- The Feds are digging for Jimmy Hoffa again. This time, they are digging near a farm 35 miles northwest of Detroit. They searched this same farm-house 30 years ago, and didnt find a thing.

If the Feds wanted to find Hoffa so badly, all they have to do is ask my brother or me what happened on that sunny, fateful afternoon, at the Machus Red Fox restaurant on July 30th, 1975. I remember as if it were yesterday (fade to new location...)

My brother and I, age three, were playing in the parking lot of the Machus restaurant with our newly signed Rick Leach U of M nerf football. My parents were inside, convincing the store manager that the strange doodles I had carved into the table using my dinner knife, where we had just previously eaten, was not vandalism, but instead profound religious symbols related to the local Huron Indian community (which still thrives to this day.) According to my folks, my doodles were protected by first amendment privileges, so the restaurant could not rightly sue my parents for the damage I had done to the table. I had no idea if my parents were actually having any success. I assumed they were having success...they had used this excuse before.

My brother and I were tossing the nerf football back and forth. My brother eventually tossed the football over my head, so I spun around to chase it down. When I turned around, I saw three men, all dressed in black and brown suits, standing behind me. An older man, who looked like boiled leather, was holding my nerf football. He said to me, "Son, is this your football?" I said to him, "Yes." He then said, "Do you know who I am?" I just stared at him. I was a nervous child, and rarely answered anyone. He followed with, "I am Jimmy Hoffa, head of the UAW." It was then that I realized I would never get my football back. Even at the tender age of 3, I knew the horrors of unionized labor. I then futilely said to Hoffa, "Mister, could you give me back my football?" I would normally have said 'please', but you have to be tough with these union guys. Dont give them an inch. Hoffa then said to me, "Son...did you know that this football was made in Japan? Look at the label. I am keeping this football. I will get you a real football, made by American workers. Proud, American union-workers who pay outrageous union dues, feel threatened when they vote their conscious, and who purposely create inferior products to keep management from making huge profits." My brother had already run back inside the restaurant. The UAW always gave him gas.

Suddenly, Mr Hoffa's head exploded! There was blood everywhere. I didnt care though. As Mr. Hoffa's body fell to the ground, he dropped my beloved football. I picked it up, and ran back inside. I didnt tell my parents. I didnt tell anyone. I figured this is what happened to people who joined unions.

Here is an article about the recent dig for Hoffa, and a biography of Hoffa:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060518/NEWS11/60518014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa

- A website devoted to letting you know when stuff (like movies, DVDs, video games, books, etc.) will be released:
http://www.releaseguide.com/index.php

- Been meaning to upgrade your computer, cell-phone, or TV? How about you upgrade yourself? It will happen in our life-times:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/medicine/2713146.html?page=1&c=y

- The NY Times asked a couple hundred writers, scholars and editors what is the best fictional book of the past 25 years:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/fiction-25-years.html

- Like every other human-being on the planet, I read the Da Vinci Code a few months ago. A truly mediocre experience. The movie comes out in a few weeks. The movie must be better than the book. The casting for the movie is perfect. There is an online game you can play related to the movie. A few friends and I have been playing it. You answer 24 questions (one question each day) and at the end of the 24 puzzles you get entered into some kind of prize-drawing. The puzzles are fairly easy. They make for a nice diversion each day. You need to create a google account to play, but making the account is completely free, and you should have one by now anyhow:
http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/davincicodequest/

The Da Vinci Code book is reknown for its puzzles, which teases the reader to push on with an incredibly outlandish, yet surprisingly boring story. The author of the book, Dan Brown, seems to make up the rules for the puzzles as he goes along, doesnt give enough information to solve the puzzles, or simply makes the puzzles too easy (hint...if you are reading the book, to solve one of the easier puzzles, hold the book up to a mirror, then read it.)

