I adore the idea and goal of increasing our country’s energy independence from oil and oil-producing nations as much if not more than the average American.  But I also adore the Atlantic coast, having grown up on the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, working and summering in Coastal Maine and spending time on New Jersey and Massachusetts shores.  The vision of oil rigs bobbing in the waves just south...

During the battle for health care reform, there were two strands to the narrative: Barack Obama disappointed his party’s progressive wing and tried to move over towards the center to center right to attempt to win over Republican votes and the center. And now it appears to be happening once again on the issue of drilling off America’s coast. But this time the issue is Obama’s call to end...

For over a year, rumors and news reports have swirled about stubbornly-chilly relations between the presidents of France and the United States. But with the French presidential couple enjoying a private dinner in the White House with the Obama’s, things seem to have changed. According to Le Figaro columnist Pierre Rousselin, the reason can be summed up in a word: pragmatism. For Le Figaro, Pierre Rousselin...

Is the American missile shield in Europe meant to defend against an Iranian missile attack, as the U.S. claims, or is it a thinly-disguised offensive weapon aimed at Russia – which endangers the nations that host it? For Romania’s AZI newspaper, Razvan Voncu warns his countrymen about turning Romania into ‘an American ballistic missile base.’ For AZI, Razvan Voncu writes in part: Thus,...

I took some weeks off from blogging on TMV to work on a variety of business and personal projects. I was also at an intellectual impasse after having written way too many posts during 2009. Over most of prior 2 years and the first quarter of 2010, I have preferred to just read the many excellent posts from the smart group of regular TMV contributors, writers and editors. Finally, I was following the latest...

The FBI has charged a Philadelphia man with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor. Let’s just say this guy apparently has a bunch of issues, including issues with Jews. Details here. PREDICTION: The climate has gotten so hateful right now in the country, look for the FBI to take these kinds of threats very seriously — whether the person threatened is a Democrat, Republican, liberal or conservative....

AFP reports that the Wall Street Journal plans to charge $17.99 a month ($216/year) for an iPad subscription. This pricing model is hard to explain, given other WSJ subscription plans. And I worry that such extreme subscription plans could cloud the iPad debut and doom product adoption.

A short while ago, I commented on a thread about the rash of violence, threats, harassment and insults Democratic legislators have endured during the last few days as a direct result of their positions and votes on health care reform. This is part of my comment on the ordeal Representative Bart Stupak has been through because of the way he voted on the legislation: I am referring to the unspeakable abuse,...

It’s been a bonanza for public relations folks who can dream up zany stunts that feed the our news media’s thirst for “man bites dog” stories. Google reported Friday that they had received more than 1,100 community responses to the broadband fiber request for information (RFI) and more than 194,000 responses from individuals. The company dashed a bit of cold water on those hopes when...

Last fall I came across an article that I wanted to write about but I didn’t know what to say that would fit within TMV guidelines (I even talked to Joe about letting me break them). The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of...

Understanding Toyota Sudden Acceleration by Joel S. Hirschhorn As a materials and manufacturing engineer with decades of experience with failure analysis of manufactured products, and as an owner of a Toyota vehicle, I am saddened by the lack of expertise and insight shared with Congress and the public about the sudden acceleration problem. When products fail due to a systemic design, materials or manufacturing...

The Apple patent infringement suit against HTC, the Taiwan-based manufacturer of smartphones including the Eris and Nexus One, is widely seen as an escalation of the gritty battle royale over the future of mobile computing. In that battle, Silicon Alley’s Business Insider reports, Apple Is Armed To The Teeth With Patents: Apple is suing HTC for violating some 20 patents — many in reference to Google’s...

Google, Intel and Sony plan to bring the Web into your living room through a set-top box called Google TV. Logitech will build the remote and peripherals. The NYTimes: Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for...

Media reports of the FCC broadband plan (pdf) that was sent to Congress today were fawning. Almost all contain this quote from FCC Chair Julius Genacowski, which describes the plan to connect 100 million U.S. households (~85 percent) to 100 Mbps high speed broadband by 2020 as a 21st-century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens and engage in...

Google is being bombarded with lawsuits and criticism around the world. So what became of the California company that everyone loved and that lived by the credo ‘Don’t Be Evil’? According to Philippe Escande of France’s Les Echos newspaper, Google has encountered the inevitible backlash against all innovators, ‘whose careers always begin in euphoria and usually end in the courts.’ For...

Is the United States coming down too hard on Iran, which it believes is building a nuclear weapon? That is the ever-more popular narrative being espoused by important powers that include China, Russia and now, Brazil. According to this article by columnist John Saxe-Fernandez of Mexico’s La Jornada, Brazil’s rejection of U.S. demands for harsh sanctions is a demonstration of the ‘change in...

Was the California Prius Incident a hoax? Some doubts are being raised:

I’d like you to imagine for a moment what would happen if a group of conservative Christians had been arrested for driving around shooting gay men with a BB gun and filming the shootings. Do you think the reaction would be muted or would there be a mild outcry ? Do you think the prosecuting attorney would keep quiet about the story or would go public to condemn the attacks ? I think we all know what the...

Jianping Fan, Guangzhou, China This cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

More than 100 cities and counties in 43 states have official and unofficial efforts to develop a pitch for Google’s fiber contest by 26 March. Apparently missing: Delaware, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming. But there’s an unofficial Facebook page for Washington, DC. On 10 February, Google announced that it was “planning to build and test ultra high-speed...

The title is from danah boyd‘s SXSW Keynote yesterday. “One of the the world’s foremost authorities on social networks,” Boyd is a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Known for her academic work and commentary on teens and social networking sites, she posted today: My talk was about privacy...

Today is 3.14, Pi Day. To celebrate, Science Blogs is having a Pi Day Bake-off together with Serious Eats. And Google has a special doodle logo… New Scientist has five tasty facts about the famous ratio. From the third: Pi is the only number to have inspired a literary genre In his upcoming book Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, journalist Alex Bellos describes how pi has inspired a particularly...

There have been a slew of charges over recent months that James Cameron lifted the plot of Avatar from previous writers, most memorably by the St. Petersburg Communist Party, who called for Cameron’s arrest for plagiarizing the work of Soviet-era science fiction writers. But this article from Ukraine’s Day newspaper makes the most convincing case of all. Columnist Maxim Chaikovsky writes that...

I’ve been tuning in to the conversation going on around Jeremy Rifkin‘s latest book, The Empathic Civilization. In it Rifkin argues that technology is ushering in a new, empathic, model of society. The modern age is coming to an end; the future belongs to the connected, empathic, global citizen. In a recent interview with Moira Gunn, Rifkin says that for America to retain its global position in this...

There seems to be no end to the controversy over Google’s activities. This article from Germany outlines how people across that country are struggling to come up with novel legal challenges to the company’s ambitious “Street View’ service. As the article shows, its a very complicated problem. For Germany’s Die Tageszeitung, columnist by Ingo Arzt writes of how citizens across...