Hop-on Brings Back the Disposable Cell Phone With a 10,000 European Purchase Order
Press release here
In a time that we are finally starting to realize that we need to care for the environment, that we are borrowing this planet from our children, US based Hop-on adds to the needless waste stream by relaunching the disposable cell phone. What utter waste. Most cell phones can last 2 to 3 years. The standard components inside have been engineered to function without failure for years with zero maintenance. The TI chip set used in this phone is no exception to this rule.
To take this discussion a step further, modern cell phones are really little computers. They contain a printed circuit board that was etched out of copper plating with a sulfur solution, leaving very nasty waste. They contain chips that are compound waste including silica, heavy metals and plastic. The phone requires packaging, which is more waste. They contain batteries that need careful recycling. It takes energy to manufacture all these components and the phone itself, it takes energy to bring the components to the factory and the phones to the store. All this energy represents a carbon footprint and climate change.
All this needless waste and energy use for such incredible marginal benefit shows a complete disregard for the responsibility bestowed upon us, making sure this planet is livable today and in the future, for ourselves, for others and the children of all people.
To the right is an add that Apple is running in India. It uses an image of Mahatma Gandhi. In case you have not heard of mr. Ghandi, he was a major political and spiritual leader in India, during it's struggle to become independent of the British empire. Mr. Ghandi was able to achieve his goals through peaceful civil disobedience. Clearly mr. Ghandi was a great and forward thinking man who was "thinking different"
However, I do not like this ad. While Apple's PR agency will tell you that they are honoring mr. Ghandi, I think Apple's association with his image for pure commercial reasons cheapens the image of this great leader.
Apple's tag line "Think different" is purely a commercial tag line. It has no spiritual value. It is of no deeper value than Microsoft's "Your potential. Our Passion". It is designed to create appeal in a target audience and than milk that audience for as much cash as possible. This simple highly commercial goal is on the bottom of the scale of noble causes whereas mr. Ghandi's goal, achieved through leadership, peaceful protest and suffering is at the very high end of that same scale. Hence my deep emotional objection to this ad.
If you are unfamiliar with mr. Ghandi, I ask you to look at this ad again and substitute the face of a hero of your country for mr. Ghandi in this ad. Some examples: Martin Luther King, George Washington (1st president of the US after declaring independence from the British empire), Nelson Mandela, ... What do you think?
Dear voter,
Congratulations on being able to vote in the democratic primary. I agree that every registered democrat should have the ability to vote in their state's primary and every vote should be counted, however, the system by which we go about these primaries leads to a very unfortunate situation in which you and me stand to lose a great deal over the next 4 to 8 years.
I believe the fairest democratic way of running primaries would be a popular vote in all states on the same day. That way all votes will always count and it would level the playing field for the candidates too. Candidates with less funding - or rather less personal wealth - would have an opportunity to compete. The news media would actually have to report on real issues that affect you and me.
Alas, the system is what it is today. And here you are in the hot seat. Lets look at some data:
- There are a total of 3253 pledged delegates that attend the DNC.
- A total of 2686 pledged delegates are already known, 1418 for Obama, 1250 for Clinton and 18 for Edwards, hence there are 567 delegates left for the upcoming state primaries.
- Given that Edwards is out of the race, the 18 Edwards delegates can probably vote as they like
- There are also 795 superdelegates, these democratic party insiders can vote whichever way they want. So far Obama has the support of 226 supers and Clinton has the support of 248 supers, leaving 321 supers who have yet to express their support.
First lets look at the popular vote.Using the numbers above you can calculate that Clinton has to win an average of 65% of the vote in the remaining primaries. Current polls show that in most states Obama is leading in the polls with the exception of the fairly big state of PA where she only has a 5% lead. So for Clinton to win the remaining popular vote is unlikely, that she'd get 65% even more so.
If there are no major changes from the polls, chances get even more outrageous after the PA vote where the candidates are currently polling at 48% Clinton, 43% Obama, 9% unsure. Lets assign the unsure voters proportionally, 4.32% (total 52.43%) for Clinton and 3.87% (total 46.87%) for Obama. PA has 158 delegates. After winning in PA, Clinton would have to win an average of 69% of the remaining vote. This is virtually impossible unless Obama makes a disastrous mistake.
