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Oh nifty! This blog is listed in on KRON 4’s Bay Area Is Talking.

E-mail is for older people, teens say in survey - Yahoo! News

E-mail is for grown-ups and U.S. teenagers now prefer instant messaging to communicate with each other online, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

Internet users from 12 to 17 years old say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to fire up IM when talking with each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging.

Oh great. As if I didn’t feel old enough already. Now email is for old fogies!

You can watch the NASA Live TV feed here: http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

I just watched it calibrate the sensing system that will eventually inspect the panels for damage.

NASA’s aging workhorse returns to space - Yahoo! News

CAPE CANAVERAL, United States (AFP) - The space shuttle has long been NASA’s pride, but the aging US fleet is now slated for retirement in 2010, when the International Space Station is finished.

Developed in the 1970s, following NASA’s glory days of moon missions, the shuttle was the first US manned launch vehicle designed to be reused, and the only one still in service.

Congrats to NASA on the launch!

Now and then, I think about the Baby Boomer generation. As we all know, the retirement phase has just begun. That, in conjunction with ever-increasing human lifespans, as well as ever-increasing suburban sprawl can mean only one thing: zillions of elderly drivers on the roads.

Looking past the inevitable “farmers market” jokes, aging is a serious matter - heck, even Microsoft has a full site devoted to it: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/aging/

All the time you see articles or letters to the editor saying that… well… gosh, perhaps we should restrict, even ban, some senior citizens from driving because of their physical changes that prevent them from driving safely.

And everytime one of those letters or articles appears, inevitably you will see a backlash, with heartfelt please such as “Take away my car and I will die” or “Driving is my independence.”

They’re right. How will our seniors go get food when they live in a cul-de-sac in a a cul-de-sac in a cul-de-sac? How will a 110 year old get to the local Walgreens or Rite Aid to get their high blood pressure medication? How will they live, without depending on others or their children.

And then I noticed this article tonight:

Graying Japan to crack down on big suburban stores to halt urban flight - Yahoo! News

Japan will try to stop the building of big shopping centers and hospitals in suburbs in hopes of halting the exodus from city centres before the population begins to shrink, officials said.

With fewer Japanese having children, the government worries that suburban sprawl could pose environmental and ultimately economic hazards unless it is stopped.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport would together submit legislation before parliament next year to tighten regulations against large new commercial and public facilities in suburbs, a trade ministry official said.

Bingo. The key is to develop with planning, and build efficiently. The Japanese have got it right. You have to condense and consolidate.

Here’s another quote:

“Considering the shrinking population over the course of time, gathering city functions in a smaller area, rather than letting them spread to surrounding areas, is economically cheaper when constructing infrastructure,” he said.

Ever notice that at night, all the 6-8 lane streets (yes, streets), 8-10 lane highways/freeways are empty? Getting worn away by the rain/snow/ice/wind? Or that we need roads to go from parking lot to parking? And then we wonder why the potholes never get filled, and why there’s never enough money to maintain all the roads. The basic fact of the matter is that we often forget that each inch of road we build, will require an infinite number of dollars to maintain if it is to survive for eternity.

And just remember… zillions of elderly drivers on the road, going to Walgreens to get their high blood pressure medication. It could be you some day.

Wow, there sure were lots of silly articles today about “Microsoft Erases Apple“!

Along the same lines, there really should have been “Microsoft Celebrates the Memory of New York’s Twin Towers“. But that’s life.

It’s unfortunate that these, and some other outdated satellite pictures marred the otherwise nifty launch of the beginnings of a neat product.

My three favorite usability tweaks about Virtual Earth:
1-Being able to use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out! HURRAY!
2-It doesn’t have “Microsoft” stamped all over the map. Sheesh I never realized how much those watermarks bugged me until I saw the pics without watermarking.
3-Inline ambiguous name resolution. Huh? Well, type Alcatraz into the “Where” field, and press return. Inline, it’ll ask you if you want Alcatraz, SF (the prison) or Alctraz, San Juan, Mexico. Neato!

Speaking of Alcatraz, while some of the satellite maps on Virtual Earth aren’t so great - the Alcatraz one is ridiculously great. Any closer and you might as well be there! I hope the other satellite maps eventually reach this depth of detail!

Virtual Earth has some other nifty things that I don’t think people got, which is something that Microsoft could definitely improve upon.

Here’s a nifty one. Let’s say you got out of Penn Station in NY, and on your way to work, you wanted to go to a bank to get some cash so you could get some breakfast and stop by a liquor store (because its one of those days). Well, here, I modelled it.

Check it out, as you move the map around, it continues to refresh and show all the locations of places of that category!

This service is in beta. I can’t wait to see what improvements they coming up soon. For example, I hope they’ll let you see more than 10 results at a time (though I guess that would be kind of cluttery if you searched for “coffee” in Seattle where, by law, they’re required to have 6 on each street).

But guys, if you need help prioritizing, please get a newer satellite map of Long Island so I can show this to my parents!

So the Wall Street Journal is reporting that ethanol producers won in the latest energy bill:

WSJ.com - Senate, House Near Energy Agreement

The nation’s ethanol industry and corn farmers emerged among the winners as House and Senate negotiators hammered out final details of national energy legislation.

In language approved yesterday, Congress would require the use of 7.5 billion gallons of the corn-based gasoline additive annually by 2012, up from four billion gallons used this year.

[snip]

While the measure, which could reach Mr. Bush’s desk by the end of the week, won’t deliver a noticeable price reduction at the gasoline pump, motorists will see a change in the product they buy. Today, 30% of the nation’s gasoline is blended with ethanol to boost octane without producing the ingredients of smog. Within seven years, according to Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, that will rise to 70%, as ethanol pushes from its Midwest base into California and other states outside the Corn Belt.

From what I understand, trucking all this ethanol to the refineries, and adding it to our gas here in California makes it more expensive. Great.

The reason I bring this up is because I remember reading this article:

Study says ethanol is not worth the energy

But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces.

[snip]

“Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation’s energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment,” according to the study by Cornell’s David Pimentel and Berkeley’s Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.

So, let me get this straight - ethanol doesn’t save fossil fuels, transfers wealth from the citizens from California to the Mid-West, and yet our Congress is moving to nearly double this amount.

That doesn’t seem right.

On money.cnn.com, they had one of those cheesey Top 10 Best Places to Live. And so of course, I clicked on it.

Here is what the entry for Mountain View, CA (a finalist) looks like:

Nothing surprising there… so then I checked out the places in the Top 10 Coldest Places. Unsurprisingly, all the places listed were in Minnesota. I did notice something a bit peculiar about them though - check out Andover, MN for example:

Did you notice that? Let me recap in this table:

[Note that this doesn't cover the higher taxes, the higher auto insurance, the higher sales tax, and higher everything (higher housing prices naturally translate to higher labor costs) in California.]

So… to all you Andover, MN readers - I must ask this question: What the heck do you do with all that extra money?

Is there some secret in MN that I don’t know about? That everyone has gold plated ice scrapers? Go to Aruba every winter? Where does it all go?

UPDATE: Err… nevermind. Apparently I could just ask my parents since they live near this town which has stats like the MN town above. And that’s in NY!