If you want to read about a true-life mystery, which has never been solved, and has all the intrigue and potential of the Da Vinci Code, try reading about the Voynich Manuscript. Over 500 years ago, some madman (or supra-genius) wrote a bizarre book containing undecipherable text and common 15th century illustrations. Scholars, cryptologists, and historians have tried to crack the bizarre writing and pictures contained in the book, but no one has succeeded. Some experts feel the book is an elaborate hoax, but most cryptologists agree that there are definitely patterns to the strange text, and it does indeed contain actual writing...its just a matter of breaking the cipher. Read more about the Voynich Manuscript here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_Manuscript

- Oil prices dropped below $70 a barrel today, but they will go back up again. I wouldnt be surprised if we are paying $4 a gallon for gas in the next few months. Georgie unfairly gets all the blame for this. The President of the United States has very little, if any power over the price of gasoline. Free-market forces and geopolitical trends are what affect the price of crude oil. Here is a website with a map showing the average price of gas for every county in the USA. The price of gas in our area of the country is typically higher than other parts of the U.S.:
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

- Follow along...this gets a little complicated, but if you can wrap your mind around it, you will have discovered a wonderful mathematical paradox: Ever watch the TV show Lets Make a Deal? It was on during the 1970s. I never watched it, but I have certainly heard of it. The host of the show, Monty Hall, would offer contestants a chance to pick a prize hidden behind one of three doors. Only one door contained a prize. The other two doors always had some kind of embarrassing item behind them. The contestant picked a door, and then Monty would show them a door that DIDNT contain the prize the contestant was hoping to win. Finally, Monty would ask the contestant if they wanted to stick with the door they originally chose, or switch to a new door. Regardless of if they switched to a new door, or stuck with the old door, this would be their final pick. Now, according to simple intuition, it seems perfectly logical that switching to a new door doesnt increase your chance of winning. Since there are only two doors left, switching to a new door, or sticking with your old door seems to give you the idea that you have a 50/50 chance of winning the prize with either door. Unfortunately, this is not the case. If you switch your pick to the other door your chances of winning increases to 2 in 3! How is this possible? How can you have a 67% chance of winning if there are two doors left, and the prize is behind only one of those two doors? Read the following article to learn about this amazing mathematical quandry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

- The news just hit the streets today...Uncle Lucas is releasing the original Star Wars movies (the un-mastered ones, the ones without the new special effects, the ones where Solo shoots first) onto DVDs. Now fans can once again watch the movies as they originally appeared in the theaters. I never had a problem with Lucas modifying his movies. They are his possession, he can do whatever he wants with them:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/rumormill.html

- Take the following test to learn how evil you are. Actually, the quiz monitors how closely you believe in the ideas of Machiavelli. Gee, among the people who read this site, I wonder who will score the highest? I scored 62 out of 100:
http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest/index.html

- Has there ever been a time-capsule which was opened when it was suppose to be opened? I have always felt that time-capsules are a rather pompous idea. Here is a list of the nine most wanted time-capsules. Apparently these time-capsules were either lost, or forgotten about:
http://www.oglethorpe.edu/about_us/crypt_of_civilization/most_wanted_time_capsules.asp

- A unique way of looking at each country's population, population density, and comparing those results to other countries:
http://www.hivegroup.com/world.html

- We cant use rocket fuel to travel to the stars, because it isnt efficient enough to meet our needs. We cant use fusion or fission, because it's too messy and too difficult to accomplish. How about anti-matter? I always thought anti-matter was merely a sci-fi term, but apparently it does exist, and scientists have made small amounts of it. The following article explains how it might fuel a trip to Mars:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

- 100 science facts. #49 is a load of bunk:
http://www.ibzi.net/d100facts.htm

- A few months ago I wrote about how your computer will eventually no longer need a hard-drive. All your data and programs will be stored off-site. Rumor has it that Google is working on a website which will give users free, unlimited file storage via the internet. Now Microsoft is working on the same thing:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1951172,00.asp

- Remember the terrifying tylenol poisonings of 1982? Some maniac in the Chicago area killed seven people by filling tylenol capsules with cyanide. It's the single reason why almost every product in the U.S. is now wrapped in plastic and sealed in glued containers. Back in 1982, you could grab a box of Tylenol off the shelf, open it like a normal box (the ends weren't glued shut), pop the top off (you had a choice of child-proof or non-childproof), and the pills were right there without any plastic shrink-wrap around the bottle or any thick seal under the cap. If you went to grab a bottle of ketchup, you could just pop the lid and start pouring. How times have changed. They never did catch the psycho who committed those crimes:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/tylenol_murders/index.html

- Expiration dates for common house-hold items, foods and beauty products. If this list is accurate, then according to my approximations, I have endangered myself 58 times in the past two years:
http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/print/0,22304,676079,00.html

