THE ENERGY REVOLUTION. Six audio/slide shows report on experimental systems for getting energy, storing it, moving it about, consuming it, and conserving it. At the link, click on the image to watch the audio/slide show.

WITH 100 SEATS IN PLAY AND ABYSMAL CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL RATINGS, Democrats are starting to wonder aloud if they should continue to support Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Her leaving being kicked out is a pleasant thought.

DETROIT FREE PRESS EDITOR caught on tape vandalizing $5M pedestrian link.

This would be laughable if it weren’t pathetic. But it does give you insight into the progressive mind: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Via Instapundit.

IN CALIFORNIA, Barbara Boxer is so bad the Los Angeles Times won’t endorse her.

NEW YORK TIMES VISUAL OP-ED COLUMNIST Charles M. Blow strikes out again.

According to an article accompanying a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Wednesday: “About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters.”

According to Blow, the fact that 61 percent of Tea Party opponents believe the Tea Partiers are racist is proof that the Tea Partiers are racist.

Hmm. Let’s write the above paragraph this way: “About 61 percent of tea party supporters say racism has a lot to do with the opposition, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party opponents.”

By Mr. Blow’s logic, that must prove that Tea Party opponents are racist.

More Blow(hard):

Their ... strategy is to repress, deny and redefine. Following their logic, racial views not visible are nonexistent and those who raise the issue are simply projecting. It’s a fete of Freudian delusions.

Huh? Did I read that right? If I don’t express any view about race, then I'm racist?

Tea Party organizers may want to run away from the facts, but they’re not that fast, and the American people are not that slow.

And Mr. Blow is slower yet.

ANDREW J. VITERBI was awarded the 2010 IEEE Medal of Honor for his invention of the maximum-likelihood (Viterbi) decoding algorithm for convolutional (trellis) codes.

For those of us who carry cell phones, it may be of interest to know that the Viterbi algorithm is used by all four international standards for digital cellular telephony.

I had the honor of meeting him when I was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and attended one of his seminars. He was, in fact, a phenomenal lecturer, and it was his 1971 paper (Convolutional Codes and Their Performance in Communication Systems, IEEE Trans. Commun. Technol. COM-19, 751 (1971)) that piqued my interest in error-correction coding and eventually led to my dissertation.

IT’S BEEN 60 HOURS SINCE MY CATARACT SURGERY and it’s nice to be able to see the world I’ve been living in for the last several years.

The surgery was quick (15 minutes; and I didn’t even have to take my shoes off), simple (if poking a hole in my cornea and mucking around inside is simple), and effective (when I walked out of the surgery center, I could see as well without glasses as I could see with glasses walking in).

The big surprise came as we drove home and turned into the driveway: the blue sky was really blue, and the green grass was really green (and unmowed). I could see color again ... really, really see color.

The next surprise was Friday morning – my depth perception was back. I could go up and down stairs without holding onto the bannister; and I wasn’t tripping over curbs.

I could read the newspaper, without reading glasses, and without holding the paper about 3 inches in front of my nose.

Friday my right eye, with the IOL (inter-ocular lens) implant, was about as good as the left eye, with a contact lens. Today, the right eye is better – I can see individual leaves on the trees. And better yet, I can tell when the postman has come and gone by looking at the flag on the mailbox. In the recently deceased past, I couldn’t see the mailbox from the front porch; today I can see the flag on the mailbox.

And I can park the car! One of the symptoms of poor depth perception is an inability to park straight; one tends to pull the car into the slot slightly askance. Not today – dead center in the slot, perfectly lined up with the stripes. Gee, that felt good.

One down, one to go. I can hardly wait. I’ll have to wear reading glasses, of course, especially as my distance vision continues to improve (the IOLs are single-focus). But that’s a small price to pay to be able to see ... really see ... again.

SOME GOOD MAY YET COME: BP spill may kill hopes for climate deal.

WHAT’S WRONG with price gouging?

CONSUMER STAR WARS: build your own laser bug zapper.

It’s not exactly cheap, but it must certainly be satisfying.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING LUCKY?

Nothing, if you’re willing to accept the consequences of being unlucky.

NO ONE IN ARIZONA IS LAUGHING. Gov. Jan Brewer punches back.

Congratulations, Governor – and thanks.

WASHINGTON POST shifts leftward online. Er, Politico left out a word: ‘more’, between ‘shifts’ and ‘leftward’. What follows is a long - and sometimes convoluted - discussion of marketing strategy, and hidden deeply is this little nugget:

[The Post’s Ezra] Klein ... who argues that while the market for news and opinion is saturated, demand for ... “analysis and explanation” remains high.

I think he’s wrong. The market for opinion, analysis, and explanation is saturated; the market for news is not. In fact, at present the ‘news’ is so saturated with opinion, analysis, and explanation that there’s hardly any news left.

I’m reminded of the old (Texas) joke about the man who was so full of sh*t that when he died, they gave him an enema and buried him in a matchbox. The same could be said of the media: if all the ‘opinion, analysis, and explanation’ were wrung out, the Washington Post could be printed on a single sheet.

Read it all.

NEW YORK TIMES, seizing on fear, pushes civil rights restrictions.

But not their civil rights.

“POLITICS IS A RELIGION, never more so than in the case of Obama. And true believers always prefer the saintly explanation rather than the most logical.”

Or, as I would put it in the converse, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

There’s more; read it all.

LUCKY IN NEW YORK. And according to our current counter-terrorism policy, when New York is finally nuked, the police will catch the terrorists – if there are any police left. They will be prosecuted - if there are any courts left. They will be convicted - if there are any jurors left to convict them. And they will be jailed – if any jails remain to hold them.

And we will be happy that our democratic ideals remained intact.

WASHINGTON POST: Tea Party battles perception of racism.

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most Americans see the movement as motivated by distrust of government, opposition to the policies of Obama and the Democratic Party, and broad concern about the economy. But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party.

Oh, wow! Three in 10. That’s a significant ..., uh, significant ... uh, minority?

Follow the embedded links. And there’s more at Instapundit.

FLACCID BRAINS: my only complaint is that the term ‘flaccid brain’ presumes there’s a brain to begin with.

SARAH PALIN MAKES SENSE. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart agrees with Sarah Palin that offshore drilling for oil must continue.

Occasionally the Post’s editorialists can afford to buy a clue.

THEY’RE NOT RACISTS; THEY’RE NOT VIOLENT: Tea Partiers are “aloof elitists, out of touch with America’s common man.”

My, my ....