After four or five conversations about global warming Desi finally said, “What is the big deal with you and global warming?”

I asked, “Have you watched the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ DVD yet?” to which she just rolled her eyes.

And I understand. Having a whiny Al Gore shove more political crap in your face is not enjoyable. But he doesn’t. Believe me, voting for Al Gore was the first time I used my vote as a weapon. I think he’s just as slimy as any other politician but for the first time I thought someone could actually do harm in a public office – so I threw my vote to the lesser of the two evils. Ah, but Shrub got in anyways and now look. But I digress…

It wasn’t Al Gore I was interested in Inconvenient Truth but the information. I have always found meteorological, geological and planetary changes fascinating. Believe me, planetary changes is not an exaggeration.

If you don’t know the background, Al Gore has been doing the lecture circuit on this presentation for sometime and director Laurie David thought a movie would be a better way to get the message out. Apparently a professor he had in college, Roger Revelle, who is one of the original scare mongrels on this whole global warming thing, had inspired Al to do this lecture.

As much as I dislike Shrub, I am by no means an Al Gore fan. What I found so profound was the information he presented. I’ve been hearing about ‘Global Warming’ since I was a kid. Roger Revelle started measuring the CO2 levels in our atmosphere in the late sixties. Having gone 30 years and not seeing any real changes it was easy to dismiss Global Warming. After all, remember the over population threat in the seventies? Shortly after The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich none of his predictions came true. I don’t believe the same will be true of Global warming.

The difference is that 35 years have gone by and the evidence has just stacked up. “Come on, I just saw the forecast and there’s record heat that haven’t been broken since the 1800’s” Look at it this way – you have a 1 in 365 chance of breaking record. Believe me; we don’t want to break them all in one year. Did you know, since 1890, here are the 10 warmest years: 2006, 2005, 1999, 1994, 1933, 1927, 1998, 1995, 2004, and 2000 (in order 1- 10)? Notice only 1927, 1933 & 1995 are out of the last ten year range.

I have talked, argued, call it what you like about ‘Global Warming’ and some people just don’t want to ‘buy it’. I’m not really ‘selling it’. Without going into the whole Kyoto thing, it comes down to simple logic. Have you heard the logical discussion to believe in God? It goes like this: If you don’t believe in God and there isn’t a God nothing happens. If you believe in God and there isn’t a God, again, nothing happens. If you believe in God and there is a God, you’re good to go. BUT if you don’t believe God and there is a God, you’re kind of screwed.

This same logic applies to Global Warming. Do these ‘non-believers’ think Al Gore is going to raise taxes to put down a layer of Freon to refreeze the polar caps? Or paint our roofs with solar panel paint? Maybe that would be a good thing but that’s a different discussion. All I’m looking for is agreement that we screwed up on the environment, and, when the opportunity presents itself, we should try to fix.

Like any controversial issue, unless you are willing to compromise (meaning you agree you will be OK with NOT get your way) you do not have the right to sit at the table to come up with a solution. Too many people take an ultraistic perspective that it ‘my way or the highway’. It doesn’t work with Abortion, Christianity or any discussion when there is no clear answer. And it’s not going to work with Global Warning. All we can really do is lean for or against. And all I’m saying is we should lean to reducing CO2 whenever possible. Get it?

Oh come on – how many times do we have to go through this? Whenever a generation loses their idols they say the current batch of artist are the worst ever. You don’t think in the seventies when Zeppelin, Stones and Who ruled the parents didn’t say they were no Elvis or Sinatra? And then in the Eighties when it was Springsteen and Madonna they said were no Beatles or Zeppelin. Or in the Nineties when it was U2 and Pearl Jam and there were no Springsteen or Police.

Let’s face it. The next decades’ heroes will always pale when compared the previous decades heroes. Time allows us to right the wrongs and the winners stand proud while the losers can quietly be forgotten. We laugh when we are wrong together and we are proud when we are right together.

