Students Discover Economics in Its Natural State - New York Times

"Mr. Tjoa's question was the title of one of two short papers he submitted in response to what I call the 'economic naturalist' writing assignment in my introductory economics course. The specific assignment is 'to use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behavior that you personally have observed.'

'Your space limit is 500 words,' the assignment continues. 'Many excellent papers are significantly shorter than that. Please do not lard your essay with complex terminology. Imagine yourself talking to a relative who has never had a course in economics. The best papers are ones that would be clearly intelligible to such a person, and typically these papers do not use any algebra or graphs.'"

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

"THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
by Carlo M. Cipolla
illustrations by James Donnelly"

National Geographic Magazine - WildCam AFRICA

"Embark on a quiet adventure and watch wildlife gather at Pete's Pond. Baby baboons scurry in the dust. Wildebeests push and shove to make room at the watering hole. Warthogs wallow in the mud."

video link: http://play.rbn.com/ngm/ngm/live/live.rm

Todd Dailey - Weblog - Blog Archive - Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso

"I should emphasize again that I was quite happy with my nano and its condition, even with the slight scratches. I don’t think the nano has a problem with being excessively prone to scratching. That said, it was completely amazing that I could remove every scratch with just a little work with Brasso. If you wish you had put your nano in a case before you used it, you now have an inexpensive way to get a 2nd chance."

Short Story

">(From OMNI, April 1991. This story, which was a 1991 Nebula nominee, has been appearing around the internet lately without my name attached. Several people were kind enough to alert me, but the truth is I'm more flattered than offended. )

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

by Terry Bisson

'They're made out of meat.'

'Meat?'

'Meat. They're made out of meat.'

'Meat?'

'There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat.'"

Microsoft Pushes Kid's Programming Language

"'One of the things we realized is that we all learned programming on some flavor of BASIC when we started. You're not going to learn how to program in BASIC anymore,' said Morrison, in an interview. 'We wanted something that isn't 20 years old; modern technology that uses an integrated development environment, so we can take our kids and move them directly from this to the .NET environment.'"

Odd things from Japan / Curiosidades de Japón: Mobile phones, truly mobile

"'Keitai-byuun' ('Keitai' =cell phone, 'byuun' =sound of a speedy run) is a set of wheels that you can attach to your cell phone to make it run like a little car. What for...? I guess it's just for fun, I don't see any other purpose here. This is for people who are really, reeeally bored and are willing to waste a few coins. It comes in 6 colors and 2 types: manual and pull back."

Macworld: News: MIT to launch $100 laptop prototype in November

"The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10 to 1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get 10 minutes of power and use. When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be ruggedized and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1GB of memory."

Rock Paper Scissors - 25

"You will notice that there is some branching going on with the arrows in the diagram. Trust me, you wouldn't be able to even get close to reading it otherwise. Thick lines branch out to thinner ones, and I've had to actually go around the outside of the circle for the smaller paths. I will be the first to admit that this game is just too complicated and you might get lost unless you really squint. By playing this game you agree not to hold me responsible for blindness, seizures, or let's face it, madness."

CaliforniaRepublic.org

"Teacher Union's Funny Numbers
To understand education budget, start with math...
[Tom McClintock] 5/18/05

The multimillion-dollar campaign paid by starving teachers unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate.

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year.

That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering."

Polski3's View from Here: YES on Proposition 75

"It is court mandated that public school teachers will be in either CTA/NEA or CFT/AFT, whichever union has bargaining rights in the school district."

Political Calculations: Rewriting the Rules of Math

"Trigonometry has for centuries been difficult for students to learn. Part of the reason is that the foundations of the subject are problematic, relying on vague pictorial definitions of the key concepts of angles and trigonometric functions. That means students rarely come to grips with the logical structure of the theory. Rational trigonometry is much simpler, relying on the fundamental quadratic notions of quadrance and spread, and with basic laws that can be derived completely rigorously using only elementary algebra."

