LOTD for February 1

Boy was born at San Francisco’s Saint Luke’s Hospital’s with 12 perfect fingers and 12 perfect toes…everything was so normal after birth that nobody noticed at first that he had a extra finger on each hand and an extra toe on each foot!
http://www.ktvu.com/news/18608582/detail.html#-

Instead of hacking into msn e-mail accounts, now the scammers are hacking Facebook accounts and getting the “friends” of the Facebook owner to send money to fake addresses, claiming that the Facebook owner was robbed and needs money to return home:
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#posts

LOTD for January 31

I cannot describe how sad I was when I first read this article. An Afghan citizen was detained at Gitmo for about six years, even though he apparently had been fighting *against* the Taliban and was a part of the pro-American Afghan government…Taliban collaborators made up accusations to get our military to take him away so that those Taliban collaborators could take over his Afghan government job, and we detained him for nearly 6 years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/washington/19gitmo.html?fta=y

It is disturbing to me that the donors to Prop 8 in California are having their addresses spotlighted in Google Maps. There are a lot of sick people out there and the last thing that we need is to make it easy for them to attack people on the other side of the issue…if this continues, this will happen to donors on *both* sides of every issue, then it could spread to doctors, lawyers, etc.:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/19/news/letter.1-410766.php

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement was passed after a lot of publicity last year but seems horribly flawed! The law is supposed to come into effect on February 10 and could kill all thrift stores and craft stores…and basically outlaws children’s books in bookstores and libraries! They have a choice of banning children from libraries or removing all children’s books (which would keep children out of the library)
http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/16/cpsia-safety-toys-oped-cx_wo_0116olson.html

Women with higher estrogen levels not only look and feel prettier, but they dress more provocatively and show more thrill-seeking behavior. Women with high levels of the estrogen known as estradial are considered more attractive and are more likely to have affairs:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50D03O20090114

Study found that heavy use of coffee may lead to hallucinations:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090114-caffeine-hallucinations.html

Article about “love potions” mentions how marriage counselors might administer oxytocin (via a nasal spray) in the future as a part of marital therapy that would help prevent couples from divorcing. They also seem to have an “anti-love potion” (oxytocin blocker) that would prevent someone from falling in love:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7226/full/457148a.html

UK man beat a 98 mph speeding ticket by proving that his 14-year-old Civic had a max speed of 85 mph:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/motoring/article-1122042/Motorist-beats-98mph-speeding-charge–buying-car-proving-manage-speed-85mph.html

The common cold remedy Vicks VapoRub is apparently harmful if used on children under 2 years old:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50C14Z20090113

LOTD for January 30

A volcano may be erupting soon in Alaska. I didn’t realize that volcanoes there don’t spew lava…instead, they shoot out this rock-like ash 9 miles up and the jet stream can take the ash quite far away:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/30/mount-redoubt-volcano.html

South Korean company claims to have created the first cloned dogs:
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000101~ISSUE~0901~RELTYPE~LST~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~NZ.html

Tech sector layoffs hit 186,995 in 2008, the most in 5 years. 228,325 tech sector workers were laid off in 2003, and 695,581 were laid off in 2001 during the “dot-com bust”:
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0901&RELTYPE=IDN&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=OB&CommonCount=0

Major worry that terrorist groups can take advantage of our lax food and drug safety precautions to attack the US. Instead of hijacking a plane, they can just slip agents into a processing plant in China and cause far, far more damage! It is scary to think that in 2006 and 2007 the FDA conducted *zero* inspections of Chinese food importers:
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090129_3617.php

$500 million of the economic stimulus package is going for the new airport X-ray machines. There are only two companies that make those machines–I hope that they are buying from the company that makes them in LA, because the UK company that makes them in Germany isn’t going to stimulate our economy!
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/01/27/can-airport-screening-gear-stimulate-the-economy/

The FDA admits that cloned meat and milk may already be in our food supply, despite how they asked food companies to voluntarily ban all food products from cloned animals. The tests haven’t been done yet to tell us whether or not meat and milk from cloned animals is safe…but it is already in our food supply!
http://www.naturalnews.com/025467.html

