Best Costume Award Goes to...

thanks to Doreen and Carolynn

Frightfully Great Time...

...Happy Halloween and...

...more Happy Halloween...

...from Bob & Doreen

No That's Not Me !

but Happy Halloween anyway...

...with thanks to Carol for thins one.

Temporary Brake Failure

This picture reminds me of when my sister had "temporary brake failure", drove right through the garage without brakes, and pushed her husband's brand new John Deere lawn tractor right though the back side of the garage like a cookie cutter in a Roadrunner cartoon !

...thanks to Carolynn

Make Mine a Whopper

Brad Sciullo, a 5-foot-11 and 180-pound chef from Pennsylvania, consumed a MAMMOTH 20 lb. hamburger in 4 1/2 hours.

Next Season on Dancing with the Stars

...thanks to Doreen

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

...with thanks to Steve for this one.

New Terminology for Ambitious Inve$tor$

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.
BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to
mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no
allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.
VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.
P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.
BROKER -- What my broker has made me.
STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.
STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.
FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.
MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.
CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.
WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked
up in a nuthouse.
PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

thanks to Doreen for this one.

WHAT'S A BILLION ?

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain... let's take a look at New Orleans... It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for

250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number... what does it mean?

A. Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans

(every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

B. Or.. if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or... if you are a family of four your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D. C

HELLO!

Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax

- Building Permit Tax

- CDL License Tax

- Cigarette Tax

- Corporate Income Tax

- Dog License Tax

- Federal Income Tax

- Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)

- Fishing License Tax

- Food License Tax

- Fuel Permit Tax

- Gasoline Tax

- Hunting License Tax

- Inheritance Tax

- Inventory Tax

- IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

- IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

- Liquor Tax

- Luxury Tax

- Marriage License Tax

- Medicare Tax

- Property Tax

- Real Estate Tax

- Service charge taxes

- Social Security Tax

- Road Usage Tax (Truckers)

- Sales Taxes

- Recreational Vehicle Tax

- School Tax

- State Income Tax

- State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)

- Telephone Federal Excise Tax

- Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax

- Telephone F federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax

- Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax

- Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax

- Telephone State and Local Tax

- Telephone Usage Charge Tax

- Utility Tax

- Vehicle License Registration Tax

- Vehicle Sales Tax

- Watercraft Registration Tax

- Well Permit Tax

- Workers Compensation Tax

-

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world... and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened? Can you spell "politicians"?

And I still have to press '1' for English.

I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times

What the heck happened?????

…With thanks to the Big Boy

Palin - Why Aren't We Focusing On Her Rape Policies?

While it media is busy focusing their newest cutie pie - Sarah Palin -- it's astonishing that no one has dug deeper to understand her policies toward women who are rape victims.

Fact: When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, her policy was to charge rape victims for their forensic exams.

It's abhorrent, especially when you consider she Palin had no problem raising money to build a sports center, but drew the line at paying for rape exams.

But there are two points that are worth underscoring.

First, this would have been bad enough if it was just a matter of being decent to women who have been raped.

But it's not.

Unless the police catch the guy in the act, forensic exams provide some of the best evidence against a rapist.

Not collecting this evidence means significantly lowering your chances of convicting the man who did it.

That means that the people who pay for this idiotic policy are not just the rape victims whose tests are not done, but any women their rapists might go on to rape in the future.

Not collecting the evidence that would put rapists behind bars means more rape victims in the future.

You'd think that $5,000 to $14,000 a year would be a small price to pay for putting violent sex offenders behind bars.

Apparently, Sarah Palin disagrees.

Second, Alaska had to ban this practice in order to qualify for funding under the Violence Against Women Act.

Which was, of course, sponsored by Joe Biden

The Great Escape - A Remarkable Engineering Achievement

In 1943 work had begun on 'Harry', the tunnel that allowed over 70 men to escape from the German POW camp, 'Stalag III', during World War II.

This was the same tunnel made famous by the movie 'The Great Escape'.

The link below takes you to a site where one of the men, after the War, drew a diagram with explanations of each of the sections.

Electric lighting. A railroad. An air ventilation system.

Against incredible odds, the Allied airmen imprisoned at the Nazi POW camp Stalag Luft III secretly engineered these and other technological marvels 30 feet underground in the three escape tunnels they named "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry."

They used only tools that they could manufacture themselves out of tin cans, and they scavenged building materials at great risk. When they were done, the airmen carried out one of the greatest mass escapes of all time.