BMW Authorities Vehicles

"Interior and Equipment

The BMW Series Special Task Vehicle is already optimally prepared from the factory for the installation of additional systems. Special equipment like firearms, blue lights, illuminated "stop" batten, etc. is accommodated securely and ergonomically in the vehicle so that it is immediately to hand when needed."

Savings Account Paying 4.0% - Fat Pitch Financials

"Savings Account Paying 4.0%

"

www.nanoengineer-1.com - nanoENGINEER-1 Gallery (New)

"Welcome to the nanoENGINEER-1 Gallery. This collection of images and animations have all been rendered with nanoENGINEER-1.

The jiggling of atoms seen in these animations results not from mechanically induced vibration, but from the thermal motion of atoms, a natural occuring phenomenon that is visible in dynamical simulations at this scale.

We invite you to click on the links below to learn more about each nanodevice design, who created it, and how nanoENGINEER-1 was used to simulate it.
"

Shirt Ninja

"Tie the sleeves in a single knot in the middle of your head. Very simple.
Pull it tight so the mask does not come loose during battle. "

WLTX News19 FYI Experiment: Mentos & Soda -- It's a BLAST!

"*** WHAT DO I NEED? ***

- One 2-Liter Bottle of Soda
(Diet soda is recommended - less sticky!)
- A pack of Mentos
- Optional: A test tube and an index card
- A level surface, preferably OUTDOORS!"

GameSpot - Sid Meier's Legacy

"Join us for a tour of Sid Meier's games, from the early obscure titles to the well-known classics. We'll even peek into some corners that Sid himself would probably wish would stay hidden, but that's half the fun, especially when we hear it from Sid himself."

CINCINNATI SUBWAY

"Abandoned tunnels are often the object of urban legend, but Cincinnati is in fact the site of the country's largest abandoned subway tunnel. But 'abandoned' is not quite the word, as construction slowed to a stop in 1925 before even half of the 16 mile line was completed. Seven miles between Cincinnati's central business district and the industrial suburb of Norwood were tunneled, bridged, or graded, but no track was laid and no subway cars were ordered. No passengers ever rode between the six stations that were built."

Magical Macintosh Key Sequences

"All the magic key sequences to make your Mac do various things."

HIOX PHP Tutorials - Error Handling, supress error, stop, turning off warning message

"error_reporting(0);
fopen('test.txt',r);
echo('test for turning off warning message');
?>

Result: test for turning off warning message"

1st Ave Machine>View Media

Interesting music video.

CSU Connection.com is the place to be!

"Here are the videos! Enjoy."

Japaner schocken | chilloutzone.de - free games and free fun

Japaner schocken | chilloutzone.de - free games and free fun

http://archiv.chilloutzone.de/05071103.wmv

Please excuse some of the links advertised on these pages.

mobiBLU 512 MB Cube Digital Audio Player, Orange - Wal-Mart

"At only 1 inch in size, the mobiBLU Cube is the world's smallest, full-featured digital audio player. The brilliant OLED display lets you easily see track names, settings and battery status. Also features a multi-function headphone jack for USB 2.0 connectivity. Plays about 250 songs with its 512 MB capacity.

More Cube features: SRS WOW Sound Effects, FM Radio, FM/Voice Recorder, Clock Display and Sleep Timer"

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online

"Catalog your books online

* Easy. Catalog your books online (example); no software required.
* Powerful. LibraryThing mines the full Library of Congress catalog—ideal for collectors and scholars.
* Free. Enter 200 books for free; lifetime membership $10 (beta special).
* Tagged. LibraryThing allows blog/Flickr-style tagging (example).
* Shared. Show everyone your library, or keep your library private. You can even put a widget on your blog to show people what you're reading.
* Safe. LibraryThing's not going away, but you can export your data."

Postgresql audit table

open-ils blog » Blog Archive » Filler: "Like all big projects that deal with user transactions we require an amount of accountability because of shared access to customer/patron data. The normal approach to this when using an RDBMS is to create an audit table for each production table you want to track. Normally one would have to create each audit table by hand, but since we’re using Postgres we get a little help. Postgres has a table creation option called LIKE that will create all columns from the named LIKE table in addition to any named in the CREATE list. Wrap that up in a UDF that creates the audit table and add a couple of triggers, and voila!"

