Thoughts Cubed™

Do you rent your car? Do you rent your home? Most people do not or are striving not to rent. Then why do we all rent our electricity? The majority of the public rents their electricity. Well it could be viewed that way, because you are really renting the ability of the power company to generate and deliver power to your home.

You are renting a portion of the physical plant, coal, nuclear, steam, hydro or Solar that generates the electrical power. Also you are renting the transmission lines that are used to move the power from the generating plant to your place of residence.

So why not buy your electricity just like you buy your car or your home. When we buy personal property that is more then we can pay out in one lump sum, we finance it over a period of time. But when that financial obligation is paid off we own that piece of personal property. Granted it takes a lot longer to pay off a home over a vehicle.

So do the same thing with your electricity. Buy it! For many of us that live in the sunbelt we can purchase our own power generating system. And once installed, it requires very little maintenance and does not emit any pollutants. The answer is photovoltaic panels. Ok, they are still kind of expensive, although the cost is coming down over just ten years ago. And the products are more mainstream and readily available today. Most system also will qualify for federal and state rebate programs or tax credits.

So instead of being a Dumb American and paying the power company every month for the rest of your life, pay yourself. Take that monthly amount you would pay out to the power company and pay off your solar system over time. Then when the system is paid off you will be getting almost free electricity.

May 25, 2005 a senate panel votes, unanimously, to encourage ethanol production. The Panel was lead by Senator Jim Talent (r-Mo) in a response to higher gasoline prices. The oil industry opposed the plan clamming that the wide use of such a policy would lead to higher food prices.

Then that same year, 2005, Congress instructed the Environmental Protection agency to enforce the Renewable Standards Act. Which required at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels be added too and blended into our existing fossil fuel by the year 2012. And so starts the process that is giving us higher food prices today.

Now jump forward to 2008 looking at two staple we all need, back in Feb 2006 corn was $2.28 per bushel just a few months ago Feb 2008 the price per bushel rose to $5.46. This is almost double the cost in just 24 months. Wheat another staple food item was $3.48 per bushel in Feb 2006; now in Feb 2008 it is $11.21/bushel.

Why is the price of basic food elements climbing so fast? Because we are burning our food crops to fuel our cars, trucks and lawn mowers. So we cause a shift in the food paradigm. We create an entirely new use and market for crops that are scarce in the world today. Maybe the crops are not scarce today in America but large parts of the world are starving. People are dying every day because they do not have any food.

Then here in America, not only do we waist food, but now we burn our food crops for transportation. The rest of the world is watching and now trying to import more food crops. They just want to protect their own countries food supply. The result is again, more pressure on the food supply that results in higher prices. We are truly dumb americans.

We need to stop the push for ethanol as a renewable fuel before we all starve to death. I would rather have the option of not filling up my car at $9.00 a gallon for gasoline opposed to not being able to eat.

Will Ferrell makes another sports based movie, why? First he spoofed the ice skating world with “Blades of Glory”. Then Will takes on the super popular NASCAR world with Talladega Nights: The Ballard Of Ricky Bobby. Then the first week of February 2008 Will Ferrell takes on the world of Basket ball with “Semi-Pro”.

And guess what, “Semi-Pro” is the top grossing movie the weekend it is released. Semi-pro beats out “Vantage Point” by taking in 15 million dollars vs. Vantage point 13 million. It should be noted that Vantage brought in almost 23 million its opening weekend, with a total to date (3/2/2008) of 41 million.

So does this mean we are “dumb Americans” falling for a repetitive formula movie? After all Bob Hope had great success in the 1940’s and 1950’s with his road series (“ The road to Morocco”, “ The road to Singapore”, “ The road to Utopia” , “ The road to Zanzibar “The Road to Bali”, “The Road to Rio” and “The Road to Hong Kong”).

But when you think about it there are a lot of series movies, Star Trek 1- 10, James Bond 1 -21, Batman, Superman, Star Wars and the list goes on and on. But are they a rip-off like the Ferrell sport series?

In my opinion series like Star trek and James Bond are good story telling movies. These series are full of action, beautiful places or great computer graphics. The Ferrell sport series are just a bunch of gags strung together around the sports thread. Some are funny and some are not. Do I get a laugh, ya some times? But do not watch the trailer or you will have seen every funny clip in the movie.

So are the dumb Americans getting smarter? Well according to folks that are in the know, the 15 million was not good enough to call ‘Semi-Pro” a success. In fact the main stream press is calling it a failure and even going so far as to question Mr. Ferrell future big screen potential.

