whatever time and effort you save will likely be swallowed up in plucking the pearls of usable information from the ordure. And I hope you wash your hands after that.

I can carry a whole bunch of music on my mp3 player. Convenient, but mp3's -- or even CDs-- don't have the sound quality of vinyl.

While computers were a factor, we really used a clipboard and slide rule to put man on the moon.

'Waterboarding' and 'staycation' make lexicon, 'prepone' postponed

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:06:00 +0000

It's an annual event. The latest Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary has 100 new words in it to reflect changes in society. You've probably heard some, and you might have even used one or two in a sentence.

Most of these words have been around a while, and nost of the concepts behind the words -- such as the stay-at-home vacation or false-faced friend -- are much older than that.

John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield-based dictionary publisher, said many of this year's new words are tied to changes in technology, increasing environmental awareness and aging baby boomers' concerns about their health and have become part of the general lexicon. "These are not new words in the language, by any means," Morse said. "(But) when words like 'neuroprotective' and 'cardioprotective' show up in the Collegiate, it's because we've made the judgment that these are not just words used by specialists. ... These really are words now likely to show up in The New York Times, in The Wall Street Journal."

Here are some of my favorite (good and bad) new words in this year's edition:

Frenemy: Your classic enemy who acts like a friend. This is a concept that's older than Judas. OK, a lot of folks are like that, but it doesn't mean they deserve a special name.

Staycation: Saving money on vacation by just not going anywhere. Basically, laying out from work for a week, sitting on the front stoop in your underdrawers, and spending Sunday clearing the pizza boxes from your kitchen and all the dead soldiers from your lawn.

Waterboarding: Enhanced interrogation (or torture) technique that mimics drowning. Used to be known as "sticking one's face in the john and flushing it" in gangster movies.

Locavore: A person who eats only locally grown food. While I consider it a travesty to eat any seafood that does not come from Lowcountry waters, don't call me a locavore.

Shawarma: A sandwich especially of sliced lamb or chicken, vegetables, and often tahini wrapped in pita bread. Whatever it is, it sure isn't from around here. Pass.

Sock puppet: A false identity used for online fraud. Shari Lewis' Lambchop has grown up and become a downright malevolent presence on the Internet.

Flash mob: A group of people gathered through online social networking. Do they wear virtual raincoats?

Green-collar: Describes the growing environmental-protection industry.

Carbon footprint: It used to be what you'd leave after a day of working in the coal mine. Now, it's a source of Al Gore's income.

Cardioprotective: I figured this would happen. "Heart-healthy" just doesn't have the right ring to it.

Reggaeton: Music of Puerto Rican origin that combines rap and Caribbean rhythms. That's the definition, anyway. If there's a difference between reggaetron and "dancehall" reggae (Yellowman was one of the earlier performers of that genre), I've yet to hear it. Of course it's not like I investigated the matter -- much as I like reggae, rap does horrible things to me.

Here's a thought: Maybe I should come up with a word for rap-induced gag reflex and peddle it to Merriam-Webster.

Earmark: This one's been in fairly common use (particularly among journalists) for decades. What took the folks at Merriam-Webster so long? Here's a partial answer: According to Morse, some words spend some time in limbo while wordsmiths wait to see if they are just fads. So maybe "earmark" spent a long time on doube-secret probation.

Vlog: What I get if I stick a bunch of videos on this blog. I think I'll pass on that; not only do videos eat tons of your system resoures, words and the occasional still photo are fine for me. "Blog" is a dumb enough word and I refuse to call myself a blogger, but at least that's a word that rolls off the tongue. Vlog, forget it.

Naproxen: Another one that finally made it into the dictionary. I was prescribed naproxen for pain and inflammation after injuring my foot 15 years ago, and it didn't work then. I had to check the Merriam-Webster site to make sure "naproxen" didn't mean "placebo."

Researchers often keep track of words over many years. Here's one to watch: "prepone," commonly used in India among English-speaking Indians and refers to the act of arranging for an event to take place earlier than originally planned. Kind of the opposite of postpone. "Prepone didn't make it this time," Morse said. "But we know about it."

Which means they'll get "prepone" in the dictionary later. Or earlier.

Oscar Mayer dies at 95

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:59:00 +0000

This whistle helped put Oscar's name on the map. It's since been updated, but nothing's quite like the original. You've got to have your wiener whistles, not to mention wienermobiles. Photo from the web site.

-----

More than simply a brand name or the punchline to a catchy ad jingle, Oscar G. Mayer, the former chairman of his family's eponymous meat products company has died. He passed away Monday at the age of 95 in a hospice facility in Fitchburg, Wis.

Who's got stimulus?

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:24:00 +0000

Ohio took back $115 million in stimulus money toward replacing Cleveland’s Innerbelt Bridge.Photo byTony Dejak/Associated Press

Already there's scuttlebutt there may be another stimulus plan in the offing, but you know how the government doesn't know how to quit spending other people's money.

Who's getting stimulus money these days? According to the New York Times, it sure isn't the big cities.

But then, everyone has to complain.

(Caution: Really annoying popups with this article.)

