Right On The Right

I didn't catch this episode yet, but judging by the clip posted on Hot Air, it looks to be pretty hilarious. Drudge must be loving the reference also:

I've had some quiet reservations about the massive use of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), but nothing major until recently. A while ago I wrote about CFLs damaging my laptop, but that was nothing more than a joke. The new evidence about the damage CFLs can do however is not a joking matter. Via Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs’ poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought. …

As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are perfectly safe. But eventually, any bulbs — even CFLs — break or burn out, and most consumers simply throw them out in the trash, said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and editor of the journal Environmental Research.

“This is an enormous amount of mercury that’s going to enter the waste stream at present with no preparation for it,” she said.

How bad is the mercury problem? According to Ed, each individual bulb can contaminate thousands of gallons of water, putting trace amounts of mercury into our water supply that can be very toxic. Also, there's a huge problem when it comes to disposal. Perhaps Rush was right about these things afterall. Glenn, any thoughts on the matter?

The web poses new challenges, especially in conflicts where there's a crisis of identity. Palestinians living in the contested areas want to be known as residents of Palestine, while Jewish settlers of course want to be called Israeli. Facebook got dropped into this very conflict of identity:

Facebook, which unwittingly had dropped itself smack in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reversed itself Monday and now is allowing Jewish settlers in the West Bank to list themselves as residents of Israel, not a country called "Palestine."

Users of the social networking Web site who live in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the West Bank protested when Facebook automatically listed "Palestine" as their hometown, the Jerusalem Post reported.

A settlers group accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.

"I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called 'Palestine,"' Ari Zimmerman wrote in a posting on Facebook, Reuters reported. "I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in 'Palestine,' nor does anyone else."

This is a good move by Facebook, although the unabashed Israel-supporter in me would've liked Facebook to put all of the contested territories under Israel. They could easily provide the Palestinian government's support of state-sponsored terrorism as the rationale for failing to include Palestine. If they must include Palestine, Israel should absolutely be an option, and failure to include the Democracy as an option in those territories would be horrendous.

It's a victory for bloggers, geeks, and e-mail users everywhere. One of the world's top e-mail spammers has plead guilty to multiple criminal counts, and his massive spam operation has been put to an end. I just thought that this would be a good story to share on this slow news day:

SEATTLE - A man once described as one of the world's top e-mail spammers pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and failure to file a tax return.

Robert Alan Soloway, 29, was dubbed "the spam king" by prosecutors who said he used networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails since 2003.

He was arrested last summer and charged in a 40-count indictment. He agreed to plead guilty to the three charges and the rest were dropped, including e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and numerous other counts of mail and wire fraud.

I stumbled across this amazing invention on the web, and just had to share the video of (perhaps) the coolest clock idea ever: