When I was kid, probably 12 or 13 years old, I remember hearing a story that supposedly happened when the DEW (Defense Early Warning) Line was being put together in Canada's high arctic. This would have been sometime between 1954 and 1957. The story went that when the system went operational (or perhaps when one of the individual stations was ( Read more... )

I had not seen this essay before, but it gave me a big laugh this morning, so I will share. The excerpt if from "The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS" by Umberto Eco (yes, the "Name of the Rose" guy):

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the ( Read more... )

Downloading an update from iTunes the following was the final paragraph of the "small print." It kind of cracked me up:

Without limiting the foregoing, under no circumstances shall 3Com be held liable for any delay or failure in performance resulting directly or indirectly from acts of nature, forces, or causes beyond its reasonable control, ( Read more... )

It's -5 today with -11 windchill.
And our hot water heater just died.

Reliance is coming sometime tomorrow evening between 4-8pm.

It's time like this I wish had developed more of my dad and my brother's mechanical saavy.

So CFL's (compact fluorescent light bulbs) really aren't so green after all. Apparently Home Depot is experiencing a very high rate of return on them since they don't last near as long as advertised - sometimes not even as long as the incandescents they're supposed to replace. There are at least three reasons for this ( Read more... )

This makes me so angry.

from Throwaway People, Throwaway Land
The impact of "mountaintop removal."
by Norman Wirzba

In August 2004, a massive boulder loosened by mining blasts rolled down a Virginia hillside, crushing to death the sleeping three-year-old Jeremy Davidson. In the spring of 2000, soon-to-be college graduate Darlies Carter was ( Read more... )

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/nigeriahelicopteroffbeat

Everything old is new againt - in more ways that one!

Thanks to macman47 for pointing me to this article on polycarbonate plastics ( Read more... )

( Disappearing Honey Bees )

I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new cell phone. My phone is not letting me check messages this morning, even though it says I have some.

** Grump **