OH, Sure! Just bring logic into it! ;-)

Yes, I see the distinction. It was a dumb post on my part. Too many beers, and too much indignation.

Thanks for the reply.

Same here, pretty much. I use MythBuntu.

If I'm watching live television, and I know the length of a show, say an hour long show, I'll just start the channel, immediately hit pause, then go do something else for about 20 minutes, then come back, and watch the show.

(There's always something productive I could be doing for that first 20 minutes, dishes, laundry, whatever.)

When I get to the commercials I just use the fast-forward function, since the commercial detection isn't running. The only trouble I have is that if I try to get through them too fast, I'll miss the end of the commercials, and have to back up a bit. So, it's not to hard to keep the advertising to a minimum.

If I had a bitch about MythTV, it's that sometimes the commercial detection is too aggressive (even on the non-aggressive setting), and I'll miss chunks of the shows I've previously recorded, and will end-up turning off the automatic commercial skip, and use my fast-forward method to get through the ads.

I expect that there is probably a way to tune the detection, but, I haven't figured it out yet. (Meaning - I haven't really tried.)

Another bitch of mine would be the steep learning curve when first getting started with it, but, that's true with most things. There are so many things to configure that I had never heard of, or thought about, before (and I still don't know what a lot of the settings are for).

For a newbie, It was very intimidating, and RTFM'ing wasn't very helpful at the time, but, I slogged through it.

All-in-all, I'm really happy with it though. I have one hauppage analog card*, and two Avermedia A180's recording OTA HDTV, and the system is connected (DVI to HDMI) to an overhead DLP projector (16:9 format). (*This card handles the remote control, otherwise I'd ditch it.)

The projector screen on the wall is 8' wide, and the picture is pretty sharp. It makes for a great setup for sporting events.

I get a lot of WOWs when the neighbors come over to watch the games.

Thanks, I guess I deserve my sig!

Hey Eclipse-now,

I will be the first to admit that I do not have enough data to determine the true urgency of this situation, and I'm not sure if I had all the data, that I would actually come to the correct conclusion. I'm a big enough micro-manager type that I would spend years trying to become comfortable enough with the data, and studying the procedures used to gather that data, before I felt that I could make a truly informed decision on it.

Long story short, I feel I have to trust the experts for their opinion, and hope to heck they are not interpreting the data incorrectly, misleading me in any way, or playing political games.

That being said, I think I might not be getting my points across as well as I'd hoped. So, let me try to clarify them:
(If any of this seems condescending, please don't take it that way.)

Concerning FUD
I don't doubt your feelings about any of the urgency you are trying to convey. My point was that the parts of your post I highlighted were counterproductive to your argument.

Your arguments contained verbiage which lead me to fear, uncertainty, or doubt. FUD scares people, and raises suspicion that you may be misleading them.

The message conveyed was "You NEED to be really AFRAID", instead of, "There are some serious problems here, and this is why".

I don't think it matters how good, and honest, your intentions were in the attempt to deliver the message. The damage was done by the verbiage, and it is hard to overcome.

The natural reaction to FUD is fight!, or flight!, instead of, "Let's discuss this rationally."

Calm, cool, and reserved communication tends to foster the trust relationship where you will be listened to, best.

(I am drawing on about 20 years of sales, and customer service experience, prior to my 10-year career solving pebkac issues to support this claim, so it is opinion.)

The old adage, "You catch more flies with honey, than you do vinegar" applies to a topic like this.

So does, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

Sorry if I'm beating the dead horse here, the son-of-a-gun just wouldn't drink.

Electric Cars
It will be a huge undertaking to change the infrastructure to support electric cars properly.

However, I do disagree in the idea that it ain't gonna happen. I don't think we get a choice. It just won't happen until it hits us hard enough in the pocket-book, to take action.

When we build it, it will probably be done around metro areas first, then radiate out towards rural areas. I have no idea how long it will take to build it, but, I am confident it will happen.

Again, when I think this takes off is when oil becomes scarce enough, and it becomes less expensive to build out the new infrastructure, rather than continue buying the oil.

Hopefully, we will all be smart enough to start on it before it gets to be an impending doom situation. But, all it would take is to get caught with our shorts down for a year, or two, and you would see some no-kidding action from all-corners.

Rail (trains, trams, trolley buses)
I don't have any figures to support this, just anecdotal evidence, but a good friend is in the trucking business, and I have been picking his brain about this since I met him a few years ago.

(He's got roughly 20 years, or so, experience in the field driving, and lately, he has been more involved on the scheduling side. When I met him, his job was to make sure that local freight (local meaning a 200+- radius) got delivered to, and picked up from the railroad. This was mostly food products (fresh vegetables) with the occasional trailer load of consumer goods.)

