Friday, May 28

Encouraging hybrid legislation

Greetings. Here's great news on the hybrid car front. This message was forwarded to a guide dog list I'm on from another list. Enjoy.

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Subject: Legislative Alert - Motor Vehicle Safety Act

Dear Fellow Federationists:

I am writing to report that all of our hard work on the issue of silent cars
is paying off. Language that will protect the blind and others from the
danger posed by silent hybrid and electric vehicles has been favorably
reported to the United States House of Representatives by the Committee on
Energy and Commerce as part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 (H.R.
5381). This legislation, which is a comprehensive bill to address numerous
vehicle safety issues raised by the recent Toyota recalls, now includes
language agreed to by the National Federation of the Blind, the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, and the Association of International Automobile
Manufacturers. If passed by the House of Representatives and adopted by the
Senate, this language will require the Department of Transportation to issue
regulations requiring a minimum sound standard for hybrid and electric
automobiles.



This victory is a product of our hard work and the cooperation of the
automobile industry, but we will need to remain vigilant to make sure this
bill becomes law. We will keep you apprised of developments and let you
know if action needs to be taken to secure this victory.



Thank you again for all you do.



Sincerely,

Jesse M. Hartle
Government Programs Specialist
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

Friday, May 14

Added Twitter to blog

Greetings. Those wanting a blog post from me will be happy for this one. I've added the ability to view my last 5 tweets on the popular microblogging site known as Twitter, as well as an RSS feed for all of my tweets or posts on Twitter. After being on Twitter for 6 months now, I truely understand that to follow what someone says on the site you really need to read the conversations they participate in, verses just reading their tweets alone. So once again, anyone that wants to keep up to date on what I'm doing and things I find interesting, you're invited to join Twitter and follow your humble blog author. However, if you just want to read my tweets alone and that's all, without going to the bother of joining this free site where there's only one CAPTCHA or visual verification code, with audio option, to fill out, then that's fine too. I would also recommend the RSS feed for The Ranger Station which is listed below in the Blogs and Feeds to Watch section (where you'll also find my RSS feed). Ranger participates in lots of back and forth with people, but he also posts many interesting, and sometimes not so much, articles and links that any tech guru might find fascinating. I thought of taking his RSS feed down, but frankly, there's so much good stuff there in the article links alone that I decided to leave it up. I don't know when my next posting will be on this blog, but as my "Wayne's Latest Tweets" section will attest to, I'm fairly active on Twitter. Enjoy.