The lowest-of-the-low-hanging-fruit in energy savings is replacing the horrifically wasteful incandescent light bulbs in this nation. Unfortunately our Republican congressional participants see the incandescent light bulb as somehow “taking away choice” from consumers. 

Really? I know that joking about Republicans anti-science stance is fodder for comedians, but this is the simplest means we have to radically reduce energy consumption in our nation so why are they pushing-back on this initiative? It is a lot harder to fund nuclear plants, changeover our electrical grid to a “smart” one, and shift away from liquid fuels to U.S. abundant natural gas, so I just don’t get why the GOP insists on fighting the phasing out of incandescent bulbs the Republican president (GWBush) signed in to law.

What is the GOP’s agenda here? It can’t just be anti-energy. Nor does it make sense that this is all about being anti-global warming. Or it couldn’t just be about continuing to burn fossil fuels at all costs, including war and Imperialism, can it? Lord knows it’s not about helping out the 99% with their household budgets.

Perhaps this is pre-election, political theater and the GOP knows it. According to many reports, like this one from ABCNews, “Congress Defunds Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs but Doesn’t Quite Save Them“:

“But what many Republicans are celebrating as a win for individuals’ light-bulb-choosing freedom will probably not save the energy-guzzling bulbs from disappearing off store shelves.

“The industry has moved on,” said Larry Lauck, a spokesman for the American Lighting Association.

Lauck said U.S. light bulb manufacturers have already “retooled” their production lines to build more efficient bulbs, he said.”

Ms. Political Theater herself, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, has famously harped on it by saying, ““The American people want less government intrusion into their lives, not more, and that includes staying out of their personal light bulb choices.”  Bachmann, who, as a member of the House, introduced a bill to roll back the incandescent ban. Of course, she did so without acknowledgement of her anti-stance on a woman’s right to choose something a lot more important than an energy wasting light bulb.

The U.S. Dept of Energy clearly spells out the energy savings if we get off incandescent bulbs. It’s such a no-brainer that even the political theater aspect can’t be all there is to an “official” Republican effort to stop it.

Or maybe they’re just old and want to go back to the past.

My family and I spent the last 10 days primarily in Germany. We’d each brought our iPhones, my wife and I our iPads, and my daughter her Macbook Air. Besides the fact that our service Boingo Bombed, what was most bothersome was how German hotels, coffee shops, rail stations and the airport are laughingly behind other countries with wireless internet access and everyone charges for access.

Services like Boingo, that aggregate hotspots, are often forced to charge an $0.18/minute “roaming” fee for services. In the same way the European Union was supposed to make doing business in Europe easier and more like the seamless commerce within the United States, we’ve seen how that has failed in today’s economy and wireless internet access is too.

If you live in Germany and have a wireless provider like Orange or Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, you can pay them a fee and have both mobile wireless and Wifi (or what Europeans call “WLAN”) access. If you’re a traveler, you’re out of luck. It was unbelievably difficult to find wireless access anywhere we went unless we were prepared to be nickel-n-dimed to death paying their stupid little fees.

It’s no wonder that we saw an amazingly small number of either iPhone or Android smartphone users while on the road. People in train stations, the airport, within hotels, and on the street, people there used mobile internet devices far less than what I’ve seen anywhere within North America (or Japan, for that matter).

When I was in Germany with my Dad in 1997 I built this website on the fly with a Powerbook, acoustic coupler and modem, an Apple Quicktake camera and a copy of Adobe Pagemill (web software). Deutsche Telekom placed a “pulse” signal on the phone lines of hotels and in phone booths in order to manage the toll charges on the call. While bothersome with voice calls, it was horrendous with a data connection since, each time the pulse occurred (about every 20 seconds), the modem would have to re-handshake and it would interrupt the data stream. God it was frustrating!

It’s just about as frustrating today trying to find access while traveling in Germany. Yes, it’s better than it was in 1997 but even within hotels it’s not much better. The only hotel where we could log on regardless of our device (an iPhone, iPad or laptop) was at the Marriott Berlin. The Marriott property in Munich was a joke (cable in room only so no wireless devices could be used).

My wife is in Germany 3-4 times per year and only uses the internet at her hotel. I’ve researched, called people in Germany, talked to various providers, and all tell me the same story: She either needs to buy a SIM card and switch out her iPhone card (fat chance) or get an account on a German mobile network (Huh? Who the hell would signup for a mobile subscription when in the country a few times per year?). 

Of course, roaming on mobile networks outside the U.S. is not an option and horror stories abound of people who have had $1,000s to pay upon their return from an international trip. Our U.S. carrier, AT&T, has international plans but they offer download amounts one would go over in an hour of solid use. They’re a joke too but it’s because of the inflexibility of mobile providers in Europe.