The impression he gave me from our talks, was one that whenever possible, goods ship by train just because of the cost differential. However, since we live in a vast country, much like yours, the trains just don't run where they need to, or on a schedule that works for a lot of freight.

Thus, the trucking industry is big here, and so is rail freight, but you have to use both, or the freight won't get delivered where it needs to go. Still, infrastructure would go a long way towards workable solutions.

Village towns
Yeah, I don't see this as being reality anytime soon. Maybe in the currently unpopulated areas of the U.S., but we're going to have to wait a while for the next real estate boom/bubble before developers are going to buy people out of their homes to build them.

I guess the big questions that exist are, "Where are you going to put these village towns? And, what are you going to raize, to do it?", and of course the typical, "Why? We have a perfectly good town over here."

I think they will be a tough sell, unless you want to put them up in unpopulated areas, and hope people want to try them out.

The subtleties of Wall St. are way beyond my scope of knowledge. I'm a newb investor, at best, so I'm not getting the whole meaning of your post.

So, are you implying Wall Street is behind it? Or, do you mean the SEC? Or, am I missing your point entirely?

I know that I tend to take an extreme view when I see shit like this, so bear with me.

And I don't know what the legal definition of fraud versus treason is, but, I'd like to pose the question:

When you defraud a large number of people, isn't that a lot like committing treason against your country? If so, where do you draw the line, and say, "THE LINE HAS BEEN CROSSED"?

Considering this was the largest Ponzi scam ever, and it touched probably hundreds of thousands of lives, either directly, or indirectly, would you be willing to call it Treason?

I don't think I would mind, but, more importantly, what do you think?

A very important element of a Ponzi scheme is the exit strategy.

It must be a plan to fall off the edge of the earth, somehow, or you will be found, and you won't like the consequences.

If you are going to try a Ponzi, you had better have the exit plan in place before you take your first nickel.

When you have achieved your magic number, you bail, and you're gone, and at that point you don't care about the alarms.

I suspect that he hadn't reached his magic number yet, and the down-turn raised a whole lot of questions that he wasn't ready for.

Maybe, he thought he could weather the storm, and continue until he made his magic number.

Maybe, his escape plan vaporized somewhere along the way, and he hadn't figured out a new one.

Drive some of those trucks over here. I'll see what I can do.

Sorry, I have to call F.U.D. on this. This is far too alarmist, IMO, and delivery style counts.

I agree that it is important that we get our energy act together, but, this type of argument turns off rational people, and instead makes them want to dismiss your claims, and ideas, regardless of how accurate, or wonderful they may be.

The more political you make the issue, the more people will dig in their heels, and the less traction you are going to get in your movement.

Electric Cars
As soon as electric cars become a viable economic option, as compared to the oil burners, people will consider purchasing them. And, as oil scarcity increases, the more attractive these vehicles will be to everyone, so they will switch when it is economically feasible for them to do so.

I don't think there is any reason we have to jump into full-tilt production of electric cars. All that is necessary here is to get the price of the technology down to where the early adopters are ready to buy, and get the ball rolling.

The early adopters that are willing to spend the premium, will buy them first, and then the manufacturing costs will begin to fall to where they make more economic sense for the rest of us to purchase them.

In addition, those people that want to live in your villages, won't need their own dedicated car, so that would decrease demand for the new cars, too.

Trains
Rail shipment, comparatively speaking, is cheap, and quite economical, from what I understand. That being said, other than infrastructure, I'm not real certain these need to have diesel engines, and carry fuel. Building infrastructure is expensive, I know, but we're going to have to replace what we have sooner, or later.

The problem with rail transport is that the over-the-road trucks can do long hauls faster, with more agility, and go places the train rails don't. This makes them superior modes of transportation despite the higher cost in many situations.

Even if transporting your goods on the train is the most cost-effective manner, trucks are still required to get the freight from the train to its final destination.

Over-the-road Trucks
I'm pretty sure there will still be enough oil left to perform an orderly phase-out for the rest of the transportation modes that still rely on it, once we get most of the cars switched over to electric.

By then, I hope, we won't be so afraid of nuclear power, and can build infrastructure to make over-the-road trucks electric, too.

(I'm thinking direct power lines with some sort of trolley system -similar to electric buses in metro areas- along highway routes, and battery power/diesel-electric for when the trucks have to leave the highway.)

Let me put it another way, if it comes down to having to use horses, and wagons, and growing your own food, I still prefer that, to living in your designer villages.

