O, Where, O Where Is My Hydrogen Car?

Brilliant Bushy promised to inspire Detroit to work on that difficult technology to produce alternative energy cars, like, say a hydrogen powered car. Check this site out:

http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/.

The technology has been available for almost thirty years! You've been duped, America! Made into a pack of fools!

Been to the pump lately? Noticed the price creep? You're buddies at Exon Mobil are laughing their asses off at you. You're making them so stinking rich that they'll never figure out what to do with all your money. And you are supporting terrorism by funding the terrorists with each gallon of gas you pump.

Keep on truckin'.

The Business of America Is Business:

It's no secret that the one positive financial note in America over the past several years has been the sale of new homes, financed with money borrowed from the Chinese and Japanese.

Now it turns out that home sales are crashing. Sales of new homes fell off by 10.5 percent last month, the biggest drop in nine years. And the number of homes on the market are at a record high, meaning fewer people are buying and many people are trying to either get out from under the mortgages or they are trying to raise cash for other reasons. It appears the real estate boom that has so far single-handedly fueled the economy may be about to crash.

The American auto industry is in free fall already. Not only is GM in a bad fanancial plight, but the thousands of workers, their families, and the ancillary businesses that serve them will have to make dramatic changes in the way they live—and spend—which will have more than just a ripple effect throughout the economy. Currently, we are dependent primarily on the Japanese to keep our auto industry affloat. Quite a change in things since the end of WWII.

Microsoft announced another delay in the release of its latest operating system. That not only affects its own bottom line but also that of the people who sell the computers that the Koreans make for the world. (Uh, that's right, your Dell is made by the same people who make all of the other computers, it's just "branded" seperately.)

Microsoft's new OS is huge and will require major upgrades in computer hardware to use. The company's goal, according to spokesmen, is to create a safe, virus and spy free operating system. Virus and spyware writers everywhere are laughing up their sleeves over that one.

On the Macintosh front, the company's latest news was that they had finally given up and gone Intel. Even though Mac users have bragged for the past few years about the security of their machines—a result of the Mac people having finally given up on its own operating system and switching to Unix with a pretty interface—the company has yet to make any sort of dent in overall sales. Their money maker is the highly over priced little music machine your teenager has plugged into his ears, isolating him or herself from the rumblings of "the real world" with a constant flow of muzac.

There Are Bears in the Woods

From Tales Told to Children

“Once you dig a hole and find yourself at the bottom of it, no one wants to hear you complain that you’re in a hole.” – Anon.

Once upon a time there was a man who complained that the woods near the town where he and his fellow citizens lived was a dangerous place. “Yes,” the people said, “it is dangerous. You should stay out of it.” The man wanted the woods cut down. The people said that maybe they should wait, not jump into hasty decisions.

The man kept insisting that the woods were dangerous, bears lived there, wolves too, and in time of drought the trees might catch on fire and the resulting holocaust could sweep through the town. "True," the people said, "but it hasn't happened yet. The wolves and bears had been kept at bay, and no fire had gotten bad enough to pose a serious threat to the town."

So one day the man found a pipe, and he began to play it. The children in the town were fascinated by the man with the pipe, and they began to follow him around. The man saw that he had much power, and he led the children out of town and into the woods. "The woods are very dangerous," the children said. "Are you sure we should go here?"

"Yes, it is dangerous," the man said, "but I am playing the pipe, and its sound is very sweet." The children agreed with him, and they continued to follow him deeper and deeper into the woods. Once the man was in the heart of the woods, bears and wolves began to creep out of their hiding places, licking their lips, their sharp teeth flashing in the moon light.

"Look!" the children said. "There are wolves and bears all around us! How will we be safe now?"

The man said not to worry, he had just the thing. He ordered the children to gather dry branches and leaves, and he quickly built a fire to frighten away the wild beasts. The fire grew hot, and the flames leaped up to the sky. "Quick," the man said. "More kindling. We must build a big fire to scare away all of the bears and wolves."

The children ran about and gathered up all of the dry wood they could find and piled it onto the bonfire. Soon the flames were licking the branches of nearby trees, which quickly caught fire themselves. The flames leaped higher and soon the trees were aflame. A wildfire spread throughout the tree branches and the sky lit up red and angry.

The fire spread faster than even the swiftest children could run, and the flames swept toward the town and the houses caught fire and the people were burnt up in their beds as they slept.

"You see," the man was heard to say before he too was consumed by the flames, "I told you these woods were dangerous."

Copyright©Jim Manis 2006