• Value of U.S. House’s Carbon Offsets Is Murky - Some Question Effectiveness of $89,000 Purchase to Balance Out Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• He Tells It Like It Is, Even to Larry David - J. B. Smoove stretches the limits of his comedic alter ego as Leon Black in ?Curb Your Enthusiasm.?
• Winging It - John McCain has a golden opportunity to make peace with conservatives. Will he take advantage of it?

• TV Critics Admit To Never Having Watched The Wire - “It sounds fantastic. I really wish I had HBO.”
• Federer’s Grand Slam run ends in Aussie rout - Djokovic sweeps Swiss in semis after 10 straight Slam final appearances
• Turning the Triple Play - Let?s imagine that we had three conservatives who said exactly what was on their minds.

• Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation - Geroge Washignton’s List
• Bill Clinton: ‘Screw It, I’m Running For President’ - Clinton told reporters Tuesday that seeing so many “Clinton ‘08″ posters “really got [him] thinking,” and said that the fact that he was already wearing a suit, and smiling and waving on the campaign trail was an added motivator.
• Why Republicans Fear Obama - If he performs against the GOP like he has against Hillary in South Carolina, there could be blood in the water.

• Taking liberties - Once again, personal choices are under attack by good-for-you government.
• ‘Sarkozy of Arabia’ Sending Troops to the Gulf - France?s new deal with the United Arab Emirates to build military bases in the Persian Gulf should be taken seriously.
• In Praise of Melancholy - American culture’s overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life
• Conservative Populism - Rightly understood
• Chavez threatens banks over farm loans - Venezuelan president warns he’ll seize private lenders who fail to meet government lending requirements.
• Waiting for Straight Talk - There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichaean simplicities. That place is in the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream.
• Belarus jails Prophet Mohammad cartoon publisher - Three years in jail under the guise of hate speech laws.

• Sonoran officials slam sanctions law in Tucson visit - Mexican politicians are unhappy with the flood of unskilled poor Mexicans coming in to their country. Irony is a bitch.
• Government renames Islamic terrorism as ‘anti-Islamic activity’ to woo Muslims - More newspeak in the United Kingdom
• Naval Academy Rite Might Slip Away - “We’re going to send these guys to war but they can’t climb a monument because they might get hurt?”

• The case against Hillary Clinton - Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?
• Obama’s spiritual mentor - Powerhouse Chicago preacher draws attention, and plenty of controversy
• Who Says 60 Million Americans Live on $7 a Day? - Annie Jacobsen searches for the truth behind this dubious statistic and finds a tangle of shoddy analysis along the way.
• The Raw Deal - A review of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes
• Taliban overrun military fort in South Waziristan - Reports indicate a force sized from 400 to 1,000 Taliban fighters, indicating a battalion- to brigade-sized assault force.
• Who Wrote Ron Paul’s Newsletters? - Libertarian movement veterans, and a Paul campaign staffer, say it was “paleolibertarian” strategist Lew Rockwell
• Jessica Simpson Completes Elaborate Plan To Destroy Cowboys’ Season - “And then I saw Tony. Instantly I knew that he was the weak link, the keystone, the only one for me to exploit.”

• The Wonderful, Despicable Life of Roger Clemens - During a quarter century in the public eye, Roger Clemens never met a truth he couldn’t bend or a person he couldn’t blame for his own failings. A timeline.
• The Real McCain Record - Obstacles in the way of conservative support.
• Reality TV Is No Lightweight in the Battle to Outlast Strikers - For the moment at least, the antistrike strategy of replacing scripted entertainment with so-called reality series seems inspired.

• Brian McNamee reveals more info on Roger Clemens to investigators - Now that Clemens has sued him for defamation and has mounted a ferocious attack on McNamee, “stuff is pouring out of him.”
• Cloudy Fortunes for Conservatism - The center of the right does not hold, and so we see an army with many flags and many generals and nobody knows who goes with which.
• Sorry, Barack, You?ve lost Iraq. - Bush’s efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an ‘08 election issue for Obama, Clinton.

• Media Rooting for an Obama ‘Tragedy’? - In the wake of Barack Obama?s strong showings at the polls, the media are fantasizing about racist hicks who would rather shoot a black man than see him become president.
• Showdown Looms Over Pirated-Media Directory - Swedish Prosecutors Target Organizers of Pirate Bay
• Inflationary threat looms as tide of cheap Chinese goods dries up - Growing numbers of economists are sounding warnings that rising cost pressures and wages in China mean that it may be starting to export inflation.
• How to live forever - It looks unlikely that medical science will abolish the process of ageing. But it no longer looks impossible
• Government Report: Millions of Youth Use Cough Syrup to Get High - 3.1 million kids are Robo-Tripping
• Drunkest Driver Ever? - Oregon woman nine times over state blood alcohol content limit
• Study Says Glaciers Formed During a Very Warm Period - Giant glaciers formed about 90 million years ago during a warm period when alligators thrived in the Arctic, researchers said, calling into question the belief that all ice melts in a ?super greenhouse? climate.
• Death Across the Border Awaits Horses Spared It in the U.S. - ?My worst nightmare has happened. This is an example of well-intentioned but very bad unintended consequences.?
• Europe?s school books demonise enterprise - Studnets on the Continent are being taught anti-market propaganda
• CBS News Implores Pols To Reach “Hipster Voters” “Mad Fast” - Unintentionally hilarious “news” video on how to talk to The Kids
• Back Down in Little Rock - Eugene Fields and an old familiar feeling.

Supposedly the latest format war is all but over.  Warner Bros. has aligned itself with Blu-Ray, leaving only three studios releasing exclusively in HD-DVD. While Toshiba, the main backer of HD-DVD, says they will go on, the writing is on the wall.  

 I don’t have a dog in this fight. Oddly I haven’t really been paying much attention, so I really have no opinion of which format is technically better. But I will say that as someone who once made his living from selling home theater products Blu-Ray winning is a headache.  

I’ve sold nearly every time of consumer electronics there is to sell. A large part of sales, at least in my experience, is educating the customer. “Why would I want one of these?” “Why is x better than y?” etc. This is why Blu-Ray is a frustrating branding, and it will hurt the adoption of the new format.  

You would be hard pressed to find a person who does not know what a DVD is. Digital Video Disc. DVD was one of the fastest adopted consumer technologies ever. While not as universal, a very large percentage of the population knows what High Definition or HD is. So slap together HD-DVD and no explanation is needed. It is clear what it is, and what its benefit is over normal DVD. Compare that to Blu-Ray. “Blue” isn’t even spelled correctly. And why as a consumer should I care about the color of the laser? “Blu-Ray” tells me nothing, as a comparison shopper.  

I am not saying this is a a major problem or something that can not be overcome. It is just frustrating that after years of educating consumers what these terms means, that Sony throws them out the window for some rather silly brand name.