Of course Clinton does not expect to win the popular vote, she just hopes to get closer to Obama's delegate count and than convince both pledged delegates currently pledged for Obama and the super delegates to vote for her at the DNC and so win the Democratic Presidential Nomination in a process that is actually far from democratic. If you want to read that in more detail, please refer to my previous post here.
I (perhaps naively so) believe the DNC would not be so foolish to override the popular vote. Recent statements from Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean testify to this effect. Actually, the party would be wise to cancel the superdelegates altogether, it is a very elitist and non-democratic element of the nomination process.
For the Clinton team, to make the override as plausible as possible, Hillary needs to come as close as possible to Obama's popular vote and call in doubt Obama's electability, the latter is especially a messages for all DNC delegates. Hillary, having the 30 or so years experience in politics that she claims, is now falling back on a tactic that is potentially disastrous for the Democratic party: providing the republicans with ammo to attack Obama.
The republicans are happy to collaborate. The current consensus amongst them is that John McCain stands a much better chance at beating Clinton than he does at beating Obama. So they attack Obama and leave Clinton alone, thinking they'll deal with her later. The Clintons on their part must not believe this, even if current polls currently suggest this is true.
What this means is that the Clintons are willing to carry the bigger risk of having the next president be John McCain rather than a fellow democrat who's plans are really not that different. This would be a disaster for the working and middle class families that Hillary claims she wants to support so much. It would mean the continuation of the type of policies we have seen for the last 8 years, that have led to the upper economic class cashing in on the collective wealth of the middle class.
To me it seems Hillary is using blue collar and middle class families as a platform to get elected, but her true commitment is to herself only. She wants to win, not for you, not for me, but for herself. If she loses she wants it to be against a Republican. Except for personal pride lost in her defeat, she will not suffer like you and me. With $20 million income last year, she's far removed from the middle class and qualifies as a real elitist.
You the voters in PA and IN have a chance to stop this madness and increase our chances of having a sensible democrat in the White House by 2009. Do not allow Hillary to continue to feed John McCain the ammo he needs to defeat Obama. Do not allow her to count on and encourage delegates to trample democracy and override the popular vote. Do not allow her to bet your future on her personal ambition. Vote to maintain unity in the democratic party, Stop Hillary now. Vote for Obama, he is already the presumptive nominee.
With kind regards, Catalyst
A bit more than a week ago I came across this quote from the Clinton camp: "The more people that have a chance to vote, the better it is for our democracy."
Source: here
This was especially interesting in the light of a remark from Clinton a week earlier: "... Sen. Hillary Clinton told reporters that the pledged delegates awarded
based on vote totals in their state are not bound to abide by election
results."
Source: here
I think this gives us insight in the Clinton campaign strategy, which goes somewhere along the following lines:
Clinton can not win the popular vote anymore, but that does not matter because there is an electoral college that decides the final outcome of the primary. So the Clinton efforts should go to convincing delegates, both super delegates as well as delegates pledged for Obama to vote for Clinton, ignoring the popular vote which will favor Obama. Chelsey and Bill are currently handling the task.
To make the scenario plausible, Clinton has to stay in the race until the end, rejecting calls to drop out. She must at least appear to be putting up a fight and given that her campaign is losing financial support, she has borrowed $5 Million from her personal wealth as well as take on $9 Million in other debt to finance her campaign.
Source: here
To stay in the fight she constantly reinvents herself and her message to align well with the latest opinion polls or Obama statements. This to me is the mark of the politics as we know it today, no personal belief just say what you need to say to get the power.
In the mean time there is pressure behind the scenes on key party members, such as Nancy Pelosi to prepare the Democratic National Congress for the suppression of democracy. Well-heeled supporters of Clinton try to blackmail Nancy Pelosi into setting the stage for Clinton.
"We have been strong supporters of the DCCC," they wrote. "We therefore
urge you to clarify your position on superdelegates and reflect in your
comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each
of the delegates at the National Convention in August."
