Back in the 70's, we experienced drastic fuel shortages causing many people dumped their gas-guzzlers and buy economy compact vehicles giving better mileages.  There was a lot of talk about electric vehicles but not a lot of progress for the next thirty years.  The funny part was that as fuel prices drop, mileage dropped as well.  Some SUV's today are lucky to get 10 mpg in town.

Something strange happened a number of years ago.  It seems the focus switched from electric battery driven vehicles to fuel cells.  Not quite sure why, some say it is because the batteries are costly and do not last long enough.  Others speculate that it is easier to keep a supply chain dependency going with fuel cells since they will require fuel stations where you can recharge electric vehicle about anywhere.  I am not sure what the try reason is for the switch, but I think the battery driven vehicles sound safer, especially in the case of large highway pileups.

Hybrids

People are now flocking to buy the new hybrid gas/electric vehicles.  It seems many dealers cannot keep up with the demand.  However, do these new hybrids really save what they cost?  I have an older Ford Explorer that gets almost 25 mpg on the highway and 20 around town.  Some of the specs of the new hybrid SUV's have them in the 35-40 (and a few new ones listed at 32 in the city and 28 on the highway). 

Considering a hybrid is usually at least $7,000 more than a standard version, it is a lot of money to justify.  Even if you found one that doubles your mileages, it could take more than two to three years to break even.

Mass market of Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles?

Our government has allocated $318 million for both fuel cells and hydrogen production research in this year's budget (2005).  They plan to research the feasibility of producing hydrogen fuel cell based vehicles for the mass market by 2020.  Yep, they are looking at 15 years before being readily available.  That is a long time to wait! 

Recently, I watched a documentary about Iceland replacing their vehicles with hydrogen fuel cell transportation along with generating all this power to make the hydrogen from geothermal resources they have.  They are moving at full steam.  Already they have 70 percent of their energy needs are met with geothermal and hydroelectric power.  They expect to be completely fossil fuel free by 2050 and plan to be a leading exporter of energy.  (Note: a quick scan on msn search for the keywords "Iceland" and "hydrogen" will provide a ton of information on their projects).

Maybe it is time to drop researching and move on to production in the USA.  It seems the USA is falling behind in yet another industry.

New battery technology

The big problem with battery driven electric vehicles are the batteries.  In the past, batteries were heavy and had a small life span before needing to be replaced (which is expensive).  Another downside is they take so long to recharge.  It is doubtful that a person wants to stop every 100-200 miles of a trip for a several hour wait while their car is recharged.  Of course, this is not a big problem if you are using it strictly for commuting to work locally.

A few years ago, I saw a news blurb about a couple guys who used a large number lithium laptop batteries to power a car.  The advantage was that the batteries would last longer than previous technology, hold a charge longer and be easy to recharge using household current.  I wanted that car ;)

Toshiba recently announced they have built a new lithium-ion batter using nano technology allowing it to be lighter and have the ability to take an 80% charge within one minute.  This is great news to the electric vehicle market as it could mean that using battery based electric vehicles that recharge in about the time it would take to fill up the tank of gas.  This could open many doors to get electric vehicles out in the market.  Toshiba says they plan to bring this technology to production in 2006.  Good going Toshiba!

(More information on the new batter can be found at: http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/topstory/000881)

Conclusion

With the current state of the world resources declining as mentioned in many reports of late and global warming becoming everyday news, it is important to look for alternatives to produce electricity and switch to electric vehicles, depending more on electricity than fossil fuels. With the many sources of electricity generation such as geothermal, wind, solar, waves, ocean currents, boifuels and hydro in addition to possible new sources on the horizon, it would be foolish to move slowly.  The time is right for the move to electric power on almost everything.

I personally expect to explore this horizon more and have an electric vehicle by this time next year if I can work it out.  At least one for local driving!

This country (USA) spends a great deal of our resources every year on education.  Are we wasting many of those resources?  Is the rise is private schooling and the general lack of desire for public schools telling us something?  Has the public school system turned into a legalized public funded daycare center?

I think it is about time to change the entire educational system.  We currently have schools scattered over all every city in the country and they are all do the same thing every year.  We pay educators to reach a handful of students, repeating the same teaching every year. Is this yearly repetition redundant?  Why pay for a teaching more than once when you can share it repeatedly for little of nothing?

