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Apple Quits Chamber Of Commerce Over Phony Climate Change
Apple made a big show of quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today, because the business group refuses to drink the Kool-Aid and embrace Al Gore’s junk science.
Apple Inc on Monday became the latest company to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the technology company disagrees with the business group’s climate change policy.
"We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis," Catherine Novelli, a vice president of government affairs at Apple, wrote in a letter dated Monday to the business group.
Novelli wrote that Apple resigned its membership in the business group "effective immediately."
Last month three big power utilities, Exelon Corp, PG&E Corp and PNM Resources Inc, said they were leaving the chamber over the group’s stance on climate.
Everyone knows the Apple folks are a bunch of tree-hugging libs — so this is no great shock. What I find amusing and even a little disturbing are the power utilities who left The Chamber.
How bizarre is it that power companies are embracing an ideology that seeks to shut them down? I can’t believe they could really buy into the climate change BS. I suspect this is about politics. They figure if they pretend to tow the line maybe Obama won’t regulate them out of business. Sadly, they’re mistaken. The environmental whack jobs are running wild right now and they’ll destroy our country if given the chance.
Global warming is phony and the science behind it is phony. The environmental extremist movement has nothing to do with the environment, and everything to do with redistribution of wealth and “social justice”.
The earth is actually cooling right now — not warming.
That said, I plan to embrace the green movement by saving some, and not buying any Apple products.
Video: New ‘Taser X3’ Can Take Down Three Targets Without Reloading
Notice the very petite girl they nailed with this thing in the video. If she can take it then people need to quit crying about taser use. It’s the most effective non-lethal device being used today.
Come to think of it, we should have used a taser for interrogations at Gitmo — that’s right, I said it.
(hat tip Breitbart TV)
Video: The Ultimate Vehicle For Liberals
D.C. Homeless Have Cell Phones And Blogs
The Washington Post has an interesting article about the homeless in our nation’s capital. The article claims that between 30% and 40% of D.C.’s homeless have cell phones, email addresses, and many even have blogs.
To the usual trappings that help many homeless people endure life on the streets — woolen blankets, shopping carts or cardboard box shelters — add the humble cellphone.
Today, it’s not unusual for the homeless to whip out Nokia 6085 GoPhones (with optional Bluetooth and USB connectivity), stop at a public computer to check e-mail or urge friends to read their blogs.
This is the kind of thing that is almost too outrageous to be outraged about. I get why a prepaid cell would be useful to set up job interviews and what not, but blogs? Come on now, stop playing.
If you’re sleeping on the street, but you maintain a blog that you encourage people to follow I’ve got no sympathy for you. If you have time to blog, you have time to get off your ass and get a job.
Only in America could the most destitute among us have cell phones and blogs. The poorest people in America don’t even come close to the kind of poverty people experience in other countries.
So all the liberal America bashers out there like John “that’s not my baby” Edwards should really just pipe down. Edwards should get together an email list of all the homeless so he can let them know he’s going on another “poverty tour.”
-Chris Jones
Obama Forced To Give Up Blackberry When He Takes Office
It never occurred to me that Barack Obama would have to surrender his Blackberry and give up email when he takes office. Given the way his campaign was run and the extent to which he himself uses technology day to day, I assumed that would continue in the White House. Surprisingly, nothing could be further from the truth.
American presidents are simply not allowed to use email or carry electronic devices such as cell phones or Blackberrys. The security risk is just too great. With today’s technology there’s just no way to be sure a president’s email is 100% secure. One of the things President Bush is looking forward to is sending emails again once he leaves office — as he hasn’t sent one in 8 years.
Even though President Obama isn’t gonna be firing off emails or blogging on MySpace, he will to his credit be the first President to use a laptop in the oval office.
As a certified Blackberry addict and Internet junkie myself, I cannot imagine being unplugged for years at a time.
-Chris Jones
Video: AT&T’s Super DVR Records 4 Shows At Once
Immunotherapy Cures Skin Cancer Patient
A cancer patient has made a full recovery after being injected with billions of his own immune cells in the first case of its kind, doctors have disclosed.
Picture: Earth From Mars
(click photo to enlarge)
This is a recently released picture of the earth and moon as seen from the the surface of Mars. This an amazing picture, imagine how far home would look if that was you standing on Mars.
