I'm glad that more and more music services are moving to DRM (Digital Rights Management) free music, but the change is slow in coming.

I subscribe to Rhapsody Music Service and have for years. Rhapsody is a streaming service. For a monthly fee I can stream nearly anything I like. If I want to own it I can download it for $0.89. This is 10 cents cheaper than Amazon and iTunes, two other services I use. Those two are strictly download services, though you can listen to a sample.

I’ve just started using Amazon, having just discovered it because of Pepsi points. All their music is DRM free and in MP3 format. Even at $0.99 I often download from them because Rhapsody does not have all its titles in DRM free MP3 format, though more and more of their music is. The music that isn’t is in RAX format.

In order to get it as an MP3 I have to burn it to CD and then rip it. This works but it takes a lot of work for Windows Media Player to recognize it and download the album art. Then it thinks it’s smarter than me so it tries to name the song using the album name. It’s a pain. If it’s in RAX I don’t buy there anymore.

iTunes also uses its own format. Usually all I get from them is their free songs of the week, since I mostly use the service with my iPod Shuffle (screen? I don’t need no stinking screen!). When I want to turn one of theirs to an MP3 it’s easy to burn it to CD and turn around and rip it to MP3 and iTunes remembers what it is—200% better than Windows Media Player!

So why download from Rhapsody at all? Coke points! I use my Coke points to download Rhapsody music that’s in MP3 and I use Pepsi points at Amazon for everything else. As you can see from above, a lot of my music is free. I love free, don’t you? I know, I know, I’m cheap.

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Sign the "Drill here, drill now, pay less" petition to ask congress to allow drilling our own oil reserves. Click here: http://www.americansolutions.com/actioncenter/petitions/?Guid=54ec6e43-75a8-445b-aa7b-346a1e096659

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I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm searching for the perfect phone. I've related my problems with the Palm Treo and with my current phone. Out of all the phones out there, my son's LG EnV remains the best all around phone. Good music player, stereo BlueTooth support, decent camera, and a QWERTY keyboard. It also supports custom ringtones, wallpaper, etc.

Well LG has just announced the LG EnV2! It has all the above in a smaller package! "Great," I said. There's just one problem, they took out the flash!. What's the point in having a camera if there's no flash? Thus they took a great phone, made it better, then blew the whole thing by taking out the flash.

Why can't I have the phone I want? Music with stereo BlueTooth, ringtones, wallpaper, camera (with flash!), QWERTY keyboard, (and no, I seldom text, but a QWERTY keyboard is still nice when you're entering addresses and so forth) removable memory card, and a calendar that supports weekly, biweekly, and triweekly appointments? (And no, the EnV doesn't have that either, (Apparently that's a Palm thing) but it should!)

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Here's yet another article supporting global cooling!

Climate facts to warm to

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. ...

Read the rest at the Australian News: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html.

I recently read the Popular Science editorial where the editor said "The threat of human-influenced global warming is no longer in serious debate," (April 2008) and I wrote him an email refuting that statement. Of course he did not reply. Hey Mark Jannot! You edit a magazine called Popular Science. You know, science. Not politically correct non-science.

I once subscribed to Science Digest. One article told about a volcano in the Antarctic that has been erupting for hundreds of years. A letter to the editor pointed out, (this was when the ozone hole was big news) that chemicals from the volcano must be contributing to the formation of the hole more than man-made freon. The editor replied that of course there was no mechanism to move the chemicals from the lower to the upper atmosphere. I was outraged! If there was no mechanism to move chemicals from a volcano spewing them high into the air, what was the mechanism to move freon from ground level to the upper atmosphere? It was such a stupid, politically correct response from the Science Digest editor that I canceled my subscription. I told them I thought I had subscribed to a science magazine! Oh, my mistake!

Unfortunately scientists and science writers can be just as self-righteous and opinionated as anyone. This has always been the case, sad but true.

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It is now official: there is not only no global warming, but we're actually entering a cooling phase. All the major climate centers (the legitimate ones that are not corrupted by political correctness) agree that there has been no warming for the last few years and that the cool temperatures have more than erased the warming we've had before that. The arctic ice has more than recovered this winter and the nation has suffered under a particularly cruel winter.

