JayB

Interesting... http://www.keepshooting.com/selfdefense/photoblocker/photoblocker-phantomplate.htm "The infamous Photoblocker manufactured by Phantomplate is now here! This New and Improved, Patent Pending Photoblocker Spray is used to reflect photo radar flash and to make your license plate invisible to cameras! It really protects you from Red Light Camera. Don't let them take your cash in a flash! For only $19.95, you CAN avoid getting tickets. Protect yourself before too late! Phantomplate's Photoblocker Spray: ›› REFLECTS photo radar flash, helping to prevent a costly ticket! ›› FAST spray-on formula is easily applied in minutes! ›› INVISIBLE to the naked eye, only you will know it is on your vehicle! ›› EXCLUSIVE formula! Good for up to FOUR plates. ›› BEST alternative for those areas where you can't use an anti-radar license plate cover! ›› One application of PhotoBlocker is good for life. Will not wash off, will not fade, nor will it dissolve away. How does "PHOTOBLOCKER" work? Photo radar cameras often utilize a strong flash to photograph the license plate on your car as it speeds by. "PHOTO BLOCKER's" special formula works to reflect the flash back to the camera. The result is an overexposed and unreadable picture, often preventing a costly ticket. Instructions: 01. Remove plate. Place flat. 02. Spray PhotoBlocker evenly until surface is totally saturated. Let dry and repeat 2-3 times until plate is very glossy. 03. Let it dry for about 2 hours. Should be good for life!"

Glimpse of the Future.... " Anger as fines from speed cameras soar By James Kirkup and David Millward Last Updated: 2:58am GMT 06/12/2007 Almost two million speeding tickets are being issued to motorists each year following Labour's vast expansion of the speed camera network, official figures disclosed last night. Since the party came to power, the number of fixed penalty notices for speeding has almost trebled from 700,000 a year to more than 1.9 million, the Government statistics showed. Coupled with an increase in the basic speeding fine, this means speeding tickets are now raising almost £120 million a year - most of which is simply ploughed back into operating the cameras. But despite the significant increase in speeding penalties in the past 10 years, road deaths have fallen only marginally, while the number of deaths from drink-driving has remained stable." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/04/nspeed104.xml

Me too, but I'd love to hear the recording....

Agreed on both points. I am looking forward to contributing to whoever runs against Licatta and whoever else on the council voted for camera surveillance when I return. It's hard to argue against red-light cameras unless one includes the near certainty that this will: -Inspire ever more invasive and dubious applications in which their effect on public safety is marginal at best. -Generate a revenue stream that the government incorporates into their budget projections. This will almost certainly encourage them to expand the size of the fines, the number of cameras, and the number of offenses subject to camera enforcement. The only thing that would convince me otherwise would be legislation stipulating that the cameras could only be used for red-light offenses, and that all revenues generated in excess of the operating expenses would have to be transferred to the citizens via a dollar-for-dollar tax or fee offset.

Word. Checking the rates online, but it seems like some outfits are better than others (from what I hear) when it comes to dealing with breakdowns, not-hosing you with extra fees, etc. Pondering bringing along chains if it'll work weight-wise.

All should feel free to chime in with all things related to car-rental though...

It's been years since I've had to rent a car, and when I did, it was from these guys: http://www.mauicruisers.net/ Awesome deal, great service, run out of a shipping container on a vacant lot featuring a legit junk-yard dog, and a one eyed mechanic. Very memorable. Insurance was included in the daily rate ($20), and there was no dicking around with upgrades and whatnot. Which car rental company do you like to do business with? Any outfits to avoid? Any outfits that provide chains? (Driving from LAX to Mammoth)

If you want to avoid accounts that require a minimum balance to establish the account, you might want to look at companies that offer a direct purchase plan for their stocks (http://www.enrolldirect.com/indexnj.htm) Another alternative is to use an at an outfit like the one below that enables you to invest in stocks in dollar (rather than share) increments with scheduled deductions http://www.sharebuilder.com/

Lay it down for me, bro. I'm not surprised that black electoral politics still revolve around the dynamics that you've outlined - I'm just surprised at how quickly the professional grievancemongers turned on the Clintons. "Et Tu, Reverend?"

I've been enjoying the show. A Dr. Frankenstein moment for the purveyors of race/gender grievances... I have to confess I'm surprised to see "The First Black President" on his back foot with blacks, especially given his record and the fact that neither his comments nor those of his wife had the slightest hint of anything that could possibly be construed as insensitive, racist, etc.

Most of the post-confessional conversations that I've had with folks that have talked about their tech-bubble losses have been interesting. Few were willing to chalk the experience up to bad decisions, poor-analysis, wish-thinking, etc on their part. Far more were eager to consign blame to crooked analysts, etc. Much the same rhetoric that we're hearing from the dipshits who took out the stated-income, neg-am, I/O loans for 10X their annual income these days. I'd estimate that ~0.5% are/were victimized by another party, and the remainder have only themselves to blame.