Again, I'm not saying that your idea is bad across the board, it just doesn't suit me.

And, it wouldn't suit a lot of others, like me.

On, the other hand, your model will still need farms, ranches, etc., so maybe I can just live on the other side from the village.

Privacy is a subjective term.

Admittedly, I'm spoiled, but, I have lived in places where your closest neighbor is half a mile, to a mile, away. I have also lived in apartments, and condominiums. I currently live alone in my house which is located in a small bedroom community about 30 miles outside of Phoenix, Arizona. (I telecommute whenever possible.)

Compared to the first, the rest (including my current home), don't feel private, at all. (Yeah, I know, wah-wah.)

I think that is more F.U.D.. Please try to have a little more faith in human ingenuity. It may seem that we are headed to doom, and gloom, but, I don't think it is as worrisome as you predict. We'll find workable solutions, and life will go on.
(Unless, of course, we do something really stupid with our nuclear toys.)

"City-dwellers". Yup, I screwed up on that. Having spent my entire life in the western half of the US, I forget that what others call towns are what I tend to think of as cities, and what others call cities, I call places I really don't want to be.

(And, yes, I will be taking the first reasonable opportunity I can, to get further away from Phoenix - notorious sprawl, as you probably know.)

We will adapt to different ways of life, as necessary, and we will likely do it only when necessary. (We in the general sense.)

Honestly, keep up the good thinking. I appreciate people who try to come up with solutions.

Whoops. I left out the point of the post.

I'm not sure BMI is a good measure any way you cut it.

I broke the 200lbs. mark at eleven years old.

I'm only 5'10". My heaviest weight was 272lbs. playing football in high school.

My lightest weight as an adult was 203lbs. with almost no visible fat about 7 years later.

Lately, I'm somewhere in the middle. I probably said "super-size me" a bit more than I should have, and I'm not real keen on exercise anymore.

You left out 'highly annoying'.

While I applaud your enthusiasm, and believe this is a pretty good idea for those that would be happy in that environment, your opinion of what the best living conditions are is vastly different than mine.

This model of living effectively sends shivers up my spine.

My preferred way of living is to be away from population centers, and only visit them when I have a need to do so.

If I want to be around people, I'll go find them. If I need supplies, I'll go to a place where I can get them.

Believe me, you don't want me around when I've had my fill of people. (The asshole switch really flips on.)

If this means that occasionally I'll have to slug along in the occasional 10-mile long traffic jam, I'm okay with that.

I don't see it as a waste of time, at all.

Sometimes less is more, but oftentimes, less is simply less.

So lets make sure we focus on ways to improve energy efficiency for everyone, not just those that would prefer to be city dwellers.

That's a good question. There have been a couple of small discussions about it lately.

I know it goes against the grain of "Information Should Be Free", but, as many have pointed out to me, Good Professional Journalists deserve to make a living, too. So, I hope this idea isn't too unpopular.

Maybe the online newspapers can stay competitive on the net.

What if they were to form cooperatives (or whatever the correct business type is called) where the news they publish is only on their site, and indexed by them only. They could then simply tell Google (if necessary) that they only want their main site to come up in the search results.

The online newspapers could then take advantage of the .htaccess, or robots.txt, files, and control it easily.

The only problem that would remain would be to make sure that the public knew about their news coop, then they could actually keep some sort of control over the content. Since they are in the newspaper business, so it shouldn't be too hard to tell their readers where to find them.

This would allow them to charge a subscription fee (I hope not), and would likely attract better advertising opportunities, and allow them to continue to function mostly as normal. In other words, they probably wouldn't have to tighten their belts so much that they put more journalists out of work.

As for local news, each participant could maintain their own sub-domain with their local stories on it. (e.g., chattanooga.newscoop.net)

They won't have the advantage of Google bringing all those additional eyes to their stories, but they could maintain some sort of viable business that way.

Any thoughts? (Constructive criticism, is desired here.)

+1, scary-but-plausible

Of course, we won't have to worry too much about that until the manufacturing actually comes back to the US.

(Whoa, I wrote a bit of a novelette here, sorry about that.)

I don't really disagree with you. When an issue makes it to true hot button status, like this has, then, I too wish people would make the time to educate themselves on the particular issue.

Unfortunately, this eventually creates a trend of just about any issue that someone decides is most important to them, ends up blown way out of proportion, and becomes added to the list of hot-button issues.

The issues that perhaps deserve this extra personal exposure most become difficult to identify, and the the quandary comes back to which issue is the most important to spend your time researching.

