I’ve been watching HD DVD’s plummeting popularity since Warner’s decision to jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon, especially evident following CES. But Toshiba’s apparently not going down without a fight. In Bryan Gardiner’s article for Wired, he explains what may be their “Hail Mary” effort to stem the tide.

You’ve got to hand to Toshiba. Even now, when faced with overwhelming evidence that Sony’s Blu-ray has won the high def format war, the mortally wounded HD DVD backer just keeps on prolonging the inevitable.

First, Toshiba decides to dramatically cut prices on its HD DVD players in the U.S. following Warner Bros. Blu-ray defection earlier this month. Now, for reasons that also escape us, the company has decided to buy a 30-second Super Bowl spot for $2.7 million to advertise its desperation those marked down HD DVD players.

Of course, none of this is really convincing consumers. As Ars Technica recently noted, in the week following the Warner Bros. defection, weekly HD DVD player sales tanked big time, falling from 14,558 the week previous to a measly 1,758.

Meanwhile, Blu-ray saw a reverse trend, climbing from 15,257 to 21,770. In fact, the format ended up capturing approximately 93 percent of the market that week, according to NDP. …

We’ve watched the format war rage for nearly two years. The world’s apparently made its choice. Maybe it’s time for Toshiba to throw in the towel on this one.

This was in Sunday’s Parade (“Ask Marilyn” section) and was fun to work out. Try it yourselves and see how much you remember.

A number has five different digits, none of which is 0: (a) The first plus the second equal the third digit; (b) the third times 2, plus the second, equals the fifth; (c) the second times 2 equals the first; (d) the first times 4 equals the fourth; and (e) the fourth minus the second equals the fifth. What is the number?

Come up with the right answer and win a valuable, great and wonderful free subscription to this site!

Davey says, “Following the recent crash landing at London’s Heathrow Airport, there have been some modifications to runway lighting…”

An article in the current issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter (Dawn subscribes) offers this advise:

1. Find an exotic fruit, preferably from an ancient culture. Already taken: açai (pronounces ah-SIGH-ee) from Central and South America, goji (GO-jee) berry from China, and pomegranate from the Middle East and South Asia.

2. Turn it into juice, either straight or mixed with other (i.e., cheaper) fruit juices.

3. Attribute extraordinary healing powers to your juice. Already taken: açai is the “fountain of youth,” goji berry is “the most potent anti-aging solution on earth,” and pomegranate lets you “cheat death.”

4. Get Whole Foods to carry it and charge what the market will bear. Don’t be shy. Start with four or five times what regular juices go for.

What will your customers get for their money? An assortment of antioxidants and phytochemicals, just like they’d get from any fruit juice. But whether that makes the juices healthier is unclear. At least that’s the case with two of our three examples:

• Not a single published study has looked at whether people who drink it are any healthier than people who don’t.

• Pomegranate juice. In a small, preliminary study, UCLA researchers found that rising PSA levels slowed substantially in 38 of 46 men with prostate cancer who drank 8 oz. of pomegranate juice every day for three years. … But there’s a catch: The study didn’t include a placebo group, so there’s no way to know if the pomegranate juice was what slowed the rise in PSA levels. …

• Goji berry juice. Same as açai juice.

And what about blueberry juice, which is starting to show up on supermarket shelves? While blueberry extract seems to help rats find their way through mazes, it’s too early to say if blueberries—or their juice—can prevent memory loss in people.

If you like flight simulators, you’ll enjoy this application I just learned about from Michael. Called FlightGear, it’s open-source, so as long as you abide by the terms of the license, you’re free to download, use and share it.

And while it may be free, don’t think for a moment that it’s not full featured. Professional polish and attention to detail are evident in flight variables like wind effects and real-time day/night. That’s the beauty of open-source—programmers around the world contribute to a project.

Flightgear includes real-world scenery taken from photographs and comes with the San Francisco area pre-installed. But you can visit the FlightGear Web site to get additional settings from around the world, including thousands of real airports.

FlightGear runs on Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and IRIX platforms allowing the user to “fly” their platform of choice. If you’re a flight-sim enthusiast, give it a try. New challenges keep your flight-sim skills honed, and you sure can’t beat the price!

