“I endorse it. I think it was correct,” King said. “Contrary to what many have said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision. They have been motivated, I think, by little more than the wish to embarrass the Supreme Court. When I saw Brother Wallace going up to Washington to testify against the decision at the congressional hearings, it only strengthened my conviction that the decision was right.”

Rob Boston also notes that, in a time when some states still made it illegal to buy, sell or use birth control, Dr. King was in favor of greater access to it and was a strong progressive when it came to economics, health care, and poverty. He was also, of course, a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War.

That the House of Representatives declare 2012 as the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania in recognition of both the formative influence of the Bible on our Commonwealth and nation and our national need to study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures.

Read resolution 535 and choke on your own bile here.

I’m all for people reading the Bible in order to understand what’s actually in it. I have a feeling that it may wake a few people from their ignorant Judao-Christian slumber. But is it really a necessity for people in our country to accept this mythos as part of our governance model?

Saccone doesn’t even try to take a secular route in explaining it:

“As not only Pennsylvania, but the United States, continues to face great tests and challenges, House Resolution 535 serves as a reminder that we must look to our faith in God and the Holy Scripture to provide us with the strength, wisdom and courage to conquer these great trials,” said Saccone. “All over the Pennsylvania Capitol, one can easily see the tremendous influence that Christianity and the Bible have had over our founders and predecessors. These images and quotes illustrating the beliefs and morals that have shaped our great Commonwealth must never be forgotten.”

So the next time we’re faced with horrible adversity, let’s all pray for it to magically go away. Yeah, that works. Has anyone noticed that when people pray for these selfish miracles, their prayers go unanswered? If I were wrong, we’d live in a world where everyone’s favorite sports team wins every game every year, and we’d all be 30 pounds lighter and having sex with super-models atop our piles of lottery winnings.

And if 2012 is the ‘Year of the Bible’, what was every single year before this? Should we expect a ‘Year of the Koran’ in the future? In its own way it, too, shaped our nation. Personally, I’d like to see a ‘Year of the Kama Sutra’. That’s something I could get behind.

But the worst part is that the resolution passed 193-0; without a single voice of dissent. So foreign theocracies are bad, but good ol’ fashioned American theocracy is just what we need! Yeah, the bible can help bring back the good old days of slavery, subjugation of women, and pork-less Sundays. Unbelievable.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation can’t believe it either.

“Our constitution grants sovereignty not to a deity or a ‘holy book,’ but to ‘We, the People.’ There is no reference to God, the bible, the Ten Commandments or Jesus in the U.S. Constitution, just as there are no references to ‘consent of the governed,’ ‘civil liberties’ or ‘democracy’ in the bible. Those who have truly studied the bible realize that it is a moral quagmire, a behavioral grab bag, which has been used to justify automatic rule, tyranny, slavery, the degradation of women and gays, child abuse, war, atrocity and mayhem,” noted FFRF.

So I got my minute of fame, but it was in Canada. Does that even count? I wonder if I’m still big there. Anyway, you can listen to the one-minute spot here: The Zipcat Pro Radio Spot.

Seriously, Cee Lo Green? Changing the lyrics to John Lennon’s “Imagine” is wrong on countless levels. Let’s focus on two.

1. Artistic Integrity. You don’t change an artist’s work. And unless Josh Krajcik on FOX’s “X Factor” is a “hot-blooded woman”, he deliberately sang Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” keeping said reference to being female in order to maintain this integrity.
2. Intended Message. John Lennon generally had a secular (though spiritual) message in his works. This one, in particular, was a message that the abolishment of all organized religions would yield a better, more peaceful world. Cee Lo Green’s is the opposite, and wrong I might add. As the artist, only Lennon has the right to make such a fundamental change.

It’s hard to tell if this was a gaff by someone who simply didn’t know or remember the lyrics well enough, or if it was a deliberate attempt to pander to those in the viewing audience who believe in Christian mythology. It could have even been an attempt by Cee Lo Green to change the lyrics deliberately such that it became more religiously inclusive. Perhaps he thought that he knew better than John Lennon, with regard to how a message of peace and love should be delivered within the context of a song by John Lennon.

Hitchens was someone whose boisterous, peremptive, larger-than-life personality seemed poised to overtake any illness or challenge, regardless of how ridiculous and illogical that may have seemed to the various portions of the brain that provide the faculties of critical thinking and reasoning. That’s how powerful his intellectual contributions were to our world. He made us think, no, believe that he was a Homerian hero; a fixture, not a man.

But he was a man. An extraordinarily gifted man.