The educational system is far behind technology. We are using the same old methods and paying the same old bills.  It is time to use the technology of today to provide a better quality of education and at a substantially reduced cost.  We need to stop wasting our resources and start providing education that will lead us into the new millennium.

Educational system for the new millennium

We need to take part (notice I said part) of the educational budget to build an entire 4-12 grade multimedia curriculum.  The technology is here today and we need to put it to work on our educational system.  I am not talking about a cheesy boring multimedia presentation, let us get Hollywood involved and hire the best educators money can buy, putting them to work on these multimedia courses so that all can benefit from their skills, not just a handful of people each year.  Once developed, all school systems would use the same courses insuring everyone receives the same education.

The school buildings in this system (I prefer the name "educational centers") would be filled with individual cubicles where students can learn without distractions.  In addition to these centers, a system of this nature could easily be utilized over the Internet.

This method also opens education to everyone in the country, not just children.  There are a good number of people in this country, which would probably use such a system to further their education.  In the current system, this is usually not possible even though supported by public funds.  Everyone should have the ability to further their education since they already pay for the right.

The initial cost of this system is mostly a one-time investment, as it would only require minor modifications over the years as needed to keep up with our changing world.  The operating cost would be a fraction of typical education.  In addition, you are providing the best possible education from the top educators in the country.

This type of system allows students to learn at their own pace.  Slower students will no longer be pushed from grade to grade or advance students suffer while waiting for others to catch up with them. 

What about the educators, what happens to them?

Educators are still required in this system, but in a more limited role.  As people work through the courses, educators should be available in person or online to answer any questions the student may have and help them in areas they do not grasp. 

You can structure the assistance as online call centers, where educators would be available 24 hours a day 7 days a week, no matter what time of day, someone would be available to help.  This allows us to centralize centers and not require a large number of educators in every city.  It would even be possible to monitor the communications to insure the quality of assistance.

Some topics can only be taught in person and to that point, there will always be some level of local human led classes, but it is possible to handle the vast majority of our educational system with top-notch multimedia systems.

Of course, we do not have to stop at grade 12.  In this country, education should be free, provided by our tax dollars.  I am not saying we need to increase taxes, I believe this system would drastically reduce the cost of our educational system while providing full college level curriculums.  Imagine anyone in the USA could study in any field they desire, at any time, at their own pace and without cost of books or tuition.  Think of what these people would be capable of doing.

If we want this country to lead, we must provide a full complete education empowered by technology.

BioWilly,  a 20/80 biodiesel/petroleum mix being promoted by Willie Nelson which can be used by any diesel powered vehicle without modifications:

Primary benefits lower pollution emittions, less petroleum consumption and helps the farmers.

Oil prices are high, yep!  Is it that we have increased our consumption so much that the prices have tripled in six years?  Tripled, really, they have tripled?  Well, six years ago in Columbus Ohio, I paid $0.78 per gallon for fuel (I even switched to mostly premium because it was so cheap).  Now it is $2.23 per gallon so it is almost triple in just six years.

I personally believe that current fuel prices are just inflated price gouging as happened in the 2000-2001 man made energy swindle where power bills soared. Companies were found to have shut down power plants with false maintenance issues to drive the prices up, among other scams.

Yes, I do believe this is why the prices are so high.  Why do they want to continue selling to you at a lower price if you are willing to pay more?  They would sell it to you at $20 per gallon if you are willing to pay that price.  It seems that the prices will continue to rise until consumption slows, showing they have reached the ceiling price.  We are not near that price unfortunately.

Is there reallly a shortage?

In 2004, the world consumed slightly more than 31 billion barrels of oil. The catch is, the known oil reserves of the entire world is a little over 1 trillion barrels.  There may be a bit more in other places, but most people doubt we will find any sizable reserves, ever!  It does not take a lot of math to know that crude oil will be gone 40-50 years from now at the "current" rate of use.

Some might say, that is 40-50 years down the road, we will worry about it in another 20-30 years, by then everyone will have an electric car and we will not need it.  We still need ways to generate that power to drive all those electric cars.

The is another problem though, oil is not used strictly for powering vehicles, there are many other uses which we need to reserve supplies for the future.  So, the true coming crisis is more like 5-15 years down the road.  If no actions are taken and other countries increase their use of fossil fuels, that crisis is apt to be closer to the 5-year mark than the 15-year mark.