As the world continues to accelerate toward one where the masses have wireless devices and expect to gain access wherever they go, Germany better get their act together and quit protecting their telecom companies and open it up. 

Either Republicans are stupid and incapable of strategic thinking (unlikely), doing anything to ensure consumers continue to waste energy to fill the coffers of energy companies (more likely), or are trying anything they can think of to get something passed they can hang their hat on in the next election (most likely). Amazingly, they just snuck in an amendment to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act (HR 2354) to extend the ban on 100W incandescent light bulbs…and it passed!

The amendment was delivered by legislator (and climate denier) Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) who has said previously, “The federal government has no right to tell me or any other citizen what type of light bulb to use at home. It is our right to choose.” Could this mean he’s pro-choice? 

Then we have presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann and her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act trying to ”keep the government out of our houses.” Again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these two and their party would waste their time saving energy wasting light bulbs (especially since our country is so close to defaulting on our debt). 

For the last five years (see this post from 2006 and this one about Bachmann) I’ve been closely watching what’s going on in energy and, especially, the ONE, MOST WASTEFUL energy use WORLDWIDE: incandescent light bulbs. The US Department of Energy, the European Union energy ministers, and anyone with half-a-brain can do the 2nd grade arithmetic necessary to easily see the energy wasting nature of this lighting source.

Take a look at this chart:  [Read more...]

What the hell are you doing Google? Why are you opening up holes filled with God-knows-what-access-to-us in a browser (the rapidly growing Chrome) which more and more of us are embracing?

While delighted with GooglePlus in a way I’ve never been with Facebook, I’m stunned that Google’s Chrome Web Store is populated with extensions that give an extension developer unbelievable and unprecedented access to our stuff.

Since we don’t yet have a “condom for the internet” other than our own savvy choices on what we do online, most of us inherently trust vendors like Google, Apple, Facebook and others to be smarter than us about security and privacy holes. With the rapid acceleration in new services like GooglePlus—services that are new paradigms and require highly tech-savvy people to dig in and work hard to learn about them—even friends of mine who use Chrome are installing browser extensions like crazy in order to manage all of these services easily.

The kicker? The “verified authors” of these extensions (Extended Sharing; Fixed Top Bar; GPlus Notifications) are written by people/organizations that on the surface seem OK and legitimate…but I sure as hell wouldn’t just hand over the keys to my house, access to my webcam, my browsing history, access to cookie sessions of my active Facebook, LinkedIn and other signed-in-sites (like Schwab or my bank?) to them. Especially since I’m logged in to all of them simultaneously with my Chrome browser and they (or their “partners”) would have access to everything! I highly suggest you think twice about loading extensions if you’re a Chrome user.

But there’s more… [Read more...]

Serene Branson, CBS News

When you’re on Twitter, Facebook or using any other social media and you see everyone piling on some internet meme or buzzing about some news headline, think about NOT jumping to conclusions like I just did. There usually is more to the story.

Taking a peek at my Twitter feed today I noticed several discussions about a “Serene Branson” and an “epic fail” so I took a look at the video. Like many on Twitter, I instantly burst out laughing and found myself thinking, “Oh…reporter. Los Angeles. The Grammy Awards. Probably imbibed or snorted something backstage.”

Turns out there are several M.D.s that instantly were very concerned that it was highly likely there’d been a neurological event (e.g., a mini stroke) and not anything else.

I’m ashamed to admit that my initial suspicious reaction is likely wrong and I should’ve stopped myself from leaping to any conclusion. It took reading the comments (where others had said, “Hey! Wait a minute!” and pointed out the potential for a brain issue) to stop myself from jumping on the pile and it wiped the smile off my face pretty quickly.

Is the jury still out on whether this was “self medication” or a brain problem? Yes. The station released a statement yesterday afternoon saying, “Serene Branson was examined by paramedics on scene immediately after her broadcast. Her vital signs were normal. She was not hospitalized. As a precautionary measure, a colleague gave her a ride home and she says that she is feeling fine this morning.” While it’s possible she was blasted or high, shouldn’t we all take a page from the American justice system and consider someone innocent until proven guilty?

A friend of mine once had an episode on the phone where he couldn’t speak for 30 seconds. Shrugging it off, it happened again that evening. Turns out he had a brain tumor. You’d never know it by looking at him, and having him as a pal should’ve made me be instantly empathetic, but instead my instant reaction was coldly judgemental. Think about that the next time you see some “EPIC FAIL!” video that someone has tossed up on YouTube for we voyeurs to gawk at like a car wreck on the highway. I know I will in the future.

Good overview from the Today show: