Do I really have to treat this bozo as if he’s some intellectual giant ? In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king , I suppose. Here’s the Republican rebuttal , if you really want to torture yourself. Here’s my only-occasionally verbatim summation. But first, I want to point out that Rep. Ryan thinks the unemployed are lounging in a “hammock”, and billionaire Pete Peterson thinks giving people the Social Security they paid for is “paying people to be on vacation.” This is a family blog, so I can’t say what I’d like. But you’re probably right in whatever you’re imagining. Highlights: The country’s economic engine was seizing up, and the president insisted on pouring oil into the engine to get it going again. We only gave him enough oil to get the engine running, but not to fix it, and now we have to pay for all that oil! Damn him! Health care is an expensive entitlement. I know, because Ayn Rand told me so . The same party who put you behind the economic eight-ball is just the one you should double down on. GOP: Since our thirty-year campaign to convince you that government is incompetent, everyone now agrees with us. Which proves we were right! “We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility and individual responsibility” — i.e. tax cuts and subsidies. “We believe, as our founders did, that “the pursuit of happiness” depends upon individual liberty, and individual liberty requires limited government.” Except when it comes to gay marriage, abortion rights and scientifically accurate depictions of evolution in your textbooks. Then, we know best. “This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency. ” Yeah – BY ELECTING THEM TO CONGRESS. Maybe we can do something about that! “Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness and wise consumer choices has never worked — and it won’t work now.” Except for funding the creation of the internet and R&D for Big Pharma, just to name a few. “We need to reclaim our American system of limited government, low taxes, reasonable regulations and sound money, which has blessed us with unprecedented prosperity. And it has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed. That’s the real secret to job creation — not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.” Except tax cuts and corporate subsidies. That’s not really spending, it’s more like tithing! Oh, go read it yourself. It’s making my head hurt.
Continue reading …This cute, bearmonkey-like creature with animatronic head and arms perched atop a rotating, but otherwise fixed torso is called Robii. He’s built by Compal Communications, the ODM more often associated with handsets, and will be sold under the new UrRobot brand in Taiwan. The 16,900 NTD (about $582) toy robot features an interactive projector tucked away inside of Robii’s circus tent. When extended, it projects interactive video for gaming and infotainment — very similar to the projected multitouch display we saw demonstrated by Light Blue Optics at CES 2010. Robii can track moving objects using its built-in cameras and comes equipped with an ambient light sensor, and voice and image recognition. It’s also capable of barking commands at children with the appropriate visage (from a catalog of 100 facial expressions) to ensure dutiful compliance. Quick demo after the break. Continue reading UrRobot’s Robii hides a multitouch projector in his circus tent (video) UrRobot’s Robii hides a multitouch projector in his circus tent (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Famously private celebrity couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz welcomed their first baby yesterday, according to reports. A Spanish newspaper and magazine report the baby boy was born at LA’s Cedars Sinai Hospital, Us reports. No other details were available. Cruz and Bardem married in secret in July.
Continue reading …Kelley Williams-Bolar tried to send her two daughters to safer schools—and in doing so, she found herself convicted of a felony and sent to prison for 10 days. Williams-Bolar lives in Akron, Ohio, but wanted to send her children to the schools in Copley Township, where her father lives,…
Continue reading …Image: thehui.wordpress.com The State Legislature in Hawaii is trying to fight the devastation that factory fish farming is bringing to local ecosystems. Two bills were introduced on Monday, one to stop the reckless expansion of the farms, and another that would require fish farming companies to conduct a full analysis of the environmental, socio-economic and cultural impact of their businesses…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …We are having a little tech issue. The images should be back up shortly.
Continue reading …It’s definitely one of the first things we thought of trying with AT&T’s 3G MicroCell back in 2009, but our dreams were quickly dashed after finding that said device was hard-wired to only operate when receiving a GPS lock within the United States of America. Thankfully, it looks as if at least a few engineers at Ubiquisys are riding our same train of thought, and come Mobile World Congress, it’ll be debuting the device of our dreams. The Attocell is described as a personal femtocell for use with 3G smartphones, and best of all, it’s designed for use internationally. In essence, this would allow a smartphone from one country to use their international web connection to tunnel a cell call through — presumably free of charge — and definitely bypassing those nasty roaming fees that are incurred when ringing through an overseas cellular network. The company admits that it has been tested with the iPhone, BlackBerry handsets, a few Nokia phones and a gaggle of Android handsets, and we’re guessing that Windows Phone 7 and webOS users won’t have any issues, either. The idea is fairly simple: connect the Attocell to your laptop via USB, which provides power and an internet connection. From there, it’ll analyze the IP address and radio environment to determine which country it is in, and sets its 3G radio power accordingly to below the licensed level. In some countries its range will be just five millimeters, in other countries, it could cover a whole room. For those in the former, you’ll need to place your phone atop the dongle and use a Bluetooth headset to make a call, but hey, it’s still better than paying AT&T two arms and the vast majority of a leg just to phone home from wherever you may be. Crazier still, Ubiquisys thinks that the device’s low power output — coupled with its ability to “continuously monitor its radio environment to ensure that there is zero impact on existing mobile networks” — will make the Attocell exempt from regulatory controls and the requirement for type approval. Here’s hoping it flies through just as the company hopes, and we’ll be hitting the floor in Barcelona to pry out a price point, release date any carrier deals they’ve managed to land. Ubiquisys unveils Attocell: personal femtocell designed to work internationally, make dreams come true originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …ABC’s Christiane Amanpour hailed President Obama’s State of the Union address as “very Reaganesque,” but in October, holding herself up as some kind of protector of Reagan’s legacy, she discovered “a long and venerable tradition of conservatism in this country” exemplified by Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley and “all of that sort of intellectual conservatism,” yet now, she feigned distress, “people are looking at the Tea Party and saying this is not conservatism as we knew it but it's extreme.” Asked for her “take” on Obama’s address, Amanpour trumpeted his “Sputnik moment” as “remarkable,” heralding Wednesday night on ABC: Well, full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque , on and on about American exceptionalism in many, many instances and full of Kennedyesque encouragement to break a new frontier. That Sputnik moment was remarkable, of course harking back to 1957 when the Soviet Union put the first un-manned satellite in space and started the space race and really launched a whole new era of technological, scientific and all sort of progress and the President calling for more of that here. (Two MRC colleagues tweeted Amanpour’s “Reaganesque” characterization here and here .) Back on the October 17 This Week , she argued: There's been a long and venerable tradition of conservatism in this country. You can go back at least to Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, all of that sort of intellectual conservatism that lasted about 30 years, and people are saying that right now, it's really gone to the extreme. People are looking at the Tea Party and saying this is not conservatism as we knew it but it's extreme. — Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
Continue reading …When I wrote Coffee Table Doubles As Heliostat, Lighting Room , I suggested that “Perhaps it could use a little advanced technology to track the sun automatically.” Susan Labarre of Fast Company was stronger in her language: File that under well-intentioned-but-yeah-*$&%ing-right…..So Pure Sun might find a cus… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …