Brian Gongol
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The government there is insisting that power companies restore electricity to the hardest-hit regions...by the end of March.
![Socialism Doesn't Work](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/commies.png)
Florida law prohibits the use of surveillance cameras (like red-light cameras) for the issuance of traffic tickets. That's a good policy. But at least two towns are so interested in bringing in money via traffic fines (one has brought in $300,000 so far) that they're using traffic cameras to issue "civil infractions" instead of traffic tickets. Not only is it an example of Orwellian double-speak, it's also a spooky reminder of just how cheap our privacy really is to some public officials. There are much better ways to improve traffic safety than by installing cameras everywhere -- at red lights, for instance, all it takes to reduce T-bone crashes is to make a slight adjustment to the timing cycle of the lights. And let's not forget that adding red-light cameras, for instance, actually increases the number of rear-end crashes in some places. But instead of using common sense and some simple engineering to make life safer, public officials in a lot of places seem intent on sleepwalking straight into a surveillance society, in which everything you do is monitored by some "authority." Benjamin Franklin would be apoplectic.
![Science and Technology](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/sci.png)
Given China's explosive growth in energy consumption (and India's, too), we should probably be thinking right now about what we'll do when oil reaches $200 a barrel
![Science and Technology](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/sci.png)
The likely political climate in Washington following this next election will probably include a lot of enthusiasts for more government regulation and intervention in business. The Internet, meanwhile, has been free to develop over the last few years mostly outside the scope of regulation -- which has in turn meant lots of good things for consumers. But if the regulatory juggernaut comes to play, the whole universe of technological progress could find itself moving a lot slower.
![Threats and Hazards](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/threats.png)
The state, Bihar, has almost 83 million residents -- which makes it larger than Germany and all but 14 other countries in the entire world. But once people start to lose their faith in a reasonable system of justice and begin to handle matters extralegally through violence, a dozen events can easily cascade into many more.