Not only is our crude oil supply failing, but also our natural gas resources are starting to fade.  Here in the western part of the USA, they are talking about importing natural gas to fill the needs.  The supply will run out…

What can be done?

The simple truth is that governments around the world need to become active in building new forms of alternate energy sources and open up new mass transit systems to help lower consumption.  SUV's are not the problem, it is all fossil fuel vehicles.  While some SUV's are fuel hungry, so are many other vehichles.  It is not enough though to simply cut back some, we need to take drastic measures to ensure the future.

Governments should require automobile manufactures to produce electric (not gas/electric hybrids, pure electric) vehicles for at least 50 percent of their product line and continue to raise the percentage every other year until 100 percent of the vehicles are electric. Then maybe the patterns would begin to shift.  Not only that, require imports to be at least 50 percent electric.

We have to look into other sources of energy such as biomass, tidal, wave, solar and wind and geothermal.  If we do not change our dependency on fossil fuels within the next 5-10 years, it may become too late to provide reasonable transportations for years.  Alternatives have to be developed soon!

The good old days of $0.78 per gallon fuel prices are gone for good.  It is time to get on the bandwagon and find other sources of power while we still can.

The Winkie photo gallery will be posting soon.  Be sure to subscribe to this site's RSS to be updated when posted!

Was browsing around and found this: http://abfhm.free.fr/basket.swf

Nothing but net...  Swish..  I think a ball would have been safer ;)

I received the following in email a while back from a friend.  While I do not know if all that facts are correct, I do know that referenceto “Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit“ section is correct as it was verified on one of my favorite urban legends sites:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/generic.asp

I personally know of a rip off on zantac clone that my mother uses all the time called Ranitidine.  When she was purchasing it here locally at a discount pharmacy, it cost her just a little more than $90 per month.  After doing a little research, I found that I could buy it online at a few dollars over $70 for “six months“ supply.  This was incredible to me, that she could actually get six months of the exact same medication for less than she was paying for just one month.

Well, after that her six-month supply was over, I found that the online price had an increase of about $10 for the six months.  Before we renewed, I checked to see how much it would be in the city next to us (85 miles away) at their Costco store.  It was time for another shock.  The same pill, but in lower dosage (she just had to take more pills to get the same amount) ended up at just a little over $40 for an entire year supply!  Yep, for the price of only a half a month of pills here at our “discount“ pharmacy, we could get full year's supply of the same medication.  Let us see now, the math is over $1,080 per year at our “discount“ pharmacy or just a little over $40 for the year at a national discount store.  That just seems insane to me!

Not all medications have this huge markup as there are several medications for family and friends that were close in price, but even if you only get hit with a few at this “price gouging“ level, it still gets to you.

Here is the post that was sent to me:

Subject: Prescription costs

The women that signed below are Budget Analysts out of federal Washington, D.C. offices. Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America.

The chart below speaks for itself.

• Celebrex 100 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.60
  Percent markup: 21,712%
   
• Claritin 10 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
  Percent markup: 30,306%
   
• Keflex 250 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
  Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
  Percent markup: 8,372%
   
• Lipitor 20 m g Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
  Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
  Percent markup: 4,696%
   
• Norvasec 10 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
  Percent markup: 134,493%
   
• Paxil 20 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
  Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
  Percent markup: 2,898%
   
• Prevacid 30 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
  Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
  Percent markup: 34,136%
   
• Prilosec 20 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
  Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
  Percent markup: 69,417%
   
• Prozac 20 mg Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
  Percent markup: 224,973%
   
• Tenormin 50 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
  Percent markup: 80,362%
   
• Vasotec 10 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
  Percent markup: 51,185%
   
• Xanax 1 mg Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
  Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
  Percent markup: 569,958%
   
• Zestril 20 mg Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
  Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
  Percent markup: 2,809%
   
• Zithromax 600 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
  Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
  Percent markup: 7,892%
   
• Zocor 40 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
  Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
  Percent markup: 4,059%
   
• Zoloft 50 mg Consumer price: (100 tablets) $206.87
  Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75
  Percent markup: 11,821%

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone I knew should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on. It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen's on every corner.

On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo.....three thousand percent!

So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs. I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices, I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08. I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in. (this is true, I went there this past Thursday and asked them.)

I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and passing it into your own email, and send it to everyone you know with an email address.

