And Michael Arrington has posted a love letter: In just a few hours Verizon stores will open and the first customers will get their hands on their very own Droid. [CNet covers the midnight Droid madness last night in Manhattan.] And I promise you, if you are one of the people waiting in line, you will have a much lower than average amount of letdown. That’s because, in my humble opinion, the Droid is the...

In 1960, President Eisenhower warned us of the growing influence and power of the Military Industrial Complex. He was right and we ignored him. Today our country has the world’s largest total annual Military Budget of over $650 billion, additional defense-related spending of over $350 billion, more than 1.5 million people serving in its Armed Forces in over 100 countries around the globe, and is currently...

Here are two recently broadcast reports on the development of wind power and other alternative energy sources in Denmark. Steep energy taxes seem to be helping the northern European nation to both end its dependence on foreign oil and do its part to clean up the global environment. [This is being crossposted at my personal blog.]

Google announced today: In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including...

You wouldn’t think so based on what the world is watching. The biggest television series ever, worldwide, was Baywatch. Broadcast in 142 countries its peak audience surpassed a billion people. House is tops today, with 82 million people watching last year in 66 countries. CSI and Desperate Housewives come in close behind. That from an interesting Foreign Policy piece by Charles Kenny. In it he argues that...

So much for Beijing’s past pronouncements about the exclusively peaceful use of outer space. Days ago, the commander of China’s Air Force, Commander General Xu Qiliang, made a number of comments that have created a genuine tumult amongst defense analysts and China watchers. According to Malaysia’s Straits Times, with some additional quotes from the People’s Daily, General Xu said in...

Back in March, Declan McCullagh reported that the Obama Administration cloaked its draft section of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) under “national security” wrappers — for the general public. At the same time, the document had supposedly already made the rounds of “corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.” Today, someone has leaked information about the...

This point has been made before, but not usually as bluntly as here (emphasis in original):

A new study out this week says that there is a genetic variation in people which could be one of the causes of bad driving. The study was limited, involving 29 people of which 22 had the genetic quirk. The participants in the study drove 15 laps on a driving simulator then came back later and did the same test again. Those with the genetic quirk performed 20% worse on all of the tests. Obviously this is going...

President Obama must understand that foreign wars are the undoing of U.S. Presidents and most domestic agendas. If he hopes to concentrate on getting us out of this deep recession, he cannot spend any more time in Iraq and in particular, enlarge or continue our dead-end involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps he’s trying to find a way to break the news to the U.S. Military and the American people that we must...

TechCrunch: Twitter tweeted out a message today about a special Halloween feature if you Tweet “#trick” or “#treat.” It was difficult to figure out at first, but if you tweet either from your Twitter home page (this is key, you can’t enable the feature when you are on a client), your home page background will go “ghoulish” and the avatars on the Tweets on your page will...

Now that most economists, our government, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street Barons, and our ignorant and shallow 24/7 info-entertainment Media pundits have pronounced that the recession is over, there are no more excuses. For all those people still lounging around on unemployment benefits, given up looking, or working at temporary and part-time jobs, get off your lazy duffs. There are no more excuses. Take...

The Mercury News: Google is set to launch a free service for smartphones that will combine GPS navigation, voice-activated search and real-time traffic updates. Other telecommunication companies already offer turn-by-turn navigation systems that talk drivers through a route and run on smart phones, although many are not free, and would not offer the same connectivity to Google’s massive store of data. There...

Researchers are finding that animals and humans have a lot more in common than we generally think.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés and I have been posting on a Texas criminal justice case that has now become an issue of national interest. It is the now infamous case of Todd Willingham who was executed almost six years ago for the 1991 arson related death of his three children at his home in Corsicana, Texas. The Texas Forensic Science Commission was reviewing the case and hired the noted fire scientist Craig...

My partner and I use Google Voice as a single number that rings all our phones (home, both mobile and both offices) so that if a friend is trying to find us, one number does it. Because it’s another number for friends to learn, it hasn’t caught on. Now we can port our existing mobile numbers over to Google Voice. It’s not a full port, Google says they’re still working on that. There...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama administration will today unveil something truly useful for us to do with the nation’s tax dollars. The nation’s power grid has long been in decrepit shape, representing inefficiency, a waste of resources and exposure to widespread brown-outs, power failures and potential terrorist threats. We may finally see some badly needed improvements with...

It was a busy weekend and I’d like to give people at the Moderate Voice a heads up on some of what we’ve been covering. From Pakistan’s The Nation Newspaper, the editorial headlined Hillary Clinton Should Mind Her Own Media! attacks the secretary of state for criticizing Pakistan’s media coverage of the huge U.S. aid bill to that nation. Then for Pakistan’s Pak Tribune in an...

Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S. Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities that they would encourage...

Frederick Deligne, Nice-Matin, France This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

The journalism gods turned prankish Friday. As Chesley Sullenberger was taping a PBS News Hour interview about how he how saved 155 lives by landing safely in the Hudson River last January, two other pilots were overshooting Minneapolis by 150 miles. The incident recalled an old standup routine in which Bob Newhart comes on the intercom as a clueless cockpit voice to ask, “Would any of you folks back there...

While George Lucas may or may not be preparing to unleash another Star Wars trilogy on us, this time in stereoscopic 3D, some of his most re-creative fans had their work included in a fun Star Wars Uncut trailer out this week. Launched in July, the project aims to complete a full user-generated version of the original, dubbed Star Wars: A New Hope. This “biggest fan recreation in the universe”...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist. I work with veterans on a daily basis. Lately, I’ve been burning the midnight oil as part of Operation FREE, a coalition of veterans groups and national security organizations that are looking to raise awareness about the links between climate change and national security. We’re...

The newest critique against the Federal Government limiting executive salaries in companies that it has essentially saved from liquidation or in which it holds a major ownership interest, is that it will cause a brain drain of the best people to other companies. I have one response to such a meritless argument: Bullshit. Some of our private sector oligarchs are so narcissistic, greedy and arrogant that they...

On the same day. And just hours ago: Back-to-back deals on Wednesday to make the company’s steady stream of posts available to Microsoft and Google’s search engines may point to a potential new source of cash. How large, however, is not known. The terms of the deals were not disclosed and Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said in an interview that revenue was “not the focus of the deals.” Microsoft...