A Boot Camp to Prepare for Retirement

This article describes a retirement planning exercise, illustrating the steps to go through to determine if you're ready to retire. The article says that a full 80% of participants realize they're not ready to retire.
Part of the plan is the following: start paying quarterly instalments of taxes, something you may never have had to do whole employed, so you don't get a surprise huge bill at tax time.

YOUR MONEY: A Boot Camp to Prepare for Retirement

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

Eight drills to determine if your finances are healthy enough for you stop working — and to help get them on track if they're not....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/your-money/25money.html

Managing an Online Reputation

This article introduced me to the term 'astroturfing', meaning
generating a fake grassroots campaign, for example by having your
employees write raving reviews of their own company.

Managing an Online Reputation
By KERMIT PATTISON

Monitoring Web conversations, interacting with customers and honing
your technical know-how can help your business get ahead....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/business/smallbusiness/30reputation.html

Fatal Tunnel Accident

Don't cut in front of trucks in traffic! this video shows just how
much force a truck imparts because of its massive weight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clhIce8hteY

NYTimes: No Apologies From the Boss of a No-Frills Airline

Wow - Being crotchety, irascible, blunt, and peevish nets you $500 million.

No Apologies From the Boss of a No-Frills Airline

By SARAH LYALL

Michael O'Leary believes that short-haul airline passengers will endure almost any indignity, as long as the tickets are cheap and the planes are on time....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/world/europe/01oleary.html

NYTimes: Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal

Big brother is *advertising* to you. Did you know, for instance, that data-mining companies have 1500 pieces of information on every person in America. So says this article - read on...

Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Marketers have started mining the mountain of offline information and connecting it to consumers' browsers....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/media/31privacy.html

Disaster quotation

"That's how disaster works - one moment it's today and all the days
that came before it, and the very next moment the future becomes
unrecognizable." - 'Disaster in the making' by Lisa Taddeo, Popular
Science Aug '09

Tesla Dealer in Seattle

Yes, the Tesla dealer has opened in Seattle. You can go there for a
test drive, 435 Westlake, 206-682-2625

Tesla is an all-electric sports car for $100,000, and, no, I'm not signed up to get one.

See the photo gallery at

http://www.teslamotors.com/design/gallery-body.php

and videos at

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=teslamotorsvideo&view=videos

They have a 4-seater car in the works too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvzOdYVw6Pw&NR=1&feature=fvwp

COOL CLOCKS

Take a look at these clocks - fun to watch on your screen:
The animated hand drawing the numerals
http://www.kgr.de/uhr/

This one is an expensive $15 screensaver, but looks very cool -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoZmBjaFWto

This clock follows your mouse all over the screen
http://www.vb-helper.com/JavaScriptClock.html

This one shows time marching on...
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf

This one I'd get tired of...

http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock/

And here's the other one pictured:

http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/03/idea_the_bulbdial_clock.html

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2008/09/29/collection-of-unusual-clock-designs/

http://www.holycool.net/2008/08/different-ways-to-tell-time-collection.html

The programmer of the first one has an intriguing site with many more clever animations at
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3

(His animations reminded me of the games at zefrank.com)
http://www.zefrank.com/

Latitude on iPhone

Finally! Google has made latitude available on the iPhone. Your
location using GPS is sent to Google so your friends can see where you
are. Now I'll have to find out if it updates location in the
background, or if you have to be running latitude to get location
updates.

Unfortunately, it doesn't update location in the background; you have to load the page m.google.com/latitude on your iphone to update your location.

Wind turbines are pushing the limits of their transportation

"[The] transportation logistics are starting to limit how large — and as a result how powerful — wind turbines can get."

BUSINESS / ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT   | July 23, 2009 Slow, Costly and Often Dangerous Road to Wind Power By KATE GALBRAITH As demand for clean energy grows, towns are finding their traffic patterns roiled by convoys carrying huge windmills.

Wars over resources: Water

This interesting interactive graphic shows some hot spots where access to water is or could spark a war.

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/016/016waterfights/index.html

In a Reversal, Mumbai Attacker Admits Guilt

The Mumbai hotel shootings were such an international disaster that the case was being hurried through the Indian court system at unprecedented speed, until suddenly the defendant stood up and stunned the courtroom with a full confession. The article goes on to say that, incredibly,
"It is not unusual for cases to last for a decade or more in India."

INTERNATIONAL / ASIA PACIFIC July 21, 2009 In a Reversal, Mumbai Attacker Admits Guilt By VIKAS BAJAJ and LYDIA POLGREEN The only survivor among the team of gunmen who killed more than 160 people offered a dramatic and unexpected confession.

Gauging Your Distraction

Can you beat the average user at this game?  How well can you drive while you're texting?   TECHNOLOGY   | July 19, 2009 Gauging Your Distraction Gabriel Dance, Tom Jackson and Aron Pilhofer/The New York Times A game illustrates the potential consequences of distractions like texting on your driving ability.

Prefab building material safe, non-toxic, green

http://www.kama-eebs.com/sitepage.php?_p_=15

Sent from my iPhone

Bizarre Human Powered Boats

Take a look at these boats, and these. Very inventive. Like, the aquaskipper.
Also, there's the Cadence - an 83 pound pedal kayak.
These craft are hard to sell - most of the links in the newspaper article about pedal craft are broken suggesting they went out of business.

