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That’s right — any Mark Steyn merchandise or books purchased today will mean money donated to the legal defence funds of Canadian bloggers Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Kate MacMillan, Mark and Connie of Free Dominion, and National Post columnist Johnathan Kay against the lawsuit filed by Richard Warman. These men and women have been vocal, vital advocates in the cause of freedom of expression rights in Canada, and both need and deserve our support, O Reader.

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Interesting article from John Robson, which gives some context and meat to observations I’ve made before in various comment-level discussions here on the site. Namely, he points out that when governments tend to fail in their efforts to promote “environmentally friendly” initiatives, private enterprise usually succeeds.

It will upset others that companies are succeeding where governments often fail. The European Union’s environment commissioner just admitted that biofuels promote rainforest destruction. Legally mandated efficient light bulbs may give some people skin problems. The failure of governments to build nuclear plants has contributed massively to greenhouse-gas production. But over there in the private sector, it’s just progress progress progress. Wretched, isn’t it?

The progress is enormous. That digital dictaphones use less power not only means fewer dead batteries full of weird metals chucked into landfills, it also means fewer new batteries manufactured then schlepped about using fossil fuels. Thes we store s on require far fewer resources to manufacture, and generate far less trash when they’re history, than LPs, spools or the aforementioned three drawers’ worth of microcassettes. (And just wait until I discover external hard drives.) Fourth, a subtle refinement, early digital dictaphones required proprietary software CDs and connection cables that also had to be manufactured, transported and, one day, discarded; newer ones send standard files through standard USB ports or wireless. Fifth, we e-mail, FTP and stream this stuff instead of couriering or mailing physical copies.

If you’ve ever been in a darkroom while “film” was being “developed” (Google it, kids) the stench of sodium thiosulphate tells you instantly that digital photos convey at least equal benefits. (And how, incidentally, do you dispose of old photos you no longer want? Landfill? Burn? Yuck. Whereas now it’s right-click, delete, empty recycle bin, goodbye ex-mother-in-law.)

Some greens advocate going back to a time when the human “footprint” on the environment was smaller. But we actually have to go forward, technologically speaking. The “footprint” of a portable cassette device was far larger than that of a digital player, while a medieval monk would have had to lug some nit with a lute on his back to enjoy Greensleeves while he jogged, to say nothing of plucking geese, skinning sheep and mixing who knows what gunk to write down the sheet music.

If you think about it, this makes a good deal of sense. Progress and technical innovation, especially in the field of consumable products of almost every variety, are inherently driven toward greater efficiency. That’s the nature of the give and take of supply and demand — consumers want devices that perform a wider variety of roles, and different companies will race to meet that demand. The companies that will thrive, and the products that will survive, are the ones that offer the best balance between price and capability — this is why the iPod dominates the digital music market despite the fact that there are dozens of brands of mp3 players out there.

But the principle is applicable in a broader sense as well. Obviously, not everyone buys like this, but the average comsumer looking for a new vehicle will tend to want (especially given fuel prices these days) to buy a vehicle that gets better gas mileage. That means that the pressure is put, because of consumer demand, to develop more efficient automobile engines that burn fuel at a more efficient rate. That also (surprise, surprise!) has the effect of reducing emissions.

It’s no coincidence that the Western nation with one of the best environmental track records in terms of emissions controls in the last decade is also the nation that has been enjoying, for most of said decade, a major economic boom: the United States of America. Almost as a matter of course, greater efficiency of products and diminished levels of environmental impact necessarily follow prosperity.

Of course, this effect can go too far as well, and I have in the past been highly critical of the situation that megachains like have created by reducing price points to so low a level that it is easier and cheper to throw away a defective electronic device and buy a replacement for it than it is to have said device repaired. I think that’s a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction, crossing the like from progress and efficiency into wasteful decadence.

