- The last ice age ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and humanity barely survived it. Since then, human beings have lived in a temperate climate which has allowed us to thrive, but there have been slight changes to the climate during those 10,000 years. From the years 1300 AD to 1850 AD the earth suffered through what scientists have termed a "Little Ice Age." The average global temperature dropped four degrees during this time-span. This may not sound like much, but even a few degrees change in temperature had a profound effect on a civilization which had yet to discover practical applications of electricity, heating or locomotion. Don't believe me? Don't believe the earth suffered a miniature ice age a few hundred years ago? Let me offer this as proof...remember the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware river? If you recall, the river is full of ice, and it's one of the reasons why the crossing was so dangerous. Well, the Delaware river hasn't had ice in it for over 200 years! It never freezes over. The following article gives further details about the Little Ice Age. Oh, and here's a link to the famous Washington painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/t/a/tac202/images/Washington.jpg

- Random numbers are a staple of any video game. You swing a sword at a dragon, and the computer generates a randon number to determine if you hit. A baseball pitcher throws a ball over home-plate, but the ball doesnt go straight down the middle. During a game of Tetris, blocks fall down the screen with seemingly no predictability. How does a purely logical machine, like a computer, which works on the principles of 1's and 0's, generate random numbers? There is nothing random inside a computer. Computers don't actually generate random numbers, they generate pseudo-random numbers. These numbers appear random to you and I, but in fact, there is a pattern to them, if you know the key. The whole process is much easier than you would think. Follow this link to learn more:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question697.htm

- The top ten most popular myths in science. You might want to think twice about letting your cat or dog lick your face, and Elaine really should have avoided muffins with poppy seeds:
http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/?url=myths_gumballs_03.jpg&cat=myths

- Are you getting less spam in your Inbox? Bill Gates promised two years ago to find ways of thwarting spammers. According to the following article, spamming has finally died down:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/insideit/story/0,13270,1684044,00.html

- A bit of advice to democratic members of the Senate Judiciary committee...if you want to succeed with the public, DON'T MAKE THE NOMINEE'S WIFE CRY! Good lord, is there a more disgusting group of politicians than the democrats on the judiciary committee? Biden and Kennedy actually make it easier for Georgie to get his nominees to the senate floor:
http://bench.nationalreview.com/

- Canadians will have national elections next week, and the Conservative party is on the verge of taking back the government. They haven't been in power since 1993. This is very good news for us. Perhaps the Canucks will give us more support for the war on terror, and allow us to monitor their airspace for inter-ballistic missiles, which they denied us a few years ago. One caveat though; the Tories had a lead in the polls a few days before the last national elections, and still lost, but this time they appear to have a larger lead, and more momentum at the end:
Canadian elections