Through this interactive map, drawn after the war by one of the POWs, Ley Kenyon, you can explore the remarkable story of Harry, the 300-foot tunnel that 76 men snuck through during their infamous getaway on the night of March 24-25, 1944.

When graphics appear, move cursor over the number (no need to click) to display an explanation of activity.

Make sure you take the tour. It's really something to see.

www.kerman94.com/tunnelharry.html



Thanks to the Big Boy

Rerouting the Web

SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.

American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. “Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,” Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us.”

Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications.

Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.

“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”

Source: NY Times

Comcast's 'Unlimited' Internet? - Cry Foul to the FCC !

Suppose you had a car lease with an annual cap of 20,000 miles, and arbitrarily the lease terms were changed to 10,000 miles. Would you push back?

What if your cell phone provider suddenly cut your minutes per month from say 700 to 350? Would you cry foul?

Well, enter Comcast, our greedy friends who just announced they'll cap every account at a total bandwidth of 250 GB per month.

Not an issue, you say. Well, what happens when they want to squeeze more new customers into existing bandwidth, and decide to cut your allocation again, and then charge you premium rates to add back what you've lost?

And consider this... How will your usage patterns change in the next 5 years? As the PC moves into the living room, your bandwidth consumption will increase exponentially as you wirelessly download and watch movies.

Just another profit opportunity for your friends at Comcast !

Here's a helpful guide to file complaints against Comcast:

A Resource Guide for Complaints Against Comcast

1) The customer service reps will give you the IP Network Abuse number: 1-856-317-7272. This is a waste of time. Be forewarned that all you can do at this number is leave a message for someone to call you back. The chances of someone calling back are slim to none .

2) Better to contact the Executive Offices at: 1-215-665-1700 or 1-215-665-2278. Just remember to always stay calm, be polite and be concise....don't ramble. Again, notes are helpful. Tell them you want to file a formal complaint and be specific about the issues involved. Again, log any names of people you speak with.

3) Write a formal letter of complaint to the top management of Comcast. Be very nice but firm, keep things concise and to the point. Try to keep it to one page if possible, two at the most. Start with Brian Roberts, the CEO. Send cc's to the rest of the management team and to each of the directors of the board.

The names of the management team and board of directors is available here:
»www.cmcsk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=11···ovManage

Send the letters to the management team c/o
Comcast Corporation,
1500 Market Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Use Google to find the mailing addresses of each of the directors.

4) File a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint division. Information on how to do this is here:
»www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html

»www.fcc.gov/contacts.html

»www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq···=congdir

While they all have email available, it is better to send hard copies by snail mail. While the email is read by their staffers, much of it doesn't make it to the Congressperson. A higher priority is usually placed upon physical letters...they have a better chance of being seen. And again, try to keep it one page, two at the max.

Also send letters to the Chairman of the following two Congressional subcommittees that oversee internet issues:

The Senate Subcommittee on Communications
»www.congress.org/congressorg/web···nate.gov

The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
»www.congress.org/congressorg/web···ouse.gov

Be extremely polite, concise and professional. Briefly explain the issue, ask them to please look into it and let them know you value their time.

5) File a complaint with your local Cable Franchise Board (found in your local phone book). Also file a complaint with your State Attorney General. Often, they will have a website set up for people to do this.

6)Finally, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. You can do this online at:

http://us.bbb.org/WWWRoot/SitePage.aspx?site=113&id=ab12ce37-3680-42cc-9817-df71ecfda32e

Be sure to read their website thoroughly...they are very picky about what they will accept complaints for, and what information is necessary in order for them to proceed with a complaint.

Be aware that processes such as these take time. No results are going to be seen overnight, and many government agencies can take months to deal with a complaint. Please be patient, and give them at least 30 days before checking back with them for a status report

Source: Thanks to "mapiper" for this helpful guide

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9076400

PA Turnpike - Highway Robbery

I have happy memories of riding in the back seat of my parents' car driving from New Jersey to Michigan to visit relatives each summer. Even at 4 years old, I remember how amazing it was to travel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and drive through those tunnels that, from a 4 year old's perspective, seemed endless. I remember the (what's now considered retro) look of the toll plazas, as it was the 1950's futuristic.

Now, this national treasure is about to be put on the auction block. Inconceivable? Desperate to raise state revenue, PA is in the final stages of trying to auction off the licensing rights (read: revenue) to the highest bidder.

