Amazing what interesting trivia you sometimes stumble across on the Internet. For example:

During WWll, the Red Cross delivered special Monopoly games to POWs that included real “get out of jail free” cards, writes Brian McMahon in the November-December issue of Mental Floss, a magazine of far-flung trivia.

In 1941, the British Secret Service asked the game’s British manufacturing licensee, John Waddington Ltd., to add secret “extras” to some sets, which the Red Cross delivered to Allied POWs inside Germany. These specially marked sets included metal files, compasses and silk maps to safe houses in the areas of the respective POW camps (silk, because it folds into small spaces and unfolds silently). Even better, real French, German, and Italian currency was hidden amongst the game’s fake money. Soldiers and pilots were told that, if they were captured, they should look for these “special editions” identified by a large red dot in the game’s “Free Parking” space.

Of the 35,000 prisoners of war who escaped prison camps, “more than a few certainly owe their breakout to the classic board game,” says McMahon.

Here are some more fun facts about Monopoly from the Hasbro site.

Someone sent me this “Blog Readability Test” the other day so, naturally, I took it. Or rather, I inserted this blog’s URL in the designated space and, in less that a nanosecond, it read my entire blog and determined that a high school education is required to understand it.

I suppose that’s about right. I write most posts for easy readability by a wide audience that includes my teenage grandsons. But considering the program’s rapid response, I suspect it merely searched for four syllable words and, finding relatively few, determined the blog’s readability quotient. Perhaps I’ll pen a long, nonsensical essay laced with four or more syllable words and resubmit. Farcical, you say? Impracticable? Perhaps. But incontrovertibly gratifying.

Now that she’s lost Iowa, Hillary Clinton says the state “doesn’t really matter.” I wonder if Nebraskans will appreciate her newly minted “I’m really a down-home, cookie-baking mom” persona?

Her handlers thought it best that Bill stay away from Iowa. Didn’t help. I suspect now he’ll rush to her aid.

I wonder if Nebraska will “matter”…

Darnel sent this graphic in response to this morning’s PCWorld “100 Best Products” post. I’d seen it around; in fact, you can Google the phrase and find countless related discussion threads. I’m not sure where the graphic originated or why there are so many threads on the subject, but my guess is that it’s self-explanatory.

Anyway, here’s the graphic. Draw your own conclusions as to what it means.

The editors of PCWorld have ranked the best PCs, HDTVs, components, sites, and services of 2007 and listed the products they’re looking forward to in ‘08. Here are the top 10:

1. Google Apps Premier Edition. I wasn’t surprised - hosting core applications on Google’s servers rather than on users’ makes sense, and the number of initial clients shows that it’s likely to enjoy continued acceptance.

2. Intel Core 2 Duo. Again, no surprise here. Intel is producing some great “new generation” chip sets these days and the things lined up for introduction are amazing.

3. Nintendo Wii. I haven’t used one of these but the ads make it look fun!

4. Verizon FiOS.

5. RIM Blackberry 8800. Great smartphone with peripherals.

6. Parallels Desktop. Allows Mac users to run - not emulate - Windows. Works better than on PCs in some cases!

7. Pioneer Elite 1080p PRO-FHD1.

8. Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV.

9. Apple Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. A great operating system made even better with the latest release.

10. Adobe Premiere Elements 3. Long missing from the landscape, Premiere has reestablished itself as a player in video production.

Two things I found particularly telling after reading the list: First, no where is there any mention of Microsoft’s premiere operating system, Windows Vista! Apple’s OSX Tiger and the Canonical Ubuntu 7.04 operating systems came in at numbers 9 and 16 respectively, but Vista failed to make the cut! I’m sure Vista fans will cry foul, but PCWorld is highly respected in the industry…

And second, that Google Apps Premier Edition won the “Product of the Year” crown. Microsoft may still be the ten-ton hippo of office applications, but for the majority of us that rarely require such a bloated, albeit feature rich, office suite, Google Apps is looking like a no-brainer.