Obama’s new Homeland Security Chief (FEMA is under Homeland Security) ordered an immediate review of what occurred during Katrina:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/homeland_security_chief_orders.html

It is really sad to read about how flawed our government contracting system is–giving bonuses to companies that fail on projects, allowing programs to regularly go over budget, etc.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aATeIVFk61O8&refer=home

Dell’s smartphone may be coming out next month. Dell has been working on 2 phones–one based on Windows Mobile and one based on Android. One has an iPhone-like touchscreen and the other has a G1-like slide-out keyboard:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123327385680231133.html

Nortel ended all work on 16e and will focus on LTE now:
Press release

It is sad that spammers are targeting twitter now. It is quite easy for them to get twitter users’ addresses, so this is a potentially huge problem for twitter:
http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=44447&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&view=news

Remember the woman who gave birth to 8 kids recently? It turns out that she *already* has 6 other young children (ages 7, 6, 5, 3, 2, and 2). I do not understand why this 33-year-old woman was given fertility treatments (they normally do not give fertility treatments to anyone younger than 35)! She may or may not be married, but her father is going to Iraq to work as a contractor to make money to support his grandchildren:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-octuplets30-2009jan30,0,5460225.story

Chula Vista is the last chance for the Chargers to stay in San Diego County…but there are MAJOR problems: the site that the stadium could be built on is currently used by a power plant that cannot be torn down because it is in use, the credit market will make it hard for the Chargers to finance the stadium, and the mayor of Chula Vista apparently doesn’t want the Chargers there. Couple this with the Chargers hiring a PR firm in LA and it looks like LA might get a pro team around 2011 or 2012:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/30/1m30chargers232743-lack-feedback-chargers/?zIndex=45285

Spinner sharks migrate close to the Florida shore this time of year…and they have been jumping up out of the water a few feet from where people are surfing!
http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story/Local-surfers-close-call-with-a-jumping-shark/aHY7h6tKVkmqoASvFNT3EA.cspx

Swiss police found a pot farm with 1.2 tons of pot by using Google Earth:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D960T7180&show_article=1

17-year-old boy tried to help his friend by taking a test for her. He had to dress up like a girl to take her test, but he was caught. I didn’t realize that going to a school to help someone cheat on a test could result in burglary charges!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28917649/

LOTD for January 29

Report discloses that mercury has been found in high fructose corn syrup, which is used in yogurt, soda, candy, juice, jelly, and a ton of other food products. Apparently the FDA knew about the mercury problem and kept silent! We are talking about brands like Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Hershey’s, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain, and Yoplait…and the FDA allows for products with high fructose corn syrup to be labeled “natural”!
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/26/132619/467/?source=most_popular

The Army is recalling more than 16,000 sets of body armor plates that the Inspector General believes were not properly tested and could jeopardize the lives of US soldiers:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/29/exclusive-army-recall-armor/

This lawsuit should be interesting…former Lockheed employee says that her boss retaliated against her when she filed an ethics complaint about her for having affairs with US Army soldiers and billing the government for them. She claimed that her boss sent sex toys and laptops to soldiers and traveled to meet with them, with the expenses charged to the federal government:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_11547111

The US Admiral in charge of preventing Somali pirate attacks discussed how attacks are well down from before. Of course, the bad weather has also reduced pirate attacks and US forces haven’t actually warded off any attacks or gone after any pirate ships.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/pirates-stopped.html

The Somali pirates are getting pretty clever with their attacks. They attacked 3 ships under military protection as decoys, then went after and captured the German tanker that was their actual target:
http://www.eaglespeak.us/2009/01/somali-pirates-learning-curve-pirates.html

Report states that some climate change due to carbon monoxide emissions cannot be reversed, with the global warming effect lasting for at least 1,000 years even if all pollution ended today:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html?sid=65329b35-2069-42bd-b07a-b3c1cbe09ac2

Apple was awarded what seems to be a key patent over its multi-touch technology that covers phones and other devices. Other smartphones have avoided Apple’s multi-touch technology, but the new Palm might be affected by this:
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/01/27/apple-awarded-iphone-patent/

