Please visit the LHT website to download the full report:
[www.lowcountryhousingtrust.org]

By analyzing past, current, and future trends they have given us invaluable insight and hopefully a better understanding of the relationship between continued population, business and employment growth in the area, and potential housing needs/demand.

If you started a restaurant, what would it serve, what would it look like and what would you name it? You have an unlimited budget.

Submitted by crazygirl33087

View other answers

As to my concerns about marginalization, Chadwell notes that every single-sex program in the state is voluntary. As for the boy who might feel bullied, he says the single-sex classroom seems to reduce the bullying because the big boys don’t have any girls that they have to impress — particularly when there is an effort made for team building amongst the students.

I still have my doubts, but it’s largely due to ignorance in how these classrooms work — being a life-long coed learner.

You can see how it works in the picture; you plug the Kill a Watt into the wall, and then plug whatever electric thing you want to measure into the Kill a Watt.  It then tells you how much energy your computer or television or blender is using in Kilowatt hours (among other things), and from there you can calculate the daily, monthly, or yearly cost of each item.  What’s even better, perhaps, is that you can monitor things like how much power it takes to keep your computer on standby all day, or keep your stereo plugged in - they’re still sucking up energy even if they’re off (which is why they’ve been called vampire appliances, as Alys told me this morning).

I found Kill a Watts for sale all over the Internet: Amazon, eBay, ThinkGeek, not to mention the first one I linked to in the post.  And they’re only about $25 - can’t beat that.  I’m thinking that one might not be out of place in our staged Mixson home…

In the process of laying out their programs, Principal Benjamin Bragg of St. Andrews Middle School talked about the benefits of single-sex classrooms. A study on these classes was lauded yesterday by state Superintendent Jim Rex, with a wide majority of student, parents, and teachers were encouraged by the class structure.

But, after hearing Bragg’s pitch, I was a little troubled by the generalizations assumed in launching these all-boys and all-girls classrooms. Things like “boys like non-fiction and girls like fiction.” Boys respond to a teacher who moves through the classroom, while girls like direct instruction. It all turned my stomach, being one of those students who often stood in the margins beyond what most boys liked. Who am I to argue with success, but this across-the-board instruction style would seem to me to leave some students in the gap.

One thing that I remember from my years in a high school where boys and girls shared the classroom, was that different teachers had different styles. It seems to me that might be a better catch-all. That said, I’m sure educators today could argue that going that route puts other students at a disadvantage. Who knows schools can do to make sure everybody wins?

My friend Rita is officially big time …

A graduate of the College of Charleston, Rita Bachmann, 26, worked organic farms in central California and New York State before returning to the South Carolina Lowcountry. From a plot on nearby Wadmalaw Island, she has become a local hero of Charleston’s slow food and community-supported agriculture movements.

Among the vendors of prepared food who are supplied by Ms. Bachmann are Angie and Traci Colyer of Savory Catering. Turn a brunch appetite toward a bowl of their local shrimp and grits ($6) or a slice of vine-ripe tomato pie ($5) filled with fresh basil and herb cream sauce and topped with puff pastry.

Other friends mentioned are the Pour House and Global Awakenings, not to mention JB’s Barbecue, Kudu Coffee, B’zar, Redux, and Lost Dog on Folly. Right on!

Please join hundreds of your fellow citizens from across the tri-county area at the Regional Forum on Saturday, July 26.  Participants will come and talk together to look for answers to some important questions about our communities and our region.  How will our communities continue to grow without lowering quality of life or damaging our natural resources.  What can we do to ensure job growth continues and benefits everybody?  What can we do to restore some of our critical natural resources and better protect ourselves from future natural disasters like hurricanes?  What is our vision for the future of this unique but changing region?  What do we need to do within our individual communities to be good neighbors in the region?