Many articles have been published before and after his passing which discuss his ability to smoke and drink us all under the table while effortlessly writing a few thousand words on the most complex topic, straight from his mind, at the speed of typing; never a braggart, a friend to every man. I won’t (and can’t) adequately discuss these things. They’ve been covered to the point of banality. What I will say is that he is one of a very few who truly mesmerize me in print and in debate. His ability for discourse equaled his ability to think. That mind. That voice. What a powerful, Orwellian combination. He had the intellectual equivalent of a nuclear arsenal, and he wielded it only for the enlightenment of those around him.

To describe him further risks the use of cant, overused and mostly meaningless metaphor. But his life and impact on lives makes the use of such phrases strangely appropriate. And so, he was a transformative figure. I’m sorry to see him leave us. But I’m equally happy to have been able to see him actively transform those lives, of which one was my own. He once said, “Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” It was his life; his raison d’etre. He feared the inability to write more than chemotherapy, more than radiation treatments, more than losing his voice, and more than the threat of an impending death. So he wrote, and wrote, and wrote, through all of it, right up through his last days, transforming lives every step of the way.

His legacy will surely be one of continued transformation through his many works, as it should be. Would he have it any other way?

I recently read your recommendation concerning the complete ban of mobile phone use while vehicles are being driven. I’ve even heard talk of the potential use of technology to disable mobile phones entirely while a vehicle is in motion.

The evidence for the dangers of distracted driving are quite compelling. One such statistic from the NHTSA reads: “Some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year involved distracted drivers, although the actual number may be far higher”. They went on to note that this is an epidemic. “At any given daylight moment, some 13.5 million drivers are on hand-held phones”, according to a study released last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

I couldn’t agree more. Even hands-free use of mobile devices is distracting to a driver, though many might argue to the contrary.

But you’re not going far enough. Below, I have crafted “The Argentini Plan”, in which I seek to eliminate all significant distractions for drivers. My plan is based on research, as well as decades of experience driving on public roadways.

The Argentini Plan

The following shall be banned from use while a vehicle is in motion.

Embedded vehicle distractions. Any controls on the dashboard or console are to be banned as they distract the driver, taking their eyes and/or attention off the road for seconds at a time. These controls include, but are not limited to: air conditioning system and vent controls, radio/mp3/CD/DVD players, speedometers (and RPM displays), trip computers, GPS and navigation systems, fuel gauges. Other features of the typical vehicle that are distractions include side and rear-view mirrors, glove compartments, center consoles, door compartments.

Third party vehicle distractors: Additional significant distraction is caused by the following, which should be banned from being within a vehicle when in motion: passengers, pets, drivers who haven’t had enough sleep, drivers who don’t have a license, drivers who cannot properly control their vehicle (terrible drivers and those with sufficient driving impairment), thoughts not centered around the act of driving or desired destination.

Likewise, the following should be banned from being within the driver’s reach inside the vehicle while it is in motion: prepared foods, beverages, makeup, reading material, portable electronic devices, eyewear, hats, cigarettes (and sources of ignition), purses and other containers for personal belongings, medical supplies, groceries/packages, umbrellas.

So let’s get serious. Mobile phones are a cause of significant distraction to a driver who uses them improperly (a.k.a. while driving). But so are many other accepted amenities built into cars. For example, there have been cases where a driver was in a head-on collision with another vehicle simply because they glanced down at the speedometer to verify that they weren’t exceeding the speed limit in a residential area. Seriously.

So what’s the real answer? I think it’s fine to recommend and even enforce some common sense behavior, like not talking on a phone while driving, not texting, and so forth. There are short-sighted (or dim-witted) and selfish people who need this recommendation. But to cater to the absolute lowest common denominator by banning entire device use while driving, when they have perfectly legitimate uses for an active driver (e.g. GPS), is madness. That kind of thought process leads to the complete ban of personal driving privileges.

Perhaps you (the NTSB) should take all the time and energy devoted to the “madness”, and aim it squarely at technology and auto manufacturers to encourage them to build additional safety features into vehicles. Google has the patent on cars that drive themselves. Today. They have already logged over 100,000 miles of driver-less travel in California with existing technology. Many luxury vehicles already feature the ability to detect an impending impact and adjust the car’s trajectory to avoid it, or to alert the driver who may be falling asleep at the wheel. Wouldn’t it be great if all our vehicles could help to protect us from accident and injury in this fashion, as airbags have done?

Sincerely,
Michael Argentini

Below is the format of the command call using Terminal.

sudo cd /Developer/usr/bin/
./SetFile -d '10/29/2011 12:00:00 PM' /path/nameoffile.txt

One trick you can use to add the filename to the command is to enter everything through the date, and then drag-and-drop the file onto the Terminal window and it will append the path and filename to the command line.