Sharon L. Davis, Budget Analyst U.S. Department of Commerce Room 6839
Office Ph: 202-482-4458
Office Fax: 202-482-5480

NUDITY

I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a Woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, "Mom! That lady isn't wearing a seat belt!

HONESTY

My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he'd dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage. Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush.

He held it up and said with a charming little smile, "We better throw this one out too then, 'cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago.

OPINIONS

On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a Note from his mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents."

KETCHUP

A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup to come out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. "It's the minister, Mommy," the child said to her mother.

Then she added, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle."

MORE NUDITY

A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover.

The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, "What's the matter haven't you ever seen a little boy before?"

ELDERLY

While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4- year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds The various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs, unfailingly intrigued her.

One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe this!"

DRESS-UP

A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned,

"Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit."

"And why not, darling?"

"You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.."

DEATH

While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin.

Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased.

The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayer s and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his Father always said:

"Glory be unto the Faaaather, and unto the Sonnn .. and into the hole he gooooes."

SCHOOL

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk!"

BIBLE

A little boy opened the big family bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible.

He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.

"Mama, look what I found", the boy called out.

"What have you got there, dear?"

With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear!"

No Billionaires until everyone is Millionaire!

Recently I was pondering wealth and what a person needs throughout their life.  To me it seems many people live for nothing but pure greed (love of money).  There have always been those that are beyond rich, but in today's world, it seems like the range from poor to rich is far greater.  May not be, but it appears that way to me.

Let me make it clear that I do not have anything against anyone that becomes super rich and live in abundance; I wish all of them the best and that everyone could be this blessed.  However, I do have a problem with those that have wealth, which I classify as "Obscene Wealth".  When a person reaches this level of wealth, I feel they should be using any future gains to help others or give back to the world in some way.  More on that in a minute. 

Obscene Wealth

A few days later, I read a news article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4388536/

It said that last year there were 587 billionaires (most of them multi-billionaires).  Bill gates topped the list at $46.6 billion.  Five members of the Walton family (Wal-Mart) are in the top 10 richest at over $20 billion each, a combined total net worth in excess of $100 billion.

This to me is simply obscene!  While I agree that a person should be able to achieve wealth in this world today, I believe these people have lost all sense of reality.  How much wealth is enough before you find that there are others you should be helping besides yourself?  Is there a point where you finally say "Enough" and funnel everything else you ever earn to others or give back to the world in some form?

A little simple math shows that a person who has only $1 billion dollars and never invests a dime, nor earns any return on the money, would have to spend in excess of $27,000 every day for the next 100 years to ever run out.  If you put the money into an investment of even 2% annually, you would have to spend over $54,000 per day for just the return on that investment and still have all your original $1 billion left. These people would have to spend (without any investment) over $27,000 per day every day for over 4,600 years to exhaust their wealth.

I came to the realization that there should never be a person with more than a billion dollars until every is a millionaire.  That might sound drastic, but in reality, it is says that there never should be a billionaire on the planet, since there will always be those with need.

Giving?  Really? Oprah?  Bill Gates?

It really makes my stomach turn when I hear rich people giving away part of their wealth to others and being praised for it.  I have never seen any of these obscene wealth elites give anything that really puts a dent into their wealth.  Remember, if they gave everything but just $1 billion away, they would still have plenty for the rest of their lives and the lives of their children.  Let us see Bill Gates give $45 billion away and then I will begin to applaud.

There are many people who practically worship Oprah for all that she gives away to others because she cares so much.  What a crock!  Yes, people get given a lot of things, but, if you listen closely, they usually come as a gift from of the supplier not the billionaire, Oprah.  It is simply an advertising marketing ploy.  How much is a worth to get your company or product featured on such a high rated show and displayed in such a positive manner?  Usually, worth a lot more than what they give away.  Oprah makes it sound like she is the one giving it away when in reality, she takes the credit and the others pay.

Some people might not care where it comes from that it is wonder to see the "giving" occur.  Yes, that is true, but it is sad the public are the ones deceived, thinking these people care about anything other than their wealth and power.

Another example is Microsoft.  This last year, they started talking about cutting some of the benefits that employees were used to receiving in the good old days.  While most of the Microsoft employees have wonderful jobs with great benefits, why would they need to think about cutting anything and Microsoft should be figuring ways to give them more.  I mean, over $46 billion, you would think that no one would every hear anything about cuts.

