For anybody who has bought a hybrid vehicle… especially those who bought them before they were in vogue, here’s another reason to pat yourself on the back.

From the article:

Based on their sales, Toyota has calculated that comparing straight gasoline vehicles in the same class and similar size and driving performance, their cars have prevented 4.5 million tons of CO2 from being released in the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent to about 535,500,000 gallons of fuel or, at todays prices, $2.01 Billion saved. That’s a lot of… well, everything! And the 2010 version should be even greener!

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From the article: The Vatican announced Thursday in a general decree that it will excommunicate anyone who would attempt to ordain a woman as a priest and the woman herself.

There’s a part of me that WANTS to be angry at the hierarchy for this move, but in truth… I have to agree with this decision… not because I don’t think it’s right to ordain women, I happen to believe that it would be a good thing to ordain women AND have married clergy, but because the decree doesn’t penalize discussion of the ordination of women, but rather those who would use the issue to cause scandal and discord.

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From the article:

The administrator went down to the new manager’s office to report the missing X-Box. The new manager was quiet for a moment and then sheepishly informed the administrator that it was he who had removed the X-Box. The manager had thought the X-Box was just a games console that the IT departments staff used for recreation when it got quiet. Noticing that the X-Box hadn’t been moved from the server room for some time and that his son was going to be at home on school holidays for the next two weeks, the manager decided to take the X-Box home so that his son would have something to entertain himself with. The manager then drove home and retrieved the X-Box. The administrator got a labeling machine and plastered the words “This is actually a server” all across the console.

If you think THIS is bad… you should see what happens when somebody unplugs their PS3.

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From the article:

“Crew members aboard the International Space Station have been fumbling with plastic bags since their zero-gravity toilet made “a loud noise” and stopped working properly last week.”

Wow… the jokes could fly fast and furious on this one. However, I think it would be better to point out something that is crazy-interesting… namely, how dangerous a simple breakdown can be in space. Here on Terra Firma if our urinal stops working we can always use a bush, a bottle or a box. Now imaging trying to do that in zero-G. — On second thought, don’t imagine that… it’s too messy.

If you’re an American citizen, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that a while back FOX news contributor Liz Trotta, made a serious gaffe. While commenting on Mrs. Clinton’s JFK remark she confused the name “Obama” with “Osama” when saying that we SHOULD assassinate him. When she was corrected that they were indeed talking about the presidential hopeful and NOT the terrorist, she gleefully laughed and mentioned that we should kill BOTH.

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I cringe every time I hear a story like this… young victims in dire situations. People who are supposed to help them in their vulnverability. Gross betrayal of trust. — Is there anything worse?

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We’ve all head it from gas-station attendents before “it’s not OUR fault that gas prices are so high.” We might believe them, but I think deep-down we still believe that it MUST be the guy who takes our money who is to blame for the price-gouging and incredible profits of the oil conglomerates.

Here’s a little article that shows the other side of the rise is gas prices… this is from the view of a station manager who is being muscled out by her own company — I guess greed really has no loyalty.

From the article:

“A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they’re allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings.

Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones.

I want to be sympathetic. I really do… but seriously… allergic to certain types of electric fields? I know of few people who make similar claims about DEC phones and microwaves. The claim itself isn’t all that audacious… it is quite possible to be overly sensitive to certain EM fields, however, the people that I’ve known who claim this disability seem to have “selective, selective EM field allergies.” In other words, they are allergic to devices that they know about, but most of them have unknowingly lived next to the EXACT smae types of em fields without ill effects.

Physiologicall possible? Yes… More likely psychological… yes.

It’s really easy to look back upon the Jesuit presence in Bolivia and pick apart what they did wrong. It’s easy to say that perhaps they shouldn’t have been there in the first place or perhaps they shouldn’t have tried to impress Christianity upon the indigenous people. You can make a great case for the possbility that Bolivia would have been better off if the outside world had never set foot inside its borders — but that’s not reality… and that’s not the world we live in.

The simple fact of the matter is that all of those things are part of the history of Boliva… a country in which I have lived and worked for a large chunk of my life. — And for all of the negative things that you can say about the Jesuits in Boliva… there was some really good work done… some people’s saved… a legacy left.