You can use another program called GetFileInfo to obtain the modification date.

sudo cd /Developer/usr/bin/
./GetFileInfo /path/nameoffile.txt

Bluetooth
If you use Bluetooth to connect your phone to your car, when in your house make sure that the phone is disconnected from your car. Surprisingly, some iPhones are able to remain connected to a parked car for great distances. This can drain power from your phone pretty quickly. I saw this happen with my iPhone 4S, losing one percentage point every few minutes when in standby mode. My guess is that the signal is weak at greater distances, requiring more power and/or polling of the signal between the two, thus eating more power. Once I turned off Bluetooth on the iPhone, the battery life returned to normal.

Geolocation, Find My Friends, System Services
The GPS in the phone uses a large amount of power, and as such, shouldn’t be used too frequently. Most apps that feature geolocation turn it on briefly, grab the location, and shut it down. But sometimes apps leave it on accidentally, lock up while it’s on, or just use it too frequently.

New services, like Find My Friends require the use of the GPS more often, so disabling it when not needed is the only workaround here, short of uninstalling it entirely. This feature should not be confused with Find My iPhone, which is a completely separate service that runs in the background and uses much less power.

Many people aren’t aware that there are hidden system services that use location services, but don’t display an icon in the status bar of the phone. Sometimes they get stuck and leave the GPS on. And some of them may not need to be enabled at all, based on your preference. To see these services, follow the Settings path Location Services > System Services. If you suspect one of these services is stuck, turn each one off then back on to reset it. My personal preference is to turn off location services for Location-Based iAds. Some people also turn it off for Compass Calibration. Either way, at the bottom of the screen you should turn on Status Bar Icon so that you are aware of when these services are using location services. When I did this, I realized that the Traffic service was keeping my location services on constantly. Since I don’t need to use real-time traffic or navigation very often, I turned off location services access to this service as well. Problem solved.

Identifying Bad Apps and Services
Another way to determine if a running app or service is sucking up resources, which in turn sucks up battery power, is to run an analysis on running apps using a suitable tool. One of the better ones is System Activity Monitor. This is a utility similar to OS X’s Activity Monitor, which lists the processes your iOS device is using as well as indicates, in real time, how much processing power is being used. Launch the app and tap the Processes button at the bottom of the screen. You should see the processor graph. If it appears to jump into the high percentage range too often (e.g. every few seconds or so), you have too much activity which will kill battery power. If you see the service CrashReport running near the top, the device is probably in a crash loop of some kind. usually one of the other top entries is the app which is crashing. At the very least you’ll see which apps are the most aggressive with regard to processor and network use, and you can kill the app, turn off some of its automatic settings, or uninstall it entirely.

But wait, there’s more…

Upgraded iDevices
Sometimes upgrading a device to a new operating system causes issues. This can be due to many factors, including a bad upgrade process implementation, a botched or interrupted upgrade, and incompatible settings or apps. When possible, it’s best to update the device cleanly without restoring any apps or settings from your backup. At the very least, this will get you to “square one”, which is an easier place from which to determine which apps or settings are causing a problem as you install or configure them one at a time.

iCloud Services
If you choose to use always-on cloud services, the device will need more power to automatically sync on a frequent basis. You may want to disable some services you don’t need. For example, iCloud can sync many types of data including mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, and more. Some of these may not be necessary.

Corrupt Accounts and Crashing Apps
Sometimes a corrupt contact or calendar entry, or similar problem, can cause an error to occur when syncing to a remote server, like iCloud. When this happens, the device will continue to try and sync repeatedly, which in turn sucks up battery power. Sometimes the underlying settings for the account are simply corrupted from a previous crash or iOS upgrade process. You can determine this by viewing the device logs.

To do so, tap through your settings in the order General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostics & Usage Data. If you see a fair number of CrashReport entries, open them one by one and try to determine if they are related to a particular app or service that is trying to sync with a remote server. If so, remove the offending account or accounts and add them one by one from scratch. If you see that a particular app is crashing too often, you may want to remove it from your device (or just not use it) until a new version is released.

Siri
One feature that people have reported to use additional battery power is Siri’s Raise to Speak feature. This enables the ability to put the phone to your ear when not on a call and speak commands without holding down the home button. You can turn this off by navigating to the Setting via the path General > Siri.

iTunes Store (and 3rd party) Automatic Downloads
Some apps (built-in and 3rd party) plug into the iTunes Store automatic download service. If you navigate to the Store settings, you’ll see options for automatically downloading purchases from the iTunes store, but you’ll also see apps like the NY Times. Disable the automatic downloads you don’t need or want.

Behavioral Methods and Common Sense
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning some of the basics. These are common sense methods and behavioral changes that will increase your battery life without having to necessarily “go without” features or functionality.