I won't speak for anyone else here, but, when I see an issue that the arguments are largely dogmatic, with a sprinkling of science thrown in, I tend think that perhaps my efforts would be better spent worrying about things I am likely to have more ability to help produce a beneficial outcome over.

I believe the pragmatic approach to global warming is to let the scientific branch of society determine the nature of the problem, verify it, and work with engineers to determine a workable set of options as solutions, which they then bring back to the persons responsible for making decisions. (Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers, Dictators, Congress People, etc.)

Then the responsibility to determine the proper action to take needs to be addressed by the decision makers. To do this responsibly, they need to consult with the economists to determine what the most reasonable solution (as presented by the scientific community) to implement would be (in terms of cost-effectiveness), and set the priority of the problem accordingly to the rest of the issues that would hopefully be handled in the same way.

Once the proper action is determined for each issue, and the relative priority is set, then the decision makers need to determine how many of these issues they can really afford to deal with (in terms of what resources we have available, not how expensive is it, because it has already been prioritized), and then act accordingly.

The issues that are not dealt with get put back into the pool of things to be dealt with when it is possible to do so, and they will be re-prioritized with the next issues that are found.

Where this comes off the wire, is when an issue doesn't get prioritized in the way that some think it should, they become angry about it, and issue becomes political.

At this point, science is thrown out the window, and the proponents use emotional arguments in an attempt to give their issue higher priority, when, in fact, the reason it was put off, was it just didn't make the cut in terms of priority, or possibly that the solutions presented were deemed too costly to implement on the grand scheme of things.

The natural reaction to this for the decision makers is to attempt to put down the emotional arguments, which really doesn't work well in society, so they fight fire with fire, and their argument becomes emotional, too.

We end up with a great big mushroom cloud of emotion, where logic and reason are supposed to prevail, but are, for the most part, conspicuously absent.

Until we can agree to remove the emotion from the arguments, and simply concentrate on the problem, and its viable options, I think we will continue to spin our wheels.

As to the question itself, lets ask Joe Public what he thinks: (my observations)

Is Global Warming happening?

"Maybe so. If for no other reason than the warming trend that has happened since the last Ice Age."

(But, it is not because Joe Public has a tangible way (to him) to know for sure. If he did, there would be no buts about it.)

Do you (or anyone else) know exactly what is causing it?

"No, but, I don't think we are helping matters as much as we could with our environmental practices."

(So, Joe would likely agree that there is something we should do to attempt to mitigate the effects of what we are doing to our environment.)

Do we know what actions we can take to stop Global Warming?

"No. But, that is why we have scientists, and engineers."

(Joe Public doesn't know what the right action(s) to solve Global Warming are and doesn't think it is his job to know.)

Joe, what should be do about Global Warming?

(Joe Public is now paying attention to all of the arm-waving, and both sides of the argument are pretty intimidating to him.)

"On one hand, you have the 'We have to do SOMETHING!' crowd, which makes me think, 'Yep. Gotta do something because it sounds like the right thing to do.'"

"On the other hand you have the 'What if we do the WRONG something, and bites us in unexpected ways?' crowd which makes me think, 'Well, maybe we ought to wait for a better understanding before we act.'"

End of interview.

At this point, Joe Public is effectively paralyzed, and the pressure coming from both sides instills a need to make a decision, which is likely to be dogmatic, and will end up doing nothing other than intensifying the argument.

Joe has an alternative to self-educate himself about Global Warming, but, his time is valuable to him, so it's a task, and a half, in his eyes. And, he figures that scientists, and engineers, should be doing this for him, as that's their vocation.

If this problem is really as big as it is made out to be, he should drop everything he's doing, and begin studying the problem for himself. On the other hand, if it isn't, he will consider it a waste of his time. Either way, he will resent having to do the work because it takes away from his most important resource, which is his time.

Unfortunately, the sheer amount of work required to form a completely well-informed opinion, could take him years to study existing efforts to a point where he is satisfied with the veracity of what he is being told, and only then can make a truly responsible decision.

Any effort to self-educate that is less than that, will be omitting data, and views, that may be pertinent to the discussion, and he may just as well go back to the sound bites he hears on Fox News.

So, here we are.

If I were a decision maker, here's how I would want to handle it:

I think the only realistic solution would be to make some token effort that appeases both sides of the aisle, and hopefully lets the argument die down, and fall under the radar, eventually.

In the meantime, I would ask the scientific community to continue to (quietly) study the problem, find any possible solutions, then bring them to the table (quietly), and we'll work together (quietly) to address them as soon as it is practical to do so.

The key to solving it in my mind is to keep it from getting political as much as possible.