New $2000 Indian Car Set For Launch

It has been talked about for a while now (including an article on this very blog several months back) and it seems like the Indian auto maker Tata Is finally ready for the launch of the Nano. The car will be interesting and attractive for two big reasons. First the price. It is set to go for 100,000 rupees which translates to about $1,983 U.S. dollars by current exchange rates. The second is the miles per gallon it can get. It is said to be able to go 50 miles and more on one gallon of gas. There has been incredible interest in the car. The companies website has gotten over 30 million hits in just the last year. Tata Motors is the largest conglomerate in India. The company is said to be worth about 50 billion dollars and is comprised of almost 100 different companies involved in several sectors of manufacturing. Tata recently acquired the companies that manufacture both the Jaguar and the Land Rover. While the Nano has a 625cc gas powered engine the company is working on an electric version of the car and also a version that can run on compressed air. The best way to think about the car is as a lesser version of The British Mini car in terms of style but more in terms of mileage. The mini will get you about 37 m.p.g. while the Nano can get you over 50 m.p.g. This fact is sure to be appealing to buyers in this economy. The car will be officially launched on March 23rd, 2009.

Hair Weave Stops Bullet - Saves Woman's life

The saying goes if you live long enough you will see everything and this is one of those things you would never expect to see no matter how long you lived. Some people have been calling it a miracle including the young woman involved. On Wednesday February 18th Brianna Bonds was sitting in a car in Kansas City when suddenly an ex-boyfriend came upon her and shot her in the head. She remembers feeling a sharp pain and some intense heat but other than that she remained unhurt. Police were called to the scene after the shooter had fled and upon examining the victim found a bullet lodged in her hair weave. Apparently the weave had stopped the bullet from penetrating her skull and thereby saved her life. The victim has decided to give credit to the lord above for saving her life instead of crediting her hair stylist for making her weave so tight that it became bulletproof. Miss Bonds says that after the incident she suffered from one of the most intense headaches she ever had but other than that she seems fine.

Economy May Already Be Beyond Saving

This week should be the last week of discussing and debating in the house and senate over the economic stimulus bill. The final amount will probably come in at just under 800 billion dollars in total. It will likely be about 790 billion or so if some republicans stop insisting that more of the aid package be cut in order to get them to vote for it to pass. The trouble with this whole idea may be simply that even if the package were 1 trillion dollars it may not be enough. The entire U.S. economy is worth about 15 trillion dollars and some economists have estimated that the damage that has been done to it in the last 5 months totals something more like 2-3 trillion and growing and that 790 billion is just not going to pack enough of a punch to move things in the right direction. Last week Vice President Biden was quoted as saying that the stimulus package has about a 30% chance of failing and ending up accomplishing nothing. Most economists would put that percentage much higher. It would be something like a boxer throwing a punch at an opponent but not having enough power on the punch to effect him and as a result not getting the desired result of laying his opponent incapacitated. Most economists are saying that 790 billion dollars will not be enough of a punch to do any good in an economy the size of that of the U.S.
In the meantime a total of about 3 million Americans have lost their jobs in just the last 6 months which is a pace that has not been experienced before in the nation's history and that rate of loss is increasing with almost 600,000 of those lost just in the month of January of this year.

Why Switch To Digital TV Will Leave Millions Behind

Last week both the house and senate passed a bill which the president has already signed to extend the date from which anonlog tv makes the switch over to digital from february 17th 2009 to June 12th. Despite this change of date some channels are planning to go right ahead and make the switch over to digital on february 17th as planned anyway. No matter what the date it is likely not going to make much of a difference for millions of tv viewers who still get their signals over the air and watch tv on anolog sets. The F.C.C. estimates that there are about 6 million households nationwide (thats about 10% of the viewing public) for whom anolog over the air viewing is their only means of watching tv and for many of them it is the only viable way. Many rural areas of the country are simply not hooked up to cable and so there is no service and therefore no option to switch over to cable even if they both wanted to or could afford to start paying for tv, which is something that they have not traditionally done before. These people may in effect be left out in the cold.
The virtues of DTV have been tallied for months now. The superior picture quality and sound have been used by proponents of the switch to promote it and get the viewing public to embrace this change. One thing they usually wont tell you about is how fragile the signal sometimes is. DTV does not work like analog. Analog is a stronger signal generally than the signals that are sent out by digital transmissions. On an analog channel even if the signal is weak or less than perfect the likely result is that the picture will be fuzzy or slightly out of focus or even have some snow on it but it will usually be viewable. On digital there are only two possibilities. The picture will either be there or it wont. If the signal is strong enough the picture will be there if it isint your tv will display a box that indicates that there is no signal and the screen will be black, there is usually no in between. The signal can also be effected by weather. If it is very windy for example the signal may disappear on your set and you will have to rescan the entire digital spectrum in order to retrieve it. All these factors will of course depend on how strong the signal is coming from the station broadcasting it. This is still very spotty and varies from region to region in the country. In some areas it is not going to matter what you do. You could even install an antenna on top of your roof to pick up signals and it still may not help because some stations signals are still going to be too weak based on where you live and you are just going to be out of luck.
The other selling point about digital TV is the increased number of channels that will be offered for free. It's called "multicasting" and what it means is that every individual station will be able to broadcast multiple channels at the same time and offer more viewing options to the public. For example, if you watch channel 5 on your tv you will notice that there will be also a channel 5.1 and 5.2 and so on. These additional channels will have different programs running at the same time from the same station and you will no longer be limited to having just one channel and one program running at a time. This is a great idea if only these stations had something to put on these extra channels that was worth watching. Channel 5 in new york, which is the local FOX station is multicasting already as are most of the channels here. On channel 5.1 it runs its usual Fox lineup of shows. On channel 5.2 it runs a channel that it also owns called MY9. If you switch to channel 9.1 you will see all the usual shows that run on MY9. If you switch to channel 9.2 you get the Fox station. The local ABC affiliate channel 7 runs an all day weather channel on its multicast. The local NBC station runs high school swimming meets and tack meets all the time. Simply put you will have more channels if you can pick them up that is but you are going to be more bored than ever. Its a lot like that old Springsteen song, "57 channels and nothing on."
Like it or not the change is gonna come and it will be permanent soon. Lets hope that the people behind it can get their act together and boost up those signals so that everyone can pick them up from a technological standpiont and lets also hope that they can find it in their hearts to put something on worth watching from a programming standpoint. I know im hoping against hope on both of these things but i cant help but keep hoping.