Frank Caliendo’s parody of an Al Gore movie sequel from his new show, Frank TV, on TBS.

Thanks Shannan!

Reserve A Spot in Heaven claims to be “the only licensed and registered distributor of reservations in Heaven.” Thus far the site offers two novelty packages: The “Essential Travel Kit” for $12.79, which includes “everything needed to transport one individual to Heaven,” and an “All Access Travel Kit” for $24.95 that comes with an additional VIP Pass that “will grant you access to VIP exclusive areas including the Land of Milk and Honey where all the elite get together and kick it.” More

In its 2007 Year in Pictures, MSNBC has again compiled a stellar list of photographs it believes best represent 2007. Presented as an audio slideshow, it’s the News images that to me are the most moving.

So you’ve listed your New Year’s resolutions and now you find yourself where you always do after announcing your intentions - struggling to act on them, to put them in motion. You tell yourself that you’re not alone, that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to following intentions with empowering actions, but you wish, just once, you could actually follow through. Believe me, I know. I’ve often been right there in the proverbial boat with you. But Dawn and I decided that this was going to be our year and so we took some unconventional, albeit fun, steps to help us give it a kick-start.

It was Dawn’s idea, I think, and pretty soon both her mom and sister had signed on, so there was no way I could shrug off doing my part as well. It seems Dawn (or maybe her mom) had read an article in the January issue of Redbook by shuistrology expert Ellen Whitehurst on some cures to make this the best New Year ever. All we needed, claimed Whitehurst, was a little New Year feng shui! Here’s what she recommended and how we did…

A Clean Sweep. Before New Year’s Day, we were to clean the entire house “to clear the way for new and exciting energies to enter your home.” The task apparently can’t be done on New Year’s Day as doing so is thought to “sweep away” all the fortune and luck that is headed your way in the coming year. If that was too big a project (it was!) then cleaning just the kitchen (we did) would be okay since it represents our health, happiness and prosperity. An integral component was to move 27 things around our home (we stayed in the kitchen) as this simple change up causes the same-old to head out with the old year. We were off and running!

Create a Cash Flow. Next, we headed to the bank for 27 one-dollar bills and 49 coins each so as to make our wallets appear full and bring us “untold and unexpected fortunes in the year ahead.” We even sprinkled dried ground ginger on the wallets and our checkbooks. I’m not sure what that does but we wanted to give ourselves every possible advantage. It wasn’t clear whether we were to leave the ginger in place or remove it. I dusted mine off. Hope that didn’t disqualify me from any untold and unexpected fortunes.

Begin New Rituals. We didn’t refer to anything from the past on New Year’s Day, speaking instead of our hopes, wishes and dreams for the future. The placement of nine mandarin oranges in a bowl in our kitchen was to help “orchestrate sweet treats that will make the coming year’s dreams come true.” And since we were home as the year turned, we briefly opened and closed all our doors and windows, no small task in a home the size of ours, “to let the previous year’s energies out and allow some new, interesting ones to come in.”

We passed on the recommended lighting of firecrackers or the banging of pots and pans to “scare away any maligning influences” that may have been headed our way - firecrackers are illegal in El Dorado County and the cookware too heavy and expensive - but since it’s considered very auspicious if the first thing one sees on New Year’s Day is a red bird, I Googled up a few on the computer screen. Red bird sighting? Check.

Find the Right Words. There was no crying on New Year’s Day as doing so “could have triggered a yearlong deluge.” No losing of tempers, foul language or whining, either. And since the first words one utters at the top of any New Year have “a huge impact on your fortune and luck in the 12 months following”, we chose to say “health, happiness, prosperity” to one another at midnight. (I inadvertently included “and”, possibly a technical foul.)