MilkandCookies - Crazy Ping Pong Match

MilkandCookies - Crazy Ping Pong Match: "Two tournament players get more caught up in keeping the ball alive than actually winning."

Moodteller: Estimating mood levels in LiveJournal

"A demo of a technique for estimating the current mood levels in the blogosphere using the language used by bloggers."

I hate to be pedantic about your pedantry

"I hate to be pedantic about your pedantry, but the phrase itself by no means implies two chronological acts and is not understood as such. And to amend it to “You can’t eat your cake and still have it” would be one of those small acts of linguistic dumbing-down that no true pedant should be in favor of. Or of which no true pedant should be in favor. Or in favor of which no true pedant should be. Whate ver."

Byron's Dutch Oven Recipes - Campfire Dutch Oven Pizza

"Campfire Dutch Oven Pizza
1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef 1/2 medium red onion; diced
2 tsp. italian seasoning 3 Tbs. diced greeen bell pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder 3 Tbs. diced red bell pepper
salt and black pepper to taste 1 (8 oz.) can mushroom stems & pieces; drained
2 Tbs. olive oil 12 black olives; sliced
1 can crescent rolls 8 oz. shredded Cheddar cheese
1 jar pizza sauce 8 oz. shredded Mozzarella cheese

Heat a 12' Dutch oven using 18-20 briquettes bottom until hot. In a medium bowl add ground beef, italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt and pepper; mix together with your hands. Drop ground beef by small pieces into the hot Dutch oven and fry until brown. Remove browned beef from Dutch oven and wipe oven down with a paper towel.

Pour olive oil into Dutch oven and spread evenly over bottom of oven. Unroll the can of crescent rolls and line the bottom of the oven with a layer of flattened rolls. Spoon pizza sauce evenly over crescent rolls. Sprinkle evenly with seasoned ground beef, red onion, bell peppers, mushrooms, olives, and top with Cheddar and Mozarella cheeses.

Cover and bake using 8-10 briquettes bottom and 16-18 briquettes top for 20-30 minutes until crust is browned on edges and cheese is bubbly.

Serves: 6-8"

Evolution Quotes

"For scientific materialist the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. We might therefore more accurately term them 'materialists employing science.' And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism First Things November 1997

One of the ironies of the whole controversy is that it's a stock in trade for the Darwinists to say, 'The critics are religiously motivated and they believe in God and they're throwing their religion at us and they shouldn't be doing that, and they should keep that out of science,' But being religious or antireligious is the same thing: It's a position about religion and God, and it goes beyond the evidence and into very confident assertions that are based more on personal convictions than they are scientific testing. Phillip Johnson's Assault Upon Faith-Based Darwinism East Bay Express July 27 2005"

Closing techniques

Closing techniques: "This is a big list, but the real list of closing techniques is almost endless. You can go to each need, for example, and invent several closes around satisfying or threatening them. Here are closing tips to help you further.

'Sell on the tangibles, close on the intangibles' is good general advice. Note how many of these methods follow this rule."

Highspeed Photography of Punctured Water Balloons:

"Highspeed Photography of Punctured Water Balloons:

Punctured water balloons are photographed at high speed (1000 frames/sec) in a laboratory. Since the rupture process is on the order of milliseconds, the initial impact of the membrane retraction on the bulk fluid can be observed without the significant interference of gravity."

LEGO.com Factory LEGO Digital Designer

"LEGO DIGITAL DESIGNER

Welcome to LEGO® Digital Designer! With Digital Designer 1.4, you can build anything in your imagination using virtual LEGO bricks - right on your computer at home!"

Technology

"New mediums aren't an everyday thing. Neither is the technology used to create them. Zebra holography, a very unique technology uses a highly proprietary process that renders a very fantastic result. "

AnnualCreditReport

"This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion."

