Teddy and several others sent this in response to this post…

Sadly, there’s a lot of truth in this ‘toon. Many voters are choosing candidates this way, perhaps more than in any previous election, or are what’s become known as “single issue voters” — they vote for whomever is aligned with their pet issue. Iraq and, before that, abortion are good examples. C’mon, people, we’re better than that!

SWEETWATER, Tex. — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

“That’s just money you’re hearing,” he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.

“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself. …  Article…

Movie theaters are notorious for charging consumers top dollar for concession items such as popcorn, soda, and candy. Are moviegoers just being gouged?

New research from Stanford and the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that there is a method to theaters’ madness — and one that in fact benefits the viewing public. By charging high prices on concessions, exhibition houses are able to keep ticket prices lower, which allows more people to enjoy the silver-screen experience.

The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it’s better to charge more for a primary product (in this case, the movie ticket) or a secondary product (the popcorn). Putting the premium on the “frill” items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films. That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears.

Indeed, movie exhibition houses rely on concession sales to keep their businesses viable. Although concessions account for only about 20 percent of gross revenues, they represent some 40 percent of theaters’ profits. That’s because while ticket revenues must be shared with movie distributors, 100 percent of concessions go straight into an exhibitor’s coffers. Article…

The Manchester (UK) City Council is advertising an employment position with what may be the best job title ever:

Teenage Pregnancy Implementation Manager.

I’m not kidding! If you think you would qualify and “want to develop your skills and experience in an exciting and supportive environment”, the position pays £29,728 to £33,291 and requires a grueling 35-hour work week. Read the complete job description and details, and if you feel, um, qualified, you’re invited to apply on-line at http://www.manchester.gov.uk/work/jobs. And get this. They “welcome applications from people wishing to job share.”

I can imagine the barrage of applications they are sure to receive for this position, especially from teenage boys…

James sent this great photo of an owl in the hollow of a tree. Unfortunately. he was unable to provide any information about where and when it was taken or by whom. Nonetheless, it’s a great shot worth sharing.

If this is your image or you know who the photographer is, please let me know. I’m sure we’d all like to know the details.

2008 is a leap year, so Friday will be February 29th, a date that rolls around just once every four years. If that’s your birthday, that makes you, what, eight? Ten?

Confused? Well, here’s the short explanation. Our year is measured by how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun. It doesn’t take 365 days but 365 1/4. Actually… 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. So, every four years we effectively lose a day. To prevent drift in our calendar we adjust the four year period to be 1,461 instead of 1,460 days. You can read more on The “Straight Dope” website.

Anyway, here are three smart things you should know about leap years in order to impress your friends and maybe win a few beers, compliments of Wired Magazine:

1) A leap year is any year evenly divisible by four — except for century years, which have to be divisible by 400. It’s not a perfect system: The Gregorian year is 27 seconds longer than the astronomical year. By 12008, we’ll be three days off.

2) October 5-14, 1582, never happened in Catholic lands. Brits (and their American subjects) born September 3 to 13 had no birthday in 1752. Those days were dropped when the Western world switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

3) International Atomic Time — kept by ultraprecise clocks — is gradually out-pacing astronomical time, which is determined by our planet’s rotation. (Earth’s spin is slowing — what a drag.) So in 1972, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service began adding occasional leap seconds. They’ve done it 23 times, most recently adding an extra “one-Mississippi” on December 31, 2005.

Michael forwarded this well written article by Gary Hubbell of the Aspen Times Weekly that describes, to a tee, a lot of folks I know. It’s definitely worth a read.

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

Click to read more ...

Use Windows long enough and you’ll recognize that bloated, sinking feeling creeping in. Spyware and viruses pile up, registries get corrupted, drivers stop working or cause conflicts — eventually reaching that point where you want to just erase everything and re-install the entire system. After swearing to pay more attention to the links you follow and the software you install, you find yourself staring at a brand-new-all-over-again Windows desktop.

Your system is fresh and untarnished. Now what? Time to tweak it to your satisfaction! Continue reading…

Did you see it? Night before last, we were witness to one of science’s more fascinating phenomenons — a total lunar eclipse. Dawn and I were driving home and watched it directly in front of us as we made our way up the hill from Sacramento, at least until it became obscured by clouds. It never ceases to amaze us, as I suppose is true for most people since such occurrences are some of the most witnessed and photographed worldwide. This image comes courtesy of Simone Vitale of Tucson, Arizona.

Want to be ready for the next lunar eclipse? Here’s a list through 2020.

This week’s fly-by features a montage of video clips of the F-22 Raptor’s first full tactical air show demonstration, performed at Langley AFB in April 2007 by pilot Major Paul Mogataken. It includes cobras, backflips, super-high-alpha flight, hovering with its nose pointed straight up, super-fast pitch-ups, and some sonic shock condensation cones and wingtip vortex contrails (“vapor”) at the very end.

As you may already know, the F-22 is essentially invisible to the enemy in combat; in simulated war games, its pilots consistently “kill” the enemy while remaining undetected. In addition, the Raptor has the fastest cruise speed of any aircraft currently flying (MACH 1.5 - 1.75, depending on whom you ask). It’s capable of breaking the sound barrier while in a straight up vertical climb, fully loaded, and is highly sophisticated in how it manages, shares and integrates information and presents it to the pilot.