Participants will spend most of the day talking in small groups with the support of a trained table facilitator to discuss questions like those above.  Each table will have a diversity of people from across the region.  Participants will look for areas of agreement and to better understand each other in areas where they might disagree.  Ideas from all tables will be gathered and summarized into a report that will be available shortly after the meeting is over.  These results will help set the goals and strategies for Our Region, Our Plan.

Individual voting keypads will be used by all participants to answer questions throughout the day about their preferences and priorities.  The hundreds of participants will respond to various questions and immediately see the results for the room.  This will further help identify areas of agreement and disagreement and what are the top priorities for the group as a whole.

At the end of the Regional Forum, participants will be given opportunities and encouraged to stay involved in Our Region, Our Plan and to get more involved in other local activities that address the opportunities and challenges in their community.

Elected officials and other decision makers from across the region will be involved in the July 26 Regional Forum.  They will participate themselves and hear the voices of the people.  They too will be asked to make commitments to stay involved in Our Region, Our Plan and work more closely with their neighbors and regional partners.

Registrations for the Regional Forum will be closely tracked and every effort will be made to get the full diversity of the tri-county region fairly represented in the room on July 26.  Please register today and encourage your friends and neighbors to get involved.

Casulo Mobile Furniture

and another bright idea:

Matroshka, on Treehugger

Sunday Fun Day, Sun. July 27, 2-9 p.m. Hazel Parker Playground. 70 East Bay St.

Get ready for: a water balloon fight, competitive picnicking, potato sack racing, human wheelbarrow racing, Twister, bocce, croquet, badminton, kites, and more.
What you need to bring: WATER BALLOONS!

Other fun things to bring: drinks, picnic material, bug spray, sunscreen, games, slip’n’slides, kiddie pools, pets, kids, and friends. Furry ones, too!

If you haven’t already checked out this shady playground/park, you are in for a surprise. This adult-centric playground is connected to a baseball field, dog park, and tennis/basketball courts. It is fenced in - for your furry ones. Come drop in any time during the day.

Parking is limited in this neighborhood, so please try to walk, bike, or carpool.

Clue # 1 : Father was an M.D..

Clue # 2 : Raised a Quaker.

Clue # 3 : Oscar winner.

I’ve been taking a closer look at my last.fm statistics, and it’s been interesting watching the trends evolve. Most notably, there is definitely evidence of my trending away from a smooth jazz/newage/Weather Channel phase back to a more mainstream hard rock selection of music again.

The new last.fm does a much better job of giving you breakdowns over different periods of time; thus, one can gain a much better perspective on the progression of one’s listening habits. A prime example is my “overall” list — while I indeed have listened to Ryan Farish and Trammell Starks over a combined 13,000 times in nearly three years, it’s also worth noting that a majority of those listens happened in the period before the last year. In the last 12 months, I’ve listened to Trammell Starks a measly 798 times. Contrast that with nearly 1900 plays for Journey (Ryan Farish is still the tops in the past year with 2,557 plays), and you’ll start to see a shift emerge. The Journey kick came roughly after a friend’s birthday last year where I heard a lot of Journey and decided to go and get a ton of their back catalog. This was a turning point where the jazz started to fade, and I began to get back into more of a rock vein.

Breaking down into the six-and-three-month graphs further bears this trend out. In fact, in the last six months, the evidence suggests Tantric is now my favorite band, as they’ve been played at least 1,012 times (likely more now, too). Ryan Farish comes in second at 793 plays, followed by Fuel and Journey at 576 and 530 plays, respectively. Fuel’s incursion is interesting, too, as it coincides with a period where the “Angels and Devils” album grew on me quite suddenly (and you know, I’m not sure why that happened).

The three-month graph is the most interesting, as it shows Enigma breaking into the top charts in 8th place based on the strength of four songs: “Why”, “Gravity of Love”, “Sadeness (Pt. 1)”, and “Silence Must Be Heard” — I’m sure it’d be more if I got off my butt and grabbed “Return to Innocence.” Of these 201 plays in the last three months, 91 of the plays are “Gravity of Love” and 89 of them are “Why?” — both the top tracks in the last three months, too.

