I saw a graph today that listed the average Internet broadband speed by country. The USA was listed at under 10 mb/s, and we were 15th on the list, trailing (in order) Germany (didn’t we kick their butts in WWII?), Iceland, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Poland, Canada, Portugal (they’re all under 10 mb/s), then Netherlands, France, Sweden and Finland (all right around 20 mb/s). Number two in the world is Korea at 45(!) mb/s, and number one is Japan at over 60 (I think we beat them, too)!

You’d find the same sort of thing if you looked at mobile phone networks. The USA is FAR behind both Europe and Asia in cellular capabilities, specifically data rates. Our companies have barely opened the 3G gateway with dreadful performance so far, while our friends overseas have mobile data rates that approach true broadband speed.

And yet we American consumers are paying top dollar in the world for our third-world technology – even me. Because of my lust for the iPhone, I gave up my T-Mobile service that consisted of 1500 anytime minutes and unlimited EDGE (2G) data for which I paid about $60 a month. My service is now provided by AT&T, which provides only 450 anytime minutes (that I can barely use at home, and can always expect dropped calls on my daily commute), with 5000 night & weekend minutes (night rates start at 9 PM and end at 7 AM on weekdays – I could pay another $10 or so a month if I wanted my nights to start at 7 PM) and a 3G ‘high-speed’ data plan (that more closely resembles my old 2G service) plus 200 text messages per month for the princely sum of $75 a month plus taxes and surcharges. My Internet service at home is provided by Time Warner Cable – I get 1.5 mb/s service (remember, the US average is 10 mb/s) for $35 a month.

Why? Why do Americans get the shaft? I’ll tell you why – the hunger and greed for corporate profits. Why would a company spend more of its profit margin on world-class service when their stupid customers seem to be happy with substandard service at premium prices? It sure makes the shareholders happy, and companies have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders before their customers.

I don’t think it’s always been that way.

I remember sitting in my freshman social studies class in high school when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flirting with breaking through the 1000-point level. My teacher, Buck Martin, said that would be a big deal when it happened. However, the DJIA pulled back before hitting a thousand. It touched a thousand in late 1972, then twice more in 1976 It was in late 1982 before it hit 1000 and never looked back.

Way back in 1896, when Charles Dow started keeping track of the stock prices of 12 of the most successful companies in the country, the Average was around 12. It took 86 years to hit 1000, a bit over six more years to hit 2000, just short of three more to reach 3000, five more for 4000, etc. Today the DJIA stands at 11,386; its all-time high is 14,164, set in October 2007.

It’s my humble opinion that for the past 35 years, the rapid growth of corporate America and its never-ending plundering of the economy for higher and higher profits to appease its greedy shareholders has taken its toll on the average working Joe. It’s more important to make things as cheaply as possible in order to maximize profits: so cheaply, in fact, that all the good paying manufacturing jobs have moved offshore where people are grateful to work for a buck a day. How can working class citizens compete with that?

Don’t get me wrong – I still believe in capitalism and free enterprise, but America’s heart is sick and warped and greedy and completely oblivious to the suffering of its citizens. There can be no incentive for things to improve other than recognizing the condition of the human heart. It sounds corny and trite, but we need to look up and outside of ourselves and see and know our fellow travelers. Every great reawakening starts with a single change in the way we think and love.

Support Grows To Change Kosher Rules : NPR

An interesting story on All Things Considered this afternoon about a movement to reform kosher rules to address current societal ills. We all know basically what ‘kosher’ means – essentially ancient rules dealing with selection and preparation of food according to Jewish tradition. Keep milk separate from meat, determining the kinds of animals (and what certain parts of animals) can be consumed. There are rabbis employed by food processors to ensure that not the slightest rule is broken.

That’s all well and good, but what about the companies which are approved for kosher food production, but which also underpay their employees? Or pollute nearby waterways with their effluent or the skies overhead with their particulate? Isn’t it just as important to address those issues as it is to make sure one uses the right kind of knife when slaughtering animals? Some say ‘yes’, others say ‘no’. Listen to the story, linked at the top of this post – I found it fascinating.

I’m cleaning and scanning some more of my dad’s old slides and just got through photos from a visit to Disneyland way back in October 1980. The first shot was a picture of the front gate. This was back when they still charged for ride tickets rather than general admission. But look at these prices!