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer

"What is a PocketMod?

The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to describe just how incredibly useful the PocketMod is. It's best that you just dive in and create one."

BBC News | In pictures

"Santiago Pangan, local recycler"

HoustonChronicle.com - How Curious George escaped the Nazis

"How Curious George escaped the Nazis
Popular books' authors fled Paris by bicycle with manuscript"

Cato News Release - September 14, 2005

"Budget Disaster Looming
Cato scholars offer budget cuts, as requested by Majority Leader DeLay

At a briefing on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declared an 'ongoing victory' against bloated federal spending. Congress passed $62 billion of spending for Hurricane Katrina relief that will push the deficit back up to the $400 billion range. When asked whether Katrina relief should be offset with budget savings elsewhere, DeLay said 'bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it.'

Cato Institute scholars Steve Slivinski and Chris Edwards have the offsets that the majority leader is looking for. They have compiled $62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term."

Tony Snow: Fear is a waste of time

"Here is a short inventory:

Faith matters. Prayers heal. Love overcomes.

People want to do good for others; they just need excuses.

Fear is a waste of time. The worst that can happen is that we'll die -- which happens to everybody, anyway. Until the Grim Reaper comes knocking, we're alive.

We can count our hardships, but not our blessings.

Life does not revolve around us. It envelops us.

There is no condition that someone else has not already overcome.

"

Las Vegas Weekly

"Picketers for Hire

The strange business of protesting jobs that may be better than yours"

Radio Blogger

"Three days of Clueless Joe Biden, condensed into one minute.

A daunting task indeed, but one which I felt needed to be done. The Senior Senator from Delaware was arguably at the center of what little fireworks occurred at the now-concluded question and answer session with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. Without further ado, I give you Joe Biden."

ExtremeMusic.com - Class A Production Music Library – A Site For Sore Ears

Production music library.

brevity.org -- Links to essays in Best Software Writing I

"Joel Spolsky has compiled a book of essays on software, which he calls The Best Software Writing I. The essays all came from online sources, but when Spolsky released the chapter listing, I didn't see anywhere online where he posted links to the originals. So here they are."

Songs About Oakland

Songs About Oakland: "Trio member Bruce Bratton recalls a period of a week or more when 'every major radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area would play the Oakland Song at exactly the same moment. So you could literally go up and down the radio dial and hear the Oakland song everywhere without missing a beat.'"

mozdev.org - greasemonkey: index

"Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ('user scripts') to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction.

For example, you could:

* Make sure that all URLs displayed in the browser are clickable links
* Improve the usability of a site you frequent
* Route around common and annoying website bugs
* Use the Coral content network selectively."

Demographic Google Map application

"Instructions:
To obtain a demographic report, simply select the desired report from the drop-down menu below, and click on the map."

It's an Artsy Ad

It's an Artsy Ad.

Hamlet - The Text Adventure

"Bedroom
You are in your luxurious palatial boudoir, all of ten feet square. There is a four-poster bed, and not much else. A portrait hangs on the wall.
An exit leads north.

> examine portrait
It is a painting of your late father - who, rather confusingly, was also called Hamlet - in the usual cheesy royal portrait pose."

Exclusive: BillG Goes To College

"You want it, we've got it. The camera work is a little bumpy, but here's the spoof video that was shown at PDC 2005... uncut. Some highlight screenshots are below..."

Small Ad

Small Ad

DAZ Productions - 3D Models, 3D Content, and 3D Software

"DAZ|Studio is a free software application that allows you to easily create beautiful digital art. You can use this software to load in people, animals, vehicles, buildings, props, and accessories to create digital scenes. DAZ|Studio includes two pre-configured scenes ready for you to Load & Render within DAZ|Studio. Just double-click on the scene thumbnails inside of DAZ|Studio, and everything will come on screen posed, lit, and ready for you to create a stunning digital image. "

Sushi Pictures

Sushi Pictures

USNews.com: The National Interest: Adam Smith, political pundit (9/14/05)

"Last night I was reading (actually, rereading) Gertrude Himmelfarb's luminous The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, and came across this quotation from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.