The numbers surprise me in a few other places, too: I at least think I listen to a lot of Days of the New, but the numbers don’t bear it out. According to the charts, I’ve listened to Days only 202 times in the last three months. (Yes, this is even with iPod scrobbling!) I’m also surprised at how much Ryan Farish I seem to listen to, because I don’t really think I listen to him as much as I used to.

It’s also interesting how much of a resurgence Extreme and Metallica have made in my life in recent weeks. In some respects, I’m returning to a similar pattern of music that I had in my later high school years; this past week, I played Extreme nearly 100 times. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that. I’m not sure really what to chalk that up to; it could be anticipation of their new album due in a couple weeks, but there are other factors that it could be as well.

I could really start to read into my musical choices on a week-by-week basis, but I’ll spare you the details…for now. It’s fun to take a look, though — imagine what kind of field day I would have had in high school had I had empirical data on everything I listened to?

Recently someone sent in a post suggestion via Twitter:

As I was fixing my lunch I had an idea for a Home Ec post: what to do when you love
peanut butter but are tired of common jellies and honey.

We have had an incredibly busy summer and my favorite snack is a good old PB & J.  I was shocked the other day.  I went to fix myself a sandwich, opened our economy tub of peanut butter, and realized we’ve gone through nearly six pounds of the stuff in only a few months.  Yikes!

Sometimes for lunch I stir peanut butter with a little vanilla yogurt and honey. The kids then use apples to scoop it up. Other times I leave it plain and give the kids unbuttered popcorn, celery, apples, and raisins to dip and eat.  I also like it as a base for a Thai peanut sauce for chicken or pork, but Mr. Heather isn’t a huge fan, so we don’t use it too often.

I have friends who make marshmallow fluff sandwiches.  Ivy’s grandma used to make peanut butter with bacon sandwiches and my father loves peanut butter on hot dogs.  Both sound terrible, but the mixture of salty and sweet is something like the Thai peanut sauce mentioned earlier; may the food snobs forgive us all.

So, Home Eccers, it’s your turn:  What are your favorite uses for peanut butter?

The Sustainable Warehouse is in need of a permanant home. If you know of a warehouse facility that is available, please send them an email or call 843-532-9351. Also, if you have a project, call them to see if they can find what you need.

This is an inventive project…I can’t wait to see where it goes!

Launched in 2008 by the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments (BCDCOG) Regional Land Planning Committee, Our Region, Our Plan is a 24-month planning process designed to create a shared vision of the tri-county region for the year 2040.

This is a great opportunity for greenies like us to get out there and have our voices heard. It appears that there is still time to sign up. The event is this Saturday, July 26, from 8:30am – 3:30 pm at the Charleston Area Convention Center.

• 09:14 @pandora_radio I see you! :) #
• 09:33 Using TweetDeck, why can't I follow people that come up in a global search? #
• 09:40 Bwahahahaha! I must see this movie. bit.ly/UdAnQ #
• 09:58 Musing on MTV's proposed RHPS remake. #
• 10:29 @EdRoberts congratulations! #
• 10:30 @worleygirl I suspect (though I don't know) that Twitter is growing faster than it can hire staff. #
• 10:31 *snerk* I have issues with George Lucas, but this is a bit much. bit.ly/1I4DoC #
• 10:39 @kyrka1970 nods. Serves them right for not hiring me. ;) #
• 10:43 @kyrka1970 Meh. I don't want to move. #
• 11:24 Gah. I have a craving for Ethiopian, but I'm tight on dough. :( #
• 11:27 @pandora_radio It would be cool if you could rate a song compared to the last one played. #
• 13:14 @tradingnothing Brown rice turning green is great for composting, not so great for eating. #
• 13:17 Looking forward to Cherry DeLuxe Burlesque show tonight. #
• 17:15 Whee! I found a time format that php strtotime() can't handle: Oracle's "DD-Mon-YY HH:MI:SS.FF AM" #
• 17:33 Headed out; hoping @ruisseau will let me ride tonight, despite the risk of storms. I don't relish trying to park my cage. #

Ingredients:

Sea bass (about 5 oz. piece)
1 teaspoon white miso paste
1 teaspoon mirin
2 teaspoon sake
1/2 teaspoon ginger juice
1/2 teaspoon palm sugar (sugar)

How to Make Miso-Marinated Sea Bass
See More of Hugging the Coast’s Fish For Friday Recipes

But might I just say...that it's looking better and better every day?

