Just read an interesting blog over at the New York Times: “Saab’s Owners Offer a Peek Into Its Future.”

I’ve had a soft-spot in my heart for Saabs since the late 1980s when my folks first got one, and then a 1991 Saab 900S was my first car out of college. Just this weekend I saw a beautiful convertible tooling around Portland and I got a twinge of jealousy.

Anyway, the article says that Saab’s new owner, Spyker Cars, needs to sell 85,000 cars worldwide by 2012 to break-even.

At first that didn’t sound like a lot, until I saw recent production numbers – Saab produced 94,751 cars worldwide in 2008, but only 20,791 last year.

My skeptical mind noted that the first number, 85,000 is “sales” while the second set of numbers is “production”. Perhaps misdirection or perhaps just available figures, you can decide.

Either way, Saab has an uphill battle, I hope they can figure this out.

I think that it’s impossible to apologize for Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, or any other act of war, especially six and a half decades later. That’s why wars end and treaties are signed.

Closure.

Using the events as a means to discuss nuclear disarmament isn’t a bad idea. Let’s just not place any blame, okay?

That’s my final thought – well, at least until Monday’s anniversary of Nagasaki.

Kidding!

So this finally happened yesterday: “Rodriguez Hits 600th Career Home Run.”

Yep, give that guy a star!

The whole story here: “Planned Sign of Tolerance Bringing Division Instead.”

Anyway, on Tuesday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a pretty fantastic speech about immigration and freedom of religion, and how New York works.

Here’s a little bit of it, the complete text can be found here:

This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.

The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.

The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.

Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.

Good stuff.

And I’m not even being facetious.

Did you see how “Apple Offers Free Cases to Address iPhone Issue” and that Apple even admitted “iPhone 4 Drops More Calls Than iPhone 3GS“?

Yep, I’m waiting for iPhone 5.0. Well that, and a job.

This guy is nuts. Completely detached from reality.

And there’s really only one answer to why/how he’s acting this way; Larry Wilmore and the Daily Show had it dead on back in April with a piece they called “Republicans Want Michael Steele to Fail.”

Quick synopsis: “Instead of Republicans trying to tell America that a black man will steer us all to ruin, they’re using Michael Steele to show us.”

It’s completely genius, although it has some salty language, so be advised:

Made me think of Maine’s own Les Otten.

Check out his graph and you’ll agree, “global warming” does have a nice ring to it …

It’s a 40,000-square-foot farm on the roof of a building in Queens. Apparently they will “grow tomatoes, eggplants, chilies and various leafy greens to be sold at a farm stand on the premises and to a few restaurants”.

Fantastic idea!

It’s a fully-recyclable single-use French Press cup called the “XPress cup” made by California’s SmartCup, available at NYC’s BKoffie.

Genius.