T-Mobile mentioned in this interview that they will have more G series Android-based phones released this year:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-mobiles-neville-ray-we-will-have-more-g-series-phones-2009/2009-01-29?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-FW&dest=FW

Clearwire got a B- credit rating:
http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20090128/WIRELESS/901289997/1105/financial-ratings-wrap-up-clearwire-nokia-texas-instruments-and

A survey of WiFi users found that they use WiFi more often on their phones than their computers!
http://gigaom.com/2009/01/28/more-proof-people-really-love-wifi-especially-on-iphones/

Leapfrog is launching a “Baby BlackBerry” smartphone for kids:
http://crackberry.com/getem-while-their-young-leapfrog-launches-baby-blackberry-kids

Criminals handcuffed together escaped from custody…until they tried to run on opposite sides of a lamp pole, forgetting that the handcuffs wouldn’t allow that to occur. The video looks like something from a cartoon:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28910027/

Florida man was driving to one of those classes you have to go to after getting a DUI…and he was picked up for a DUI after swerving all over the road and smelling of alcohol! When you drive drunk to a DUI class, you really have an alcohol problem!
http://blogs.tampabay.com/bizarre/2009/01/im-going-to-dui.html

Australian father is accused of murder after throwing his 4-year-old daughter off a bridge:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24980080-601,00.html

LOTD for January 28

62% of prescription medicine sold over the internet are fakes, with potentially fatal consequences. Not only are those purchasers risking their lives, but they may also be funding terrorism:
http://www.physorg.com/news152278680.html

It is shameful that the peanut plant that has caused deaths and massive recalls of peanut products throughout the US knew about the problems 2 years ago. I cannot understand how they could test their own products, find that there was a salmonella problem, and then instead of fixing the problem they just could keep testing their product over and over until one test passed their peanuts!
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/27/georgia-plant-begot-salmonella-outbreak/

A mathematical model created to win the board game Clue has inspired a technique that could help robot mine sweepers:
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0901&RELTYPE=SOFT&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=LM&CommonCount=0

Computer manufacturer Acer will release a smartphone next month:
http://www.slashgear.com/acer-smartphone-announcement-on-february-16th-2832244/

LG is recalling one of its cell phones (they might have sold up to 250,000 of them!) because it emits too much radiation. They are apparently only recalling them in Canada…Industry Canada decertified the phone but I don’t know if the FCC has tested the phone:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090127.wcellphone27/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090127.wcellphone27

An Android developer leaked the details of the next version of Android on his blog:
http://arronla.com/2009/01/installed-cupcake-development-build/

Google rejected the first attempt by this Australian company to make an Android phone (the screen was too small and there were some software issues), but they are coming out with a revised Android phone soon:
http://androidtwit.com/2009/01/26/ruslan-kogan-working-on-another-android-device/

It is pretty cool that the 3rd generation Prius that will be at Toyota dealerships in the Spring will have an optional solar panel on its roof:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/28/solar.powered.cars/index.html

The House Republicans were able to defeat the bill that was going to delay the digital TV transition–the House needed a 2/3 vote to pass instead of a majority:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/28/tec-digital-tv-transition-012809/?zIndex=44166

It appears that San Diego will have to start rationing water on July 1:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/28/1m28water235248-rationing-water-probable-july-1/?zIndex=44076

The drum major that was suspended because he nodded towards Obama during the inauguration has now quit his band:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/27/inauguration.drum.major/index.html

LOTD for January 27

The lawsuits between New York and M/A-COM are going to be pretty nasty, especially since the contract was worth $2 billion and each side is asking the other for tens of millions in damages:
http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/news/tyco-ma-com-new-york-litigation-0127/

The New York-M/A-COM lawsuit will have an impact throughout the wireless industry. If Motorola was in better shape, they could dominate the LMR market now (Motorola and M/A-COM are the top 2 companies in that market):
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/commentary/new-york-ma-com-impact-0127/

The US military is overseeing nearly two dozen solar power projects in Iraq:
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60254