'In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have always been two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time, of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion.'"

What is the BBS Documentary?

"Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer...

....there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did.

They called these places 'Bulletin Board Systems', or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and dreams became the way that an entire generation learned about being online."

Boeing Commercial Airplane Prices

"The prices above reflect a range of available options and configurations for each model. Configurations and options that may affect price include performance capability, interiors, avionics, fuel capacity, etc.

All prices are in U.S. dollars and are in millions."

CARLTON DRAUGHT BIG AD

"It's a big ad."

Towards a Semantic Web for Culture: Veltman: JoDI

"Figure 5. Aristotle's Four Causes"

Ellis Cohen's Relational Database Page

"Ellis Cohen's Relational Database Page

Educational course material for learning and teaching about
Introductory and Advanced Database Topics"

PSOUG Morgan's Library

"Puget Sound Oracle Users Group"

Telegraph | Opinion | Bush kept his head and the danger's passed

"I'm often dismissed as a Bush cheerleader, though I disagree with him on immigration, education and bombing Syria."

The Great American BBQ

"Barbecue is a touchy subject all over the country.
—Calvin Trillin"

Cinemocracy VOD

Cinemocracy VOD: WW2 films by John Ford, Frank Capra, etc.

Kodakgallery.com Slideshow - Katrina

"Slideshow (1 album)
Five Days with Katrina - Alvaro, 9/1/05"

Esquire:Feature Story:The Falling Man

"Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day."

Does the Truth Lie Within? - New York Times

Does the Truth Lie Within? - New York Times: "Roberts was convinced that this system was accompanied by a powerful signaling mechanism: whenever you ate a food that was flavorful (which correlated with a time of abundance) and familiar (which indicated that you had eaten this food before and benefited from it), your body demanded that you bank as many of those calories as possible."

Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight

"ABSTRACT:
Little is known about how to generate plausible new scientific ideas. So it is noteworthy that 12 years of self-experimentation led to the discovery of several surprising cause-effect relationships and suggested a new theory of weight control, an unusually high rate of new ideas. The cause-effect relationships were: (1) Seeing faces in the morning on television decreased mood in the evening (>10 hrs later) and improved mood the next day (>24 hrs later), yet had no detectable effect before that (0–10 hrs later). The effect was strongest if the faces were life-sized and at a conversational distance. Travel across time zones reduced the effect for a few weeks. (2) Standing 8 hours per day reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative, even though more standing was associated with less sleep. (3) Morning light (1 hr/day) reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative. (4) Breakfast increased early awakening. (5) Standing and morning light together eliminated colds (upper respiratory tract infections) for more than 5 years. (6) Drinking lots of water, eating low-glycemic-index foods, and eating sushi each caused a modest weight loss. (7) Drinking unflavored fructose water caused a large weight loss that has lasted more than 1 year. While losing weight, hunger was much less than usual. Unflavored sucrose water had a similar effect. The new theory of weight control, which helped discover this effect, assumes that flavors associated with calories raise the body-fat set point: The stronger the association, the greater the increase. Between meals the set point declines. Self-experimentation lasting months or years seems to be a good way to generate plausible new ideas."

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - William Morrow, 2005

"Dubner and Levitt's latest New York Times Magazine 'Freakonomics' column (Sept. 11, 2005) concerns Seth Roberts, a Berkeley psychologist whose very long and frequently strange history of self-experimentation has led to, among other things, a revolutionary new diet."

dallasobserver.com | News & Features | News | Woot, There It Is | 2004-11-18

"From fancy watches to the “Bag O’ Crap,” woot.com sells itself to rabid consumers—one item a day

Every night, one minute before midnight, they hunch over their computers, this crazed lot of 10,000 from across the world, hoping to be the first to buy the next day's Woot, or, barring that, the first to post an opinion about it."

Dancing About Architecture: Funny People at Woot!

