2008 will last one second longer tomorrow night to account for a miniscule slowing in the earth’s rotation, and to keep GMT on the nose.  Interesting enough reason for me to click on this link, but what I found surprised me.  Apparently there is quite a heated battle brewing over GMT vs Atomic Time, pitting nation against nation as bitter rivals in the epic battle to control time!

Although the time will pass in the blink of an eye, Judah Levine, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., predicts the change will make him a very busy man starting about 5 p.m. Mountain Time. As part of the institute’s Time and Frequency Division, he’ll be helping to work out the bugs that follow.

“There’s always somebody who doesn’t get it right,” Levine said. “It never fails.”

Britons seemed less concerned about the remote prospect of having tea at 3 a.m. than the notion of leaving a France-based body in control of the world’s time.

“I think there’s some kind of historical pride we might feel in Britain about Greenwich being the point around which time is measured,” 50-year-old telecoms executive Stephen Mallinson said as he waited to board aEurostar train for Paris at London’s St. Pancras Station.

“But in practice, does it make a difference? No.”

At the Royal Observatory, 53-year-old homemaker Susie Holt was adjusting her wristwatch to match the digital display above the meridian. She said it would be a pity if GMT were made obsolete. Her daughter, 15-year-old Kirsty, was more forthright.

“We don’t want the French to control time,” she said. “They might get it wrong or something.”

So much trouble over just a second?

Read the entire article here.

Senate President Michael Waddoups says yes. Lisa A Marcy of the Utah Hospitality Association will join us tonight to respond.  An invitation has also been extended to Senator Waddoups.

-Tom

Tonight’s edition of KVNU’s For the People will feature Tom Grover, Ryan Yonk and three hours of fun. We’ll be live from 4-7 p.m.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARMgjdbY93o&eurl=http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/12/the-doctor-is-in-cyberspace.html&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Paul Mero is in town tonight, so we’ll be having a KVNU For the People family dinner at 6 p.m. tonight at The Factory. If you’re reading this, you’re invited.

Be there or be square.

With the site redesign, the site is a fixed width and is made to display at 1280 x 1024…do we need to change this, or can you live with it?

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Your favorite Web sites may soon have ratings much like movies if England’s Culture Secretary gets his way and is able to get Barack Obama’s administration on board with his plan.

Saying there’s a greater public interest in rolling out censorship on the Internet and forcing ISPs to provide “kid safe” surfing, the Culture Secretary plans to unveil a laundry list of things that can be done at the first of the year to make his vision a reality.

Some of these ideas, frankly, sound pretty scary.

“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”

And…

“If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.”

I’ll give the Brit this: Libel is an issue on the Web, but it is far from the world-ending, Chicken Little disaster that many have predicted it would be for years. The dangers of bringing any type of government restrictions to the Internet are far greater than the dangers presented by the Internet, in my opinion.

After reading this article, I actually started thinking of an interesting comparison. We talk so much about guns and our rights to own guns in America. If the government even threatens to take that right away, there is an immediate reaction from gun advocates and owners (as we’re seeing now in the form of gun grabbing). Do we not view access to the Internet and information as as big a right, at this point, as gun ownership? If there were a government threat to start restricting our access to the Internet and information, would we see a vicious reaction from online anarchists and hackers?

I think we would. And the damage from that would be far greater than anything we “Internet deviants” could construe otherwise.

-Tyler

Merry Christmas to everyone in the KVNU For the People family.

Your friends, Tyler, Jason, Marc

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Pat Robertson criticizes Bush, praises Obama « – Blogs from CNN.com.

In an illustration of the point that President-elect Obama is doing a good job in his pre-Inauguration days in showing that he will likely govern from the middle, he’s received a nod of support from one of the most conservative men on the planet: Pat Robertson.

While at the same time saying President Bush has done a less than stellar job, especially with rebuilding Iraq, the economy and Katrina, Robertson said he’s pleased thus far with Obama.

Interesting to hear that, but it’s another piece of information that can’t make the extreme left happy.

-Tyler

Two snowmobilers killed in Utah avalanche – CNN.com.

Nothing bugs me more than careless, inaccurate, blatantly untrue reporting.

And maybe I missed something here, please, correct me if I’m wrong, but when I was reading CNN.com’s story about the avalanche that killed two men in Providence Canyon, I came across this bit that just annoyed the heck out of me:

CNN’s Scott Spoerry, who grew up in the area, said a recent avalanche knocked out the water supply for the city of Logan’s 47,000 residents.

“Every year, there’s a few avalanches,” he said.

Can someone please tell me when this “recent” avalanche happened? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t remember it happening.

-Tyler

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

PROVIDENCE — Two snowmobilers died Wednesday in an avalanche in Cache County, the sheriff there said.

