The Hand Is Not Invisible, The Head is Balaclava-clad

Languedoc winemakers introduce us to a new way to prop prices up:

The activist wine group CRAV has issued a one-month ultimatum to Nicolas Sarkozy threatening 'action', and possibly deaths, if the new premier does not help the struggling southern French wine industry.... They said that if in one month nothing has changed and that wine prices have not gone up, they will go into action.

I guess I'll stick to Châteauneuf-du-Pape and other Côtes du Rhône wines for a while.

The Progressive's Dilemma

Privacy is sacred... unless it's violated for the Good Green Cause. At the end of a New York Times article about online privacy, one finds this gem:

Hotmapping, a “geo-rectifying” British company, uses spy planes to conduct thermal surveys of some neighborhoods to determine which homes are leaking heat — and therefore, money (hotmapping.co.uk). “Now here’s an invasion of privacy I can really get behind,” writes Chris Taylor, who writes the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. (blogs.business2.com/futureboy) Local governments post thermal maps on the Web. Blue buildings are “cool,” red houses are “hot,” and wasting energy. Owners who do not take action “will be shamed in front of the whole neighborhood as energy hogs,” Mr. Taylor writes. “Green action groups will know which doors to knock on.”

So if you are not only (in Identity Woman's words) an "angry, progressive anticonsumer guy", who cherishes privacy more than convenience and efficiency, but also a Gore disciple, what do you do?!