I hear they just raised the price of an adult admission (a 10-year-old is considered an adult, by the way) to $69 – under age 10 is a relative bargain at $59. But since I’m a SoCal resident I’m entitled to a 215-day annual pass (the particular 215 days are selected by them) for $174. I’ll take two!

I suppose I should have mentioned this when it happened, but a couple of weekends ago a friend and I took in The Dark Knight, the second film of the current Batman reboot that’s raking in all the money this month, at the historic Cinerama Dome at the Arclight theater complex on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood.

The Arclight is generally considered to be the premiere theater complex in SoCal, high ticket prices, but excellent presentation (sharp focus, checked by theater employees several times throughout the screenings), excellent sound, ushers who show you to your seat (reserved, by the way), exhibitions of actual props and costumes in the lobby (they had the Batmobile and the Batcycle in the courtyard, and the Batman and Joker costumes in the lobby.

Unfortunately we were within the first four rows of the theater and off to the right side, so we had to kind of crane our necks to take in the entire width of the gigantic screen in the dome. I want to see it again in a better seat, but it was still very enjoyable.

A while back, Obama gave a speech that included some practical things that normal everyday people could do to reduce gas consumption: inflating tires properly, regular engine tune up, that sort of thing. The McCain campaign jumped all over it like a bunch of snickering B-track schoolboys, passing out tire gauges labeled ‘Obama’s Energy Plan’ to the press (the ad to the left appeared on the Drudge Report this morning – don’t bother clicking on it, it’s disabled). It’s so juvenile, it embarrasses me, and I didn’t even do it!

Meanwhile, McCain continues to tout more oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas (offshore, Alaska, etc) all the while ignoring the fact that such drilling would have no significant effect on oil supplies for decades.

There’s a column on the Time Magazine website by Michael Grunwald that really says it best:

The real problem with the attacks on (Obama’s) tire-gauge plan is that efforts to improve conservation and efficiency happen to be the best approaches to dealing with the energy crisis — the cheapest, cleanest, quickest and easiest ways to ease our addiction to oil, reduce our pain at the pump and address global warming.

In other words, Obama is right.

Read the entire article here.

Let me state unequivocably that the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen on television. I hope you saw it, and I hope you saw it in HD.

But I still think that Barcelona’s cauldron lighting in 1992 was the best, bar none:

This hasn’t been reported too widely yet, but it will be.

All the hubbub of Governor Schwarzenegger’s bold plan to roll back the wages of over 200,000 employees, and the subsequent stand-in-front-of-the-tanks vow by the state controller to defy that order is being made moot by the fact that it would take six months to reprogram the state’s antiquated computer systems to effect that change, and then another nine months to undo the change once the budget is passed in the coming weeks.

At least that’s the upshot of this article from the Sacramento Bee, published August 5, 2008.

Where’s Skynet when you need it?

IBAF changes rules for extra innings – Olympics – Yahoo! Sports

In an effort to speed things along in a tied game, when the 11th inning is reached, that inning (and every subsequent one) starts with runners automatically at first and second base with no outs. Not only that, but the team at bat can start the inning anywhere in the current batting order.

“So if this rule were applied to major league baseball against the Yankees, you’d be facing Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez in every inning from then on, and with Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera on base already,” – Scott Kendrick from About.com guide to baseball.

This may be baseball’s last year at the Olympics. It’s definitely out for 2012, and it’s appealing to be reinstated for 2016.

I am fully aware of how boring this blog has become. Heck, I can hardly bear to visit it myself sometimes.

When I took my blog hiatus many moons ago, it was because nothing was happening in my life that was worth reporting. Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. I restarted the blog with less of an event-driven focus and more observational, more opinion. That hasn’t garnered much interest either.

Maybe I should make it a topic-central blog, you know, focus on a single subject like classic television, or kiddie records, or Scrabble Tournaments. But then I’d have to figure out what hasn’t already been obsessively covered elsewhere.

The only subject about which I’m an expert is me, and sometimes I surprise even myself. Maybe I’ll start taking more pictures and posting the most interesting of those. Or not. Stay tuned, if you can stand it.

Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

I wish I could make this stuff up. What does it take to stir the national conscience into action? Are these men human? Do our elected leaders not have even the slightest bit of regard for the American people? Our opinion matters not a whit to these…intransigents (I could use a more colorful noun, believe me, but this is a family blog).

Who will YOU vote for in November? I don’t know either.

Think Progress » EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them