When I was in eighth grade my favorite band was Blue Oyster Cult. They were great. And that was a respectable choice but they were by no means a decade defining Rock band. So was Peter Frampton great? Apparently he was for an album – but we all thought so. So are the Stones the greatest Rock band ever? There is something to be said for timing and longevity.

But are all the great days behind us? No, but the more ‘influential days’ could be – but not entirely. The 60’s were special times for music because they were special times for the youth culture. As they grew so did their music. Was it better? that, of course, is a matter of opinion.

I believe greatness is based on opportunity. Great performances, as in actors, are based on great characters. Tom Cruise sucks as actor because he is always playing the same damned character (yea, yea, I know – he was great ‘Born On The Fourth of July’ and no I haven’t seen Vanilla Sky, yet). The music of the 60’s & 70’s reflect what the youth culture was going through at that time.

So 25 years or so later is there anything left for the new ‘Youth Culture’ (Generation X, Y, Z or whatever you want to call them) to discovery? Maybe not. So it music dead? No way. When 9/11 occurred I watched the outpouring of music on MP3.com. These were reflections of a single event. Were they all classics? Of course not. But look at Springsteen’s ‘The Rising‘ his own reflections of the events on 9/11 – and his best album since ‘Born In The USA’.

The problem is how music is distributed. Believe me, there are hundreds of ways to distribute music now (Moby’s ‘Play‘ album is a poster child of licensing music for profit and exposure). It isn’t just us and our friends listening to albums in our bedrooms or listening to our favorite radio station anymore.

On the other side the artists themselves are more accessible. Most bands have a MySpace site and regularly interact with their fans. I hold up one of my favorite bands Marillion and how a ‘no name’ band can have a successful career as musicians their these type of relationships.

So music is not dead, has long as people continue to write songs and fans continue to find them and continue relate to them. Will there ever be another band like the Beatles or The Stones? no – those were different times. Are the Beatles better then U2? different music, different times. These days I am a kid in a candy store with all the music that’s out there. Can’t find anything you like? that’s because you aren’t looking. And you shouldn’t have to – and THAT I blame on the music distribution system. Music is not dead, not by a long shot. But as they say, its hard to get a drink from a fire hose.

Man, am I happy about the Bears getting into the Super Bowl. If you know me you know I am a Bears/Packers fan. Yes a strange combination but as always say, a perfect football season is the Bears 16-0, the Packers 14-2 (I have lived in Chicagoland all my life, The Pack has to lose those two games).

I started the season making a effort to watch every game. Yes, I missed the Minneasota game because I was fishing with Phil and Josh. Apparently Wisconsin does not broadcast Chicago sports too often, and I don’t think Phil and Josh would have wanted to listen to the Bears game while the Packers were playing.

At 6-0 I asked Ralf if he was watching, he said we was going to wait until they were 8-0. I figured they could make it dispite Grossman after that Arizona win. However, Ralf cursed the Bears when he watched earlier because they never got to 8-0 with their first loss to Miami. That cost Bill a dozen donuts and allowed Dave to dance in the IS aisles for weeks.

The worst was watching their final game up north with my in-laws. Not that they were mean or anything. But everyone loves to see the team on the top brought down – especially The Packers.

Sorry, Grossman isn’t great. He maybe some day but he isn’t now. You’ve got to give it to the Defense but even they have faultered (remember Tampa Bay’s come back? way too close).

Have they won games they shouldn’t have? Of course. I’ve heard the called the worst 14-2 team ever. But when it is all said and done, they have had a great year. The ball has bounced their way but its does for many teams – at least half of them. Please do not compare them to the ’85 team. That was a magical year and even that year wasn’t perfect.

The 2006 Bears are a great football. Outstanding? no; Record-setting, a little; Historic? no way. I think too many people forget the drought we’ve been in for an actual ‘great team’. That’s why its paid off to be a Bears-Packers fan because I had The Pack in the 90’s while the Bears were really terrible. Thank you for a great year gentlemen. One more game to prove a few more doubters wrong.