If this goes through, other major U.S. highways, that we paid for with our tax dollars, will be auctioned off similarly. That in turn could jump-start projects in waiting, from Florida's Alligator Alley to Chicago's Midway Airport.

You can only imagine how the toll prices will increase when the profiteer needs to recoup their investment. The new operators can raise tolls 25% in 2009, then keep them in line with inflation every year, according to the Wall Street Journal, 8/26/08. You can read more here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121971201641371425.html

Please join me in telling your State Representatives to flush this idea.

And once you've done that, click on this link to read an amazing history of the PA Turnpike that dates back to the late 1800's as a failed railroad project.

www.pahighways.com/toll/PATurnpike.html

Finally, here's a link to a collector of PA Turnpike postcards that may bring you back to when you were 4 years old, and in awe of the majesty of this road.

http://flickr.com/photos/mytravelphotos/2681317644/

It's Finally Arrived, the Women's Remote

Pls. click on this picture to enlarge it. Source: Thanks to Babs !

Tightwalking the Twin Towers

On a gray morning in August, 1974, a young French aerialist walked a tightrope between Towers 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. He stayed suspended above lower Manhattan for 45 minutes.

There, he was almost free.

Police couldn't get to him.

Authorities stood helpless, waiting.

Citizens cheered him from below.

For nearly an hour, as Phillippe Petit later described it, the Twin Towers breathed quietly with him, "as they welcomed a trespassing poet determined to etch his destiny on the sky."

When he completed his performance to his own satisfaction, he calmly stepped off the tightwire and back into the world, offering his wrists to the waiting handcuffs.

He was taken to New York's Downtown hospital to be examined for mental illness. “The police thought he was crazy,” remembers John Flynn, M.D., who at 87 is still practicing at the same hospital. “I told them he wasn’t — that he was a trained aerialist. Then they took the handcuffs off him.” Petit remembered Flynn and later sent him a photo. “We hung it in our bedroom at home,” he said.

Two years after the Towers fell, Petit wrote a brief and moving essay about them called

My Towers, Our Towers

I walked a tightrope from one to the other--and I watched them die.

by PHILIPPE PETIT

Saturday, September 13, 2003

You breathe, don't you?

So do I. And so did they, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Whenever a cloud interrupted the sunshine that made their silver robes flutter chromatically, the drop in temperature caused the steel skeletons to contract a little; when it passed, they expanded again.

You and I groan in anger at times. So did they, when gales forced them to sway, although they had been designed to win that sort of tug-of-war.

All this I know for a fact; because I rigged a cable between the two towers, from crown to crown--the appellation for the inclined setback of the top floors that supported the roof, coined by Leslie Robertson, the buildings' structural engineer.

That gray morning of Aug. 7, 1974, the twins, separated at birth, acquiesced in a temporary union, as they welcomed a trespassing poet determined to etch his destiny upon the sky. I linked them with a smile, that of my cable's catenary curve. The curve of my involuntary smile mirrored that of the cable as I took my first steps. The towers whispered in awe. At midcrossing, I sat down to contemplate the horizon and noticed that it, like my balancing pole, was slightly curved; the towers had imparted to me a most important discovery: "The earth is round!" They quieted down the moment I genuflected, so that I could hear the clamoring of the astonished audience that had gathered a quarter of a mile below. The towers kindly held their breath as I lay down upon the wire, they eavesdropped on my silent dialogue with a red-eyed seagull that hovered above me.

That morning, the twin towers became my towers.

Six years earlier, learning of their impending birth, I had decided to conquer them. I watched them grow. I spied on them. I fell in love. Then, under cover of night, I married them, with a seven-eighths-inch steel cable composed of six strands of 19 wires each. At daybreak, the entire world was our witness.

For what seemed an eternity, we enjoyed each other. I visited them often, through the ups and downs of their colorful lives. I introduced them to my friends and family. And then, on a perfectly clear blue September morning, I watched them die, stabbed in the back by assassins who vaporized in mid-air.

I heard my towers cry for help for a long, long time. I listened in anguish, powerless, to their last sighs. I witnessed their collapse and fell silent, eviscerated. Where had they gone? Who besides me knew that, despite 200,000 tons of steel, glass, concrete, and aluminum, the towers were made mostly of air? Between every piece of solid material, air! Mostly air. Could it be air to air? Like ashes to ashes?

Fluidly, in a deadly cascade of smoke and debris, in a matter of seconds, they erased themselves, taking thousands of human lives with them.

