Of course, the driverless car represents a lot more than just a leap forward for lazy people like me. Imagine giving a blind person a newfound sense of freedom when they can just hop in the car and go where they need to. Imagine that drunk college student who might have otherwise thrown their life away getting behind the wheel inebriated. Imagine scheduling a car rental from your phone and having the car itself pick you up at the airport and take you right to your hotel room. Imagine helping our elderly retain the freedom of being able to go where they want when they want without presenting a danger to themselves or others.

These possibilities are a lot closer to becoming reality than you may realize. Google has been road-testing their driverless car technology for years now in California, and now Nevada is getting into the game with an approval for Google to being road testing their cars in the Silver State, where I was born and raised. As 9to5Google reports, someone must be behind the wheel during this testing phase to take over “just in case”, but as this technology spreads and people become more accustomed to it, it’s easy to see in five-to-ten years a big market for computer-driven vehicles.

To get an idea of what the driverless car will be like, watch the video embedded in the story at 9to5Google.

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It’s probably a safe bet that RIM won’t completely abandon the keyboard-centric models that are currently still the preferred phone setup in the corporate sector (though even that is starting to change as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) becomes more popular in the business world), but the world is changing and the old way of doing things is getting lost amidst large, glossy touch-panel screens.

Therefore there’s little doubt that this is the right direction for RIM to go in, so the real question is whether or not it’s a case of “too little, too late”. If anyone can attest to the difficulties and frustrations of trying to break into a market now dominated by iOS and Android, it’s Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 (soon to be simply Windows 8). Despite their efforts on many fronts including a deal with Nokia to make their smartphones Windows exclusive, they are not getting the market penetration that they need as few people are willing to switch into a new ecosystem. Phone manufacturer LG just announced days ago that they were abandoning the Windows platform in favor of Android, further limiting the abilities of Microsoft to get their OS out there to the public. All this despite the fact that Windows Phone 7 has high favorability ratings amongst those who’ve tried it.

So what’s RIM to do? How can they inject their new platform into a market that’s not looking for one? In my opinion, developing their own operating system at this point is a mistake. Introducing a fourth (or fifth if you still count WebOS) ecosystem into the marketplace hoping to attract software developers from their already lucrative endeavors on iOS and Android is going to be difficult to the point that it may actually be impossible at this point without bringing any big, meaningful changes to the market.

I’m talking introduction of the iPhone changes. And there’s no way they’re doing that.

Instead, I think that RIM would be wise to abandon trying to develop the next mobile OS and invest in making a branded version of Android. Think about it; Android is now the most ubiquitous mobile OS on the market. The platform has tons of support, with hundreds of thousands of apps available in the Play Store. Android was originally developed with BlackBerry-type phones in mind, so modifying it to support phones like the BlackBerry Bold wouldn’t be that difficult. RIM could then focus on making BES-compatible enterprise applications for email, messaging, and the rest of their propriertary software for their corporate customers.

After all, why do people like BlackBerry? Primarily, from what I’ve seen, it’s for two things: the phone form factor and BlackBerry Messenger. You could have both of those with the Android platform, along with all the perks that come along with running a popular Operating System with a built-in developer support community.

Let’s face it; RIM already acknowledged that they needed to expand their app library when they embraced Android application support on the PlayBook. Would this really be such a big leap?

I imagine I know a few folks that might jump at the chance to get their hands on a BlackBerry Droid.

Take a look at the dull and lifeless BlackBerry 10 showcased at BlackBerry World 2012:

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Check out the trailer and tell me what you think:

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I may be alone in feeling this way, but I actually dislike this idea. I thought that Mr. Nimoy’s appearance in the first film made sense and nicely tied a bow on the old cast as he passed the torch onto the new team, and now this basically undoes the closure we got in the first film featuring the alternate universe crew.

What could old Spock’s role be in the new film? It’s hard to say because so little is actually known about the new film’s plot. Aside from some leaked photos and casting news, the actual plot of the film has been kept largely secret, which is a good thing really.

My theory would be that if old Spock is to return, then he’s likely going to die. I say this because Nimoy is in his eighties, and though he’s rapidly becoming the Brett Favre of Hollywood after announcing his retirement from acting only to appear in more projects, I am pretty sure that the only way he would be coming back would be to put a cork in his most famous and enduring character.

Of course, the problem with this is that we’ve already been through Spock’s death in Wrath of Kahn. There’s simply no way that the death scene at the end of Star Trek II can be replicated or topped with the same emotional resonance, and JJ Abrams and crew are fools if they’re going to try it. It would have been so much better to leave old Spock’s fate ambiguous and let the new crew stand on their own in this film.