"Tired of clicking all over the web looking for the lowest price on the finest merchandise with the best features from the most reliable retailers? Give your inner Consumers’ Reporter a break by indulging in a purchase that no one would mistake for a good deal: another one of Woot’s famous Bags o’ Crap."

WolframTones: My WolframTones Collection

"My WolframTones Collection"

Reason: Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars

"Confessions of a Welfare Queen
How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars
John Stossel"

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company | Information

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company | Information: "My name is Jay Shafer, and since 1997 I have been living in houses smaller than some people's bathrooms. I call the first of my little handbuilt houses Tumbleweed (left). My decision to inhabit just 100 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I just do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. I"

English as she is spoke: Introduction

"This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering.

This text is that of a book of excerpts compiled a few years after the book was first published. Anything that looks like an error is, in fact, the way it actually appears in the book. I've transcribed the complete text of that book; I do not, unfortunately, have a copy of the original. I'm sure you'll notice bits that look like typos. They're not; that's all part of the fun."

Greg Packer Is the 'Man on the Street'

"He's not just another face in the crowd at concerts, book signings, and sporting events. Somehow, over the course of 10 years, one man has managed to become the media's go-to guy, quoted more than 100 times in various publications, including several prominent newspapers. Greg Packer is the 'man on the street.'"

Grits for Breakfast: DEA Nostalgic for Alcohol Prohibition?

"The Drug Enforcement Agency pines away on its website for the good old days of alcohol Prohibtion, because it 'worked'!"

Homocon: No Blood for Nuclear

"'The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired of paying 28 cents/kwh for its electricity, which is three times the national average. Today, Galena 'is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River's ice-free months,' according to Reuters. But Toshiba, which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for 'Super Safe, Small, & Simple'), is offering a free reactor to the 700-person village . . . Galena will only pay for operating costs, driving down the price of electricity to less than 10 cents/kwh. The 4S is a sodium-cooled fast spectrum reactor -- a low-pressure, self-cooling reactor. It will generate power for 30 years before refueling . . . '"

TOSHIBA - Nuclear List of Delivered Units

"History & Experiences
Nuclear plant"

Desktop Publishing Circa 1976

"Cut and paste meant using scissors and rubber cement to paste prepared sections of text and graphics onto a master page. "

Microchess

"I love programming. It is almost impossible to explain the joy of writing software to someone who has not experienced it.

First and foremost, it is an act of creation. From a simple thought, and the arrangement of a few words and symbols, a reality is created that did not exist before.

No other activity can keep you in the moment the way that writing software can. At each step, one hundred percent of your concentration is applied to the solving of the current problem. Time disappears.

A well written program is a work of art. From conception to final presentation, the activity is that of an artist - the embodiment of a dream world expressed as an interactive experience for the user."

On The Media- Pulling Back the Curtain

"Everybody always sounds erudite and witty on NPR, and I've always wondered why, and I think there probably is some darkroom magic going on there."

BBQ Junkie - a Los Angeles barbecue odyssey » Charcoal chimney starter

"If you know someone who uses charcoal lighting fluid… might I suggest that a charcoal chimney starter makes a great gift. Charcoal chimney starters are not that expensive (around $12) and will save him or her money in the long run. I have even seen one made from an empty coffee can that had both ends removed with church key holes along the edge."

PHP on Mac OS X

"For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll assume you’ll be installing PHP as an apxs module that works with the Apache server that shipped with Mac OS X. I’ll show you how I installed a few modules that were of particular interest to me, though other modules can be installed using similar methods."

php iCalendar

"PHP iCalendar is a PHP-based iCal file viewer/parser to display iCals in a Web browser. Its based on v2.0 of the IETF spec (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt). It displays iCal files in a nice logical, clean manner with day, week, month, and year navigation. It is available in 13 languages and includes support for printing, searching and RSS news feeds."

The Opportunity Cost of Economics Education - New York Times

"'You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton? (a) $0, (b) $10, (c) $40, or (d) $50.'"

Banana sticker collection

"I'm interested in trading with other label collectors. If you send me your address, I'll get in touch with you. Thank you."