So what's up with Nintendo, anyways?

I see Nintendo as sort of the Sears of the video game world. They've both been around forever and you keep wondering how either of them manage to stay in business with some of the weird decisions that they make!

Case in point - Nintendo is rumored to be announcing shortly that during this holiday season they will be releasing a redesigned, smaller wii console, only a week after launching their next-gen console, the wii-u. LINK to the story at WebProNews. Why would you undercut the sales of your brand new console with a redesign of a six year old console in the same holiday season? A decision to do something like this boggles my mind. Do they think they're going to make money by saturating the market at both the high and low ends?  Nintendo has made some pretty flaky decisions on how to run their business in the past, and this one rates right up there as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure there will be plenty of people in the game industry that will come up with justifications for this, but in the end, I think Nintendo is doing nothing but hurting themselves in the long run.

As for the wii-u, I've had a chance to check it out and frankly, the graphics don't look next-gen to me, and by that, I mean they don't really compare to the PS3 or XBOX 360, both of which are slated to reportedly be replaced as soon as next holiday season with new consoles. I don't really like the wii-u's tablet-like controller either, though my son says he loves it. It just felt awkward and clunky in my hands and didn't feel like something I'd want to hold onto for several hours of gaming.

It's my opinion that within a year or two, we'll see Nintendo become a shadow of what it once was, or disappear altogether. I think the same goes for Sears too, some dinosaurs just go extinct!

How many have to die before people learn? Again!

STORY at the Christian Science Monitor

At the age of 48, I grew up during a period in our country during which people had learned the follies of speeding cars. During the late 60's and through the 70's speed limits across this nation had been scaled back to a maximum of 55mph. It had been the costly lessons of the 50's that had taught us that speed equals fatalities. High death tolls during the 50's, coupled with the rising cost of gas and shortages of fuels during the early days of OPEC together encouraged our nation's leaders to set strict speed limit rules on our highways. Almost immediately this resulted in fewer fatalities, fewer multi-car crashes and better gas milage for motorists.

So what happened? The excesses of the 80's happened, that's what. Spurred on by Reaganomics, our nation's leaders, (mostly the same ones that fixed things two decades before!), started repealing laws on curbing highway speeds because WE as a nation demanded more, more...more! It wasn't enough that lowering the speed limit caused fewer traffic fatalities, the reasoning went that since cars were being built with more safety measures installed in them, it was therefore safer for cars to travel at higher speeds. That's like saying that since we have better medical procedures now, it's safer to run with scissors!

Now here we are again, looking at high gas prices, huge multi-car pile-ups on the freeways and more fatalities involved with car crashes than anytime since the 50's. It's time once again to put on our common sense caps and lower the nations speed limits. It doesn't have to go all the way back to 55mph, although I'd be okay with that myself. I think setting a speed limit on all of our nation's highways to 65 mph would be enough to turn back the clock on death by automobiles!

Going too far?

Have you heard about the two employees fired from a non-profit organization for a photo they posted on Facebook? LINK to the story for the details.

They were at Arlington National Cemetery and one of the employees photographed the other standing in front of a sign with the cemeteries name on it asking everyone to be silent and respectful as she "pretended" to be screaming out loud and flipped the bird. A harmless prank meant to make their friends and family laugh when they see it on Facebook. The photo went "viral" though and when complaints started coming in to the non-profit organization they worked for, they were summarily fired. How is this a relevant reason to fire someone from their job? I can guarantee you that if that were me, I'd have already hired an attorney and would be suing for wrongful termination!

The world has gone insane with all this kind of crap! Whatever happened to "freedom of speech" and the "pursuit of life, liberty and happiness"? This all started in the 80's when someone coined the term "politically correct", and it's escalated to the point where none of us any longer have a private life where we can be who we want to be. Instead, we're being forced to live in a world where we have to more and more be what someone else wants us to be. If I lived anywhere near Arlington National Cemetery, I'd go there and make my own prank photo just to show the world what I think of it's "big brother" mentality!

My Batman...

...Just saying!

Has Science Been Misleading Us?

I was messing around today on Youtube, and came across one of the many videos purporting to show an example of a perpetual motion machine. What's a perpetual motion machine you ask? It's supposed to be a machine, usually mechanical in nature that once set into motion, does stop and generates more energy than it requires to stay in motion. Science, and shows like Mythbusters has been debunking these perpetual motion machines for years. The hope is that someday someone will come up with a machine that generates more electricity than it consumes, thereby giving the world abundant, free, or really cheap energy.

My thought on this subject is, has science been misleading us into not asking the right questions? Why does a machine have to be a "perpetual" motion machine to give us benefits? Why couldn't someone just invent a machine that once set into motion might just run on it's own inertia for say a month or two, generating electricity until it finally winds down and needs to be started up once again? That's how an old fashioned spring-wound clock operates. You wind up the spring and the tension on the spring keeps the hands moving for days or weeks at a time, depending on the size of the spring.

Let's say you had to use an electric powered motor to start a large flywheel turning and after an hour you turn off the motor and the flywheel keeps turning through it's own inertia for a month through a system of cleverly balanced weights. That flywheel in turn spins a large alternator that generates electricity. As long as you're generating more electricity than it took to get the flywheel going in the first place, I would see that as being a great scenario without it having to be perpetual. Maybe we need to stop thinking that something has to run on it's own inertia forever and just find a way to harness what I'll term, the "temporary motion machine".

Disaster preparedness, or not?

In the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, it's become apparent that the United States needs to seriously start investing (i.e. spending money) on reinforcing the infrastructure of our country. Nearly a week after the storm hit the East coast and there are still millions of customers without power, the distribution of fuel is spotty at best and citizens are feeling the frustrations of general chaos.  LINK

For instance, after every major disaster it seems there is always a lack of fuel distribution. I know it was that way for us here in the Mid-west after a major wind-storm earlier this year. Most gas stations, although they had gasoline, had no power and therefore couldn't pump it. The same is now happening on the East coast. Why can't the government require fuel suppliers (i.e. gas stations) to all have back-up power systems, I mean, it's not like they don't have fuel to run generators! Every quarter for the last several years, all the major oil companies have been reporting record profits, why not make them put some of those profits to good use. They (the oil companies) always claim that they don't actually run the gas stations, that they're mostly all independents. Who cares?! Even if it's true, the oil companies wouldn't exist if it weren't for the gas stations that deliver their product to the consumers. So in my opinion, it would be in their best interest to see that the gas stations are open and operating after a major crisis.

The time that it's taking to get power restored to customers on the East coast also hi-lights the need for our power distribution grid to be over-hauled. We need redundancies built into the system so that power can be restored more quickly, and it's apparent that if consumers had more access to solar and wind energy alternatives, many people wouldn't have to wait for public utilities to be brought back online.

This Tuesday could be a deciding factor in what will happen after the next major disaster. Will we elect a Republican government that wants to sit back and say we like thing just the way they are, or will we elect a Democratic government that will move forward on improving the infra-structure of the country so that we can face the daunting problems that nature throws at us?