So chalk one up for the Dumb Americans, you spotted this one.

Sony looks like the big winner of the next generation video format war. At Januarys CES 2008 in Las Vegas Warner Bros. took sides and announced they would no longer support both formats. This appears to be the last straw for HD-DVD. With Warner Bros. announcement the majorly of the major movie studios now support ONLY Blu-ray.

It appears that Warner Bros looked at next gen disk sales in December 2007 and notices the Bul-Ray was out selling HD-DVD. So to help encourage the adoption of a single next generation video format, Warner Bros decided to support only Bul-Ray.

Does this really make sense for the consumer? If you look at both formats Blu-Ray and HD-dvd they have similar specks. Blu-ray does have a greater storage capacity. On the other hand Sony Blu-Ray is an evolving standard. To get in the market Sony Blu-Ray decided to do a phase in of the standard. Kind of developing the product as they go. This means that when you buy a Blu-Ray disk and get it home, then pop it into the player it might work and it might not.

Surprise, you see a screen with big letters saying that YOUR Blu-Ray player does not support THIS Blu-Ray disk. Great now you just spent $30 plus on a disk and it will not play. So now what do you do? Will there is this convoluted firmware upgrade procedure you need to do before the disk will work. And oh by the way it requires a PC, with a DVD burner and an internet connection (on the LG BH-100). Great, so now I need to spend an hour or so to find, download and burn a DVD that will play in a DVD player.

I never had the upgrade problem with a HD-DVD disk. The HD-DVD standard was complete when the product was released. I have never had a problem playing an HD-DVD disk. All my problems have been with Blu-Ray. And the problem are not limited to the disk will not play. Other problems I encountered with Blu-ray are audio track drop out and audio and lip sync problems.

Oh and by the way The HD-DVD standard includes a migration plan for the consumer. The HD-DVD speck includes the option for the studio to put the HD-DVD format in different layers of the disk and the older DVD in a another layer( kind of like having side A & B). That way you can play the movie in your bedroom on your old DVD only player. OR you had the option to buy the new movie on a combo disk in the anticipation that you were going to by a new Generation HD-DVD player in a few months, but wanted to watch the movie on a standard definition DVD player now.

So Toshiba was offering the consumer a reasonable migration plan to the next generation high definition format. A completely formulated software standard, that works. Plus Toshiba also offered HD-DVD player for a reasonable price, at times under a hundred bucks. True the player did not have every gee whiz feature, but you could still afford a next generation player.

Now, Sony, on the other hand wants you to pay for the movie for each and every format. That would be DVD, Blu-Ray, PSP etc…. And the price of the Blu-Ray players is three to four times that of the HD-DVD entry players.

Sony also paid studios hundreds of millions of dollars to get the movie studios to back the Blu-ray format. Sony was not going to lose another format war. Sony lost the video tape format war when Betamax lost out to VHS. Sony’s MiniDisc audio format never caught on in the shadow of the infamous Compact Disk (CD). Sony did not hold back on next generation video the format war.

So who pays? You and Me we pay. We all pay through higher prices for Blu-ray players and Blu-ray Disks. After all someone needs to pay all the hundreds of millions of dollars Sony spent winning the format war.

So You (the consumer) lose!

Companies in the telecommunications, cable and satellite dish industry are always advertising their services with a surprising low price. At first glance the price looks good. Then you see the words promotional rate, introductory rate, first three months, or limited time at this rate. Or something along toughs lines. But nowhere, on the ad, is the real cost listed. Sometimes there is the little special symbol that denotes and additional explanation or terms. But good luck finding the fine print, it is buried somewhere in the multi page paper ad or on another web page with in the site.

So this advertising technique must work. The dumb Americans are jump at this low price and do not even think or consider what this service will cost after the low price time period expires. So as dumb Americans consumers we either get hooked on the service or we get lazes and never cancel the service. So the advertiser wins because you keep paying the monthly fee, month after month at the higher rate.

If the company will not display the real cost then it is not worth it singing up. Most likely they are trying to compete with someone else’s rate that is actually lower all the time. The new company is just trying to lure you into their program with a temporary rate that appears to be competitive. In my opinion this is on the edge of being dishonest, I understand the advertisers rational is they are offering a lower rate for new customers to check there service out for a trial period. It is still only a short term rate.

The advertisers should clearly (not is a tiny print that is imposable to find) state what real monthly rate is in addition to the promotional rate.