I always say you can’t predict the future if you can’t envision it. I’ve always imaged that someday television programs won’t be shown, they will be posted. So you won’t have to record them, you will simply watch them when you get home. Socially, the key will be the first ones to watch them so you can talk about it with your friends.
Well those days are coming sooner than we think. A new product called Joost is currently being tested to allow users to share video. This is geared toward television and will offer DVD quality television for free. Allowing you to watch what you want – when you want.

So more hype from the Web 2.0 (I hate that term)? Remember when they shut down Napster and twenty more file sharing programs sprung up in its place? One of the most popular of these was Kazaa (who were sued and lost). These same guys went on to create another small piece of software Skype (which was sold to eBay for $2.6 million).

These same guys have come up with Joost. They hope to do to the television networks what Skype has done to the phone systems. You may not use Skype yourself but nightly there are 4 million users that do.

Of course the television execute aren’t happy but this time Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (the Swedish inventors) are doing everything by the book – with DRM (Digital Rights Management) in place. Warner Bros is already on board. Its also been described as YouTube on acid!
I have signed up to be a beta tester so hopefully I can give you first some first hand information. Keep you eyes open for Joost and I will let you know more as I play with it.

We were going to get the kids a new Nintendo Wii for Christmas but after trips to Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. we could not find one. Yes, I went to Ebay and yes they had plenty but I wasn’t going to paying $400 to 500 for one – plus $50 in shipping. (I must confess, it desperation 3 days before Christmas I did bid $272.52 for one which promptly got out bid. So for Christmas Nate received a Wii game with a note that we would get a Wii for the family when they were available.

We stopped in Fond du Lac, WI on our way up to Desi’s family to celebrate Christmas with her family at Best Buy, Walmart and Target – again to no avail. We talked to a kid working at Best Buy, and I’ve talked to others who said the same thing, the calls they receive on Wii’s compared to Sony’s Playstation 3 is 10 to 1. In fact, the kid in Wisconsin said, a guy returned his Playstation 3 because he couldn’t sell it on Ebay (I’m not sure I believe that part).

Nintendo played it smart by going after gameplay instead of the ‘high def’ and competing with Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox. The Wii’s remote control with attachable Numchuk lets you play a video game like never before. Xbox and Playstation 3 remain with pretty much the same controllers. The other nice thing I think parents like is that that sort of interaction gets the kids moving when they are playing.

To be honest, due to the short supplies of Wii, the real winner this Christmas was Microsoft who exceeded their numbers units for Xbox. If you were going to get your kid a game system, there were plenty of Xboxes around this Christmas.

The loser is Sony and they could be in a world of hurt. The reason for the short supply and the late release of Playstation 3 was Blu Ray – Sony’s high definition video format which is competing with HD DVD. Sony has lost its edge on the TV market when the LCD and Plasma units came out. Their PSP is ok but doesn’t touch Nintendo’s DS. They needed to win the game console war to support their Blu Ray format. At this point they have all but officially lost. I say serves them right after their CD DRM disaster when they installed rootkits on peoples PC’s when they played their Sony music cd’s.

I agree with Tim Jarrett – Boycott Sony (author of BoycottSony.com). Here’s to Nintendo, the latest ‘little guy’ fighting against the huge corporations. OK, Nintendo is a huge corporation too. But 32 Billion vs. Sony’s 48 Billion vs. Microsoft’s 306 Billion makes them the ‘little guy’. Hey, maybe we should all gang up on Microsoft – I’d be for that!

We did eventually find a Wii. Nate got a tip from school that EB Games had gotten some in. Desi went out there and picked up the last one. I have only bowled and boxed but it was fun and I wasn’t sitting around on the floor numbing my thumbs. Way to go Nintendo, you got us again – at least until the next game system war.