Blogs

Is it just me, or is it funny that a maker of carbonated soft drinks is participating in something called the Carbon Disclosure Project? I wonder why they don't provide any information about how much carbon is released into the air every time you pop the top of an A&W Root...

This morning I stumbled across perhaps one of the coolest things I have ever found: A digitized version of The House of Beadle and Adams and its Dime and Nickel Novels by Albert Johannsen. (I write that as though I've heard of the book before – I haven't.) It contains lists of many of the periodical-style publications from the heyday of the dime novel (c. 1840 – c. 1900). And boy, is it ever complete!

While...

For those of you who visit Free Market News regularly, you'll know that they pretty constantly have a sweepstakes going. Sometimes the prize is gold coins, sometimes silver. A month or two ago it was signed copies of G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature from Jekyll Island about the creation and subversion (is it really "subverted" if it does its intended function?) of the United States Federal Reserve.

Since about December '05, I've e...

Apparently, leaving excess oil in your lawnmower can bend some sort of thingy (technical term ;)) and cause the machine to shake inexorably to the point where one's arms may feel like Jell-O^®.

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This is the best article I've seen yet on the reasons why gas prices are so high (outside the politically driven conspiracy theories that big-oil barons set it high to gouge single mothers and grandparents of their hard-earned dollars).

Proof of Price Fixing at the Pump?

To summarize the reasons why gas is expensive:

1. Because crude oil is trading at 70+...
   

In general, I have no qualms with the ability to "nuke" one's food. Microwave technology is a great invention, and I use it frequently.

But when it comes to ramen, there is nothing better than boiling. Microwaved ramen just does not taste the same. It's a different consistency, and more often than not it's uneven.

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The government has released footage from one Pentagon security camera that "shows" the Boeing 757 crashing into the wall on 9/11/01. However, as is too often the case, the footage is very sketchy.

You can view it at Total 911 Info, but it's pretty grainy, and the sun's position in the video blurs the image even more than it might have been. About all you can see is that one second there is not...

I'm rather behind the scene when it comes to digitizing my music. Only about a year ago did I first amass any real music "library" on my computer. Dave started me out with a bunch of songs from his "90s" playlist. Since then I've added to it, reworked it a little, and now I'm trying to flesh it out a bit.

Of course, the hard part is remembering the names of songs and groups that were all the rage 10-15 years ago. I've never really been able to remember music trivia as well as Da...

Stephen King's Desperation is one of his better non-Dark Tower books. I just saw a commercial for a TV movie version of it on ABC. Looks good.

I was disapointed when I missed the TV movie version of Salem's Lot starring Rob Lowe. That was another favorite non-DT (or maybe proto-DT is a better descriptor) of mine.

Anyway, there's some info on King's website about it. I ...

Why do so many people seem to like MySQL over PostgreSQL? When searching for software, I am finding quite consistently that plenty of solutions exist for MySQL, but few or no solutions exist for PostgreSQL. For example, PHP wiki software comes almost exclusively with MySQL support only. Apparently there is some work going on to "port" MediaWiki (the software used by Wikipedia and related sites) t...