- The Top 87 bad predictions about the future. My favorite quote is from Charles H. Duell, in 1899, "Everything that can be invented, has been invented." Mr. Edison should have smacked this guy up-side his head.
http://www.2spare.com/item_50221.aspx

- If you put the 20 tallest skyscrapers in the world, all in the same city, what would the skyline look like? Well, here is what it would look like. Note: the scale of some of these buildings is clearly incorrect. For example, the Empire State Building definitely is not the tallest building in the world, but it looks slightly taller than the other buildings in this picture:
http://www.skyscrapernews.com/wtb1.jpg

- You have until 2029 to finish that book you are reading, or finally watch those shows you Tivo'ed the other night. There is a 1 in 6250 chance a giant asteroid will smack into the earth in 2029:
http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20060316230330846

- We are one step closer to creating an actual Steve Austin and Jamie Summers. Scientists have given a man robotic arms, which he can control with his mind. They have also given a blind woman the gift of limited sight:
http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=82612

Steve Austin

- When you ask for a carbonated beverage, do you say "soda", "pop", "coke", or something else entirely? I have always asked for a soda or pop, but my parents only use the word pop. The following map shows how people from different regions of the U.S. have a different way of referring to a carbonated beverage:
http://www.popvssoda.com/images/smalldrawn.gif

- Casper Weinberger and Lyn Nofziger died today. Lyn was 81, Casper was 88. Lyn Nofziger, as one of the Ronald Reagan's closest advisors, was a big reason for Reagan's rise to national prominence during the 1960s and 70s. Casper Weinberger was Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. When I think of Casper Weinberger, I am reminded of a famous quote from the cartoonist Berke Breathed (whom I wrote about a few months ago on this website). Breathed wrote, "Ah Casper Weinberger...there's a man who knew the value of a billion."

Casper Weinberger is one of the many reasons why the carbon, nitrogen, potassium, iron and hydrogen which make up your body arent floating around in the upper atmosphere. You see, Casper had the big idea of dramatically increasing the cold-war arms race with the Soviets, thus forcing the Russians to ramp-up their own production of nuclear weapons. Not coincidentally, this ruined the Russian economy and ultimately destroyed Soviet communism. So, you can thank good ole' Cap for keeping you from getting vaporized during the 1980s. Thanks Cap! Here are articles about Casper Weinberger and Lyn Nofziger:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,189335,00.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3752008.html

- Changes to the earth's surface normally take tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of years to happen, but on the east coast of Africa, geologists are watching a large chunk of the African continent split into two, at an accelerated rate. It will still take several millions years to see the final outcome, but for scientists, this type of geological upheaval happening so rapidly is a unique boon:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,405947,00.html

- The twenty greatest tools of all time, according to Forbes magazine, and one extra item that shouldnt have been omitted: duct tape!
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/03/14/technology-tools-history_cx_de_06toolsland.html
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/03/14/tools-duct-tape_cx_de_0315ducttape.html?partner=rss

- Since I know a good deal about computers, people often ask me, "Is it better to turn my computer off when I am not using it, or leave it on all the time?" Surprisingly, there is no easy answer to this question. Leaving your computer on obviously costs you more money (even if you leave it in power-saving mode) because the computer is constantly drawing electricity from your power outlet. Leaving it on also generates more wear and tear on the few moveable parts inside your machine, like your hard-drive and CPU fan, which both constantly spin even if you arent using your computer. On the other hand, turning off your computer isnt a great idea either. Every time you turn on your computer, you send a shock of electricity into every part of the computer that depends on electricity to function. The constant on/off status to any electrical device creates heat and friction, which will eventually cause a computer component to fail. Ever notice how light-bulbs usually fail when you turn them on? Same principle.

So, my answer to the question is this...when you go to bed at night, turn off your computer. If you plan on leaving your house for more than two hours, turn off your computer. If you dont plan on using your computer for several hours, turn it off. Here is an article which will give you further guidelines on when you should turn off your computer:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question328.htm

- The Star Wars movies may have come to an end, but the Star Wars universe lives on in many forms, including video games, novels, comic-books, and in a few years, TV shows. In 2007, we will get a 3D animation Star Wars TV show based during the Clone Wars. In 2008, we will get a live-action Star Wars TV show set between episode 3 and episode 4 (also known as the jedi purge.)

