There are a lot of uses of oil; energy is just one of them. I think most plastics are made with hydrocarbons, and someone told me that the pharmaceutical industry uses hydrocarbons in manufacturing (no details on what, though).
So does Iceland plan to make all of its plastics out of recycled material? Do they count as being oil-free if they import premade stuff from other countries?
While a laptop or tablet PC generally has better resolution and more functionality, it is not always superior to a digital picture frame. My father-in-law set his up at our wedding reception. He had scanned in photos of my husband from when he was a kid to when we started dating. I added some of my own baby pictures, and we had a fun series of photos charting our growing up and dating.
Yes, we could have used a laptop. But this was a wedding reception, and it was so nice not having an ugly computer sitting on the sign-in table. We got a lot of positive comments about it, and no one was tempted to start browsing the web during the party.
A print is great if you have only a few pictures. My husband and I took 3000 pictures on our last trip. We would like to share some of these with our parents, who either don't have a fast internet connection, or don't use their computer much (if ever). A digital picture frame was a great solution; we crammed a bunch of pictures onto a spare memory card, sent it back East, and that was it, pictures shared.
The article states that because the cars are powered with electricity, there is no pollution. This really irks me. While there may be no local pollution or emissions, that doesn't mean that the source of the electricity isn't polluting. If the source is solar or wind power, that's great, but in many (most?) cases the source is more likely to be a coal or gas plant, which are definitely not non-polluting.
I'm not saying I don't think this is a great idea, because I think it's terrific. But to say that it is non-polluting probably isn't true.
New Scientist (a British science weekly) has a great online gift guide.
It is primarily suggestions from readers (and a few from the editors), so it's probably a lot more honest. Many of the items are only available in England, but many are available in the US or worldwide.
In fact, you can pay them less, and they can still have a BETTER standard of living. And it's not like a programming team can't be located anywhere. Surf instructors may not be able to do their job in Kansas (relative to CA), but a programmer's location doesn't matter that much.
The programmer's location may not matter to the programmer's company, but it sure does to the programmer and the programmer's family! There's nothing like raising your children in a homogenous, all-white society, such as you'd find in Kansas. It may be more expensive to live in California, but for many people the standard of living is better.
I second Brio wooden train sets! Thomas the Tank Engine makes a compatible (and much cheaper) set of trains and tracks as well. I never had them as a kid, but a department store we shopped at had a huge set to play in the the kids' clothing department, and I could sit for hours with it.
My husband and I gave a set to our 2 year old friend, but her parents said it would have to wait a few more months, as she was getting frustrated putting the tracks together.
I have read that each new Lego set needs to include a new piece. After how many years of new sets, I would imagine this would get pretty difficult, and would explain why some sets come with pre-built walls and weird (dumb) stuff like that.
Advertisers? Definitely won't last long. Marketing loves to spend money on new ideas, but any business that lets them run amok without any cost to results will go bankrupt.
So does mean the demise of big annoying adverts on every webpage?
why is it do you suppose, that they haven't started sticking advertising in bathrooms
They do stick advertising in the bathrooms, at least here around San Francisco. There is often a large poster on the inside of the bathroom stall door with multiple ads. I can't say I remember what they're ads for, but I do know they're there.
They already have the capability to do something similar here in the SF Bay Area with Fastrak transponders. These are small, optional, devices that some commuters carry to go through the bridge toll booths quickly. Last year Caltrans started using them for traffic flow information (511 info) along major highways. At the time they said that personal information would not be tracked, but everyone was sent a plastic anti-static bag to use if they felt uncomfortable being tracked in any way (these of course are a pain, because you have to take the transponder out of the bag at the toll, and who knows if they really prevent any tracking.)
It would be trivial for Caltrans to collect personal information about each driver on the road with one of these transponders. Heck, I'm surprised they haven't sold the information to Clear Channel to close our budget gap. Many people use a credit card to pay for the tolls every month, so if you could get the credit card companies involved getting the buying habits data would be easier.
(side note: these same transponders are used all over California, but I only know about how they're used in the Bay Area.)
How about Tom Lehrer's reference to his friend Hen3ry in one of his songs (well, it was the opening to a song, and unfortunately I can't remember which one right now.) I am certain that the friend is either fictitious or that this wasn't his legal name.
It's not surprising that the top ten states this year were the top ten states last year (and the bottom 10 states were, with one exception, the bottom 10 states last year.) But what's up with Rhode Island??? 21 to 11 in one year isn't too shabby....
Consumers Union (which publishes Consumer Reports) was sued by Suzuki in 1988 when it reported problems with its SUVs. The lawsuit was initially dismissed, but Suzuki appealed and they're back in court.