Thomas Sowell sums it up well with his article that I read in the Las Vegas Review Journal, but I'm linking to Jewish World Review's version, since the LVRJ's is on a subscription site.

Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2008 / 22 Adar I 5768 Cold Water on ‘Global Warming’ By Thomas Sowell http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather. But stampedes and hysteria are no joke — and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis." They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis. Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

The rest if the article can be found here: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell022808.php3 check it out.

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We had a huge windstorm on Wednesday. I was in the cellar when the power went out. I felt my way out (not thinking about the cell phone I was carrying that could have lit my way!) and went towards the garage where I knew there was a flashlight. Something huge swept past me and there was a huge crash. I decided to go in the house to get a flashlight instead. The flashlight told me I was probably lucky I wasn't killed or injured, since it was a huge chunk of my garage's roof!

Though it's not obvious, that's four pieces of roof steel in the picture. That's heavy gauge steel and the sheets are 13 feet long. It came off as one piece then the wood holding it all together splintered so the pieces separated. I had to replace many of the wood runners before I could reattach the steel sheets. This time I bolted them down instead of just screwing them into the runners. The photo shows the roof with some of the runners already replaced.

I started yesterday afternoon and got up early this morning and worked all day. I'm pretty much done except for the cap at the peak. I'll have to go to the city to get that.

The roof steel must have been accordioned in because the roof is now two inches shorter than before. If I had noticed earlier I could have stretched it but it was already attached except the last piece, so it'll have to do.


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The abiotic theory of oil formation says that oil is not a fossil fuel, but is continually being produced in the earth. this of course upsets the enviro-loonies who insist we're running out of oil.
The following article has more evidence that the theory is correct:

BLACK-GOLD BLUES
Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'
New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply

---

Posted: February 1, 2008
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.

The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

The abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure.

While organic theorists have posited that the material required to produce hydrocarbons in sedimentary rock came from dinosaurs and ancient forests, more recent argument have suggested living organisms as small as plankton may have been the origin.

Continued at World Net Daily: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59991

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I put a funny greeting on our voice mail, but my wife said that she'd like something that identifies us. So I played with Audacity a bit and inserted a little clip identifying the Bush house which then leads into the funny greeting. Audacity is a powerful audio editing program. I'm still learning its features though. The voice mail supports appending to the message, so I could have recorded it that way, but Audacity was a more elegant a solution.

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I've made the decision to retire my ancient answering machine. It was a great answering machine, a PhoneMate 4300, and I've never found anything that I liked as well. The problem was that the tapes were wearing out. Now I could have replaced the message tape, but the continuous loop greeting tape is impossible to find. Although mini-tapes are still available if you look hard enough, my machine used full sized tapes.

What finally made me make the switch was the phone company began offering packages of features that gave me more for less money. Who can resist that, right? Even more irresistable was the 50% increase in my broadband speed. Another part of the package was voice mail. I decided to try it and found to my delight that my Uniden phones (TCX 805's) have a blinking light when there's a message waiting. If I glance at any phone I can see that there's a message. Really cool!

Of course what I need to do now is to record one of my pre-recorded gag messages onto my voice mail. The one on my answering machine went like this: "Hello, I am a digitally enhanced answering unit. Who are you? Please leave a message after my obligatory tone and we will respond as soon as humanly possible. Chou baby."

Yeah, I've got to have that back!

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A few years ago I went to see SpaceShipOne and its carrier the WhiteKnight fly. It was great! SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo are about ready for roll out. Here's the article.

Entrepreneur Unveils New Tourist Spacecraft

Chip East/Reuters

Richard Branson and aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled two new aircrafts Wednesday in New York.

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: January 23, 2008

Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft on Wednesday.

Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo.

The rest is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/science/space/23cnd-spaceship.html?ex=1359003600&en=462bf8c769b65f6c&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

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Check out the darkest substance ever!