I close my eyes, I remember and pay my respect to the victims and their families. That dreadful morning, my towers became your towers, our towers.

Eleven years ago, when my young daughter died without warning, the dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, came to my side. He offered me guidance from his heart, but quite commandingly: "Speak of her in the present; you must not use the past tense!"

When asked today, "Do you have children?" I answer, "Yes, I have a daughter named Gypsy. She is 9 1/2 years old, and no longer alive."

So are my twin towers, our twin towers, gone, yet still standing tall, made of thin air, yet gloriously defying the sunset on this warm late summer evening.

Look at them!

Mr. Petit is artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York

Sources:

Thanks to lisa schamess and WSJ for narrative and pix.

Why Is This Dog Looking Confused?

For years, lots of dog lovers have gone without the companionship of man's best friend because, for one reason or another, they felt they couldn't keep a pet.

Now, some are getting around obstacles by sharing ownership. And to meet that growing demand, pet-lending services are proliferating.

Penny De Los Santos wanted a dog but traveled too much to care for one full time. So, she opted for the next best thing: a time-share pet.

For two years, Ms. Santos shared a mellow female Husky mix with her neighbors, who took the dog for about one week a month. They split veterinary bills and the cost of vaccinations and heartworm pills. The neighbors called the dog Nika. Ms. Santos preferred the name Monica.

"It's kind of like Monica had two lives with two families," says the 39-year-old photographer in Austin, Texas.

For travelers, some locations of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Marriott International Inc., are offering guests the chance to take out resident dogs for hours at a time.

Some animal shelters let dog lovers swing by and take a pooch out for a day.

Short-term pet leasing, specifically, has drawn criticism that the practice frays the traditional bond between man and dog. "From a social standpoint, it's very hard on the animal," says Bonnie Beaver, professor at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, in College Station, and a past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Dogs could develop abnormal behaviors such as obsessive licking and whining. Also, the practice "can make them more leery of people," Dr. Beaver says.

Source: WSJ's Anjali Athavaley reports. (Aug. 5)

Why It Pays To Rent

For all you financial whizzes and MBAs, do the math on the Paul McCartney-Heather Mills divorce vs. Eliot Spitzer's deal.

After 5 years of marriage, Sir Paul paid Heather $49 million. Assuming he got sex every night during their 5 year relationship (which would NOT have happened!) it ended up costing him $26,849 per time.

On the other hand, Elliot Spitzer's call girl, Kristen (see pic) is an absolute stunner with a body like no other, charges $4,000 an hour. For anything!

At Eliot's rate, Paul McCartney would have paid Kristen a total of $7.3 million for sex every night for 5 years, and still pocketed a saving of $41.7 million!

Value-added benefits are: a 22 year old hot babe, no begging, no coaxing, never a headache, plays all requests, no bitching and complaining or 'to do' lists.

Best of all, she leaves when you're done, and comes back when you ask her. All at 1/7th the cost, with no legal fees.

Sometimes renting makes far more sense.

Source: Thank you to the Big Boy

Alients and UFO's Are Real

Apollo Astronaut Mitchell Says Aliens Exist and The Government Doesn't Want You To Know About Them

Now seventy-seven years old, the sixth man to walk on the surface of the moon told a stunned radio audience that Aliens from other worlds have contacted humans and that governments have purposely covered up what they have learned about these entities. Mitchell describes the beings as “little people who look strange to us.” He says that the traditional description of creatures with a small body frame, large eyes and over-sized head is accurate.

Mitchell told radio host Nick Margerrison, “'It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it… I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes - we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it's been happening quite a bit.”

Source: 9/24/08

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8307

Shock and Awe... About Prices

So what would 25 cents buy in the '50's?

This menu from Woolworth's will bring back good memories to some of you, and disbelief to others.

Click on the menu to enlarge.

Source: thanks to the Big Boy

3D Web Is The Next Killer App

Now that over 80 % of American homes have web access, the next frontier is 3D video in high definition.

Over the last 30 years, we have gone from punch cards to DOS typed commands to drag-and-drop folders to Windows Vista's 3D panels

Now, what real estate, home decorating, or architectural firm wouldn't want their clients to be able to see high definition, 3 dimensional images?

Bandwidth and processing power are constantly growing, leading to several convergent trends.

Interfaces are moving closer to reality. Hardware that makes 3D immersion possible starting to now reach consumers' homes.

