$3 per gallon -- Smart Car

So we're paying more than $3 a gallon for gasoline. Annoying as it is, I'm constantly reminded by my friends in Europe and the UK that it's still a bargain here, compared to their prices.

Personally I hope it stays at $3, or even better, rises to about $5 a gallon and stays there for a year or two. Why? Because maybe that would convince car manufacturers and consumers to purchase more gas-friendly vehicles, which would be a good thing all the way around.

It would also hasten the push to develop alternative fuels. Today, it seems every time we get close to hydrogen or other sources, the price of gas miraculously drops and the idea fades from the minds of everyone involved.

Part of the problem is that, at heart, Americans believe size does matter -- at least where automobiles are concerned.

Later this year, the Smart Car is slated to debut in the United States. If you've traveled in Europe, you've already seen Smarties. They're smaller than the smallest car you've ever seen in the United States, get excellent fuel mileage and generally perform as well as any other vehicle.

Can you carry around five friends in it? No. If you are accustomed to hauling furniture in your vehicle, you'll be disappointed with a Smart car.

But if you want a car that can help end our dependence on foreign oil, this is the car for you.

I hope I live to see the day when the oil companies in the United States go out of business, shut down their refineries, take their names down off the "big board" and fade into the woodwork. That would be a day of celebration, indeed.

Television can kill you

When I was a child, television was considered bad for you. It corrupted your mind. It ruined your eyes and it gave up radiation that could make you sterile or worse.

Today, with televisions increasing in size, they've become deadline for an entirely different reason. Once again this past week, we read of a youngster who was crushed and killed by a large-screen television falling from an unsuitable television stand. Several similar stories have been in the news over the past couple years.

It's always been amazing to me the role a television plays in the average American home. Remember when they were called television "sets?" That's because at one time you bought a kit (or set, like an erector set) and built your own. My first television set was a five-inch screen attached to a box the size of breadmaker. All during college and for much of my early career years, that tiny black-and-white filled the bill perfectly.

The last television we purchased was about 15 years ago at a department store in Santa Maria, Calif. It was a nifty 24-inch with a great picture and heavy as a refrigerator. We still have it. It's probably the best investment we've ever made.

It's hard to believe that beginning in 2009 our old television will be officially obsolete. We're trying to decide whether we're going to buy a new one or simply get the digital converter kit. Hardly seems right to get rid of something that works so well.

For all of the technological changes, it's fair to say that Newton Minow continues to be correct in his assessment that television is a "vast wasteland," as he declared it in 1960. Oh, there are moments of brilliance. Who can watch the Walton family wishing each other a good night and not be moved?

Today's television content consists of a collection of reality shows, game shows and an odd and absurd retinue of productions most of us can easily live without. But we don't. It's the odd household that doesn't have cable or dish so we can surf for hours and never find anything worth watching.

And now, television is the latest threat to our children, only this time a quick and deadly physical threat, not a slow and mind-rotting threat many of us have always believed it to be.

Maybe the era of digital and high definition television will mean an increase in the quality of programming. Maybe not.

The demise of newspaper v.1395

The other night on a newscast from one of the Twin Cities television stations, a story was aired on the strides made this past year in Web sites offered by news entities. It was very much check-book journalism for the stations that aired the story. Most of the three minutes or so was devoted to touting how great their Web site was.

One of the individuals interview got so giddy he boldly proclaimed that newspapers as we know them today would perish from the face of the earth in the next few years. I couldn't help but laugh, considering we heard this same verdict from Ted Turner nearly three decades ago (he was wrong), Bill Gates two decades ago (he was wrong) and a host of other empty-headed prognosticators (they were all wrong).

Has the newspaper industry changed fundamentally over the past several decades? Yes it has and that's precisely the reason why I think predictions of its demise are greatly exaggerated. Everyone from market analysts to reporters in the newsroom have been amazed at how quickly most newspaper companies have adapted to the new technologies.

Today's reporter no longer approaches a story with only a notebook and pen in hand. He also shoots images to be published in the printed version as well as online. He records audio for sound bites and video to be edited into moving vignettes of local news. Twenty years ago, no one would have believed the day would ever come when paper and ink would simply be one of a line-up of publishing endeavors for a typical communications company.

And really that's what it's all about. Newspapers that realize they are not in the printing business but in the communication business do best in responding to the high tech challenges as they arise. There will always be those companies out there who, like the dinosaur, refuse to adapt and yes, expect them to become extinct.

But don't count out the williness of publishers to diversify and fight for their place in the communications spectrum. Newspaper people have always been a scrappy bunch and that seems to be the one aspect of the industry Turner, Gates and many other seems to have missed in their calculations.