Solar Power Goodness

I have notice a growing trend in solar power devices. Portable radios are no exception. I borrowed this from a friend.

It is solar-powered, hand cranked, has AM/FM radio, along with a headphone jack. It is a good size, and easy to store. It cost about $18 USD.







I have a couple more pictures of this, but I covered the important parts. When I get one, I shall let you all know how good it works.

Cliff

Really how far is this going to go?

Right now there is talk about regulations and taxes put on sugar products (such as soda) and on tobacco products.

I am not a smoker. I do not consume high qualities of sugar, either. (I like to keep an eye on my health. I see it as a long term investment, and beneficial to surviving longer.)

I do not care if people smoke, as they long do not blow it in my face. I expect to smell smoke at a bar, if I go to one. Don't go to a bar, if you are so offended by it. It is not anyone's place to say what you can or cannot put into your body.

The argument is that sugar and tobacco both cause health problems, therefore causing health costs to increase, and costing too much to upkeep health programs, ergo the necessity for taxes on these products. But, no matter what it stamped out, there is always some type of health problems around. One can say that eating too much meat is bad, so that must regulated as well; or fat is bad, so that should be regulated. It keeps growing.

People know the dangers of all this, just like people know that cliff diving is dangerous and people die, but if they want to, that is their business. Want to charge them for that, too?

If it starts with sugar,it will become like gas and tobacco, where the actual cost of the product is only a small percent of the price. What's next?

Language Love

I found this article on yahoo. It amuses me that that we got people so dedicated to the English language.

Web 2.0 crowned one millionth English word Posted on - Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:15AM EDT
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -

A U.S.-based language monitoring group crowned Web 2.0 as the one millionth word or phrase in the English language on Wednesday, although other linguists slammed it as nonsense and a stunt.

The Global Language Monitor, which uses a math formula to track the frequency of words and phrases in print and electronic media, said Web 2.0 appeared over 25,000 times in searches and was widely accepted, making it the legitimate, one millionth word.

It said Web 2.0 started out as a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services but had crossed into far wider circulation in the last six months.

Other linguists, however, denounced the list as pure publicity and unscientific, saying it was impossible to count English words in use or to agree on how many times a word must be used before it is officially accepted.

There are no set rules for such a count as there is no certified arbiter of what constitutes a legitimate English word and classifying the language is complicated by the number of compound words, verbs and obsolete terms.

"I think it's pure fraud ... It's not bad science. It's nonsense," Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told reporters.

Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, brushed off the criticism, saying his method was technically sound.

"If you want to count the stars in the sky, you have to define what a star is first and then count. Our criteria is quite plain and if you follow those criteria you can count words. Most academics say what we are doing is very valuable," said Payack.

He has calculated that about 14.7 new English words or phrases are generated daily and said the five words leading up to the millionth highlighted how English was changing along with current social trends.

This list included "Jai Ho!" an Indian exclamation signifying victory or accomplishment, and "slumdog," a derisive term for children living in the slums of India that became popular with the Oscar-winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire."

The list also included "cloud computing," meaning services delivered via the cloud or Internet, "carbon neutral," a widely used term in the climate change debate, and "N00b," a derogatory term from the gaming community for a newcomer.

"Some 400 years after the death of the Bard, the words and phrases were coined far from Stratford-Upon-Avon, emerging instead from Silicon Valley, India, China, and Poland, as well as Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the UK," said Texas-based Payack.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090610/tc_nm/us_word_millionth_life_tech