The University of Nevada-Reno’s first crop of algae for biofuel was a success, demonstrating that algae can be an economical, commercially viable renewable energy source for Nevada. I’m surprised that the algae can be grown outdoors year-round in Reno…it gets so cold there!
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0901&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=KG&CommonCount=0

NASA is working on supersonic aircraft that do not have the “sonic boom” effect:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/nasa_boomless_supersonics/

Article about how the worst disaster that could happen to the Earth would be if it went through one of the giant dust clouds in our galaxy…it would take 100,000 years to get out of the dust cloud, and the sun would be blocked out so everything would freeze over and life would basically end on Earth! The “good” news is that the Earth isn’t scheduled to hit one of those dust clouds for another 40 million years or more:
http://www.popsci.com/node/31419

British pilots have been trying to shoot down UFOs since the 1980s, but no results so far:
http://www.military.com/news/article/brits-shoot-at-ufos-exofficial-says.html?col=1186032310810&ESRC=topstories.RSS

University of Texas at Houston researchers got $5.2 million from DARPA to develop a fracture putty that could regenerate leg bones shattered by IEDs or roadside bombs. If this works, it would have obvious benefits for soldiers and civilians:
http://publicaffairs.uth.tmc.edu/media/newsreleases/nr2009/leg_injuries.htm

Vapor Fuel Technologies claim that they will be able to retrofit current cars for just $900 to get them to have more than 30% improved fuel efficiency and 30% less emissions:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/real-vaporware-for-cars-would-enable.html

Israel is using antelope to help its efforts against Hezbollah:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1058506.html

People around the world are eating so many frog legs that the survival of the frog species is in danger:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/27/frog-extinction.html

It is great that wineries are adapting to solar energy in such a big way:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/green-marketing/e3i38c60ff3da19ea8686b56335e2afc39d

The GEM Peapod (used to be called the Chrysler GEM Peapod) car is launching this Earth Day (April) and I hope it finds its niche–it is an electric car that will cost just $12,500, but it has a 30-mile range and cannot go on the freeway:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/green-marketing/e3idb2c398ada1252b7496642b8884b3ccb

http://www.automobilesreview.com/auto-news/gem-peapod-meet-neighbor/4822/

At least Verizon is doing well in this difficult economy:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123304191981419017.html

Not only was Verizon’s earnings up 7.6% in 2008 as compared to 2007, they sold 1 million BlackBerry Storms between Nov. 21 and the end of January,
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=15&articleId=9126850&intsrc=hm_topic

T-Mobile and Meru have partnered up to bring FMC to enterprise customers:
http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-mobile/articles/49433-meru-networks-pact-with-t-mobile-usa-give.htm

Nice special report on the layoffs that have been occurring in the wireless industry:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/out-work-wireless?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-FW&dest=FW

34-year-old woman suffered a heart attack 10 days after giving birth to her son and was in a coma for 2 weeks. They tried all types of things to get her out of her coma, but nothing worked and the doctors told her husband that she could be in a coma indefinitely. But he got her to wake from her coma by asking for a kiss!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1127393/Husbands-kiss-woke-sleeping-beauty-wife-coma-heart-attack.html

I think that it is CRAZY that cameras have been installed in the bathrooms in this UK high school…they are concerned about misuse of soap and paper, but cameras to record what goes on in a bathroom seems like overkill and invasion of privacy. Who is monitoring the people watching the high school kids in the bathroom?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/mid_/7851282.stm

14-year-old boy reported for work at a Chicago police station and was actually able to be on patrol for 5 hours before they realized he wasn’t a police officer!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28861227/

LOTD for January 26

New Zealand man bought a used MP3 player for $10…and found confidential US military files on it!
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/413551/2453415

Looks like a fairly low-power laser was able to shoot down a UAV at White Sands. It is pretty impressive that they were about to get a viable weapon with just 1kW, when current lasers require at least 100kW to be powerful enough to be used as a weapon:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/laser-1-drone-0.html

Article about how the latest development shows that our spy satellites can spy on other satellites, which is a capability that other countries might feel they need to respond to:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126925.800-spy-satellites-turn-their-gaze-onto-each-other.htmlGadgets