The snowmobilers were riding on Logan Peak. The avalanche was reported about 10:30 a.m. by someone communicating on a cell phone, said Sheriff Lynn Nelson. It was not clear whether that person died or if there were survivors in the avalanche.

A command post has been established in Providence Canyon. A helicopter flew one person off the mountain about 11:30 a.m.

Further details were not immediately available Wednesday.

The Utah Avalanche Center, http://utahavalanchecenter.org/, said there was considerable to high danger of slides throughout the state. The center warned against backcountry travel in central to northern Utah, including the Uintah Mountains and the Bear River Range.

2 dead in Cache County avalanche – Salt Lake Tribune.

—–

PLEASE, PLEASE for the love of all, STAY OUT OF THE MOUNTAINS people. The conditions are absolutely treacherous right now, and I have no idea what compels people that they are able to outsmart Mother Nature, but this is NOT the time to go into the backcountry.

This is an absolute tragedy to happen on Christmas Eve, but is made even worse by the fact that it was an absolutely preventable tragedy.

-Tyler

In Google we trust? | The Open Road – CNET News.

I’ll admit, I love Google. Sometimes, its growth, however, may be scary.

What do you think?

For Immediate Release: December 22, 2008
Contacts: Celia Alario, 310.721.6517, Julianne Fitzgerald, 435.452.8177

Statement by Tim DeChristopher, Bidder #70 at Controversial BLM
Oil and Gas Auction

DeChristopher’s Act of Civil Disobedience Has BLM and Oil Industry Reeling

Salt Lake City, UT~ Tim DeChristopher made headlines Friday after signing up as a bidder at the Bureau of Land Management’s auction and successfully winning oil and gas leases for some 13 parcels, covering over 22,000 acres of public lands in southern Utah, worth over $1.7 million. After other industry bidders became suspicious of DeChristopher, the auction was temporarily halted and he was removed from the room. After questioning by BLM officers he acknowledged that he had no intention of paying for the parcels.

DeChristopher, a 27 year University of Utah student attended the BLM’s auction December 19th, and says he took the action as an act of civil disobedience, hoping to take some of the parcels off the auction block as a temporary means of protecting the areas, which have significant wilderness qualities according to the BLM’s own reports.

“It was clear to me that this was a fraudulent auction, and a fraud against the American people, and in response I chose to take this act of civil disobedience.” said DeChirstopher, upon hearing the news from the US Attorney’s office Monday. “What drove me to act was the ineffective nature of the environmental movement—myself included—over the last 20 years. It’s time for more critical action from people around the nation to insure a livable future.”

The auction, announced on Election Day, has been hotly contested by many, including the National Park Service, members of Congress and Obama’s transition team, and both regional and national environmental groups who have called it a last minute ‘fire sale’ giveaway by the Bush Administration to the oil and gas industry.

Since his actions on Friday DeChristopher has been deluged hundreds of emails and phone calls of support. He says the outpouring of positive feedback solidifies his faith in the American public, and calls on those who’ve sent words of encouragement to commit to take action with him in Washington DC next spring.

“It’s been inspiring to have so many people stepping up to stand in solidarity with me, and I want to ask everyone who has taken the time to call, email or comment online to meet me in Washington DC on March 2nd at the protest being called for by Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry and others, when we as a nation answer Al Gore’s call for civil disobedience.” DeChristopher said.

DeChristopher will continue blogging at www.oneutah.org. A legal defense fund has been established by the Center for Water Advocacy at: http://www.wateradvocacy.org
###

In an exclusive interview with Human Events magazine, Sarah Palin says, among other things (including being compared to Andrew Jackson) that she was mishandled by the McCain campaign.

The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts?

But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that’s how you get your message out to the electorate.

I don’t know if I buy this. In fact, I’m chalking it up to another case of Sarah Palin not “getting it.” If she was withheld from the press by the McCain campaign, it was because she fumbled the ball in most of the instances that she was put in front of the camera. Certainly, if she were a valuable asset to have in front of the media consistently, she’d have been speaking to reporters more. But when she pulls things like she did with the Katie Couric interview (“I read all of them”) the McCain camp had no choice but to hold her back.

-Tyler

Yahoo! Sports has a column today about a new method for sports fans to report unruly fans.

Continuing the trend of tattling in our society, most NFL teams are now allowing fans to text message information about offensive or unruly fans to security, giving security the opportunity to deal with the potential problem fans.

It’s sad to see this trend continue, as it’s bad enough that many people are more inclined to call the cops on their neighbors than to confront them with issues they have.

The column writer brings up a number of flaws in the system, however. You just know that people are going to abuse this system.

Furthermore, I’ve always been one to argue that people have a right to NOT be offended. If you are worried about taking kids (or yourself) to a wholesome atmosphere, then a sporting event is probably not the best place to go.

-Tyler