There's already a huge industry out there for "Organic" food, why can't both co-exist?
Ideally they could both exist. But all it takes is a speck of pollen to float from a GM field to an organic field to make the organic field non-organic. Or a single GM seed to get mixed in with a bag of non-GM seed to spoil the bag.
I used to work at an ag company (to remain anonymous) that produced GM and regular seed. While I was there a batch of GM soybean seed (still in the experimental phase) was mislabeled as regular seed. The error was caught before any of it was used, but we were lucky.
I think there is a place in the world for GMOs, but I'm not certain that this is the time. There's just too much room for human error and not enough controls.
If I'm going to play an online game, but only have a few hours to play each week because, say, I have a job, it makes sense to spend some real money to move ahead. If I were unemployed, it might make sense to spend those 40+ hours a week online finding stuff, then selling it.
Playing online games such as Everquest shouldn't be restricted to people with lots of time. Without being able to buy items, those of us with little time would have a hard time advancing, and it wouldn't be as much fun.
Do contributions made to Kerry or Bush right now count as contributions made to the primary election or the presidential election?
According to the FEC document I read individuals can contribute up to $2000 per candidate per election. But since Kerry (and Bush, I guess) hasn't officially been picked as his party's nominee, can I give him $2k now, wait until this summer, then give him another $2k?
I may be on the upper end of the 16-30 range, and I'm not a guy, but I do spend money on games (both for me and my partner) and I don't necessarily want M rated games.
What I *do* want is an interesting story line, clever game play, cool graphics, or just a plain fun game. Currently I'm playing Crystal Chronicles with my partner, and I've spent weeks at a time playing RollerCoaster Tycoon; both are terrific non-M rated games that meet the above requirements. I wasn't a big Myst fan, but I know a lot of people who spent huge amounts of time playing it and its sequels.
Maybe a game of picking posies sounds boring, but I see many people who are addicted to simple little games that are found on the web or available for one's cellphone or PDA. I'm certain someone could come up with a very addictive Posie-Picking game if they put a little thought into it.
Slashdot Mirror
to pick this up in June. Like that's possible....
New Scientist (British, but they publish an American version with American job ads) is an excellent, weekly, replacement for SA.
You might also try Science News, also a weekly, but sort of a condensed version of major stories in science journals that week.
There are a lot of uses of oil; energy is just one of them. I think most plastics are made with hydrocarbons, and someone told me that the pharmaceutical industry uses hydrocarbons in manufacturing (no details on what, though).
So does Iceland plan to make all of its plastics out of recycled material? Do they count as being oil-free if they import premade stuff from other countries?
While a laptop or tablet PC generally has better resolution and more functionality, it is not always superior to a digital picture frame. My father-in-law set his up at our wedding reception. He had scanned in photos of my husband from when he was a kid to when we started dating. I added some of my own baby pictures, and we had a fun series of photos charting our growing up and dating.
Yes, we could have used a laptop. But this was a wedding reception, and it was so nice not having an ugly computer sitting on the sign-in table. We got a lot of positive comments about it, and no one was tempted to start browsing the web during the party.
A print is great if you have only a few pictures. My husband and I took 3000 pictures on our last trip. We would like to share some of these with our parents, who either don't have a fast internet connection, or don't use their computer much (if ever). A digital picture frame was a great solution; we crammed a bunch of pictures onto a spare memory card, sent it back East, and that was it, pictures shared.
The article states that because the cars are powered with electricity, there is no pollution. This really irks me. While there may be no local pollution or emissions, that doesn't mean that the source of the electricity isn't polluting. If the source is solar or wind power, that's great, but in many (most?) cases the source is more likely to be a coal or gas plant, which are definitely not non-polluting.
I'm not saying I don't think this is a great idea, because I think it's terrific. But to say that it is non-polluting probably isn't true.
New Scientist (a British science weekly) has a great online gift guide.
It is primarily suggestions from readers (and a few from the editors), so it's probably a lot more honest. Many of the items are only available in England, but many are available in the US or worldwide.
In fact, you can pay them less, and they can still have a BETTER standard of living. And it's not like a programming team can't be located anywhere. Surf instructors may not be able to do their job in Kansas (relative to CA), but a programmer's location doesn't matter that much.
The programmer's location may not matter to the programmer's company, but it sure does to the programmer and the programmer's family! There's nothing like raising your children in a homogenous, all-white society, such as you'd find in Kansas. It may be more expensive to live in California, but for many people the standard of living is better.
