I have been following Euro 2008, the European football championships. On Saturdays and Sundays I can watch the games live, and I’ve recorded a few of the weekday games (airing in the middle of the work day here in the USA) for late-night viewing pleasure. The main reason for this post, really, is to play with embedding media in a post. I just copied the code and pasted it below:

[Unfortunately, the flash object or whatever it was is now gone.  But I still catch an EPL or UCL game whenever I can.]

Andy Box posted a while back, and again more recently, about why he likes high gas prices. I have to agree.

What!!?? Two people on the same planet actually LIKE paying around $4/gallon for gas!!??

Well, I didn’t say I liked paying those prices. But in principle, I like the fact that gas costs a lot. Andy sees the expense as a driving (pun not intended) force behind people consciously finding ways to conserve gas, and sure, that’s a good thing, but I’ll supplement his thoughts with some of my own. Discomfort is good – it forces people to assess what’s really important. But there’s more.

Expensive gas is an indicator that the free market system is working. The market determines what the price will be over the long haul, which is the way things should be. If some entity (US government, or, in the foreseeable future, a One World Government) steps in and artificially ‘lowers’ the price of gas, things get messed up because the relationship between the supplier and the consumer is no longer the most important factor. If Charlie Consumer stops buying gas from Suzy Supplier because it’s more important for him to have his money than her gas, she loses a customer; if she loses too many customers, she adjusts her pricing. No, she doesn’t go out of business because she buys gas for more than she can sell it for, and here’s the reasoning: if Charlie buys from Valerie Vendor instead because Valerie’s prices are lower, Valerie can afford to offer hers at a lower price, and thus so can Suzy. So Suzy will just make less money but still some. If Charlie buys no gas or less gas because he’s conserving, then there will be more gas to offer everyone else, so people will sell it for cheaper in order to get more business because the supply is greater than the demand.

This works if there are 3 people in the gas market; it also works if the are 3 billion. We hate to wait since we all want things to be more comfortable (cheaper) right now, but over time, gradually, the market will level at a place where the buyers and sellers are comfortable with the price.

If you hate the big evil gas companies right now because they’re charging too much for gas, then just wait, and one of two adjustments will occur:

• You’ll love it when they have too much product on hand because people like you stop buying, and they have to keep paying billions to store it and pay their employees and such. Then they’ll have to sell off their stuff at a loss.
• OR, your attitude will change when you realize that the price is fair after all because it’s so important that people are willing to pay the price offered.

So the next time I pay over $50 to fill up my little gas tank, I’ll count my blessings. I could live in a society that would put limits on how much my provider could charge me, but that society would put put other limits on other things that would make me much more uncomfortable.

Today I noticed that the Firefox start page at Google (http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-blahblahblah) has a link to Firefox’s Download Day Page (“Help set a Guinness World Record by downloading Firefox 3! Learn more.“)

I’m not a big fan of what they’re trying to do, namely, getting people to pledge to download Firefox in an effort to set a world record. Personally, I’m not pledging because: 1.) they don’t tell you what day is Download Day, so I might be on vacation or busy or forget or something; 2.) I don’t want to tell the world I’m going to do something to make someone feel good and then not do it.

But I am a big fan of the Firefox. And open source software in general. So I’ll take this opportunity to make a few plugs for my favorites:

	Firefox is my favorite Web browser. No, I haven’t tried them all, so if you have a suggestion maybe I’ll take you up on it. Firefox is just superior to Internet Explorer. I’m not just saying it because I’m on some sort of “I hate Microsoft” bandwagon – it’s my personal experience that Firefox works better for me than the Big Blue E.
	I use Thunderbird 2 as my e-mail client at home and at work. I didn’t have a good experience prior to 2008 (maybe the older version 1.x was the problem), but it’s been golden since I installed version 2.
	Ever wish you could have a full-blown office suite (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, database) without having to pay for and deal with the activation and licensing that goes along with Microsoft Office? You can with OpenOffice.org!
	This site is powered by WordPress, a freely downloadable blogging/content management system. It’s written in PHP and uses MySQL for database storage, which is fantastic.
	PHP Hypertext Preprocessor – scripting language well-suited for developing server-side Web applications such as shopping carts, this WordPress Web site, and other cool things like you’ll find on neilandginger.com.
	MySQL – a robust, stable, open-source database management system.  MySQL Community Server is the flavor that’s free for anyone’s use.