Yeah, right. Do the cable news stations really think they still have credibility? Have they managed to convince themselves that the crap spewing from their gaping maws is actually untainted fact? They've misreported, embellished, and twisted so many stories over the past couple of decades that it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what isn't. I can tell you right now that CNN doesn't give a rat's ass about holding BP accountable for the Gulf oil spill. All they care about is their bottom line. They will report this story whichever way nets them the most viewers and the most money.

I've largely stopped watching the news. I get my information as factual tidbits from raw Internet news feeds. And why not? When you think about it, the BP story can be distilled into a single headline: "BP oil rig explodes, oil leaking into Gulf of Mexico, problem yet unresolved." Done. It's not necessary to have a stone-faced reporter, with a pulsing forehead vein, speaking emphatically into a camera while clips of black sludge belching from an underwater vent loops in the background. What the hell does this do for the average US citizen? Nothing. It just whips people into a frenzy, sows fear & panic, and gets them to keep watching.

News, in it's pure form, is dead, folks. The days of Walter Cronkite are far behind us. No longer does television news seek to educate. Instead it seeks to stir up emotion and draw forth primal reflex - a task that is best left to the fiction wizards in Hollywood.

Well, there's Hollywood. Filmmakers like to glorify the end of the world. The reoccurring theme is that the human race goes to the brink of extinction only to scrape our way back from the edge. Deep Impact and The Day After Tomorrow come to mind. These "apocalyptic" films, despite being entertaining, aren't very accurate. Plus, they don't really show the end of it all. If people survive, shouldn't they simply be called "disaster movies?" Humans do not go extinct and the Earth is still habitable in the end. If you want a real apocalyptic movie, maybe you should watch 1983's The Day After. It's probably the most hopeless and depressing movie I've ever seen. And that's saying something.

It's no wonder that Hollywood makes so many doomsday movies, as there is no shortage of ideas. I'm almost certain that there exists, somewhere on Earth, a blank room. Within this room resides a half-dozen of our most gifted creative minds, except these savants are not working on cures for disease, limitless clean fuel sources, or solutions to hunger. They serve only to devise ways by which mankind can perish. Each day, they scratch their best idea on a shred of papyrus, encapsulate it, and fire it, via vacuum tube, directly into the pop-culture lexicon. Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich each get a carbon copy.

The oddest part is that society eats this stuff up. We love to hear about ways that death may claim us all - and I'm no exception. From the inevitable (the Sun consuming the Earth in 4-5 billion years) to the wildly imaginative (a zombie plague forcing us to each each others brains), people will actually stand in line to see computer-generated reenactments. Why? My theory is that by gazing into the mirror of mortality, we are able to remind ourselves how precarious our lives are. Remembering that the world could be shattered by a colossal chunk of iron speeding through the void of space works wonders at keeping us humble. It teaches us that our family, friends, careers, high-definition televisions, sports cars, and the air we breathe is superfluous. Somewhere deep inside, we need this information because it helps us build perspective. To know pleasure, we must also know pain.

Actually, these LED lights are pretty spiffy. Besides the obvious benefits of less power usage and a lower electric bill, they appear to be much more vibrant than the traditional incandescent lights. A good comparison would be automobile brake lights. The incandescents on a regular car are bright, yet soft, while the LED tail lights on a higher-end vehicle are almost piercing. The LED lights also run far cooler due to their reduced power consumption. The downside is that the strand of lights seems to have some kind of inline resistor, which does get slightly warm. It also the clunkiest thing on the entire strand (comparable to a C-size battery) and can be a challenge to hide when decorating.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. I'll probably save a few dollars on my December energy bill, while providing seasonal merriment for all my neighbors.

While I do share tweets with friends of mine (which also show up in the top-right corner of this website), I largely use Twitter to keep up on news and interesting people. By following SonyPlayStation, I'm able to stay informed about the latest game releases and PS3 firmware updates. Meanwhile, AdagioTeas, keeps me up-to-date on the tea inventory at my favorite online tea retailer. It's actually useful! Who would have thought? My only gripe is that not enough of my friends use Twitter, so I'm largely left reading the tweets of people I don't know on a personal basis.

Because of the increasing usefulness of Twitter, I found myself requiring tools that would circumvent my increasing need to visit the website a hundred times per day. For the longest time, I used an iPhone app called Twitteriffic ($5). This worked fine for my limited use, but as my needs increased, I found myself wanting more - especially an application for my desktop computer. And so, about three weeks ago, the great Twitter software shakedown began.

At first, the field was large. For the iPhone, I was considering TweetDeck, Tweetie 2, Twitterific, and Echofon. The desktop computer side of things was a bit smaller with just TweetDeck and Echofon. At first, the selection was whittled down quickly: I found the desktop version of TweetDeck far too complicated and annoying, so Echofon easily won out. On the flipside, I found the iPhone version of Echofon to be a bit on the light side, so that was dropped almost immediately. Twitterific held onto the crown for about two weeks, until I decided that TweetDeck and Echofon offered far more features, while being easier to use... and that is where I stand right now. I'm still debating between TweetDeck and Tweetie, as both apps are almost equally weighted with pros and cons. If someone held a gun to my head and told me to pick one, I might lean towards Tweetie, simply because I like it's minimalist design, but both apps are otherwise in a virtual dead heat.

  

Left to right: Echofon, TweetDeck, and Tweetie 2
(Click to Enlarge)

That about concludes my Twitter software spiel. I would review each individual program and explain their merits, but I think this blog post would end up being a solid 2000+ words in length. Just know that I'm a picky guy and each Twitter client is examined for their presentation, color scheme, ease of use, and chunkiness (in other words, less bloated = better). If nothing else, I hope this list will help to point someone in the right direction if they're looking for a good Twitter client.

Also, if you're a Twitter user, keep your eyes peeled for FlyTags. That's me.