Carbon nanotube carpet darkest thing ever made

• Michael Kanellos
• 6 comments

A loosely packed "carpet" of carbon nanotubes is the darkest material ever made, according to researchers from Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The carpet consists of nanotubes--hollow, honeycombed tubes made from carbon atoms-- standing vertically. Instead of being tightly packed together, the researchers went for a low density arrangement, complete with spaces and gaps, sort of like a box of dried spaghetti. Light striking the nanotubes as well as the gaps gets absorbed. When light gets absorbed, black (the absence of light) results. The nanotubes were also specially manufactured to have a more random arrangement of atoms, further reducing reflectivity. (Again, think of trying to look into a box of spaghetti. Not easy.)

The nanocarpet is in the middle. Former record holder to the left.

(Credit: RPI)

This resulted in a material that reflects only 0.045 percent of the light that strikes it. (Put another way, 99.955 percent of the light that hits it gets absorbed.)

Conventional black paint reflects 100 times more light. The previous record holder for darkness, a nickel-phophorus alloy pitted with light-trapping craters, reflected four times as much light.

The rest is here: http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9855485-1.html?tag=nl.e501

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When are they going to stop selling crappy cell phones?

I’ve been kicking myself ever since I bought a Samsung SCH-U740. The QWERTY keyboard and the music player appealed to me, and the dual flip was just too cool! It might be one of the smallest phones on the market with a full QWERTY keyboard. At first, the phone appears to be well designed and have all the right features, but soon the critical flaws show up.

Why so many of the Samsung phones do not have a standard 2.5 mm headphone jack I will never know. When I got the phone, I went out and bought a nicer set of headphones than those that came with the music kit. Unfortunately, soon after trying to listen to music and work around the yard, I found that the adapter would slip out of the non-standard jack. After just a few attempts to work and listen to music, I switched to an IPod Shuffle. I’ve never had the wire slip out unless I caught it on something and really yanked it. Another problem for middle aged eyes is the small keys make it hard to see, but I could have lived with that if not for the other problems.

Since it’s impossible to use the phone to listen to music this way then you’d think that stereo Bluetooth would be the answer, right? Nope. The phone doesn’t support it.

Since the phone isn’t working for me and I use a Palm Pilot, I thought I’d try to replace it with a Treo 700P. I spent several days bidding on EBay and finally won a phone at a good price. The 700P has a standard headphone jack and even supports stereo Bluetooth (with third party software).When it came though, it was a 700W (The P stands for Palm OS, the W for Windows OS, get it?) making it incompatible with my current Palm Pilot data files. Wow, I got to box it up and ship it back (after multiple emails to the vender).

Once again I spent several days bidding and won another phone—from the same vendor. This time when it came it was the right one. But it was not in as good a shape as the first and the headphone jack didn’t work in stereo. The right side headphone wouldn’t work. Once again—emails to the vendor and I got to box it up and will ship it back tomorrow. This time I noticed what I failed to notice with the 700W, it uses only midi ring tones and I can’t find a way to add my own. Plus the camera has no flash, which is strange. I’ve never seen a camera phone with no flash before! So I think I’m glad this one was broken. It would have been nice to consolidate my phone with my Palm but, basically Palm took a Palm Pilot and added a poor phone to it. It’s a shame, since it could have been a great product.

I’ve been looking around for a phone that offers a QWERTY keyboard, a great music player with a standard headphone jack, stereo Bluetooth headphone music capability, a decent camera, and of course, the other goodies--ring tones, speakerphone, etc. I couldn’t find anything better than my son’s LG enV! The only thing it doesn’t have, that it should, is the ability to multi-task (play music while doing other things with the phone) but that’s apparently a brand new feature so I’ll have to wait for the successor to the enV. I can’t get another phone through Verizon for another year anyway (and I’m not finding affordable enV’s on EBay). There will probably be better phones by then. Maybe an IPhone style phone without all the mistakes Apple made with theirs. You know, like no stereo Bluetooth capability!

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Well, will you look at this. A 300 mpg car and congress didn't mandate it! This is free enterprise at it's best.

Aptera: The 'Wingless Bird'

A California startup says its airplane-inspired vehicle can deliver 300 mpg for under $30,000.

By Jacob Gordon of TreeHugger.com

Slated for initial production in late 2008, the Aptera will come in all-electric and plug-in hybrid models. Its name means "wingless" in Greek, and the Aptera's body materials and aerodynamics are borrowed from light aircraft.

