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I just don’t get the whole “Wal-Mart = Evil” paradigm. They’ll soon be breaking ground on a new Super Wal-Mart in my town and I couldn’t be more excited. But to hear the protests and absolute cries of outrage, you’d think it was the coming of the Antichrist.

Ok. I understand that Wal-Mart has some challenges. There are charges of unsatisfactory managment principles and employee mistreatment, but can we not expect that? I mean ,1.5 million employees, people. They’re basically running their own nation spread around nine countries.

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One of the great new uses for technology I’ve found is the download and management of digital audio books. Audible.com, iTunes.com, and now even Walmart.com are getting into this space. I download to a little Creative Muvo 256MB I picked up at Wal-Mart for less than $100, and now I’m never without six audio books where ever I go.

One of my favorite recent listens is a free posting from Audible.com from the Library of Congress lecture series on “Digital Future”. The first in the series is David Weinberger talking about the Web, blogging, and new forms of data management are changing the ways we access information and interact with each other.

David Weinberger is a contributing author to the Cluetrain Manifesto where a lot of these ideas are discussed in more detail.

So I’m only hours into running WordPress as my software of choice, and I can honestly say I’m impressed. In the past, I’ve run PostNuke, PHPNuke, Geeklog, and others, but the simplicity (and dare I say elegance) of WordPress is quite nice.

It may not have all of the features and whiz-bang gizmos that the others possess, but for what I want to accomplish it’s perfect.

Is biodiesel the answer to our fossil fuel woes. Rising gas prices have some saying “yes.”

OK. So it’s not quite as cool as running your vehicle on hydrogen or electricity, but as a non-fossil fuel alternative, biodiesel is not bad. And I especially like the fact it pairs environmentalists with diesel vehicles.

I was first interested in biodiesel when I ran across a backfile to a website under construction by The Big Farm in Portland, OR. The site was for the Ecologic Fuel Company and it was nicely styled. It sounded like they could be an interesting investment opportunity, but now I can’t find any reference to the company on the web. As anyone who has made recent investments in oil stocks, I’ve made good returns. However, as oil prices continue to rise, the market has to be looking hard for alternatives. I site the recent sales in hybrid autos as an example.

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