Then you had Microsoft wanting to move a portion of their development and research into places like India so that they can lower their costs and be more competitive (so they say).  This is all pure straight out greed.  Think of the revenue they already generate, how about giving the world the Windows OS free, since they have all their other software and technologies to support their fortune.  It is Never enough!

Take the top five Walton family members (Wal-Mart) and their combined wealth over $100 billion.  I wonder how many small businesses in different communities had to close their doors for them to claim this wealth.  It is great that they can be a success, but where is the shut-off point, what is "enough"?

These obscenely wealthy people have an addiction and it has taken them over.   In the Bible it says the "LOVE of money is the root of all evil".  It does not say that Money is the problem, but the love of it is the error.

I do not know the answers, but it does look like there is a clear problem!

Coming to screens May 19, 2005 is the final Star Wars episode “Revenge of the Sith”.  The trailer looks pretty good from the few clips of the new epsiode it contains.  Time to get ready to stand in line again..  Sure wish I was back in Columbus Ohio for the IMax screen ;)

Here is a quick link to the trailer on Tribute.ca:

http://www.tribute.ca/...

If you are a conservative and stand for Christian values, you might feel at times that your locked into a single party to vote for on election day as the democratic party seems to stand for values such as abortion and the removal of all references of God in government and public places.  There is another option however…

This last election, I noticed the "Constitution Party" (which is actually how I voted on several local and national offices).  Reading through what they stand for, I seem to agree with most things.  While there are a few things I do not agree with (such as the death penalty), the party seems fit most of what I believe.

Take a few minutes and browse find out what the are all about.  You might have more options on Election Day than you realize

http://www.constitutionparty.com/

Today I was reading the following blog post:

http://thewideawakes.org/archives/2005/03/06/cracker/

I tried to post this message to the blog, but it kept generating a PHP error.  Anyway, I thought it would make for a post on my blog at least.

I am a very conservative business minded person, but in today's world, I believe that the minimum wage should be raised even higher than they currently seek.

Here in Oregon the minimum wage is already over $7 per hour, but for anyone to be able to live on those wages is a joke.  I can clearly tell you that in the part of the country where I am located, it is not just teenagers or dopers working for minimum wage, it is families working at call centers, manufacturing companies, agricultural industries, etc.  These families struggle to just exist and keep food on the table and the rent paid.  I cannot image the suffering in families that have to work for less than $7 per hour.  Just a reminder for those that may not been noticing, $7 per hour only generates around $1,200 per month BEFORE taxes, social security, etc.  With that, people have to pay for rent, food, transportation, auto insurance, utilities, taxes, clothing and many times, their own medical/dental bills.

It was not long ago, I had a completely different opinion on this subject.  My thoughts were that the minimum wage should be dropped and that we should also open the borders and let whoever wanted to work, perform that work for whatever they would take to do the job.  I was blind and thought that a good number of businesses had enough morals that jobs would still retain a decent wage.

In our world today, a large number of companies (more corporations than small businesses) are driven by pure greed and the they have no loyalty to anyone or any place, they only want to make a buck and do not care who they crush to achieve this goal.  If they could get someone to work for $0.25 per hour, they would do it.  It is not a market salary, it is slavery to those without skills.  You must provide for your family.  On minimum wage, both parents must work to even just exist, and this provides even more damage to the children in those homes.

Of course, if a person happens to live in an area of plenty and does not daily see the results of these greed driven businesses and how that is hurting people, who do not have a chance for something better, then it might not seem fair to raise the minimum wage.

If you drop the costs of a living, there will be no need for a hike. But, if the cost of fuel to get back and forth to work rises by 250%,  power to keep your lights on go up by 65% (which is likely out here this year), natural gas goes up by 25%,  along with crops not being planted due to drought and power prices for farmers to pump water to water their crops jump 300%, then it is time to move the wage up to compensate.

Today I was reading the following blog post:

http://thewideawakes.org/archives/2005/03/06/cracker/

I tried to post this message to the blog, but it kept generating a PHP error.  Anyway, I thought it would make for a post on my blog at least.

Since my post was typically a bit long, I moved it to the articles section.  You can find it here:

http://ReflectedThought.com/articles/195.aspx

Personal transport vehicles are probably the wave of the future along with those that carry two passengers. Much more like motorcycles, in that they will be light and compact.

http://news.com.com/Photos+Cruisin+in+the+cool+lane

Those in the link above are fantasy, but we are approaching that realm quickly for some metropolitan areas. It really makes sense though when you are talking about electric vehicles.

