Hey, I thought it was the right that wanted to stand athwart history and yell stop...

TCS Daily looks at "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

In a related article, TCS compares a broadband-speed Internet with a dial-up-rated Interstate Highway System.

"DARPA sets goal for bionic arm by 2009". Sounds good to me: 2009 would be 40 years after DARPA invented the Internet (sorry Al), and ten years before the 2019 date the replicant-inhabited world of Blade Runner depicted.

When Google accidentally deletes a blog--it's gone. But apparently emails are another story.

Meet "The Sonic Teenager Deterrent", Britain's new weapon against loitering youths:

Shopkeepers in central England have been trying out a new device that emits an uncomfortable high-pitched noise designed to disperse young loiterers outside their stores without bothering adults.

Police carrying out the pilot project in Staffordshire say some of those who have tested the "Sonic Teenager Deterrent," nicknamed the mosquito, have talked of buying one of their own.

The device which costs 622 pounds (908 euros, 1,081 dollars) "doesn't cause any pain to the hearer," according to Inspector Amanda Davies, quoted by Britain's domestic Press Association news agency.

"The noise can normally only be heard by those between 12 and 22 and it makes the listener feel uncomfortable," she added.

Once in their early 20s, people lose their capacity to hear sounds at such a high pitch.

"It is controlled by the shopkeepers. If they can see through their window that there is a problem, they turn the device on for a few minutes until the group has dispersed," Davies said.

"Shop owners have reported fabulous results and we've been approached by some who are considering buying their own equipment," she said.

Be seeing you! A couple of years ago, Reason magazine caused quite a stir, when it custom-printed copies of its June 2004 issue with each subscriber's name and a satellite photo of his or her immediate neighborhood on the cover.

This real estate-oriented online database goes it one better: the property value of every home in the US is either contained within it or soon will be.

You, your friend and your neighbors will have a field day with it.

Google is impersonating Austin Power's Dr. Evil, according to the Riding Sun blog:

I can't seem to find the link for this one; I think it was on a Rooters website somewhere. But I just read a shocking news report: In the wake of its decision to censor its Chinese search results, Google is changing its corporate motto from the original "Don't be evil."

The new motto, according to unnamed company sources, is: "Be semi-evil. Be quasi-evil. Be the margarine of evil. Be the Diet Coke of evil — just one calorie; not evil enough!"

Pajamas reports that the end is near for the 35mm format: Nikon UK is winding down production of their 35mm cameras.

I have a bunch of 35mm how-to books I purchased in the mid-80s (along with a bitchin' Minolta Maxxum 7000 and an assortment of lenses), which just yesterday, I pulled off my bookshelves to free-up space for newer titles. I guess I was just foreshadowing the inevitable.

PBS's Nova TV series is doing a year-end round-up on January 10th. Sounds like some interesting stuff, interspersed with a fair amount of PC editorializing.

Dan Riehl of Riehl World View is not happy with how Google ranks some of its searches:

For the longest time now, if you place the term Natalee Holloway into Google - the first link up has been to a Kuroshin article entitled "F@ck Natalee Holloway".

If someone is paying their own way on the Internet and not breaking the law, I don't support censorship and Kuroshin is free to write or host whatever they want. I have no complaint with their site and have been seeing the link forever.

But given that Google has a reasonable amount of control over their search mechanisms and subsequent results - there's simply no excuse for the same old tired, insulting and, frankly vulgar link to be sitting at the top for every school kid who might do a search on Natalee Holloway without safe search on.

I don't care how someone feels about the issue - whether it is over-covered, or not - that's a fair point. But there is absolutely no reason for what is now a Major Public American corporation to continue a situation potentially so insulting to many Americans for so long.

Confederate Yankee has some related thoughts, in a post titled, "My One and Only Post About Natalee Holloway"--and with a little luck, this post is likely to be mine as well.

James Pinkerton of Tech Central Station asks, "Is Google God? Maybe not, but it's way up there."

(With apologies to John Lennon, not to mention God Himself, for this post's title.)

Update: Peter Wood uses an only slightly more modest description of Google over at National Review Online: he likens it to the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

Via Ressurrection Song, you will believe, in spite of yourself, that a French car can be cool.

(Or that a well-paid advertising team can somehow find a way to make them appear cool.)

In a show of gratitude to USAF Sgt. John Stryker to the many planes he's kept flying, the Department of Defense has commissioned IBM to build...The Stryker Computer!

Interesting post on the newly reconstituted Buslaw blog by Nina Yablok (aka Mrs. Ed Driscoll) on the FTC's decision against D Squared. D Squared is (was?) a pop-up blocking firm which advertised its product by using the Windows 2000/XP function that allows an IT manager to send a message to the computers on his network, but can also be exploited to send spam.

Which is what D Squared did, to sell a product that...blocked that ads.

More here.

Pretty nifty idea for a Blog: helping people find free Wi-Fi wireless hotspots in the San Francisco Bay area.

Fascinating profile in the Las Vegas Review Journal of Bill Waggoner, Internet marketer.

As quoted by the author, there's much about Waggoner that's ripe for satire--right down to a Ralph Nader and Buck Turgidson-like fear of fluoride, and an obsession with herbal medicine combined with a two pack a day cigarette habit.

(Found via Virginia Postrel.)

Fascinating profile in the Las Vegas Review Journal of Bill Waggoner, Internet marketer.

As quoted by the author, there's much about Waggoner that's ripe for satire--right down to a Ralph Nader and Buck Turgidson-like fear of fluoride, and an obsession with herbal medicine combined with a two pack a day cigarette habit.

(Found via Virginia Postrel.)