That’s only assuming that old Spock is going to die, of course. That may not be the case, which makes a cameo by Nimoy even more pointless in my opinion. I was really hoping that we could ignore the alternate universe angle in this next film and get back to space adventures with the crew of the Enterprise led by Captain Kirk, but I’m afraid that we’re going to get more alternate timeline perspectives this time around.

Aside from this, most of the news coming out of the new film has been very positive for me, topped off with the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch, the star of my favorite BBC series Sherlock, as the main as-yet unnamed villain. If you haven’t seen Sherlock, the first series is available on Netflix and he’s fantastic in it.

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That’s right, kids; those amazing wind farms that liberals have touted as one of the many eco-friendly alternatives to traditional power sources like fossil fuel (unless of course someone happens to want to put one near a liberal), coal, and nuclear energy appears to be altering and heating the areas in which they operate, especially in Texas and China where the really big wind farms are currently operating.

Apparently the churning of the air by the blades of the wind turbines mixes the hot air from the upper atmosphere with the colder air near the ground, raising the temperatures near the ground by nearly 1C.

Realistically, how bad is that really? It only affects the local area, after all, and by a pretty small margin. The point, however, is that one of the most oft touted alternative energy sources seems to be having an impact on the climate, and since humans cannot have any appreciable impact on anything and should be living in natural caves or in trees so that we remain in harmony with our Earth Mother Gaia, it seems to me that these wind farms have to go.

Save a bird; kill a wind turbine.

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I just recently went back to Android after a brief reunion with iOS after we left Sprint to come back to AT&T. At first it was cool to be back on the iPhone, but after awhile I realized that it just seemed kind of stale after all the fun I had tweaking my old Android phones. I ended up trading my iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket with a kid after I posted an ad offering the trade on Craigslist, and I have been very happy to be back on Android. Right now I am running an ICS-based ROM that is essentially a heavily-modified version of a leaked Samsung ICS ROM; it runs great and it’s hard to tell it’s not actually an AOSP-based ROM. What’s all the more amazing is that it’s put together and maintained by a fourteen-year-old.

There is an unofficial CM9 build (or kang, as they’re known in the Android world) being put together for the Skyrocket right now; it’s in its Alpha stage at the moment but works very well. It’s not quite ready to be a daily driver yet but I’ll most likely be switching to it when it’s ready.

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Now, I am one of those who wishes that they had either just re-built the Twin Towers, floor-by-floor, the way they were before 9/11 or had gone for broke and built the tallest building in the world there. I’m not a construction engineer nor am I an architect, so I don’t know how feasible that last is, but as a proud American I find it irksome that the world’s tallest building is a hotel in Dubai no doubt built with oil money largely from the United States. I miss that spirit of American exceptionalism that drove us to always be the biggest and the best at everything; that spirit so perfectly embodied by President Kennedy when he called for America to the first to the moon.

Why can’t we have the tallest building in the world?

As it is, the Freedom Tower (as it has been christened) will stand as the world’s third tallest building, although there are all sorts of caveats and asterisks involved in these types of records. Even with all that, though, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the site of an incredible and awesomely pulse-pounding sequence in the last Mission: Impossible flick, will easily retain its record as the world’s tallest.

Maybe it’s just me; I don’t know. If you’re going to do it, I say do it right and do it best. What an awesome event it would have been to not only rebuild at the site of that horrible attack on US ideals and prosperity but to be able to claim the title for world’s tallest building.

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On the other hand, Knocked Up was hilarious in my opinion and still had those moments of heart and contemplation that elevated it somewhat. This is 40 is billed as being a “sort-of sequel” to Knocked Up, with Paul Rudd (Role Models) and Leslie Mann (Funny People) reprising their roles from the first film. Leslie Mann is, of course, married to Apatow, and the actresses who play the kids are actually Apatow and Mann’s daughters.

The trailer looks pretty funny, obviously pared back to accommodate the G-rating required for such a preview. I suspect we won’t get a real taste for how the film will play until the red band trailer is released.

So, without further ado: This is 40

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This is hardly surprising; it seems clear in light of what has been going on in the Supreme Court with two Obama Administration lawsuits seeming to be going poorly for the President that they have hardly been using the Constitution as their guide when crafting many of their policies and laws. Rep. Gowdy performed admirably in this case, and I hope more people see this video.

The video is posted below; thanks to Breitbart for bringing it to light.

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Bob Strait, 90, is  a veteran and a hero. You can hear more about his story in the video.

In the video, the narrator calls out to Comedy Central comedians-posing-as-reporters Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to help get the word out since the national mainstream media has ignored the story, but we have to do better than that. I can understand why MSNBC might not want to run with this story as it doesn’t fit into any of the templates they’ve built to help get Obama re-elected, but the new media including all of our friends on the social networks can help get this story the attention it deserves without us groveling to two narcissistic night club hacks.

Please watch the video below and then pass it around. You can share this story easily by using the links below it.

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