You can get the whole thing over at my Friday5 blog, but here's the video I cut today on how to recognize five different baseball pitches.

Oh, and this week's cartoon contest features a geek action hero.

Have at it, nerds. ;-)

• The redesigned last.fm. It’s really improved; the social networking aspects are far stronger now, as friend requests are actually highlighted better, and they’re even adding a little News Feed-like action. It’s also nice that I can see my loved tracks (I do a lot of lovin’ on last.fm). My favorite part? The graphical breakdowns now are more than just “last week” and “overall” — you can get breakdowns from a year, six months, and three months as well. Killer; helps me identify a lot of musical trends. Check mine out and maybe even friend me!
• Fail We Can Believe In. This Obamaized Fail Whale graphic is oddly appropriate seeing how Twitter took a dump in the last couple days and screwed a lot of people’s follower/following lists up. They’ve been getting those restored, but the whale still reigns supreme. (More on Twitter’s barf in a later post, this one is supposed to be positive!)
• The Tropical Weather FriendFeed Room. This FriendFeed room pulls in feeds from the National Hurricane Center as well as Dr. Jeff Masters’ tropical blog on Weather Underground into an easy-to-follow, and easy-to-discuss format that FriendFeed is great for. It’s been a wonderful time-saver with the recent tropical activity in the Atlantic.
• Identi.ca, the open-source, federated Twitter-like network. If things keep progressing at the pace they’re progressing, Identi.ca could stand a serious challenge to Twitter. They are adding features at a monstrous pace, and was just added as the latest supported microblogging service in Twhirl. Best part? Anybody can run the software powering Identi.ca (it’s called Laconica), making for a truly federated microblogging platform.

Seen anything you’ve liked lately? Throw it in comments.

Via The Heritage Foundation blog, some more interesting analysis about world energy production and demand, and where the US stands in the game. And it ain’t pretty.

Of note:

The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans’ minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year.

While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the lights on, but right now only 57 gigawatts of power are planned. No matter what Barack Obama and Al Gore tell you, alternative energy sources cannot meet demand. Solar is still only one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Today 97% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power. Wind provides 1% and solar .01%….

Despite signing the Kyoto Protocol, countries across Europe are rapidly building new coal power plants. Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired plants by 2020. Italy plans to increase its reliance on coal from 14% today to 33% in just five years. In all of Europe, 40 new major coal power are set to be built in the next five years. In 2006 alone, China completed enough coal power plants to match all of Britain’s capacity. India plans to boost coal production by 50% by 2012 and quadruple it by 2030….

A highly organized network of environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have been using every state, local and federal law they can to stop construction of coal power plants nationwide. The environmental coalition, which includes the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund and Environmental Integrity Project, claims 65 victories over the last three years.

Nuclear

The United States has not built a nuclear power plant in 30 years. While there are 30 plants currently being planned, all are tied up in the arcane permitting process the environmentalist left has created. None of the projects has started construction. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is embracing nuclear power. France already gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. Japan has six nuclear plants under construction and another six planned. India also has six under construction and another 19 planned. China has seven under construction and another 85 planned.

…The nuclear industry does not need subsidies or handouts in order to succeed. The biggest risk the nuclear industry faces is reactionary government regulation. If the federal government could lift the ban on fuel recycling it could safely manage nuclear waste.

There’s a lot more there……enjoy.

Brian Graham, a graduate student in Clemson’s City and Regional Planning Program, needs input to identify priority bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements. Please copy and paste these questions with your answers and submit them to brian.bikeped@gmail.com.