Chew On This. Many traditions maintain that abstaining from eating meat on New Year’s Day will grant you a long and happy life. Easy for Dawn - she never eats beef, pork or lamb - and not difficult for me either. Eating fish on this promising day is said to aid in intelligence, build immunity and symbolize “a year swimming in abundance and prosperity.” So on New Year’s Eve, I drove to Placerville and bought enough of Steamer’s “lazy man’s cioppino” to cover lunch and dinner on New Year’s Day. For those unfamiliar, Powell’s Steamer makes a dynamite cioppino and removes all the shells. As always, it was delicious and now we’re ready for a big helping of abundance and prosperity. We also avoided using anything sharp, like knives or scissors, as this could conceivably have cut our coming fortunes in half.

All in all, we covered most of the bases and had a lot of fun in the process! These suggestions and much more are apparently covered in Ellen Whitehurst’s new book, Make This Your Lucky Day so, if you’d like to learn how to be prepared for the rest of this year and next, it sounds like a read worth adding to your library.

Here’s the best excuse I’ve heard yet for procrastination…

The New Year, they say, is about reflections, resolutions and high hopes for the future. We take time to reflect on the year just ended and look hopefully ahead toward the fresh new year just beginning. Too often, admittedly, our reflections are about last year’s uncompleted list of resolutions and, yes, I’m just as guilty as anyone.

But 2007 has been a pretty good year for me – hopefully 2008 will be even better. And being the optimist you know me to be, I have high hopes for the coming year on a wider scale as well.

For California, I hope the state and its citizens find ways to work together for the good of the people and that the politics of negativity get buried beneath the overwhelming swell of goodwill that success produces.

For the country, I hope 2008 brings us closer to peace in the Middle East and a positive conclusion to the war in Iraq. There are good things happening in the region – we need to acknowledge them. And I hope the President is able to maintain our national security without sacrificing too many of our civil liberties, although I’m certainly prepared to sacrifice a few so-called “liberties” for the sake of security. It’s not that hard to reconcile if you remove the politics.

As for me, I look forward with enthusiasm and anticipation to the coming year. I have the love of an amazing woman whom I cherish, children I am proud of, beautiful grandchildren I adore, and wonderful friends I respect and appreciate. I look forward to retirement, more time with my family and friends, continued good health, and the opportunity and motivation to continue checking things off “our list.” 

Yes, I’m an optimist. I see the year ahead as one filled, not with problems, but with challenges and opportunities,  the glass half full rather than half empty. Thank you everyone for a pretty darn good 2007. I wish you all a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year.

About this time every year there are warnings that, according to prophesy, the world is about to end. In fact, there’s at least one book that postulates the world will reach critical mass in 2008. The current world political climate certainly points in that direction.

The latest warnings reminded me of the popular “The End of the World” Flash animation I’d posted a couple times on my AFP site so, just in case the jig is up in the next few days, here again is how it may very well play out. Not work-safe but well done and fairly accurate in a satirical way…

Requires Adobe Flash Player, available as a free download if you don’t already have it.

The Times Square New Year’s Eve ball is celebrating its centennial by going green.

The star of the world-famous holiday extravaganza was revamped this year with 9,576 energy-efficient bulbs that use about the same amount of electricity as 10 toasters.

Philips Lighting, which created the light-emitting diodes, or LED bulbs, specifically for the event, says they are smaller but more than twice as bright as last year’s lights, which were a mix of more than 600 incandescent and halogen bulbs. And the new lights can create more than 16 million colors for a kaleidoscope of hues against the 672 Waterford Crystal triangles.

“The whole world looks up to New York’s New Year’s Eve. I’m proud to be able to save energy and show off this technology to the world with such a special event,” said Kaj den Daas, chairman of Philips Lighting North America. Story

This just in from Mike…

In a news conference earlier this morning, Deanna Favre announced she will be the starting QB for the Green Bay Packers during the Playoffs. She claims she is qualified to be starting QB because she has spent the past 16 years married to Brett while he played QB for the Pack. Because of this, she understands how to pick up a corner blitz and knows the terminology of the Packers offense.

A poll of Packers fans shows that 50% of those polled support the move.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Yet Hillary Clinton makes essentially the same claims as to why she is qualified to be President… And 50% of democrats polled agree.