Only in America can you find something like this. And did you notice? Chocolate chips! No wonder we have an obesity problem in this country! Thanks Frank; now I’ve lost my appetite!

A physicist with more than 40 patents to his credit would seem to have his career clearly mapped out. But Robert J. Lang’s first love is…folding paper. One of the world’s foremost artists in origami—Japanese paper folding—Lang creates creatures of such realism and complexity that it seems impossible that each is composed of a single sheet of paper, no cuts, no glue.

Inspecting Lang’s eight-inch-tall ibex, for instance, you can see its beard, ears, horns, even its cloven hooves. His grizzly bear has teeth. His insects—Lang’s favorites—have fat bodies, twiggy legs, antennae, sometimes even spread wings.

And some of Lang’s origami creations are life size, like his eight-piece orchestra commissioned by a European paper company, or the Pteranodon with a 14-foot wing span created from a single, four-meter-square piece of paper. It flies on permanent display at the Redpath Museum of Natural History in Montreal, Canada.

Perhaps Lang’s most elaborate commercial origami assignment was creating an entire landscape for a Mitsubishi commercial. He, colleague Linda Tomoko Mihara, and a small team of model-makers folded mountains, clouds, wheat, several hundred trees—lacy trees so people could peer through the branches—tree bark, cobblestones, eight-foot-tall skyscrapers, Victorian homes, simple and complex leaves, several dogs, a deer, perching birds, flying birds and a dragon.

“In just the last 50 years, we’ve seen the number of published origami design grow from about 100 to more than 36,000, says Lang. “And in origami, we’re nowhere near the limits of what’s possible…”

…Peanuts! Linus sings The Police.

Thanks Rich!

Another smart quiz. It’s uncanny how accurate these can be!

You Are Definitely Not a Hippie

In fact, you’re so conservative, you make George Bush look like Jerry Garcia. You’re not big on experimentation or alternative lifestyles. Fringe ideas tend to freak you out. You’re pretty suspicious of hippies - or anyone who sympathizes with them. As hippies would say, you are the establishment. You’re part of the system… and proud of it.

Are You A Hippie?

Al Gore has convinced me I should do my part to help save the world from the perils of man-made global warming climate change. So I’ll be ordering this bio-fuel car when (and if) it becomes available in California.

Gee, I feel greener already!

Labeled as the 430 Spider Bio Fuel, the roadster runs on the familiar mix of 85% natural ethanol and 15% gasoline, which reports suggest yield a modest 2% increase in power. That’s enough to bring the 4.3-liter V8’s output up to 500 from the standard 490 with torque rising 4% and fuel economy improving by 5%… More

Hugh Atkin sent me another of his satirical videos following up on the great job he did mixing campaign footage of the candidates with David Bowie’s “Changes” (see What Voters Want Is…).

In this video, he mixes a teary eyed Hillary explaining “how she does it”, with Tom Cruise explaining, well, essentially the same thing. Enjoy!

…about the current political news, I really am. I’m trying to pay attention to the incessant bickering between Obama and the Clintons, Giuliani’s “Travelin’ 9-11 Show”, Edwards’ attempts to be the candidate of change, Hillary’s crying, ad nauseum. But it’s all such crap!

Maybe things will (yawn) get a little more interesting in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, I’ve got Hugh Atkin’s political mashups to keep me in the game.

Got this from one of our clients…

A thief in Paris decided to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, “Monsieur, zat is ze reason I stole ze paintings!

I had no Monet

to buy Degas

 
to make ze Van Gogh.

 
See if you have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else.

 
I sent it to you because I figured I had nothingToulouse.

 
Thanks Jim!

Thanks Frank!

Jennifer Maestre is a self-taught artist, at least in her current medium of choice - pencil sculptures. She has also produced works in beads, nails and pins, but it was her works made entirely of sharpened pencils that first caught my attention and made me want to share her work here.

Her pencil sculptures are made by drilling holes in one inch long sections of pencils and sewing them together using a sculptural beading technique called “peyote stitch”. Take a walk through her site. I think you’ll find the work unique if not inspiring.