Set your screen to automatic brightness, and drag the slider as low as you can for readability to set the lowest automatic brightness. That display uses quite a bit of power and simply adjusting this can make a world of difference.

Disable Wifi when you leave your house or place of work (or place of wifi). Otherwise, the device will continuously try to connect to any Wifi access point it finds. Imagine driving through a neighborhood where every other house has a base station. Your phone will go crazy trying to index them all, let alone make a connection. You can also disable Bluetooth if it’s not needed.

Configure your accounts to check for mail, calendar entries and other data less frequently. This applies to accounts that “fetch” data, not ones that use “push”. Navigate to Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and change the interval to a longer period of time. You can also change them to Manual, which means you have to launch the apps and tell them to check for new data each time.

Turn off the audio equalizer.

Visit Apple’s battery life tips page for the official scoop at http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

More Extreme Measures
Need that extra few minutes of power? Here are some more extreme measures that will extend your battery life at the expense of some key functionality.

Turn off cellular data. If you’re connected to a Wifi network you shouldn’t need cellular data. To disable it go to General > Network and turn off Cellular Data.

Turn on Airplane mode in low coverage areas. Note that you can still use Wifi when in Airplane mode. Just turn Wifi back on after setting the device to Airplane mode.

Turn off location services entirely.

Power down your phone when you don’t need it for extended periods of time, like during a meeting. Hold down the power button until the device prompts you to “Slide to power off”, and do so. This could also be filed under the “Basics” section (above) but it just doesn’t occur to people that they will survive without a phone for more than a few minutes.

Any other tips and ideas? Use the contact form to send them to me and I will post any that are useful.

The problem I had was that when my Windows Experience Index was calculated, the virtual hard disk was performing too quickly, and ReadyBoost was disabled by the system. I would open the properties panel of the USB flash drive and see the message below in the ReadyBoost tab.

This device cannot be used for ReadyBoost.

ReadyBoost, is not enabled on this computer because the system disk’s performance is high, as measured by the Windows Experience Index Disk score. This computer would not benefit from ReadyBoost.

The Windows Experience Index didn’t account for the fact that I’m in a virtual machine and disk performance varies wildly at times.

After searching high and low, and even trying to fudge my Windows Experience Index disk score, I found success by simply opening the “Services” MMC panel (in the Administrative Tools control panel), configuring the “SuperFetch” service to Autostart at boot, and then starting it manually. Once running, I was able to open the properties window for the USB flash drive and ReadyBoost was re-enabled.

Here’s the rub. His wife is Episcopalian. When they had children they had to decide what belief system they’d impose on them. Yes, “impose”. Children cannot choose a religion. And the reality of childhood religion is that there are no “Mormon children” or “Episcopalian children”. There are only “children of Mormon parents” or “children of Episcopalian parents”. But like so many supers, the Huntsmans don’t understand this concept. So when asked about this on a recent Piers Morgan Tonight show interview on CNN, Jon Huntsman explained that he and his wife decided to teach their children the best aspects of both religions, essentially making their children what I would call “Mormopalians”.

Does either religion condone this bastardization of their doctrines? Are we truly free to mix-n-match what we choose from various holy books and roll our own religion? I’m sure that L. Ron Hubbard (founder of the Church of Scientology) would emphatically respond “yes!” Certainly any fundamental Christian or Mormon would answer “no” to this question. But they would also tell you, as would any fundamentalist, that all other variations of their faith are invalid because they don’t follow strict doctrine. I would argue that even fundamentalists don’t follow the doctrine in its most strict form. For example, conservative and orthodox Judaism doesn’t follow through with killing one of their followers for eating pork on the sabbath.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not recommending that the supers start following through with every rule, punishment and judgement in their holy texts. Though, I must say that it would be fun to watch them try to figure out which to exercise when they conflict, mostly because they so often do. My point is that these books were written, translated, transcribed, edited, and reassembled by people who thought thunder was an angry deity and the common cold was a demonic possession. I think that deep down many of the supers realize this, but are either too lazy to put thought into their belief systems, or prescribe to a particular religion for its social benefits.

My hope is that the latter group would realize that there are ways to socialize or otherwise connect with people without such outright dishonesty or pretense. For example, a political candidate telling conservative Christian voters that they don’t believe in the voters’ religion, but they do share many (or all) of the voters’ social and economic values. Or meeting new friends at a fundraiser, convention, hobbyist gathering, or the like, instead of joining a church choir.

And I would hope that the former group of people (and surely the largest) will stop and spend the time to think about and challenge their beliefs, and make a conscious decision as to what they believe based on the information we have today, rather than let inertia carry them through a life of guilt and ignorance because a magical land awaits them after death. This life and this universe are too amazing and miraculous to ignore. They deserve better.