Google OS faces uphill battle

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:08:00 +0000

From The Workbench, Reloaded there's more on the so-called Google Chrome OS: Wired says the odds of it making much dent in Windows for a slice of the Netbook market are not real good:

The Wired article

Google to unveil operating system

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:40:00 +0000

As reported in The Workbench, Reloaded:

I'll probably play with it at some point.

In fact, you know I will.

I understand this system is free, and I tend to be fearless when it comes to computers.

More than 25% of foreclosures are intentional, economists suggest

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:00:00 +0000

A sign of the times; this one from Littleton, Colo., near Denver. Photo by David Zalubowski / AP

The in-the-toilet economy and high foreclosure rates may be a bonanza for some -- like how do you get rid of a house you can't afford? This is from TIME:

Up to 26% of U.S. homeowners who stop paying their mortgage may be doing so intentionally, not because they can't make the payments but because they don't want to put money into a house that's worth less than what they owe. That finding, from a paper by economists at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the European University Institute, raises some doubt about the approach the Obama Administration has taken toward stabilizing the housing market. The current approach focuses on whether or not homeowners can afford their monthly payments, and largely ignores the fact that some 20% of homeowners owe more than their house is worth — a situation known as negative equity, or being "underwater," which, according to the paper's findings, may itself trigger default ...

This ain't Disney World, local blogger says

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Although it's real easy to dismiss articles or posts from folks who are not from around here and know exactly how to fix your town, this is one of the better ones I've read. It's actually quite clear-eyed.

But I'd still want to cue up the John Lennon music before reading the whole thing ...

... imagine a Charleston with bike lanes along some of the major arteries to make its citizens feel safer? What if certain areas of Downtown became pedestrian-only? What if local zoning ordinances were modified to encourage more of the corner Mom & Pop shops? What if pedicabs were given free reign to cart our citizens around rather than restricting them to a maximum of 15 out at a time? What if we had a light rail radiating in all directions and neighborhoods and towns were built around those stops (just like in New Jersey or Long Island). What if we had an actual water taxi service with accessible docks scattered all over our waterways? (like Vancouver, BC). What if we tried Rails to Trails like DC or Atlanta ...?

OK, she does raise points worth discussing.

Don't forget to wash your hands first

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:50:00 +0000

Is there a new demand for this old product? (Photo from ecogeek.org)

No comment necessary here -- this is all a little hard to imagine. I'm always interested in any thinking out of the box, especially if it helps to stretch our planet's resources, but I usually take a nice-work-if-you-can-get-it attitude about such things.

This article by Hank Green of ecogeek.org is interesting, though it's a little technical. Some of the readers' comments are just too good.

Hydrogen seems like a logical choice for fuel - it's energy dense and emits only water upon combustion - but upon closer examination we see that it's extremely expensive to make from water, so all the hydrogen in production today is made from fossil fuels. But Gerardine Botte at Ohio University has figured out an easy and efficient way to break the bonds in urea to produce hydrogen. The process consumes roughly one quarter of the energy needed to electrolyze water. And, yes, the world has a fairly plentiful (and renewable) supply of urea. Maybe not enough to power all our cars, but it's a start.

Interested in knowing how this is done, and you don't mind more technical stuff? Then there's more:

Sanford's wrist slapped but he keeps his head

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:20:00 +0000

So Gov. Mark Sanford gets to stay in office, but it's not going to make much difference now. Nor will Sanford.

This is according to Newser:

South Carolina Republicans voted to censure Gov. Mark Sanford last night, but since they didn’t call for his head, he’s likely to keep it, Politico reports. They chided Sanford for failing to adhere to the “core principles and beliefs” of the party, but said that “barring further revelation” that scolding would be “the party’s last word on the matter.”

SC Republicans Vote to Slap Sanford's Wrist - Politics News Briefs | Newser

Posted using ShareThis

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:28:00 +0000

Public service announcement: This is NOT a good night for "hey, y'all, watch this!"
~ E

About John Hancock and his buddies

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Ever wonder about those guys who signed that inflammatory note to King George III back in 1776?
Here, from ushistory.org, are the profiles of the guys who basically created this great nation:

It's interesting reading.

They don't make 'em like they used to

epulsifer@gmail.com (ericsomething) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Dick Cavett (from the New York Times)

While I'm in a (kaboom!) Independence Day state of mind, here are a few thought from Dick Cavett (who has to be about 900 years old now) on pyrotechnics. He misses the good stuff. This is from the New York Times blogs site:

Fireworks ! The word still raises the hair on my arms. (The lower arms, mainly.) Fireworks of all kinds were legal back then in Nebraska, and the opening of the first fireworks stand at the edge of town meant infinitely more to me than the first crocuses did to the flower-worshipper, the robin to the bird-lover . . . well, you get the point ... I didn’t like fireworks. I loved them. (Pyrotechnomania?) And I don’t mean the stuff that girls and sissies liked: fountains, sparklers, pinwheels and those infantile “snakes.” I mean the big stuff. The heavy ordnance. Cherry bombs, torpedoes, aerial bombs, two-, three- and even six-inchers (jumbo firecrackers). And, once, a 12-shot repeater aerial bomb.

Happy reading. Have a blast, along with a safe & sane Fourth!