I have some hopes for both of these shows (namely that George Lucas isnt writing or directing either of them), but I have serious issues with the live-action TV show. I think filming a TV show that takes place between episode 3 and episode 4 is a remarkably bad idea. The new live-action show will suffer from the same problem that episode 1 through 3 suffered from. We already know the outcome of any major plot-point included in the TV show, so there will be very little suspense. I suppose filming between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope will allow them to include a few cameo appearances, like Yoda, Boba Fett, Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid is considered a minor actor, I suspect he would gladly do the new TV show) and Darth Vader, but it just doesnt seem enough to me. I doubt they could get Ewan McGregor to make a cameo. He still considers himself a major celebrity, even though his star is clearly fading.

If the new TV show sticks to Star Wars canon, then the show must include very few, if any jedi, and those jedi must get bumped-off as the show progresses. Maybe this idea, above all others, is why I object to a Star Wars TV show set during the jedi purge. To me, Star Wars is just your typical sci-fi setting, no different than Star Trek, Aliens, etc..but when you add jedi into the mix, when you add the concept of the force into the Star Wars universe, then Star Wars gains a greater purpose. It becomes mystical, even spiritual in nature, and makes you reflect upon ideas and concepts greater than yourself. This is when Star Wars truly shines. A Star Wars TV show without jedi just isnt Star Wars to me. Would I still watch the show? Very likely, but I wouldnt get "into it" like I did the six Star Wars movies.

I think it would be far better, and more entertaining to base the new live-action TV show after Episode 6. In fact, I would place it exactly 25 years after episode 6 (1983 + 25 = 2008). Then you would have a whole new plot to follow, which creates the suspense that was sorely missing in episodes 1, 2 and 3. There are also plenty of characters who could perform walk-ons, and their appearance due to aging would be completely justified. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, and Billy Dee Williams, just to name a few, would crawl on their hands and knees to George Lucas, begging him to allow them to appear in a new Star Wars TV show. I think many actors who have appeared in Star Wars have grown to resent being in it, since it usually over-shadows everything they do following it, but most actors would give their right arm to appear in another Star Wars project, due to the publicity it creates for them. Alas, they could never get Harrison Ford to make a cameo. He despises Star Wars, and never appears in anything unless he is the biggest star in the show. Harrison Ford is an ego-maniac, and he has a mid-life crisis every five years.

Think of it...how much fun would it be to watch Mark Hamill train a new cadre of Jedi knights, only to have one of the new Jedi turn to the dark-side of the force, and take over the galaxy! Perhaps Luke faces off against this new Sith lord, gets his butt kicked, and one of Luke's apprentices saves the galaxy instead. I know it's horribly contrived, but that is exactly the kind of thing Star Wars fans are hoping to see in a new TV show.

Here is an interview with Steve Sansweet, one of the honchos at Lucasfilm, talking about the new TV shows. Oh sure, I just spoiled most of the interview, but I am including it anyhow, for those of you who need to read official word of the new shows:
http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/694/694283p1.html

- The ten greatest accidental discoveries:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/start.html?pg=3

- I use to watch the TV show Deadwood on HBO. I gave up on it half-way through it's second season. No show in the history of television uses more foul-language than Deadwood. Every character on the show is greedy, dirty, and violent. Even the main character, sheriff Seth Bullock, the only possible "good guy" on the show, cheats on his wife. Maybe I am too old-fashioned, but I can't watch a show unless I can relate to some of the characters.

Three interesting historical points about Deadwood:

1. Seth Bullock became a major player in American politics during the early stages of the 20th century. He became close friends with Teddy Roosevelt, and was appointed Secretary of the Interior, back when being Secretary of the Interior meant something.
2. Wyatt Earp traveled to Deadwood, and lived their for a short time. He and Seth Bullock, despite being on the same side of the law, became enemies. Bullock supposedly ran Wyatt out of Deadwood.
3. Mark Twain visited Deadwood in 1877.