When Steve Fambro got bored building robots at a San Diego genetics company, he figured he could help keep his brain busy by building a kit airplane in his spare time. But his wife deemed the hobby too dangerous, so Fambro decided to build a car instead, one with low emissions and absurdly high mileage. Called the Aptera (Greek for "wingless"), the machine now exists as a working prototype. It has 2.5 seats, three wheels, weighs a feathery 1,500 pounds, and Fambro says his company will put the Aptera into production next October.

Specs may change between now and autumn 2008, but the current numbers look like this: 300 mpg, a price tag below $30,000, and 0-60 acceleration of 11 seconds (about a second slower than the Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid).

See the rest at http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=444375&topart=passenger.

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Another great energy story:

Left: Frank Pringle [right] and Hawk Hogan [left] feed the Hawk recycler, which extracts oil and gas from waste like tires.

Green Tech
THE MICROWAVE MAGICIAN

Frank Pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything

I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.

This is amazing! You need to read the rest here at http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html.

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Newt Gingrich gave a speech where he talked about our war with radical Islam. Here's a piece of it:

Published: November 29, 2007

Sleepwalking Into a Nightmare

Speech by Newt Gingrich

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered the following remarks to a Jewish National Fund meeting Nov. 15 at the Selig Center.

...We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it include s winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly....

The rest is here: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1385641

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More new technologies:

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

January 14, 2005

Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day.

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

There's more here.
I neglected to put the link to this article up so here it is now. This article concerns solar films:

Green Tech Nanosolar Powersheet The New Dawn of Solar

Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic technology has been around for decades, but this year, Silicon Valley–based Nanosolar created the manufacturing technology that could make that promise a reality.


The rest is here. There's an animation here.

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More great technology! A nuclear battery ten times more efficient than old designs.

Nuclear Battery Efficiency Raised

Advanced Battery Technology, Jul 2005

Scientists in the U.S. claim to have increased efficiency on batteries based on nuclear sources tenfold. University of Rochester researchers raised the efficiency by increasing the surface area of the silicon detector.

See the rest here.

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I just saw Amazon's new Kindle. I'm really impressed. I want one! Of course at nearly $400 I'm not getting one any time soon. Click on the picture for an informational video. This thing will hold over 200 books! It connects to Amazon wirelessly not with WiFi, but with the cell network. Books are about $10 each.


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Our dependence on oil is coming to an end in the near future. I keep seeing new experimental energy sources. Some of them will probably work. Here's the latest:

Yahoo News:

New technique creates cheap, abundant hydrogen: report

Mon Nov 12, 5:12 PM ET

CHICAGO (AFP) - US researchers have developed a method of producing hydrogen gas from biodegradable organic material, potentially providing an abundant source of this clean-burning fuel, according to a study released Monday.The technology offers a way to cheaply and efficiently generate hydrogen gas from readily available and renewable biomass such as cellulose or glucose, and could be used for powering vehicles, making fertilizer and treating drinking water.

AFP/DDP Photo: View of a hydrogen plant. A study just released reveals US researchers have developed a...

Read the rest at Yahoo news.

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Since the school district in its stupidity has locked us out of our “C” drives and therefore made the computers next to worthless, I’ve been trying to find some cheap flash drives so I can try to get along without the “C” drive. I’ve been using one that’s about the size of a stick of Dentine, the Kingmax in 1 GB, but I haven’t had much luck in finding another except for a company on Amazon, that wants to charge almost as much for shipping as the price of the flash drive. Every time I find one on sale it’s sold out. I’m also shopping for a cheap computer to take to school, but by the time I add all the software I would need it ain’t cheap anymore. I have some software that I use to make Power Point presentations and it must access the “C” drive, so it’s just not useable anymore. No wonder the district can’t keep teachers.

We have a three day weekend (the kids have 4) this weekend and Thanksgiving the weekend after next, so that’s two weeks in a row with short weeks, yay!

I also lit the first fire today. It’s been cool enough for heaters and the AC is not done down stairs so we used the old fashioned wood flame. Ah warm!

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