My Vision – City to City Transportation

We have put too much work on air transport and not enough on rail systems. I would like to see a public transportation from city to city based on a fast light rail system. With high-speed light rail systems at an affordable price, we take away a large part of that burden we have placed on air travel. In addition to light rail, there should be a form of freight rail service for transportation of goods at a reasonable price.

My Vision – Local Transportation

Metropolitan areas should be restricted to use only electric vehicles and provide special lanes for personal transport vehicles such as mentioned above. This will remove most of the pollution in large cities allowing for a better quality of living.

There is some development moving towards modernization of transportation built for large cities. One I really like is the SkyWeb Express. It solves many of the problems associated with mass public transit such as rail systems where personal safety is an issue, in addition to close contact with others in shared systems, not to mention, you no longer have to wait on schedules.

The SkyWeb Express system consists of individual cars that are computer controlled, taking you to your destination automatically. This would work perfectly! After a little time, it could replace most existing roads in major metropolitan areas.

http://www.skywebexpress.com/

While SkyWeb is based on a public system where you just pick up the next car, it could also work with people buying their own car and provide parking at each station. This allows the vehicle industry to continue to produce new vehicles of different types and capacity not forcing a shared car upon you.

The difference in this system compared to everyone purchasing electric cars that run on our current roads, is that the SkyWeb type system will be fully computer driven removing the traffic congestion and accidents, not to mention the huge cost savings of policing the roadways for violators. Everything on this system is automated and isolated to a rail.

My Vision – Isolation of Energy Generation

Since most of these systems are powered by electricity, generation of that power can be isolated to specific areas of a State or county, allowing for greater control on pollution. Our power plants of today produce far less pollutions than our transportation. If we move to electric transportation, we can drastically reduce our global pollution by the use of these efficient power generation plants. It benefits everyone on a global level.

Since there would be such a demand on electric power generations, we could afford employing a greater number of people in research of even more efficient and environmentally friendly power generation.

The primary focus here is to reduce the global pollutions levels by removing most of our non-efficient fossil fuel burning combustion motors, replacing those masses with efficient power generation plants.

My Vision – Closing

Many me think that this is not possible in today's world. However, I think it is possible if people will take the step and catch the vision. The increasing demand for fossil fuels in this world and the global warming that is already taking place puts our future generations at risk. We need to think of our children, what legacy of death we are providing if we do not take drastic measures to insure their survival.

Think of what we have to gain. Not only do we reduce pollution, we can have easy, safe transportation between cities and within cities. No more worry about drunk drivers, people falling to sleep at the wheel, or irresponsible drivers, everyone gets to their destination, safely and without worry.

There is also the cost savings. You do not require the addition police for monitoring traffic. The costs of snow and ice removal in the winter, saving large amounts of financing, along with all the lives saved in inclement weather. It would seem that the systems would require much less maintenance that our current road system.

Technology is a large part of many people's lives today. We use technology, depend on technology, "abuse" technology and lose technology.

Yep, there are many uses of the word "technology" above, it is to stress the topic of technology, many of us do not even begin to pay attention on how dependant we have become.

We usually only notice our dependence when the technology breaks or is no longer available. I personally have felt this and even more so this last year. Just let my cable broadband service go down for ten minutes while I have something I need to do, and God forbid, it is down an entire evening (trust me, you do not want to be around at that time).  :)

For a simple example of the “broken technology” issue and our dependence on the technology, this last summer I had an experience, which I will try to be prepared for in the future as not to get bit again.

Like many people, I have that little noisy technology jewel called a cellular phone. I placed the number in a local advertisement as a business contact work I was trying to obtain. When the advertisement when live two days later, my phone fell out of my pocket and was "misted" with water. Not soaked or anything like that, just a few drops. Yep, the phone was dead!

Problem? I had no other phone to use. In the little city where I am located, it would take weeks to get a replacement (did not try mail order FedEx). For days I tried drying and cleaning that phone and nothing.

Finally, I was going to get a phone just like it from a person on eBay in Texas. Yep, that same day the phone started to work again. I think it was the threat ;)

When I checked my voice mail messages, there was an opportunity that I missed. This was first caused by my short sightedness as not to be prepared, but also by "broken" technology on which I blindly depended.