Here is an article explaining the historically accurate and inaccurate details of the show. Make sure to also read page two of the website, as it might contain information even more interesting than the first page of the website:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-DeadwoodHBO.html

- Ten obscure facts about Albert Einstein:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980907140525data_trunc_sys.shtml

- Yesterday people in the Big Easy celebrated Fat Tuesday. I was happy to see revelers and drunkards once again meandering Bourbon street. A much lesser known, but equally important holiday always follows three days after Fat Tuesday...Skinny Friday. Created by the twice-martyred St. Swithins, the patron saint of putting all your eggs in one basket, Skinny Friday is mainly a holiday for poor college students who cannot afford a trip to New Orleans, and for people who work weekday hours but simply cannot spend the time necessary to visit New Orleans. On Skinny Friday, many years ago, St. Swithins led all swizel sticks off of all international flights. Truly a momentous day in human history, and one worthy of celebration.

Coincidentally, catholics do revere an actual person by the name of Saint Swithins. Here is a wikipedia article with information about the real Saint Swithins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Swithun

- For the past two years, I have used this website to make predictions about who will win the Oscars. My first year of predictions was uncannily accurate, but last year I made a fool of myself with bold, unreasoned predictions. Well, this year there will be no predictions. I am sick of Hollywood, and their twisted politics. I refuse to honor them with Academy award predictions. Four of the five movies up for best picture represent a vile, disturbing morality which I cannot accept. You want Oscar predictions? Read the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, or better yet, ask someone standing by your company's water-cooler. When Hollywood starts making movies the American people want to see, instead of movies Hollywood wants the American people to see, then I will return to making Oscar predictions. The following article, written by a columnist at the National Review, explains that not only are these movies leftist trash, but they are also down-right lousy movies:
http://www.nationalreview.com/blyth/blyth200602240809.asp

- The average American lives to the age of 75 (when averaging the life-span for men and women. Women live slightly longer than men.) You will spend roughly 1/3 of that time sleeping. That means you will spend about 25 of your 75 years in an unconscious state. I have always found the concept of sleep to be inherently unfair. You only get so much time on this planet and spending 1/3 of it unconscious just doesnt sit well with me. I want that time back! Soon, if scientists have their way, I may get some of that time back. According to the following article, scientists are on the verge of creating drugs which would allow you to avoid sleep, and remain perfectly healthy. Imagine how much you could get done each day if you got those 8 hours back?
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13507653,00.html

- How famous companies decided upon their company name:
http://deliberately-different.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-they-named-companies.html

- The top 500 busiest websites on the internet:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none

- Here is a comprehensive list of Republican celebrities. I can confirm some of these people as Republicans, but many I cannot. Perhaps a better way to describe this list is of celebrities who arent really liberals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republican_celebrities

- My brother totaled his car a few weeks ago. He emerged without a scratch (thank goodness), but now he needs a new car. My family always buys American cars. My entire immediate family was born in Detroit. Two of my four grandparents worked for the automobile industry. I have over 100 relatives in Detroit, and the American automobile industry employs a good portion of them...in short, my family has a genetic obligation to buy American cars. The problem is, what exactly defines a car as American? Is it a car that is built by a company that originated in America, or is it a car that was actually manufactured in the United States? Pehaps it is a combination of the two. Here is a list of all the automobiles currently manufactured in the United States. This list use to be much longer:
http://www.uaw.org/uawmade/cartruck2006.cfm

- In December, I bought a new cell-phone. I purchased the Motorola/Verizon RAZR V3c. It's razor-thin, and has a very futuristic look to it. A friend of mine bought the black version of the RAZR, which is provided by Cingular. My phone is charcoal grey, and I am horribly jealous of the "Black Razor" (inside joke for those who roleplay with me.)

The Verizon version of the RAZR has an abhorrent user interface. For the past few weeks, I have been researching how to change the firmware (the software that runs my cell-phone) to the standard Motorola software that comes with non-Verizon RAZRs. A few days ago, I finally took the leap, and "flashed" (uploaded software) my phone to the official Motorola software. I knowingly voided the warranty doing this, but I dont care. I want my phone cutting-edge, and I wont settle for inferior software. Unfortunately, my phone lost the ability to send/receive pictures and I lost internet access. I soon fixed both of those problems by editing the hexadecimal code inherently stored in the phone. The phone now works better than Verizon had intended it to. I get better reception, the battery lasts longer, and the phone is no longer saddled with a pathetic user interface.

