(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Some pushback on corn fuel.

"The United States' Department of Energy is stating that corn based fuel is not the future In related news, Fidel Castro is blasting the production of corn fuel as a blatant waste of food that would otherwise feed 3 billion people who will die of hunger.

Why isn't all this time/money/effort being put into electric?

Breaking up with tech. Easier, but cold

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

This is new.

Boyd writes: "By breaking up through MySpace comments, the heartbreaker is attempting to assert their view for everyone else to see so that they cannot be accused of saying something else in private."

Makes sense to me. Less emotionally involved, less likely to say or do something you'll regret. Still pretty cold though.

Out with the old...

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Did you know that the government is discontinuing broadcast television? At least the way we know it. That means that for any TV you own that you want to be able to receive television over the air (with your rabbit ears or whatever), you will need a digital converter.

"If we don't get this transition right, then (we will be) dealing with constituents," said Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa. "The government has broken their TV sets."

The government is offering incentive discounts for people to get the converters:

To help consumers absorb the cost, Congress set aside $1.5 billion to subsidize converter box purchases. Every household, regardless of whether it needs a box, will be eligible to receive two coupons, each worth $40, that can be used to buy two converter boxes. The coupons, to be distributed on a first-come first-serve basis, must be requested between Jan. 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009.

Sure beats a grave

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

I've heard of this before: taking the remains of your loved ones and having them made into synthetic diamonds. I didn't know you could pick colors though.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

This story is hilarious! In short:

1. John McCain, Senator and Presidential hopeful, set up a Myspace page to "connect with younger audiences"
2. He used a default theme created by the author of this prank
3. He not only didn't credit the author of the theme, but one of the images in the theme was being pulled from the author's webservers costing him money every time someone loaded McCain's page.
4. The Author, to teach him a lesson, changed the picture to a joke political message

Anyway, read the details for a much better description by the author himself.

Uh, oh.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

In a disturbing, yet reassuring article, we find out that some sheep have been created that grow some human organs. The idea is to use them for organ harvesting which is sad and terrible, but better than the alternatives.

The first thing I thought of after reading this line was the movie "The Island" (which I just watched this week).

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

Perhaps the stories of exuberant human harvesting will end. And hopefully, we won't have a future where our custom clones are raised and then killed secretly in an old underground military bunker.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Senator Barak Obama, not to be outdone by Hillary, has posted some questions to Yahoo Answers.

Technically, Hillary has been on Yahoo Answers since last fall, but she's only asked three questions

Hillary's Questions

1. How can we help to prevent and someday eradicate breast cancer, which has touched the lives of so many people?
2. Based on your own family's experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?
3. How can we as a country promote alternative energy, use less foreign oil and reduce global warming?

Barack's Question

His specific question, which I find far more useful than Hillary's so far, was "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" I hope he reads my answer. (Barack's profile here). Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Yahoo Answers

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Here's a neat story from the Consumerist about an enthusiast turned pirate and why.

I thought I was the music industry's dream consumer.

…

"You don't understand," I said, "These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them."

"Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to."

Now I was baffled. "Records never came with any such restrictions," I said.

She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"

Crikey. Maybe your customers would be more loyal if you didn't abuse them?

Reaching out to the public openly is a good leadership trait

(Image is in the Public Domain)

I've seen this before with other famous people like Shigeru Miyamoto, but this is the first member of Congress I've seen. Perhaps this marks a shift in our leaders to using technology to help us interact with them. We can hope.

My car is free for the taking with RFID. Come and get it!
(See online!)

This is very interesting. Apparently it gets hundreds of miles per tank and runs on air. Because it doesn't use combustion, the oil needs only be replaced once every 15,000 miles and the exhaust can be used for air conditioning. Most importantly,

Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc There are no keys – just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket.

Why would they ruin a revolutionary car like this with such a stupid use of wireless devices? How will they keep them from getting stolen? How will they keep people from sending them rogue signals that mess up their operation?