Source: here
Al these tactics together reflect an blatant disdain for public opinion that is really not that different from George W. Bush's win of the presidency in 2000 when the supreme court appointed him the winner instead of Al Gore who had the majority popular vote.
If you have any desire to restore democracy in this country, don't vote for Hillary Clinton. If her campaign management and tactics are any indication of what she will be like as president, we can expect a government full of cronies, financial mismanagement, the rich buying favorable regulation and a complete disregard for public opinion. I thought we had enough of that in the past 7 years...
It is sad to see how deep politics in this country have sunk. We accuse countries like Russia and Zimbabwe of suppressing democracy, but our own system is really not that different anymore. The people need to rule over politics again, vote for a person you can believe in, not just the name you know.
First of all - if you were affected by today's or last week's flight cancellations, you have my deepest sympathies. I travel a lot for business and I know air travel has become a nuisance at best, especially if you are flying with our nations airlines.
A couple of things struck me in these flight cancellations that I want to highlight here.
"American insisted that there was never a safety concern in the failed inspections..."
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/09/news/companies/airline_cancellations/index.htm?postversion=2008040915
This is interesting. The FAA issues air-worthiness directives to make air travel as safe as possible, subsequently failing to adequately enforce these policies. The airlines, under severe cost pressure, notice the FAA enforcement lacks and decide to ignore the directives, endangering you and me. When the FAA finally does the right thing and starts to enforce its directives American Airlines has the guts to claim that you and I were never in any danger.
The directive affecting AA describes how electrical wiring in the wheel well and next to hydraulic lines needs to be tied down to prevent rubbing which in turn could lead to shorted wires and then fire! If this is not a safety issue, then why did the FAA create this directive? Are we to believe that an airline that is motivated by profit is the authority on aeronautical safety? Or shall we err on the safe side and believe that the FAA, which is motivated by public opinion on its track record in managing safe air traffic? My bet is on the FAA here.
Personally I think AA's statement is a blatant and incredibly obvious attempt at treating consumers like they are ignorant and stupid. If you have any self esteem, you should not accept this type of behavior from your service providers and vote with your money - the thing AA wants most - and fly with other airlines that show respect for their customers and their customers' safety. That means you can also take SouthWest and Delta of your list of preferred airlines.
"These poor stranded airline passengers, that is so typical of the government to create such a mess"
Source: an opinion expressed in my presence
The reasoning this person applied was that the FAA (the government) was responsible for creating this mess with canceled flights because they all of a sudden need all these planes to comply with regulation. The FAA should have seen this moment coming and should have implemented a gradual inspection and certification plan...
I think this is a total disconnect. The government through it's agencies - in this case the FAA - creates rules by which we need to run our businesses to keep each other safe from harm. At least this is the general idea and though it does not always appear to be that way, certainly this cable tie down directive - just as the hull crack inspection directive two weeks ago - can be categorized as a directive that is to keep us safe from harm.
These directives are not new. The airlines have just chosen to ignore them. Even if the FAA did not inspect these things, that does not mean the directive is invalid! It is a law! With the airlines continuing to ignore these directives, the only thing the FAA could do is to set a deadline and make it really hurt for the airlines to force compliance. Kind of like being pulled over on the freeway for speeding. The airlines of course waited until the very last moment (probably hoping they'd get some stay from the FAA) and ended up canceling flights, affecting thousands of people who were on their way to a hard earned vacation, career affecting business meetings, family reunions, baby showers, funerals etc.
Following the same principle and the earlier mentioned analogy, I should blame the police officer who pulls me over for speeding, causing me to be late for my meeting, on the grounds that I wasn't stopped yesterday when I drove the same speed in the same place and he was not there. I hope in this case you would hold me responsible because I was the one violating a traffic safety directive. This scenario of course is complete fiction :)
I think the examples above are symptoms of a morally bankrupt society. It is time we make a change, lets start by teaching our airlines some manners by avoiding the bad ones and awarding our business to the ones that do the right thing. In the end, that is how GM learned it's lessons too.