I'd also recommend reading anything written for the individual investor by David Swenson (head of Yale endowment) and John Bogle (founder of Vanguard funds). Beating the market as an individual investor is like an individual gambler beating the house in Vegas. Possible, but the odds are against you, and the more you chase the big payoff/return, the more likely you are to lose. I also have found it interesting how few people honestly asses the performance of their investments. Real returns = returns net taxes, transaction fees, and inflation. For real-estate, toss in insurance and maintenance. I've also noted that belief about one's investing prowress and the capacity to honestly evaluate one's performance tend to be inversely proportional to one another - at least for most individual investors. How much of this is the desire to impress others, and how much is honest to goodness self-delusion, wish-thinking, etc at work? How many of us have encountered someone loudly exclaiming how much a particular stock, investment property, etc has made them? How many have ever encountered someone confessing that they lost big-time on whatever investment they favored, what the financial strains brought on by the losses have cost them in terms of marital stress, etc?

Yawn. Did you whip out the clip-on pony-tail and acoustic guitar while concluding that there's nothing that a successful, opinionated woman needs more than a chap like you to shield her from honest feedback and claim that any critical response to her tirade equals misogyny? She's free to keep chugging however much intellectual embalming fluid is necessary to keep the cognitive necro-nostalgia for the hard-left lesbo-cant from late 60's and early 70's going right up until she joins the great gender-neutral socialist commune in the skies. I am free to respond to it. Unfortunately - you are also free to ride in on your free-range, organically fed gelding and defend her statement with an especially odd cocktail of narcissism and condescension that constitutes a substantial portion of your online personality. In this context, it's manifested itself in the inherently contradictory "Oh, I do *love* the liberated ladies, but make note of how very much they need me to ride to the rescue..." Gag.

The fact that you actively seek out and retain such information amuses... Even money says you can recite the key moments in Sylvia Plath's life from memory, if not entire passages from "The Bell Jar."

Sad. Like a New York Socialite with an advanced case of Alzheimers attempting to simultaneously channel Susan Sontag and Stokely Carmichael after a few cocktails.

What are "Gregoire's checkpoints?"

I am curious how people feel about the use of red-light cameras. Draw the line there, or permit expansion to speed-cameras on interstates? How about systems like they're installing in England, capable of recording traffic violations like speaking on a cell phone, applying mascara, etc?

-Spend less than you earn.

The DCA I was referring to was "Dollar Cost Average." Not sure if this changes the analysis...

Here's an idea specially for SC: http://www.prosper.com/

DCA into FFNOX or equivalent. The odds are quite high that you'll beat ~99.9 percent of actively managed funds over the next ~25 before you even take expenses or tax efficiency into account, and 99.999999% of individual investors - all while sustaining significantly lower risk. Lifestyle/target-date funds with an extremely low expense ratio would probably be even better for most people. I haven't taken a look but it should be possible to get a fund with an expense ratio of ~0.25 percent or lower if the underlying assets are invested in index fund and you are basically just paying someone to reallocate the funds assets into progressively more stable/conservative stuff as your retirement date gets closer. I used to enjoy reading the WSJ column in section C where they pitted half a dozen analysts and their favorite picks versus an equal number of darts thrown at the stock-listings. From what I can recall - it was dead heat after enough iterations. Fear_and_greed is probably worth PMing if you really want to play with your money, though. Seems like he might be one of the rare few who has managed to make a go of trading with his own dough.

Articulating a message that doesn't resonate with the electorate is something quite different from not "getting your voice heard."

One could easily ask the same of Arthur Sulzberger, or any other media chief...

Per your first comment. I think that you are constructing an imaginary public that responds to your imaginary representation of the media in an imaginary way. Neither the news coverage, nor the average person's parsing of it correspond terribly well with the picture you've constructed. In the second case it seems to me that for as long as I can remember, the gist of the reporting concerning CO2 emissions and global warming was that the scientific debate was largely settled, and the question was no longer if CO2 emissions are driving a warming of the atmosphere, but questions concerning projected rates of warming, etc were still the topic of ongoing debate. Even amongst those who hold the same opinion on this matter, there's still the matter of the optimal policy response, who should pay for it, etc. IMO the manifold deficiencies of the media are a bit of a red-herring. What really bothers you is that people can evaluate the same information, and come to conclusions or hold opinions that differ from your own (which is presumably infallible). Instead of accepting this and dealing with this much more complicated and difficult-to-change reality, it seems like you've constructed your own simplified narrative as a kind of coping mechanism. Corrupt-media + sheeple incapable of independent thought = public programmed to believe falsehoods.* *falsehood in this case = conclusions/opinions that differ in any fashion from those held by mattp.

I have no idea. I listen to WBUR at work, and that's the extent of my engagement with the local media, aside from the local weather forecasts. The consensus opinion that I've encountered while surveying the media seems to be that: 1) Violence is down. 2) Political reconciliation necessary for sustained peace hasn't occured. 3) The methods used to reduce violence (co-opting Sunni militias, etc) could catalyze an even-bloodier escalation if they aren't complemented by a durable political settlement that will persist in the absence of a substantial American troop presence. With regards to climate change, a substantial percentage of the stories implicitly incorporate the connections between C02 emissions and climate change that you claim are absent from the coverage. This is true of the first story that appears on Google news, and an expansion of the data set to include all stories would result in conclusions that are contrary to your thesis.