Mulled Marc

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it….it’s not. The BBC is running a story about African villages that are using black roofing to sterilize water in clear plastic bottles. Rather than having to boil unsafe drinking water, which requires gathering firewood, people fill plastic bottles with water and place them in the sun on their roofs or pieces of scrape roofing for eight hours.

Solar radiation means a combination of ultra-violet rays and heat destroys the bacteria which cause common water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery and diarrhoea.

via Treehugger

SanDisk has a new product they are calling Gruvi (Groovy…get it, they’re so hip). They are marketing it as a way to listen to your favorite music on your PDA, phone, or PC without having to rip or download music. The price is listed at $30 and I don’t see any mention of the format used for the music, although I’m sure it’s heavily DRM-ed.

This isn’t remarkable, the Nokia 6255 cell phone I recently switched to came with a promotional MMC card containing music. What was interesting is that SanDisk is marketing it as a digital replacement for the CD that doesn’t require downloading. I was in a conversation recently with a friend about the Hi-Definition DVD battle and whether it matters. With the recently announced 32GB Samsung, how long before optical discs are replaced by flash devices?

Ubergizmo

The US Senate today voted to raise the US Debt Ceiling so we’re free to continue borrowing like children. I realize that as a percent of GDP, and per capita, etc, etc, etc it’s not that bad, but shouldn’t we stop somewhere? At this rate we’re going to have to wrap text just to fit it on a page. Whether you’re a democrat or a republican, I think it’s time we force the government to control spending.

The best quote that I’ve heard lately was in regards to the “earmarking” reform that seems to have lost traction in Congress. While speaking to NPR an analyst commented that since President Bush doesn’t seem willing to veto spending bills to control Congress, that our government has no “adult supervision”.

It’s easy to blame the republicans or the democrats, or say that the President should do more, or Congress should control themselves but, in the end, isn’t it our job to supervise the government? While that bridge in your state may be a cool idea, or getting a butterfly garden for your town might help local tax revenue, maybe we should stop thinking of the federal government as our rich uncle who can fund anything.

• What happened to the time when a local town was responsible for funding the local school?
• Why must the government be involved in the new zoo you want to build?
• Why can’t we give our money to local churches and charities to help those down on their luck?

While it may be easier to just give our money to Uncle Sam and let him figure out who needs help, if we would take just a little responsibility for ourselves we could get much more for our money and maybe actually get something done.

Reuters.com
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about the Debt
brillig.com U.S. National Dept Clock

Requires Windows Media Player 10 and is only available in the US. The website has to be the most bandwidth heavy web 1.0 site I’ve ever seen, but it’s a good first step to the web-based television networks that I think will replace broadcast networks.

Update (2006/03/15 21:00):
Just took a look at the site and tried to watch a couple of videos. First impressions:

• Might just be me, but I couldn’t get it to work with Firefox. It said I had to install a new extension, which I did and restarted the browser. I repeated this exercise three times a switched to IE.
• There is a full-screen option, which should be avoided at all cost. The video quality is not capable of full-screen, even after setting the preferences to the highest speed setting.
• The shows are prefixed by a commercial, which is to be expected.
• They could remove 60-70 images from the site to clean it up a little.

 

In2TV
via Digg

WOOD Radio had a story this morning about a new study from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that capsaicin from peppers can trigger the suicide of prostate cancer cells. Before you try a home remedy a 200 lb man would have to consume three to eight fresh habanero peppers three times a week. The BBC News story about the research also notes that eating too many peppers can contribute to stomach cancer, so probably best to wait for a drug.

I was at the Meijer Thrifty Outlet the other day and picked up one of the Eaghugger PowerPod adapters. This device has “tips” which snap on the end of the cord so you can charge many Nokia, LG, Samsung, Kyocera, and Motorola phones. You can plug the device into a standard electrical outlet, USB, cigarette lighter, or 9V battery. I have tested it so far using USB and a standard outlet on a Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia phone and it works well with no signs of overheating or other problems from the phone. It looks like it will make a good “everywhere” charger.

Mark Cuban has a post on his blog discussing how much bandwidth we will all need in the new digital world. More interesting is his vision of how we will be using the bandwidth. His vision matches very closely with what I would like to do, but I wonder how much will be impossible because of limits content creators put on innovative electronic devices.

A potentially disturbing story from News.com about Chinese plans to create their own top level domains, including .com, .cn, and .net. The Internet only works successfully if everyone agrees on who is the authoritative source for information. If this happens could it spell the end of the global Internet?

Here is a story in Newsday about paint from NaturalNano that contains copper filled nanotubs. The paint can be turned on or off, when on it would block radio signals, including wireless phones and pagers. The device can selectively filter the radio signals so that equipment for emergency personal would still work.
via Slashdot

Now this is an idea. Rather than have one or two elevators that go up and down, up and down, have 6-8 cabins that loop, basically creating a cabin version of the escalator.

via Akihabara News