1. What roads seem ideal for re-striping to create bike lanes or should have ’sharrows’?? (These roads should be wider than others, have well maintained pavement and/or already have plenty of bicycle traffic.)

2. Are there specific roads, that do not have sidewalks that, in your opinion, need them?? (Especially outside of downtown.)

3. Where would you suggest that bicycle/pedestrian activity should be counted to document a demand for facilities?? (Replys should be in the form of intersections or specific locations, ‘King/Calhoun,’ for example)

4. What type of bicycle/pedestrian/motorist education programs would you like to see the City of Charleston support?? (Obviously there is a need to educate these groups in different ways, but what do you think those methods should include exactly?)

5. How should bicycle and pedestrian activities be encouraged/ marketed in the City, by the City?? (Plenty local groups are doin’ their thing, but what how would you like to see the City of Charleston encourage bicycling/ walking?)

6. Also, I am documenting all the bicycle rack locations within the city. If you know of a rack, please follow the link and add a marker to the interactive Google map. Or, place a marker to request a rack in a certain location. This online map will remain an interactive tool for Charleston bicyclists (commuters, shoppers, tourists, etc.). A more formal map will be created and submitted to the City of Charleston.

And in even more fun, the Co-op is putting together a 2009 Sexy Bike Leg Calendar, and they need submissions. Photos must have legs, bikes, and the Lowcountry, and are due October 3. More info or submit at brewster42@gmail.com

Overall, our driving habits haven’t changed this much since the 1970s, and I think it’s a good thing. Here are a few local ways you can change you own habits, and help out mother planet at the same time.

• Ride CARTA - Riding the bus whenever possible will keep you out of your car, and keep emissions out of the air. Lucky for us, CARTA has some great routes for getting around Charleston.
• Buy Biodiesel - Fill up your diesel vehicle with eco-friendly biodeisel from OM Fuels, located in the Fox Music parking lot on Montague Avenue.
• Participate in a rideshare program - If you don’t mind sharing a ride with relative strangers, you can find local carpoolers on Craigslist.
• Buy a local hybrid or smart car - We have local dealerships that sell the Prius, SmartCar, and Honda Hybrids. If it’s time to get a new car, this is a great opportunity to cut some emissions and vote with your dollar.

• Attend the Alternative Energy meetup - Fuel is often a topic at the monthly Charleston Alternative Energy Meetup, and you can learn a lot about how green up your vehicle (and other things) by attending.
• Use the bike paths - Keep your car in the driveway and pedal to work. Bike paths have popped up around town, and local interest is driving the creation of more.
• Move closer to where you work - Summerville to Downtown commutes just don’t make sense. That goes for James Island to East Cooper commutes too. Now, I know we can’t all just move, but factor this into the decision the next time you’re thinking about it.
• When you’re stuck on the Don Holt, turn off your car! - If you’re at a complete stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic, turning off your car can save a lot of gas and keep nasty stuff out of the air. It’s a myth that turning off and on your engine uses a ton of gas, so turn that key the next time your standing still (if you can bear the heat!)

"Government has gone off course. We refuse to pay our bills. Instead we accumulate more debt. We waste billions in interest costs that buy nothing. Our manufacturing base is decimated. All the while casualties continue in a battle for a cause the country thinks a mistake. The Congress flounders in dangerous waters. The greed of capitalism has reached compatibility with the greed of politics. The capitalist is divorced from country to seek profit, and the politician is divorced from country to seek contributions. Desperate needs are ignored.

"Despite these problems, this is no time to despair. The government might be in a standoff, but the country is strong. As I show in this book, government has worked before, and we can make it work again."

• Read an excerpt from the book about making government work in Washington
  
  
• An excerpt about making government work in South Carolina
  

What’s a Knol, you ask?

Official definition: a unit of knowledge (or just short for Knowledge)

Google’s definition: Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. 