I did all this thanks to a wonderful little website called Howard's Forums. It is, by far, the busiest messageboard on the internet related to mobile phone technology. If you have any questions whatsoever about cell-phones, go to the following website, and I guarantee you will find the answers you seek:
http://www.howardforums.com

- In 1986, Frank Miller crafted the greatest written comic book ever (IMO), Dark Knight Returns. He has written several other Batman-related comic books in the past 20 years, but none of them comes even close to Dark Knight Returns. Miller is currently writing a Batman comic-book I am sure to purchase. Batman takes on Al-Qaeda! The comic will be called Batman: Holy Terror, and is due to hit the stores in 2007.

The comic book industry has a history of placing fictional super-heroes against real-world villains. Superman and Captain America regularly duked it out with Nazis. Iron Man comics from the 60s, 70s and 80s are loaded with cold war villains. I think its completely appropriate for Batman to go after terrorists. If Al-Qaeda led an attack on Gotham, Batman would certainly go after the perpetrators. Read more about the new comic at the following link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=1616836&page=1

- Once or twice a week for lunch, I eat a sandwich at a Subway's shop close to my work. I have been cutting back on the frequency in which I visit this particular Subway shop, because the Diet Coke I order doesnt taste as good as the Diet Coke I order from other fast-food places. Now I know why the soda tastes bad at this particular Subways:
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=25442

- Another step closer to a hyper-drive:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/06/hyperdrive/

- Scientists in a remote part of New Guinea have discovered over 100 new animal and plant species. Dont we live in the 21st century? Havent we covered every inch of this planet by now? How is this possible? When I read an article like this, I feel like I am some kind of 19th century British aristocrat, learning for the first time about some nut named Darwin and his crazy boating trip off the coast of South America:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002789051_lostworld07.html

- To continue the discussion I started in my last update, truly random numbers are almost impossible to achieve. Did you know that if you analyze large sets of data from many human-created resources, the number 1 will tend to appear as the first digit in the number, roughly 30% of the time? For example, if you measured the area of each river basin for every river on our planet, 30% of the time the first number appearing in the measurement of each river basin would be a 1. At any given time, if you look at all the prices of stocks for the Dow Jones industrial average over a given day, then nearly 1/3rd of the time the first digit in the price of that stock will be a 1. Look at the populations for the world's 1000 largest cities, and the number 1 will appear roughly 30% of the time for a given digit in the population. This phenomenon is known as Benford's Law, named after the physicist Frank Benford, who in 1938 discovered that human beings tend to favor the number 1 in their statistical record-keeping, even when a human-being is consciously trying to be as honest as possible with recording numbers. The IRS and enforcement officials use Benford's Law to expose tax-cheats and accounting frauds. Read the following article for a much better explanation:
http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html

- More number "1" goodness...before the advent of cable television, your typical television carried channels 2 to 13, and occassionally a few more channels between 14 to 60, depending on where you lived. How come no one ever used Channel 1? It seems to me that Channel 1 would have been the most coveted channel to broadcasters. Well, here's why broadcasters never used Channel 1:
http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon971031/skinnyon.html

- How to detect a two-way mirror. When I walk through a department store, I notice the many mirrors littered throughout the store. Obviously a department store has lots of mirrors so customers can look at the merchandise from a different point of view, but I have always wondered how many of those mirrors have a security camera behind them. Now I will know:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blmirror.htm

- Do you peruse internet messageboards? Most people with internet access read some sort of online forum to discuss common interests or hobbies. Here is a huge list of the busiest messageboards on the internet. I noticed theforce.net messageboards are in the top 20. When the prequel movies were released last year, I was a constant contributor to theforce.net forums.
http://rankings.big-boards.com/

- Businesses, schools, and of course the government employ webcams to monitor activity within their areas. Many of these webcams, whether the owner knows it or not, are exposed to the internet, for everyone to see. The following link provides live access to webcams all over the world, for your viewing pleasure. These arent voyeur webcams for spying on the private lives of people in their homes, or for even more risque endeavours. These are simply webcams situated on top of buildings, on street-lamps, or inside of public places. Its kind of fun to watch the typical hussle and bussle on a city street, or a university campus:
http://www.opentopia.com/hiddencam.php?seewhat=rated&country=&showmode=standard&screen=1

- 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