Now here’s a great, fun song! This one is just going up the charts, and I’m proud to say, I finally found something cool before it went out of style.

Actually, the style of this song went out about 25 years ago. Specifically, the Disco Era. Even more specifically, this song kicks it like it hasn’t been kicked since the Bee Gees!

If you can listen to this song without turning it up loud or even dancing around a bit, then you’re a better man than I am — and that just isn’t possible.

So, do you feel like dancing?

As always, my policy is that if anyone would like a download link for this song, just make a Comment below and ask - I’ll hook you up with a link in a comment-reply of my own (check back with this article). Download links are automatically embedded in my RSS feeds.

I just recently watched a very provocative movie about the recent history of the electric car in America. Although I’m sure there was some left-wing bias, I felt any such slant was subtle and overall the film was quite objective and very powerful.

Anyway, I wanted to share the trailer with you in the hopes you might see it for yourself, now out on DVD. Also, I’m appending a recent article from U.S. News and World Report, which gives some recent news hopeful of America’s eventual turning away from our costly fossil fuel dependence.

Who Killed the Electric Car? movie trailer:

USN&WR article:

Jump-Starting the Electric Car

By Marianne Lavelle

Posted 11/29/06

With their cheers muted because of the death of one of their brightest stars days earlier, engineers, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs gathered in Washington, D.C., this week to celebrate what appears to be an increasingly bright future for the electric car.

With the prospect of more support from the new Democratic Congress and even the Republican administration touting their inventions, car, battery, and electric power companies were set to revel in new advances they believe have taken them closer than ever to their vision of electricity as a widespread, viable alternative fuel to gasoline. But over the weekend, perhaps their most important pioneer, David Hermance, Toyota’s executive engineer for advanced technology vehicles, was killed when his experimental single-engine plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Hermance was largely responsible for bringing to the U.S. market the Prius, the bestselling gas-electric hybrid sedan that has made Toyota the undisputed leader in electric car technology. Many of the most promising ideas for electric cars of the future, including the concept to boost mileage to 100 mpg with the addition of plug-in batteries, would be based on the Prius platform. Toyota is the only automaker that has announced it is working on commercial development of a plug-in hybrid–a development for which many credited Hermance.

Read the rest of this entry »

For my little sister (who is coming home for the holidays soon!), here’s a video of a Dwarf baby rabbit at about 2 weeks old. Kim, you could get one and keep him in your pocket!

Continuing my theme from yesterday, here’s another collection of quotes from my old website. Don’t worry that they might be out of date, most of them were originally said hundreds of years ago. Kinda cool it works that way, huh?

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away
man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could
and should do for themselves.

- Abraham Lincoln

“This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead in the future.”
- Adolf Hitler 1938

“When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don’t own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment …and I can only be quiet.”
- Lyle Myhr

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
- Winston Churchill (1903)

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

“From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, then followed always by a dictatorship.

“The average age of the worlds’ greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
– Alexander Fraser Tytler

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.”
- Frederick Douglass

“The right to be left alone — the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people.”
- Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”
- Alexis de Tocquevile

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”

- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)

Life is a journey. Brush your teeth. Yada, yada, yada…

One good thing about the Internet is that you can find all kinds of cool crap you heard once but can’t remember from where. In addition, our World Wide Web is filled with amateur sages ready to enlighten you with their cogent observations on everything from religion to sex to the best choice of fast food.

So, with that in mind, feel free to quote from these great thinkers at your next dinner party to inspire some great conversation - or perhaps just start a great brawl. That’s what I do!

“Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
- Greek Proverb

“Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.”
- General George S. Patton

“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.”
- Aldous Huxley

“Tis the business of little minds to shrink. But he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
- Thomas Paine

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“The man who buys cheap laughs once, but cries many times. The man who buys expensive cries once, but laughs many times.”
~ Old Proverb

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards.

“You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating… you finish off as an orgasm.”
- George Carlin

Taking a moment here after Thanksgiving to take stock and reflect. Hmmm, better quit doing that! Best to wait till the wacky season has passed before I take another look at my life. Can I still blog with a noose around my neck?

Rather let’s reflect on the thoughtful lyrics of John Mayer. Yeah, I know the song has been played to death. But I only heard it once or twice before it became a big hit. So I’m not sick of it - and I’m gonna post it here for you lot.

Waiting on the the world to change, indeed…

As always, my policy is that if anyone would like a download link for this song, just make a Comment below and ask - I’ll hook you up with a link in a comment-reply of my own (check back with this article). Download links are automatically embedded in my RSS feeds.

Someone posted a pretty cool screenshot form the new Xbox 360 game, Star Trek: Legacy. The picture is of each version of the USS Enterprise from each era of the mythology, all docked at the same space station. Click the thumbnail below:

In stores on December 5th, here’s the game description:

This game spans the history of Star Trek, following the challenges facing the Starfleet as an Admiral of a task force of warships. Gameplay campaigns play out in all of the Star Trek eras (from the founding days of Enterprise to the adventures of classic Star Trek to the bold unknown of The Next Generation, as well as the trials and tribulations facing Deep Space Nine and Voyager), as the Federation faces an entirely new enemy that has the power to travel through time.

With full multiplayer support, players can choose from small-scale engagements to all-out war involving multiple star systems in addition to tracking stats and player rankings.

I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about this great new movie called 300. It’s another product of Frank Miller, the esteemed graphic novelist, whose source material was the foundation for the hit movie of last year, Sin City. 300 is based on the famous Battle of Thermopylae, which pitted just 300 Spartan warriors against an army of thousands.

It’s an epic story and this film looks to be visually stunning. I can’t wait to see it, just to see how they’ve applied the lessons they picked up filming the green screen FX from Sin City and applied it to a Gladiator-style film. Check out the movie site below for downloads, and the awesome teaser trailer. The movie is due out in March 2007.

300 - The Movie Website

Thought with Christmas right around the corner, you guys’d appreciate one of the funniest skits I can recall from Saturday Night Live. In this one, Hugh Jackman gathers you round the fire to recount a particularly Australian tradition.

Enjoy the tale of the Christmas Kangaroo.

Just a quick note leading up to the November podcast. I haven’t done one of these since I did the first one almost 2 months ago. But the site has been getting a lot of traffic, including an enormous number of hits in the past few weeks.

I’ve also been all over the place in my personal life. Been fighting this cold for the past two weeks (so rarely do I get sick that my body seems confused about what to do when I am) and my finances and income have been uncertain to chaotic. Anyway, the podcast is a brief two-minute recap of what’s been happening in my life - and on this site - for the past month.

More updates soon. Look forward to hearing from you!

November Podcast