As someone who writes and speaks about alternative and renewable energy, I often get asked about climate change.  What do I think about it?  What is true?  Who to believe?

There is so much noise about it.  The media knows it is an important topic to many and they know that controversy prompts viewership so they create controversy.  The U.N. Copenhagen Climate summit is the current case in point.  TV in particular provides superficial, breathless coverage of registration problems, conflicts,  walk-outs and somewhat angry talking heads arguing points of view.  So what to think?

The most cogent description of the four general …

In the early 1970s, when I was first really getting into jazz, I heard one of those glib statements that stuck with me.  “The history of the jazz trumpet can be written in four words:  Louis Armstrong Miles Davis”  Now this obviously is not true as there have been dozens of great jazz trumpeters, but in a way it distilled the history of something down to two iconic figures.

The history of broadcast television in the U.S. can and will be distilled down to the same:  Ed Sullivan Oprah Winfrey.

The Ed Sullivan show was on from 1948 – 1971, was almost …