Suck sepsis bacteria out with magnets

An ingenious new technology - attach a metal bead attached to a specific antibody to invading bacteria, then use a magnet within a dialysis device to pull the bacteria out of the bloodstream. My question is why they don't attach an antibiotic to the antibody rather than this more complicated process to remove the bacteria from the body.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-06/dr-magneto

However, as one commenter points out online, it's the body's chemical response to bacteria that causes the illness of sepsis, rather than the bacteria. So by the time you're sick enough to be septic, the bacteria aren't the entity that's making you sick.

Why there are no seatbelts on a schoolbus

In an interesting OpEd piece in the New York Times on rationing health care, he is making a point about the cost worth spending to save a life, and refers to

"Twenty years ago, the National Research Council, an arm of theNational Academy of Sciences, examined a proposal for installing seat belts in all school buses. It estimated that doing so would save, on average, one life per year, at a cost of $40 million. After that, support for the proposal faded away. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&em

Electric vehicle plug-ins mandated for new housing

As reported in the New York Times, "Vancouver is the first North American city to directly link development rules to an electric-vehicle infrastructure, local media reported on Monday."

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/new-incentives-for-electric-cars-in-canada/

Container ship

The world's largest container ship, the Maersk Estelle, carries 11000 containers with an average cargo value of $273000 for a staggering total cargo value of 3 billion dollars. - from the TV show 'How Do They Do It,' show on the Science channel.

NYTimes: Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae

NYTimes: Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae
To me, this is a significant milestone in biofuels. A huge corporation sees the writing on the wall, and joins with a maverick innovator to use algae which has a much higher biofuel yield per acre and can be grown places that are currently not useful real estate.

Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae
By JAD MOUAWAD
The program is a joint venture with a biotech company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html

Politician versus Statesman

A politician makes the possible necessary; a statesman makes the necessary possible.

Think of the 'Bridge to nowhere' in Alaska - that was making the possible necessary. Incidentally, this type of quotation is called a chiasmus. See some more very clever phrases at
http://quotes-motivational-inspirational.blogspot.com/2007/10/politician-statesman-quotes-pompidou.html

NYTimes: Clean, Sexy Water

Clean, Sexy Water
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
A charity group to provide clean water has been stunningly successful, thanks to the marketing talents of its founder, a former nightclub promoter....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12kristof.html

How Air Bags Work

I read an interesting description of air bags, and was surprised to learn that they get quite hot when they expand. I thought gases cooled when they expand rapidly, but they choose a chemical reaction that gives off hot gases so that less chemical is needed to produce a given volume of gas, which I presume allows them to make a more compact device. I also found out that they use an electronic detection of rapid deceleration, rather than a mechanical one as in earlier models. I looked it up because I am surprised that there are not more reports of false detections and incorrect deployments.

"The airbag sensor is a MEMS accelerometer, which is a small integrated circuit with integrated micro mechanical elements. The microscopic mechanical element moves in response to rapid deceleration, and this motion causes a change in capacitance, which is detected by the electronics on the chip that then sends a signal to fire the airbag"

"Using hot gas allows the required pressure to be obtained with a smaller mass of gas than would be the case using lower temperatures. However, the hot gas can pose a risk of thermal burns if it comes in contact with the skin during deployment and occupant interaction. Burns are most common to the arms, face and chest."

NYTimes: Collect Now, or Later? Timing Your Social Security Benefits

Collect Now, or Later? Timing Your Social Security Benefits

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

Waiting until full retirement age or even later to collect benefits can result in a larger check — but sometimes collecting early makes more sense....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/your-money/11retire.html

NYTimes.com: Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations

I've always wondered how much it costs to stream songs over the internet: Now I know - a quarter of a cent. You can read about it in the following article:

TECHNOLOGY / INTERNET | July 08, 2009
Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Many of the online radio stations had argued that the old rates were so high they were being forced out of business.

Very cool homemade carbon fiber recumbent trike

http://www.manytracks.com/Recumbent/Poste.HTM

I emailed this enterprising builder, and he wrote back his improvements since the web page above was written, and attached the second photo.

Many thanks for the compliments. As you will see from the attached pic I have added a "Tail" box which carries tools, light shopping, and a battery for an LED lighting system. Also note the front fairing. I added this to create a more "finished" look but it has also definitely improved top speed and it is extremely light in weight. While the picture doesn't make it obvious the main frame has been completely redesigned to reduce the number of parts and increase stiffness. Yes I have finished making carbon fiber Kingpins for the steering assembly however just haven't had time to install them yet.
The steering is a horizontal movement fore and aft. From lock to lock is approximately 6". This makes for a highly responsive steering that requires only about 1/4" movement to switch lanes.

Snarge - a word for what remains after a bird strikes an aircraft

I never knew this word until this article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/science/25birds.html?scp=3&sq=bird%20strike%20&st=cse

"...a staff of four in the Feather Identification Lab took in samples from 4,600 bird-plane collisions, or bird strikes, last year. Arriving mostly in sealed plastic bags, these included birds’ feet, whole feathers... known as snarge"