Here are a few highlights (focusing on the differences between Knol and Wikipedia):

• Authors are public, and the gatekeepers of a topic. If you create a Knol, you’re tied to it. The URL structures are even based on the author names first, then the topic. Google will even attempt to verify “you are really you” by cell phone number, credit card, or gentle cavity searches (j/k).
   
• Changes are moderated by the original author. One of Wikipedia’s weaknesses is the ability of any Joe Schmoe to edit posts. Not so with Knol. You can submit changes and updates to a Knol, but they have to be approved. 
   
• It’s monetizable. Authors can choose to display Google Ads in their Knol, with the author getting a piece of the revenue.
   
• Interaction and diversity are encouraged. Users can comment and rate Knols, and Google expects multiple Knols on the same subject.

What about some of the detractors (haters)? There are a variety of complaints, among them:

• Wikipedia has an altruistic focus - furthering the world’s knowledge (barf). Knol, with it’s revenue sharing options, could create a focus on greed rather than “the general welfare of all.”
   
• It’s getting too much into content - and potentially dominating search results instead of sending it to others. Back in ‘06, their CEO said “We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.“

Ready to get started? Learn how to write a Knol here, or read some review and analysis at TechCrunch, Techmeme, Search Engine Land, and Wired.

In the VA waitng room,

Jungle memories.

While the Bangles sing,

Summer morning.

A co-worker used to work construction, but now does computer stuff. (Yeah, "stuff". Most people reading this would understand if I said what he does, but I'm not going to. It's work stuff.) So today I'm going to compare the complexity of building a house (a subject I know little about) with the complexity of a computer (something I know a lot more about, but by no means do I know everything.)

A house. What've you got? Walls, floors, roofs, studs, joists, beams, electrical, plumbing, *planning* the thing in the form of an architectural ... er, plan? Permits, zoning, and so on. Figuring out what's wanted, designing the thing. A garage? 1 or 2 car? Or are we talking condos/apartments/townhouses? (Servers, versus desktops.)

What color? Well, that's fairly superficial. A big job, but still can be done after the whole thing is finished and lived in for a few years. That's like asking to change the color scheme of a web site -- can be a pain, but doesn't usually involve a rebuild.

Oh, you wanted brick with aluminium siding? Not the concrete/wood with wood siding we've done, that you hinted at? And when we said "okay, we'll do concrete with wood" you said "yeah whatever I don't know much about those house things", and then you signed off on it? So you want us to change the basic structure of the thing, expect it to be done in 2 days while your in-laws are visiting, and expect it to be free/cheap because we "know about that house stuff"?

That's like asking for your PHP site to be designed in MySQL (real computer people are cringing now) when, in the beginning, you didn't care what we did as long as we did it in a week and it had "social networking, videos, email, and a forum blog". We threw together something slick in Wordpress, you liked it, but now you realise what you really wanted was a forum with a document sharing area. Tough noogies. And the weeks of meetings that you spent deciding on the exact shade of blue in the footer (or, the exact pattern of the crown molding)? Worthless.

Now say you want the kitchen at the other end of the house. Sure, we can do that. Oh, the laundry room too? So you want us to reroute the plumbing and the electricals (the 3-phase supply for the dryer), again in 2 days and cheap? Suuuure. That's the same as when you ask us if the site can have fine-grained permissions bolted on later. And it should support frames (What the hell? You're not qualified to decide that. That's like you asking for the house to be built with 1 room on the 1st floor, 2 on the 2nd, 3 on the third, and so on. It's stupid. It might work in some special case, but generally it's stupid.)

Now, about the materials and construction. Do you realise that the video card in your desktop has more components than your entire house? How many in your house? Let's count every sheet of wood, every 2x4, every pipe and fixture. Let's not, actually. Take a pipe. What does it take to build one? Does every inch of it have to be designed individually? No, you probably roll some steel, thread the ends, and voila, your basic pipe (again, my knowledge of manufacturing fails me). The video card? Yeah, okay, so you can take some standard components and fit them together. I'll give you that. I know it's not true, but fine, whatever.