Some might say, "yeah, I know the pain", but what about the "lost" part?  Let me give an example using email systems.

One of the most popular forms of communications is a simple little system known as email. It is great and almost everyone uses it. We all know about the "abuse" part as our email boxes fill with SPAM (unsolicited email). At this point many people want laws put in place to protect the inbox, but it is hard to police the world and the internet is a world technology.

This last summer, a few people I know along with myself, were bit by a problem of putting dependence on just one technology, yeah the old “all your eggs in one basket” kind of thing. The problem is trying to reach someone to which you only have an email address and they, their company or their ISP has installed email filters and your email for some reason is detected as SPAM and trashed. You have no way of reaching this person unless you can find an avenue in another technology such as being able to find their phone number. Here you have someone who keeps sending you email wondering why you have not responded, while your responses are always deleted.

This is "technology lost" to me. It is not just broken, it is lost because people will have to find other means to lessen their dependence on email insuring they receive the communications intended for them.

There are other methods that will allow us to still use email communications and have a reasonable level of assurance (such as www.GotTheAnswerToSpam.com, but I think the lesson is to make sure we do not depend blindly on one or a small group of technologies. In this example, the best defense is to provide alternative means of communications such as a phone number or physical mail address, to everyone you want to make sure can always reach you.

It makes me wonder though in the future what technologies will fade away due to breaks or abuse. Maybe technologies like P2P??

Just for fun, here is a poll on the current technologies you use:  Vote    -    Results

Born in 1961 in Klamath Falls Oregon, to Gloria and Vorris (Sonny) Moore. Have twin sisters that are five years older who tried to make life as difficult as possible ;)  Father died in 1972, forcing our mother to raise us, performing janitorial services at night.

At age 16, I got involved in photography. My knowledge increased and spent many hours a day snapping photographs along with countless hours in the dark room. By 1981 was ready to open a business. It was at that time, I had planned to purchase a portrait lens for my Nikon FE and F cameras with my income tax refund.

The problem arose when I noticed this new device that had just hit the market called the Commodore VIC-20 personal computer that had 3.5 K of memory and used a data cassette (type of tape recorder) to store your programs. The dilemma was a new lens or this new thing called a personal computer. I decided to get the computer to organize my photo library. Did not know that it would change my life.

From the day I purchased the computer, I was addicted. A few hours after realizing that you cannot just type in questions and get answers as portrayed in the movies, I started to learn computer programming. From that day forward for the next decade, technology bug consumed me as I spent 10 to 18 hours per day on computers. My photo library never did get organized and all my photography equipment had to go in order to support my new addiction financially.

In 1990, I made a new discovery. While being raised in a church environment most of my life, I knew very little about the Bible. Over a period of 4-5 months ending in February 1990, I realized that there was indeed a God, and that He, as God, sacrificed Himself in the person of Yeshua (Jesus) to pay a fee I could not pay. No matter how good I was, I could never pay this charge laid against me. God knew that though, and provided a solution. This new revelation changed my life considerably.

One of the sites I own is: www.TheAwakening.com.  I have strong Christian beliefs, and hope to further my work with God in the near future.

In 1998, I had another life changing event occur. I met, fell in love and married Lou Ann Kiser in Ohio. We met as a friend and I had to call in for tech support on a computer of his which was having problems and she was the tech support person. One thing led to another, and I found myself living in Ohio for five years.

Two years ago, we moved back out here to Klamath Falls Oregon. I am currently an independent computer software developer primarily working with Microsoft .NET technologies designing web and Windows applications.

Our plans: Well, we plan to start a family this year sometime or at least work on it. We are both looking forward to having one or two little ones.

As for work, the current plan is to work a few more years in the computer industry and then try to move more over into God's work. That is were we can both be truly happy!

Here is an interesting site for you:

http://www.romanm.ch/index.php

This site has clips from Spiderman, Matrix, Hulk, Nemo and more, that are all built from animated ASCII text.  Pretty cool to watch for a little bit!

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Be sure to stop by my sites:

http://www.HintsAndTips.com - Tips on various topics from all over the world
http://www.MyQuickPoll.com  - Easy way to add free polls to your site or blog
http://www.OurLocalArea.com - For those in the USA only
http://www.TheAwakening.com - Be more than just Christian pew potatoes
http://www.ReflectedThought.com - My blog site