[ There's far more in Hijexx's analysis than I hope to address easily, but one point stuck out at me and I thought I'd mention it... you write

"Yes, some of the stuff is the same thing some people of a party would say, like saying "conserve energy!" But is that really a political statement? To me, it sounds like common sense. To me, reducing consumption makes sense as a sound policy. To others though, that believe the market should allow you to consume more if you are willing to pay for it, that's fine too. But it fails to account for the big picture. It's a myopic view. It's a faith that technology will just magically bring in an equally efficient oil substitute at the same rate that the oil becomes infeasible to use and sustain the growth rate we have been accustomed to with oil."

I'll start by agreeing that energy conservation is almost certainly the best short term response we, as a society, can have. Arguing so is political only because it's impossible to separate beliefs from politics, or at least I've always thought so. You vote your beliefs... the politics are inherent in that. Anyway, that's not the key thing i wanted to say.

You mention the market here, and note that most market analyses fail to look much beyond the current environment. This is, I think, interesting, and mostly true. I think it's a given that the markets act as a feedback mechanism on consumption... prices increase as supply decreases. I'll take it as a given that demand won't decrease, and will almost certainly increase, so we need more supply, from alternate sources.

I'm finally at my point which is the question of wether the feedback mechanism offered by the market, coupled with the subtle effects activism on the part of people like yourself, will ultimately exert the necessary pressure to instigate alternate supply in time, or wether the market will delay too long.

I tend to believe the former... that the feedback will occur with time enough, if barely, to acquire alternate sources of supply. It seems you would take the opposite opinion... that it's already probably too late to acquire enough alternate energy supply.

I'm not sure there's an answer, and perhaps it doesn't matter... in the time we have, we should probably agitate for reducing energy consumption and development of viable alternatives to oil, regardless of if we think it'll get done in time. Is there another choice? -k]

RE: As prices rise, concerns grow about world oil supplies

] After the spectacular crashes of big-name Internet
] grocers in the late 1990s, the dream of a grand new wave
] of online food stores appeared to fizzle.
]
] But with intentionally meager fanfare, grocers have made
] Internet shopping available to tens of millions of
] consumers nationwide, and upcoming expansions will expand
] it to millions more.

[ Next big thing or bound to bust? It's not terribly appealing to me, since I'm within 1 minute of 3 grocery stores. But then, I've been too busy to set foot in any of them for weeks, so maybe this could be useful... -k]

CNN.com - After flashy failures, online groceries quietly grow - May 19, 2004

] Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been
] discussing it earlier, and I... I wanted to bring this up
] to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess
] as good a time as any. I don't really know to put this,
] so I'll be blunt. We broke it.
]
] Please don't be mad. I know we were supposed to
] bequeath to the next generation a world better than the
] one we were handed. So, sorry.
]
] I don't know if you've been following the news
] lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere
] between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an
] arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a
] pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on
] us. So I apologize.

John Stewart's commencement address to Wm&Mary

[ Scroll down a bit...

Support terrorism is my fave. -k]

Zenarchery.com: Download My Banners!

] "When America treats its friends this way, then they are
] in big trouble," Chalabi said.
] He called Thursday's raid "the penultimate act of failure
] of the CPA in Iraq."
] He said his relationship with the CPA is now
] "nonexistent."

What is the world smoking? Wake the hell up. June 30th is a bullshit date.

[ It always was. A friend of mine who's a JAG indicated to me the other day that, this is, as I understand it, a legal game so that american forces can stop being an occupying force and begin being an invited peacekeeping force. We hand over power, and they sign a thing saying "We're fucked, please help!" and we magically go from illegitimate occupiers to legitimate foriegn aid, from an international law perspective (lawyers, please feel free to tear this all apart if it's wrong... this is the impression i've got).

In real-world, pragmatic terms, nothing changes, never was gonna, and all the rhetoric from the administration is, as you certainly surmise, designed to make the gesture look more relevant (again, in an everyday joe, pragmatic sense) than it is. Politics and semantics, i say. -k]

Iraqi Counsil attacks each other

[ I had a longer post written, but went to another site, which had a popup, which cleared the meme rec. window.

I'll summarize :

1. Fuck george lucas. he can take star wars with him to the special little minihell where vision-less directors go.
2. he'll never reliquish control, so no, Ep III cannot be saved... it will suck at least as much as 1 and 2, and probably more. I can only hope that this one has no real actors at all... go whole hog and have the CG do the bad acting, and recite the wooden dialogue.
3. You'll note, Ep IV was the suckiest of the original 3, and it's the only one Lucas directed. Irvin Kershner represents on Empire and Marquand is sufficient with Jedi. Nuff said. -k]

MSNBC - Can Star Wars: Episode III be saved?

] Handing a setback to emerging Internet phone services,
] the New York State Public Service Commission on Wednesday
] ruled that Vonage Holdings is a telephone company and
] thus subject to state regulation.
]
] In a statement announcing its decision, the agency sought
] to soften the blow, saying that it nevertheless hoped to
] apply "only minimal regulations to ensure that it does
] not interfere with the rapid, widespread deployment of
] new technologies."

[ Tough break for Vonage. Is QoS gonna be the first reg they hand down? -k]

New York classifies Vonage as phone company | CNET News.com

] The history of UNIX and its various children and
] grandchildren has been in the news recently as a result
] of a book from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.
] Since I was involved in part of this history, I feel I
] have an obligation to set the record straight and correct
] some extremely serious errors. But first some background
] information.

[ Nice smackdown of AdTI by Andy Tanenbaum, with, additionally, a little leftover smackdown for Linux (which, for those who don't want to rad to the bottom, he says is foolishly monolithic, when it should be microkernel based). -k]

Some notes on the 'Who wrote Linux' Kerfuffle, Release 1.1

] Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence that the
] tiny particles known as "nannobacteria" are indeed alive
] and may cause a range of human illnesses.
]
]
] The existence of nannobacteria is one of the most
] controversial of scientific questions - some experts
] claim they are simply too small to be life forms.
]
]
] But US scientists report they have now isolated these
] cell-like structures in tissue from diseased human
] arteries.

[ nanogerms. -k]

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Claim made for new form of life

] The General Accounting Office concluded that the
] Department of Health and Human Services illegally spent
] federal money on what amounted to covert propaganda by
] producing videos about the Medicare changes that were
] made to look like news reports. Portions of the videos,
] which have been aired by 40 television stations around
] the country, do not make it clear that the announcers
] were paid by HHS and were not real reporters.

[ Mixed feelings on this one. I think there are more important problems with the medicare plan, like the fact that it's very likely gonna cost 530 billion, not 400 billion among others. I haven't seen this particular segment, so i can't say how misleading it is. The GAO believes it is though.... -k]

GAO Says HHS Broke Laws With Medicare Videos (washingtonpost.com)