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Don’t call it a vacation… it’s a “family outing” — but no matter what name we choose for this time, I’m now sitting on the promenade deck of the “Pride of America” sipping a lemonade and enjoying a cool breeze. We haven’t left port just yet, but we’ll be heading out in an few hours for a leisurely cruise around the islands.

We’regoing to try to film an episode or two of ‘gadget’ while on the boat, but for the most part we’ll just be chilling and relaxing… at least as much as a huge family gathering can be relaxing! — So please forgive us if we are a little lame in the posting and the episodes releases for the next month or so… and Aloha!

At a D.C. even on Thursday, Larry Page, Google co-founder, argued against Microsoft taking ANY stake in Yahoo, saying, “You can’t have one company control 90 percent of the market, especially one that has a history of doing bad stuff.”

Wait… holdup a minute… last time I checked, Microsoft owned 9% of the search market, Yahoo had 20%, and Google had a whopping 62% — who does Page think he is fooling? Even in Yahoo and Microsoft merged they would still have less that HALF the search market of Google.There’s only one company that’s anywhere near a 90% market share and it isn’t Yahoo or Microsoft.

More after the Jump »

I was doing my regular YouTube rounds when I started to notice that I’m getting spammed quite a bit on my channel and videos. At first I thought nothing of it since SPAM is part of life on the Internet, but I did find it somewhat strange since I haven’t received this much SPAM in over a year… since YouTube started taking more stringent measure to stamp out SPAM.

As I was going though my videos, blocking users and removing messages, I started to check the channels of the spammers — Usually these would be accounts that were JUST started and could quite possibly be suspended even before I checked… however, this time I noticed that these accounts belonged to people who had been on YouTube for months, years even. Many of these people had properly customized channels and videos of their own.

This is DEFINITELY NOT what is typical of YouTube Spammers…. so… I have to ask…

Has YouTube been hacked?

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Westinghouse doesn’t have the name or reputation of Sony, Samsung, Hitachi or Mitsubishi, but they are known for putting out some pretty decent gear at rock-bottom prices. I’ve owned three westinghouse screens and not only have all of them have performed as promised, but they’ve surprised me with their price-performance ratio.

It seems as if they are now branching out into more than just the “plain vanilla” display. They’ve recently announced their VK-40F580D HD 1080P LCD, and the DPF-1021 10.2″ inch digital photo frame.

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What a disaster for Yahoo… One of their board members has resigned, announcing that he is leaving for personal reasons but also probably not too keen on a proxy fight with billionaire investor Carl Icahn. Then they accounced that they’re be moving their July 3rd board meeting to a date in late July TBA. Now Google’s co-founder Larry Page is egging on Yahoo do to anything to remain independent. — To top it all off, not only is Yahoo’s stock price takinga pounding, but they’re also losing search share to Google.

How sad is it that Senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor just days after pushing for a comprehensive Cancer research bill. He gave a speech pushing for a bill that would fund ALL cancer research equally on the 8th of May — less than two weeks later, on May 21st, his doctors found that his seizure was caused by a malignant brain tumor.

I’ve never been a fan of Ted Kennedy. I haven’t disliked him, but I have tended to lump him into the mass of congress-critters that I don’t trust any more than I can throw. — Perhaps I was just being unfair because of how he measured up to his Kennedy legacy, but something’s different now that his has this illness. It’s almost as if he has been given, along with this death sentence, an opportunity to do something that is unheard of in the annals of politics… to really believe in a cause and to have REAL motivation to see it through.

From the article: The project, which costs around $750 million, will be able to withstand inconceivably high temperatures — up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The probe is being developed at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

Ahhhh… there are so many ways I could go with this tidbit — Whether to talk about a sling-shot time-travel effect a la ‘Star Trek’ or the need for a hyperdrive to escape the gravity of the sun as they did in ‘Lost in Space.’ — Rather than fallback on any of those cliches, I think I’ll just say that it’s damn cool that they’re going to put more time and money into studying that big glowing ball in the sky.