(Via Boing Boing)
The U.S. Is Right Not To Join Cluster Bomb Ban
The United States, China, Russia, Israel, and a few others, are right not to join the 110 countries in signing the treaty to ban cluster munitions from the battlefield.
Cluster Bombs are a potent weapon that the U.S. military should continue to use whenever necessary. Human rights organizations which are of course championing this ban are not taking into account new technologies in cluster munitions.
The biggest complaint by human rights groups is the tendency of cluster bombs to leave unexploded bomblets scattered across a wide area. Years after a conflict has ended these bomblets remain lethal and can detonate at anytime and frequently kill civilians.
This is a legitimate concern and one the U.S. military has already addressed. The U.S. has recently begun using a brand new cluster bomb called the CBU-97 SFW. The SFW stands for “Sensor Fused Weapon” and it contains dozens of “smart” bomblets.
When the bomb is dropped, the outer casing comes apart and releases the sub-munitions (bomblets) across a wide area just like a traditional cluster bomb. The difference with the new SFW is that each bomblet has a sensor inside it that immediately scans the area and hones in on a target and kills it.
However, if the bomblet scans the area and fails to find a target it simply self-destructs in mid-air leaving behind a “clean” battlefield.
A single CBU-97 SFW can kill everything inside in area roughly the size of a football field and leave no unexploded bomblets behind.
This new cluster bomb is only the beginning of the technologies we’ll have in the future, so there is simply no reason to join in any kind of ban on cluster bombs.
-Chris Jones
Mars Spacecraft Successfully Lands On Mars
NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has successfully touched down on Mars.
Phoenix will be the first spacecraft to study the arctic plains on Mars’ north pole. The craft has a robotic arm that will drill into the Martian ice and retrieve samples which will be analyzed and studied remotely from earth.
Scientists will try to determine if the permafrost has the ingredients needed for life to emerge.
-Chris Jones
Google Maps Catches Chicago Kid About To Shoot Another Kid
Those rascals at Google are constantly dealing with the unintended consequences of their controversial but really cool Google Maps/Street Scenes.
When you zoom to “street view” in one part of Chicago, what comes up is interesting to say the least. It looks like the Google team accidentally captured a shooting in progress.
The image shows a kid aiming a pistol at another kid (a much smaller kid) as he’s running away.
Click HERE to see this unique “Street view” in all its “gangsta” glory.
(thanks to Gawker)
Death By Blogging?
From The NYT:
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.
“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
“This is not sustainable,” he said.
It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.
The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.
Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.
Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work.
There are growing legions of online chroniclers, reporting on and reflecting about sports, politics, business, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers — as employees or as contractors — or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind.
One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes.
To the victor go the ego points, and, potentially, the advertising. Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.
Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more.
Bloggers at some of the bigger sites say most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make as much as $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs in the field have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Others who are trying to turn blogging into a career say they can end up with just $1,000 a month.
Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.
“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”
All that competition puts a premium on staying awake. Matt Buchanan, 22, is the right man for the job. He works for clicks for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets. Mr. Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office.
He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.
But make no mistake: Mr. Buchanan, a recent graduate of New York University, loves his job. He said he gets paid to write (he will not say how much) while interacting with readers in a global conversation about the latest and greatest products.
“The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write — that’s kind of cool,” he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, “I just want to lie down.”
Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.
“If I don’t hear from him, I’ll think: Matt’s passed out again,” said Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. “It’s happened four or five times.”
Mr. Lam, who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works even harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco — hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.
“I’ve got a background getting punched in the face,” he said. “That’s why I’m good at this job.”
Mr. Lam said he has worried his blogging staff might be burning out, and he urges them to take breaks, even vacations. But he said they face tremendous pressure — external, internal and financial. He said the evolution of the “pay-per-click” economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.
In the case of Mr. Shaw, it is not clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green, who had been dating him for 13 months, said the pressure, though self-imposed, was severe. She said she and Mr. Shaw had been talking a lot about how he could create a healthier lifestyle, particularly after the death of his friend, Mr. Orchant.
“The blogger community is looking at this and saying: ‘Oh no, it happened so fast to two really vital people in the field,’ ” she said. They are wondering, “What does that have to do with me?”
For his part, Mr. Shaw did not die at his desk. He died in a hotel in San Jose, Calif., where he had flown to cover a technology conference. He had written a last e-mail dispatch to his editor at ZDNet: “Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow.”
By Matt Richtel
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