Weekly Reading Roundup

Alright, this weekend I have quite a roundup for you. Take a look at my rant on my the reasons the US is incapable of energy reform. You will be entertained, I guarantee it.

This is a great idea. Laying dark fiber with every new road built in the United States. The way I see it, the roads are already being built, and it is a hell of a lot cheaper to just put in the fiber now. It can't hurt our worldwide internet rankings which are ever decreasing. Can you image 100Mbsp internet access, up and down via fiber because of this bill? Even half would be amazing. Via Ars Technica.

A pretty funny portrayal of the modern Toyota Prius by The Casual Mafia. Embedded below.

Engadget finally got ahold of a GigaPan Epic 100 panoramic imager. I have been wanting to get one of these since they were first announced as I am a huge fan of panoramic photography. However, their review is not very complimentary. Even though I could handle their criticisms of the thing, that it is too bulky to be practical or it is too complicated (it is supposed to be complex), the price is out of my range. It is $449 for the model I would get, and to top it off, it wouldn't even officially support my Canon 30D DSLR. I think I will stick to shooting them by hand and maybe get a pano head for my tripod. Those are slightly more reasonable in price. Although I still think it is dam cool, and if I had the cash, I would probably get one.

One of the most technical computer blogs that I read, Raymond.CC had an interesting article up yesterday on tracking down stolen electronics. He found a program that lets you create your own lojack system. It is called ihound, and basically it creates an exe file called mypasswords that is disguised as a text file and when clicked on, it will phone home to the ihound website reporting its current ip address and location, helping the owner hopefully track the stolen item down. The one downside is that the new owner must click on the file to launch it, it will not autolaunch. Interesting idea nonetheless. I will probably just stick to encrypting my data, then it doesn't matter if you loose it.

<Begin Rant>

In this article, Treehugger presents the 7 biggest obstacles to US energy reform. In the following paragraph, I will attempt to find out the real reasons. On the left are Treehugger's reasons along with (paraphrased explanations of their reasons). On the right are my explanations.

A Great Big PR Problem (Nobody cares syndrome) - Let me see, nobody cares because it doesn't yet affect their daily lives. Why is this? Well, it might be because we don't price the environmental cost in to all of the products we buy from China or even the U.S. for that matter. It might be because we continue to subsidize unsustainable agriculture in turn keeping food prices down. There has been constant talk of letting the market decide when the right time is for environmentally sustainable products and services. The problem is, we do not live in a free market. If the real value of goods were presented, the populace would begin to care extremely quickly. This is a failure of leadership.

One Word: The Senate (Won't Pass) -Two words, partisan politics.

Truth, But No Reconciliation (Won't Pass in Senate) - Two words, partisan politics.

Big Trouble From China (Doesn't Matter What We Do If China Doesn't Reduce Emissions as Well) - This is absolutely true, but maybe we should start leading by example. We are not going to convince them by continuing business as usual. I honestly don't think it is our place either. Take a look at U.S. history, anyone remember the industrial revolution? Anyone? We need to stop complaining and using this as an excuse to do nothing.

More Care For Health Care (Health Care Seems Like A More Pressing Matter) - Our government never ceases to amaze me. There is always an issue that is so important it can't wait. What ends up happening is that the Senate and the House never find a productive solution to that problem either. This is just another failure of our government.

Rust Belt and Agri-Friendly Dems (Too many financial burdens imposed on constituents) - Two words, partisan politics. Really? This has been an excuse for decades. Someone is going to have to bite the bullet and absorb the costs of doing business sustainably, and in the process pay for past misdeeds in terms of environmental exploitation. This is common sense, we have run up an environmental debt, we need to pay of the debt + interest. This is yet another failure by our elected officials. They have just enough courage to get them through the next election cycle. God forbid they actually look beyond the next 2, 4, or 6 years.

The Grand Ol' Party (Republicans won't vote for it) - Two words, partisan politics. Once again, a failure by our elected officials. However, this is not just the Republicans. The Democrats have been guilty of this for quite a long time as well. They are both horrendous.

To summarize, 4 out of 7 reasons are basically failures by our government and are due to partisan politics. The other 3 reasons go back to a lack of vision and common sense by our elected officials.

This is why the solution will have to come from private enterprise. The solution will have to be so good that it overcomes every subsidy of the opposition and every governmental hurdle.

 <End Rant>

And, to end with, here are a couple cool info graphics to look at on your Sunday. Have a great weekend.

• Subsidyscope: Tracking TARP and US Federal Subsidies in the Economy via Infosthetics.
• Random Walk: The Visualization of Randomness via Infosthetics.
• Imitate + Formate: Using Nature and Biology to Visualize Data via Infosthetics.
• TwitterVision and TwittEarth: Mapping Live Tweets on a 3D Globe via Infosthetics.
•  Worldwide Obama Buzz Visualized via FlowingData.