The USDA is worried about having genetically modified food enter the US from China, Brazil, and India:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126923.300-us-prepares-to-block-influx-of-gm-food.html

Tainted honey is entering the US food supply far too regularly. Apparently about 1/3 of the honey sold in the US comes from China, and food labels are purposely being mislabeled as being from the US…Chinese honey is sold to one food distributor who tests it and finds that it is contaminated, returning it to the seller…and the seller turns around and sells it to another food distributor that doesn’t test its honey!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/397445_honey26.html

Sprint is cutting 8,000 jobs and looking for many more ways to save money:
http://sprintconnection.kansascity.com/?q=node/937

Motorola is laying off 77 Windows Mobile developers, with speculation that they will dump Windows Mobile and focus solely on Android for Motorola mobile phones:
http://www.slashgear.com/motorola-fire-77-windows-mobile-devs-wholesale-shift-to-android-coming-2631888/

Verizon Wireless customers can set up a femtocell in their homes for $250, with no monthly fees after the purchase:
http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=3851

Article about the huge problems that Microsoft is facing right now, including a potential $8.5 billion settlement they would have to pay over misleading “Vista capable” claims:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2009/01/microsofts_85_b.html?source=NLC-NOTES&cgd=2009-01-26

Cute story about how this couple met at a dance, had a long-distance courtship via letters for 6 years, and have now celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/25/lz1c25theymet185514-six-year-wait-sparked-dinner-d/?uniontrib

It is pretty sad how budget cuts forced Hawaii to stop the safety inspections of dams and tried to conceal that fact…three months before a dam collapsed that killed 7 people and destroying a lot of property:
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090126/NEWS01/901260348/1001/localnewsfront

Mexican chefs made a TWO TON cheesecake:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28844163/

LOTD for January 25

Pretty scary to think about what would happen if a bad solar storm occurs, which does occur periodically. Solar storms are expected 1 or 2 years before a peak in solar activity…and the next peak is in 2012, so the solar storms are expected in 2010 or 2011!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090107-space-weather-storms.html

Study found that Tetris can act like a “cognitive vaccine” to prevent post-traumatic stress syndrome in soldiers or crime victims:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/01/using-tetris-to-treat-trauma.html

I never realized that the red food dye in yogurt and other products was actually made by crushing the female cochineal (a beetle-like creature)! This has come to light because some people are apparently seriously allergic to eating the cochineal insect, with some allergic reactions potentially fatal!
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-libugs075989334jan07a,0,2491696.story

I think that it is really cool that for the first time in at least 25 years more American adults are reading more literature–that never happened before in this survey:
http://arts.endow.gov/news//news09/ReadingonRise.html

Article discussing the studies that might indicate that finger size reveals sexual orientation:
http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2007/08/does-finger-siz.html

About explaining why men find it so difficult to understand women–men and women may differ by as much as 2% of their entire genetic inheritance, greater than the heredity gap between humans and chimps! The study concludes that there are two human genomes, one for men and one for women:
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/mar/17/science/sci-xchromosome17

LOTD for January 24

There has been a big controversy over the French Minister of Justice who returned to work just 5 days after giving birth via C-section:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5478459.ece

The recession has resulted in a *huge* drop in plastic surgery, where 2008 was down 62% from 2007. It is hard for me to believe that $12 billion was spent in plastic surgery in 2007 and that plastic surgery increased 657% between 1992 and 2003:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-10/the-great-boob-bust/

NY seafood restaurant released a 20-pound, 140-year-old lobster back in the ocean:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/10/maine.lobster.liberated/

Lori was shocked when I told her about how people could get a free Whopper by dropping 10 friends on Facebook:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/are-facebook-friends-worth-their-weight-in-beef/

Burger King was actually particularly nasty about this campaign–normally, when you drop someone on Facebook they may never know about it (no e-mail notification or anything like that is done via Facebook)…but in this case, Burger King was sending e-mails to everyone dropped telling them they were dropped because their “friend” wanted a free whopper. After about 234,000 people were dropped, but when Facebook asked Burger King to stop sending those e-mail to the dumped people, Burger King ended the campaign:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/01/16/you-can-keep-your-friends-facebook-and-burger-king-stop-the-who/