Now, when you have a leak. Most times you can see it -- there's water on the floor, or whatever. Or your faucet doesn't. A memory leak? What do you get? Random crashes. The application hangs. If you're lucky, it'll be consistent. Otherwise, someone has to go in with a memory debugger or leak tester (in the case of the water pipe -- it's an acoustic device, I think). And believe me, the debugger is a lot harder to operate.

Take tools. When the carpenter re-uses his (or her. I'm not going there.) hammer on various projects, do you scream copyright violation, intellectual property violation, and so on? Does the plumber have to sign a non-disclosure agreement? Can your electrician use the experience gained on his next project? Sigh.

Back to trouble-shooting, which was supposed to be the point of this article. Something goes wrong with your house (computer). Do you call the police (helpdesk) and yell "help it doesn't work"? For that matter, do they say "try re-inserting the key (rebooting)"? Okay, so they say "what's the problem"? and you say "I can't use my GE (Microsoft)", meaning your fridge (word processor). Okay, why? In cvase of the fridge, it could be any number of things, from a stuck door to leaks in the freon. In case of your computer, it could be anything, from the keyboard down to the RAM. In both cases it could be user error or power failure. It could be a corrupt file or mold in the vents. Point is, in case of your applicance there are much fewer points of failure.

If it's a web site or web application I've built, the points of failure are much more. I can replace the RAM, but any number of lines of code could be bad in the web app -- and I have to find out where the errors are. I can't replace the whole app, can I?

I seem to have lost my point somewhere.

In February, Nader, 74, announced his intentions to seek the presidency as an independent candidate on the late Tim Russert’s Meet the Press (watch clip). When Russert asked about his age (he’s two years older than McCain), Nader responded, “The only true aging is the erosion of one’s ideals.”

Nader ran on the Green Party ticket in 2000, receiving 2.7 percent of the nationwide popular vote. He ran again in 2004 as an independent, earning 0.38 percent of the nationwide popular vote.

While his best-known book was the 1965 breakthrough, Unsafe at Any Speed, a top-selling exposé of the automobile industry, his recent memoir Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender retells his version of the 200 campaign and took direct aim at the two-party system and its increasingly firm grasp on the rules of presidential debates. Director Kevin O’Donnell’s 2007 documentary An Unreasonable Man traced Nader’s life, career, legacy — including a mix of commentaries on his controversial 2000 campaign.

On Feb. 28, he announced San Francisco-based public defender Matt Gonzalez as his Vice Presidential running mate.

According to his current literature, the Nader/Gonzalez campaign supports a single payer, Canadian-style, free-choice health care system; exploring the “use of solar energy over nuclear power;” cutting the military budget and reversing U.S. Middle East policy in Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and Iran; launching an aggressive crackdown on “corporate crime and corporate welfare;” “genuine enforcement” of affirmative action; equal rights for gays and lesbians, including civil unions; a constitutional guarantee of equal rights for women and full abortion rights, and “a living wage for all workers,” among other stances.

On July 14, South Carolina supporters of the Nader/Gonzalez campaign filed nominating petitions with the Secretary of State to place them on South Carolina’s November 2008 election ballot. South Carolina was be the eleventh state to formally submit paperwork for Nader’s candidacy. To qualify to appear on South Carolina’s ballot, state law requires submission of the signatures of 10,000 registered voters. The Nader/Gonzalez campaign submitted over 18,000 signatures — nearly twice the number required. The campaign expects to be on the ballot in 45 states.

• 09:08 @jeffisageek If you'll work part-time for free, I expect I can use you. :) #
• 09:56 Sacred Chao pendants! bit.ly/1kemyL #
• 10:41 @kyrka1970 I don't have much of an opinion on OpenID. It seems like a good idea, and I will be supporting it on Inksome. Link me? #
• 10:47 @kyrka1970 Now to get @pandora_radio to jump on the OpenID bandwagon... :) #