But on the flip side, I can’t deny that private industry seems to be getting things right where most governments are getting things wrong, in terms of driving us all toward the use of products and methods which, as a side benefit of their profitability, are more efficient and environmentally friendly.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)

A while ago, I bought myself an iPod Photo.  It’s a great little device, which I call Son of Smalloclees(being that I named my first iPod, a Generation 1 I bought some two years previous, Smalloclees).  The sound quality is exceptional, it’s small and portable, and best of all: it stores and displays in sharp resolution and colour the over 2000 photos I have taken with my digital camera thus far.

One common criticism I hear from people concerning iPods in particular, and most portable audio players in general, is that they hold so much (let’s face it, 40 gigabytes of hard drive can hold a lot of 5 megabyte .mp3s, and even more 4.5 megabyte equivalent .m4as - that’s the file extension for Apple’s new AAC audio codec, which tends to undercut the memory usage of .mp3 by up to a megabyte) that it would be impossible, or at least highly improbable, that an iPod owner would ever listen to all the songs they have stored on their device.

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CRUSADE-DATE #3: At the end of the day for June 8, 2005, the crusade has progressed thus far:

• Total number of yet unplayed music tracks: 2226
• Total play duration of unplayed music tracks: approximately 6.2 days

Finally broke through the 7-day mark! There’s less than a week of music left in the music. And of course, I keep finding songs I love, so my list of 5- and 4-star songs continues to grow!

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In a certain sense, this is true - we all have songs we prefer, and we’re likely to listen to those tunes more often than other tunes we’re maybe not so keen on.  At the same time, randomizer functions on any media player, whether CD or .mp3, tend to favour certain songs and track numbers more than others - that’s just the nature of pseudo-random generators, and a consequence of the fact that, as yet, it is impossible for any digital system to generate a truly random number that cannot, in some way, be predicted.

But I’m never one to let my critics have the last word.  They raise a valid point, and so this iPod owner has set out on a crusade to prove that not only is it possible for an iPod owner to listen to his entire media library, but that it has been done and documented!

Here’s the statistics on what is on the iPod right now:

• Total number of media tracks on the iPod: 5263 (includes a mix of music tracks and audio books)
• Total number of Harry Potter audio book tracks on the iPod: 420 (most of the first four books, segmented by chapter or part thereof)
• Total number of music tracks on the iPod:4843
• Total play duration of all music tracks: approximately 13.5 days

For the purpose of this crusade, only the music tracks will be considered for play.  The Harry Potter audiobooks are kind of a special case, and not really the sort of thing this iPod user would listen to in casual daily iPod use.  Now, we also have to consider some other bits of information.  For example, there are songs on the iPod that I have listened to already.  So another quick search, this time based on play-count for music tracks, reveals:

• Total number of yet unplayed music tracks: 2958 (courtesy of a raid of a friend’s laptop that boosted my library by some 3000 tracks)
• Total play duration of unplayed music tracks: approximately 8.2 days

So there you have it - the scope of the crusade.  A little over a week’s worth of music to listen through.  Fortunately, my 8.5-hour workdays are at ATCO Pipelines, and my employers permit employees to listen to music in their cubicles, so this shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks to finish.  I will post periodic updates as I get closer to my goal.

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CRUSADE-DATE #1: At the end of the day for May 27, 2005, the crusade has progressed thus far:

• Total number of yet unplayed music tracks: 2854
• Total play duration of unplayed music tracks: approximately 7.9 days

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CRUSADE-DATE #2: At the end of the day for June 1, 2005, the crusade has progressed thus far:

• Total number of yet unplayed music tracks: 2653
• Total play duration of unplayed music tracks: approximately 7.4 days

Interestingly enough, this has been a somewhat profitable crusade. As I listen to the music, I will use a built-in feature of the iPod interface to assign a rating to songs I like, either 4 or 5 stars (I don’t bother, at this time, with going less than that). When I undertook this crusade, my count of songs (there’s a playlist) with a 4 or 5 star rating was 802. It’s now up to 834. I’m happy to report, then, that I’ve discovered some tracks on the iPod that previously I would not have been aware of as awesome.

The crusade offers up spoils of victory!