Denzel Washington at Brooks Army Medical Center

Don't know whether you heard about this, but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers who have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the United States , especially burn victims. There are some buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a Hotel where soldiers' families ca n stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the Hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base, but as you can imagine, they are filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his checkbook out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

The question is - why do Brad Pitt, Madonna, Tom Cruise and other Hollywood fluff make front page news with their ridiculous antics and Denzel Washington's Patriotism doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the local newspaper in San Antonio?

The Media 'Accidentally' Missed This One. This needs as wide a distribution as we can create. Share it!

Don't tell anybody or everyone will be doing it

I was reading the article "7 headaches - and how to fix them" published in Popular Mechanics and written by Jamie Hyneman, the guy from the TV show MythBusters, and I found the following affirmations I do believe are worthed to be posted here.

(Illustration by Frank Stockton... copied from the original article)

• There are times when innovation produces aggravation, and when that happens, technology can flat out drive us nuts.
• As machines become more complicated, good interface design becomes more essential—you can't just keep adding buttons and menus.
• High-tech companies—stop messing with us on your treadmill of software upgrades while making the old stuff obsolete.
• To my mind, engineering is a high art, and it brings tears to my eyes to see it so disrespected at times by the marketing and legal departments of corporations. Ideally, form is supposed to follow function, and designing and manufacturing consumer products should be a collaborative process. Com­panies, it's time to wake up and pay attention to your engineers—and to your customers.

The best of any of the reader comments I spent time reading says... "Jamie, you have my sympathies, but so do the engineers who are forced but our market-driven society to create items that are incomplete as stand alones, too complex to fix yourself, or include far too many 'extras' to be easily used. My solution is this: become better consumers folks."

Finally, where can I find that "LED flashlight called the Fenix that puts out 1 watt, uses a single AA battery and lasts for months of use" that Jamie mentioned? Maybe, this is the one he is talking about.

'till the next post

Net Neutrality == Save the Internet

Do you like the way Internet works for you today? Isn't great you can surf to anywhere without restrictions? What about reading, viewing and playing whatever you like without asking permission to anybody else or even paying extra?

Well, these are the questions I asked myself lately when I realized my current Internet provider is against Net Neutrality... WHAT???

Yes, the 3 big ISP are at different levels against Net Neutrality. So, I started to research about it and I found that information in the great web page SaveTheInternet.com.

If you want to read in more details about it just follow the links:

• AT&T: The mechanics of the Deal
• Public pressure puts Comcast under Scrutiny
• Verizon block pro-choice text messaging

So, which ISP should I contract? Sadly, in my region I don't have the option to select Earthlink which is a supporter of Net Neutraliy, so I guess AT&T is my best option instead of keeping my Comcast connection.

Just in case you wonder, the supporters of Net Neutrality according with the FAQ of SaveTheInternet.com are Amazon.com, Earthlink, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Skype and Yahoo.

Thanks for reading.

The Paradox Of Our Age

"The Paradox Of Our Age

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but let sense;
more knowledge but less judgement;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but we have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,
but have less real communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast food but slow digestion;
tall mean but short characters;
steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's time when there is much in the window
but nothing in the room."

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Racing around the world for a better planet!!!

"On 1st March 2008, from Valencia, in Spain, Earthrace will attempt to set a new speed record for a powerboat to circumnavigate the globe running 100% biodiesel, and with a net zero carbon-footprint, in order to increase awareness of the environment and the sustainable use of resources"



Visit their web page: Earthrace

Thanks for reading.