During this exhibition, the USAF allowed one more thing about the F-22 to be shown to the public: its amazing maneuverability. No other American fighter in history has so empowered its pilot and provided such impressive combat performance capabilities.

If you suffer from lower back pain, I don’t have to tell you how debilitating it can be. I’ve suffered with it for years — I bulged or ruptured a lower disk during my reckless younger days — and so I’m usually very careful not to do anything that might aggravate it lest I find myself on my back for days. To me, there are few things worse than having to lay in bed and remain still for more than required sleep.

Well, oops, I’ve done it again. I’m not sure how, but yesterday morning as I was getting ready for work, it hit me. I don’t remember doing anything I would consider strenuous — it could, I suppose, have been something I did a day or two before — but I recognized the old familiar pain immediately. Yet I went to work anyway, I think because I was afraid I would be unable to get up by myself if I went back to bed. So I sat all day at my office computer, probably not my best course of action. Once home last night, I did lay down and, sure enough, I needed help getting back up to answer nature’s call.

So today I vowed to stay in bed and use a heating pad. But I soon became bored and uncomfortable, took an Ibuprofen and have been putzing around the house most of the day doing little things I probably shouldn’t be doing, like trying to resuscitate my inoperative external hard drive. It died a couple weeks ago and, since I use it not only for backup but as primary storage for all my photo and data files, I’m afraid I’m pretty well dead in the water. The thing won’t boot — it just clicks and clacks for a moment, then shuts off. I can’t get to either partition.

So I’m in need of a disk recovery outfit in the Sacramento area to try and salvage the data and transfer it to a new external drive. Damn! This is my second external that’s died! I replaced the first one just before it breathed its last breath with a new WD drive about a year ago! What up with that?

So here I am with, not one, but two disk problems, one in my lower back and the other on my computer desk. And that’s why I didn’t post much else today and, unless I suddenly feel a whole lot better, why I doubt I’ll be up to posting much tomorrow, either.

I’m not complaining, mind you. Well, maybe I am.

I love a good sandwich. I mean, it’s nature’s perfect meal, right? So I was drawn to this article in Esquire purporting to have done the research and determined which were the very best and where we could enjoy them. So here, unranked, unimpeachable and incomplete, is Esquire’s coast-to-coast list of the finest meals on sliced bread. No burgers allowed. Sadly, none of the recommendations are in my local area… except one:

You can get a chicken sandwich anywhere, which may explain your low expectations. Boneless breast. Bun. Blah. But down south, there lives an eye-opener. A come-to-Jesus sandwich. The Chick-fil-A. Seasoned, breaded breast served on a toasted buttered bun with dill-pickle slices. No mayo. No sauce at all. Deceptively simple, yet transcendent. The hook is the breading: spicy, with an intoxicating crunch. The meat is always juicy, never chewy. The bun is like lingerie — there, but not, providing delicious support without obscuring the main flavor. The first bite changes everything you think you know about chicken. And about the need for condiments.

Check the Esquire website for the rest. Included are the Cuban Meat Sandwich at Paseo in Seattle, the Italian Beef at Al’s #1 Italian Beef in Chicago, and the Cubano at Latin America Cafeteria in Miami.

Hungry now? Me too!

Here’s your chance, music lovers, to own the purported “world’s largest record collection” — more than 6 million songs on 3 million records and 300,000 compact discs — being auctioned on eBay with a minimum reserve bid of $3 million.

Paul Mawhinney, the Pittsburgh-based publisher of the Music Master record price guide, started the collection about 50 years ago with a Frankie Lane record. His plan hit a rough patch as the collection passed the 160,000 mark: His wife told him that either he had to go or the records did. He stayed, and the records went into a climate-controlled warehouse.

Mawhinney is seeking a buyer such as “a museum, library, university or charitable foundation” that can keep the whole collection together, saying that “cleverly arranged and displayed, and surrounded by additional cultural memorabilia, the collection could even become a tourist attraction.” That could be especially true in 10 years or so, when only hard-core music fans listen to physical music formats.

More on Mawhinney’s website.

Forever in search of the secrets to entrepreneurial success, the editors at Forbes peeked into the inspirational lives of five whiz kids who built million-dollar enterprises before the age of 20. While their peers were out making trouble, these young achievers were making bank.

The five teen millionaire entrepreneurs partnered with friends, siblings and mentors, or did the work on their own. Three are from the U.S., two from the U.K. All started at age 15 or younger—and one before he broke double digits. Their common thread? Preternatural business sense and demon drive to turn ideas into reality.

It’s an inspiring article that proves the point: Anyone can do it. You’re too old, you say? Not so! There’s no rule that says you have to be a teen to succeed! This article describes, in words and pictures, exactly how these young entrepreneurs took their ideas and turned them into success. It’s a good read!

If you think iPods are just for listening to music, you haven’t been keeping up with technology. The Apple-developed music player features all manner of accessories to help you study and developers are rushing to adapt their offerings to the ubiquitous device. Pre-teens to adults are taking advantage of the educational benefits an iPod affords them, from downloadable podcasts to just-for-iPod study guides and applications. Learning on the go has never been easier.

To help you discover the myriad ways to transform your iPod into a learning device, The iPod Hacker has compiled a list of 100 ways to use your iPod for education. Pretty impressive for what appears to be a first post on a new site!