WSJ, 7/17/08, Benjamin Duranske reporting

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121625069754060057.html

Return of the bag lunch

It's no surprise with the cost of gas that people are brown bagging it more than ever.

Instead of indulging in a roasted portobello sandwich and gourmet chips at a nearby bistro, many workers are now brown-bagging it.

As the comparison (see left) shows, the cost of brown bagging it is about 1/2 of a similar lunch from an upscale deli.

In fact, online bag retailer eBags.com saw sales of lunch bags and coolers increase 39% in June over the year before.

Other workers are turning to cheaper alternatives -- like subsidized or free corporate cafeterias and cheaper fast-food spots.

WSJ 5/15/08 Dana Mattioli reporting

Donna (Still Sizzling-Hot) Summer

Donna Summer has an most impressive body of work of any artist associated with the disco era, selling some 130 million recordings. Her voice, powerful in the mid-range and thrilling when it soars, is still a wonder, and on stage she plays to perfection the role of approachable icon.

Her first brush with international acclaim was in 1975 with the disco favorite "Love to Love You Baby," but by decade's end she had added blues, funk, rock and soul to her sound on "Bad Girls," the best-selling album of her career.

Her first new album in 17 years, "Crayon" is a musical variety pack. The blistering "I'm a Fire" is as close as the album gets to disco. "Sand on My Feet" is a folk-rock ballad; "Drivin' Down Brazil," a samba; and the title cut, featuring Ziggy Marley, a reggae pop tune. "Slide Over Backwards" nestles her in with country harmonica and snapping percussion that bring to mind a back-porch blues jam. The ballad "Be Myself Again" is a powerhouse showcase for the singer.

WSJ 7/10/08, Jim Fuselli reporting

$20 Million Trove of Cartoons May Finally Get A Home

We have the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame. The Hockey Hall of Fame.

But why no Cartoon Hall of Fame?

Good news: a treasure trove of classic cartoons, worth $20 Million, may finally get a well deserved home.

Mort Walker, cartoonist for "Beetle Bailey," chronicling the lighter side of Army life, for 58 years, has amassed more than 200,000 pieces -- including comic books from heavyweights like "Spider-Man" creator Stan Lee and the late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who died in 1970. The trove includes Mickey and Minnie Mouse drawings by Walt Disney and hand-drawn panels of "Peanuts" by Charles Schulz.

In 1996, Mr. Walker moved the collection to Boca Raton, Fla. He drew up plans for a majestic new space until two corporate sponsors filed for bankruptcy. The museum lost $5 million in expected donations and was unable to afford basic maintenance costs, Mr. Walker says. The bank foreclosed, he says, and the museum closed in 2002.

In 2007, Ohio State University Prof. Lucy Caswell, a former member of the cartoon museum's board of directors, began to talk with the Walkers about merging their collection with the university's own cartoon collection.

The university promised the art would be available for all to see, and the Walkers finally decided that was the way to go. The art arrived in Ohio last month.

From WSJ, 7-16-08, Mary Pilon reporting

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121615221992855615.html

Welcome to the Sunshine ? State

It's July in Florida and we have hot days then about 5 PM the skies open.


We won't be adding water to the pool for awhile.


Our community has a so-called "intelligent watering system", technology run amuk, intended to read soil dryness.




When it rains heavily, the "brain" never fails to sends commands up to the satellite starting the sprinklers full blast.


For you golfers, a few new water hazards along the fairway.

The American Dream -- 8 years later

[click to expand]

courtesy of News-Press, Doug MacGregor

iPhone - Pricey but Nifty

According to Walt Mossberg at WSJ, new iPhone is pricey but nifty.


Pros
...significantly faster than older iPhone
...availability of third-party software could be the biggest attraction to the new iPhone 3G.
...all in one web device functionality, ease and simplicity of use.
...ability to synchronize all of your content, e-mails, pix, music, etc. automatically, so whatever you do on iPhone, those same changes are loaded onto your other network computers

Cons
...AT&T Inc., has effectively negated the iPhone's up-front price cut by jacking up its monthly fee for unlimited data use by $10.
...Over the course of the two-year contract you must sign to get the lower hardware prices, that adds $240, overwhelming the $200 savings on the phone itself. If you want text messaging, the cost rises further. With the first iPhone, 200 text messages a month came free. Now, 200 messages will cost $5 a month, or another $120 over the two-year contract.
...iPhone 3G's battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks.
...significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can't be replaced with a spare.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121555740704037313.html