I second Brio wooden train sets! Thomas the Tank Engine makes a compatible (and much cheaper) set of trains and tracks as well. I never had them as a kid, but a department store we shopped at had a huge set to play in the the kids' clothing department, and I could sit for hours with it.
My husband and I gave a set to our 2 year old friend, but her parents said it would have to wait a few more months, as she was getting frustrated putting the tracks together.
I have read that each new Lego set needs to include a new piece. After how many years of new sets, I would imagine this would get pretty difficult, and would explain why some sets come with pre-built walls and weird (dumb) stuff like that.
Advertisers? Definitely won't last long. Marketing loves to spend money on new ideas, but any business that lets them run amok without any cost to results will go bankrupt.
So does mean the demise of big annoying adverts on every webpage?
why is it do you suppose, that they haven't started sticking advertising in bathrooms
They do stick advertising in the bathrooms, at least here around San Francisco. There is often a large poster on the inside of the bathroom stall door with multiple ads. I can't say I remember what they're ads for, but I do know they're there.
They already have the capability to do something similar here in the SF Bay Area with Fastrak transponders. These are small, optional, devices that some commuters carry to go through the bridge toll booths quickly. Last year Caltrans started using them for traffic flow information (511 info) along major highways. At the time they said that personal information would not be tracked, but everyone was sent a plastic anti-static bag to use if they felt uncomfortable being tracked in any way (these of course are a pain, because you have to take the transponder out of the bag at the toll, and who knows if they really prevent any tracking.)
It would be trivial for Caltrans to collect personal information about each driver on the road with one of these transponders. Heck, I'm surprised they haven't sold the information to Clear Channel to close our budget gap. Many people use a credit card to pay for the tolls every month, so if you could get the credit card companies involved getting the buying habits data would be easier.
(side note: these same transponders are used all over California, but I only know about how they're used in the Bay Area.)
How about Tom Lehrer's reference to his friend Hen3ry in one of his songs (well, it was the opening to a song, and unfortunately I can't remember which one right now.) I am certain that the friend is either fictitious or that this wasn't his legal name.
It's not surprising that the top ten states this year were the top ten states last year (and the bottom 10 states were, with one exception, the bottom 10 states last year.) But what's up with Rhode Island??? 21 to 11 in one year isn't too shabby....
Consumers Union (which publishes Consumer Reports) was sued by Suzuki in 1988 when it reported problems with its SUVs. The lawsuit was initially dismissed, but Suzuki appealed and they're back in court.
There's already a huge industry out there for "Organic" food, why can't both co-exist?
Ideally they could both exist. But all it takes is a speck of pollen to float from a GM field to an organic field to make the organic field non-organic. Or a single GM seed to get mixed in with a bag of non-GM seed to spoil the bag.
I used to work at an ag company (to remain anonymous) that produced GM and regular seed. While I was there a batch of GM soybean seed (still in the experimental phase) was mislabeled as regular seed. The error was caught before any of it was used, but we were lucky.
I think there is a place in the world for GMOs, but I'm not certain that this is the time. There's just too much room for human error and not enough controls.
AOL does not pay for the cost of disposing of the snail mail they send.
If I'm going to play an online game, but only have a few hours to play each week because, say, I have a job, it makes sense to spend some real money to move ahead. If I were unemployed, it might make sense to spend those 40+ hours a week online finding stuff, then selling it.
Playing online games such as Everquest shouldn't be restricted to people with lots of time. Without being able to buy items, those of us with little time would have a hard time advancing, and it wouldn't be as much fun.
Do contributions made to Kerry or Bush right now count as contributions made to the primary election or the presidential election?
According to the FEC document I read individuals can contribute up to $2000 per candidate per election. But since Kerry (and Bush, I guess) hasn't officially been picked as his party's nominee, can I give him $2k now, wait until this summer, then give him another $2k?
our money will be wasted purchasing the receivers
Could this be a plan to boost our economy by increasing consumer spending?
I may be on the upper end of the 16-30 range, and I'm not a guy, but I do spend money on games (both for me and my partner) and I don't necessarily want M rated games.
What I *do* want is an interesting story line, clever game play, cool graphics, or just a plain fun game. Currently I'm playing Crystal Chronicles with my partner, and I've spent weeks at a time playing RollerCoaster Tycoon; both are terrific non-M rated games that meet the above requirements. I wasn't a big Myst fan, but I know a lot of people who spent huge amounts of time playing it and its sequels.
Maybe a game of picking posies sounds boring, but I see many people who are addicted to simple little games that are found on the web or available for one's cellphone or PDA. I'm certain someone could come up with a very addictive Posie-Picking game if they put a little thought into it.