Man spent *26 years* trying to solve the Rubik’s cube, staying up late, neglecting his wife and child, and enduring wrist and back problems. After 27,400 hours and 26 years, he finally solved it! Faith has been asking for a Rubik’s cube and she desperately wants to start trying to figure it out…I’ve been trying to delay that (she is still just 5 years old!) but I think she’ll start soon. She loved getting a book on how to do Cat’s Cradle and a lot of other things with string for Christmas…it was too hard for her to do at first but she can already do them in the dark now!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1112396/Driven-mad-Rubiks-nut-weeps-solving-cube–26-years-trying.html

Two 8-year-old boys saw an armed man hit a woman with his gun and threaten to shoot her…so they got baseball bats and hit the man until he went away:
http://www.news4jax.com/news/18518046/detail.html

Fresno woman put a baseball card up for auction for $10…until she was informed that the card was of baseball’s first professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. and it was probably the oldest baseball card in history!
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1142620.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/sports/baseball/16vecsey.html?ref=sports

LOTD for January 23

Pretty cool that the Aptera 2e is slated to come out in October! It gets the equivalent of 200 mpg and goes 100 miles between charges. It is an all-electric 3-wheel car, so I’m not sure how they calculated mpg. It will be classified a motorcycle and be only available in California:
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/01/1st-pre-product.html

The flying car is on the market also:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/22/flying-car.html

I never realized that the CIA funded the publishing of the Russian version of Dr. Zhivago, which allowed the Nobel Prize committee to award the author, which was a big embarrassment to the USSR. A book needs to be published in its native language to be eligible for a Nobel Prize, but the USSR was obviously not going to let it be published there…so the CIA published its Russian edition in Holland:
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=7299

The ScanEagle UAV was designed to track dolphins and tuna from fishing boats to ensure that tuna is “dolphin-safe”, but now the Navy and others rely on it too:
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=7302

Georgia Tech is working to try to get UAVs to be quieter, which would make them more stealthy:
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=2496&ga=2

The situation in Mexico is so bad now that the Marines are not allowed to go to Tijuana…we can send them to Iraq and Afghanistan but we won’t let them drive across the border!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-01-21-camp_N.htm

The Army is working on “exploding marmalade” missile technology:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/marmalade_rocket_fuel/

The FDA approved the first embryonic stem cell trial:
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0901&RELTYPE=LST&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=IN&CommonCount=0

Article about the security measures being taken for Obama’s BlackBerry:
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2009/01/sigint-agencies-and-hackers-of-world.html

Article about how exclusive it will be to be on Obama’s approved BlackBerry list:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/01/22/obamas_blackberry_the_ultimate.html?wprss=44

Article about how McCain will be a strong ally for Obama on issues where they agree:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2009/01/white_house_cheat_sheet_obamas.html?wprss=thefix

Google exceeded the expectations of analysts for their previous quarter, though their net income was down due to write-downs of their investments into AOL (down $726 million) and Clearwire (down $355 million). I love that they are allowing their employees to exchange their underwater stock options (Google’s stock has dropped significantly over the past year+), which will cost Google about $490 million:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10148497-93.html

Article that tries to figure out which divisions of Microsoft will be hit hardest by their announced layoff of 5,000 people:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1836

It is pretty scary that 9 million+ computers are infected by a superworm due to a Microsoft Windows vulnerability:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/23/conficker_worm/

It looks like the BlackBerry Storm enabled Verizon to retain its customers the best out of the US cellular companies, and also to grow by 5.5% (taking a lot of customers from Sprint). For every Verizon customer that switched to Sprint, *10* Sprint customers switched to Verizon!
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/verizon-wireless-sprint-nextel-q4

Poor stay-at-home Mom won a $20,000 in a scratch-off lottery…her friend volunteered to take the ticket to verify that it was a winner (even though the ticket itself tells you when you won!) and somehow claimed to have “lost” the ticket:
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1157819.html