just another persons waste of time
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

30 August 2010
.: this ice cream truck didn't make it home in time :.
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Posted by: Peter - 9:30 AM MDT
Tags: Humor Photos
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30 July 2010
.: our solar system :.
A nice perspective on the size of our star and its planets.
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Posted by: Peter - 3:45 PM MDT
Tags: Science
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28 July 2010
.: men have better friends :.
Friendship among Women:
A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.
Friendship among Men:
A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight confirmed that he had slept over, and two said he was still there.
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 9:13 PM MDT
Tags: Humor
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19 July 2010
.: the boys are a rockin' :.
Photos of The Firewater Rock and Roll Medicine Show at The Roadhouse Bar in Dacono, CO.
View them all ...
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Posted by: Peter - 6:30 PM MDT
Tags: Photos
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12 July 2010
.: how the recession has changed us :.
Insecurity Goes Upscale -- Newsweek
It has been the most egalitarian of all the 11 recessions since World
War II. In various ways, it has touched every social class through job
loss, pay cuts, depressed home values, shrunken stock portfolios, eroded
retirement savings, grown children returning home—and anxiety about all
of the above. The Great Recession (as it is widely called) has changed
America psychologically, politically, economically, and socially. Just
how will be examined and debated for years. Here comes a booming cottage
industry of scholars, pollsters, and pundits.
A new study from the Pew Research Center, based on an opinion survey in
May of nearly 3,000 Americans and an exhaustive evaluation of economic
data, provides a preview. Not surprisingly, it confirms that Americans
have become more frugal; 71 percent say they’re buying less expensive
brands, 57 percent say they’ve trimmed or eliminated vacations. Life
plans have changed; 11 percent say they’ve postponed marriage or
children, while 9 percent have moved in with parents.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 9:36 PM MDT
Tags: The Written Word
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.: moving beyond the scope :.
Beyond Guns: N.R.A. Expands Agenda -- NY Times
Fresh off a string of victories in the courts and Congress, the National
Rifle Association is flexing political muscle outside its normal domain,
with both Democrats and Republicans courting its favor and avoiding its
wrath on issues that sometimes seem to have little to do with guns.
The N.R.A., long a powerful lobby on gun rights issues, has in recent
months also weighed in on such varied issues as health care, campaign
finance, credit card regulations and Supreme Court nominees.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 9:09 PM MDT
Tags: News Politics
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.: i need to start a rural phone company :.
Rural telco serves 17 people, rakes in $300K (of your money) -- ArsTechnica
AT&T was insanely profitable in 2009, with $34.4 billion in revenue and
$12.5 billion in net income. The company even returned most of this cash
($9.7 billion) to investors as dividends. So why did the US government
direct $435 million into the company's coffers?
Thank (or blame) the Universal Service Fund, which last year collected
$7.2 billion dollars from phone companies -- charges that are passed on
to consumers, often as a separate line item on their bills. The money
amounts to a 14 percent tax on phone service. It pays for four things:
telephone service to expensive-to-wire places, subsidies for low-income
users, computers and Internet access for schools, and telecommunications
services for rural health care providers.
Read
on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:55 PM MDT
Tags: News Politics
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.: local news falling by the wayside :.
Citizen journalism not making up for loss of local newspapers -- ArsTechnica
In the US, traditional newspapers have undergone a period of
contraction, with many papers shutting down entirely. This has been
especially hard on local news, because even those newspapers that
survive are likely to be consolidated with former competitors, shrinking
the total number of outlets and the reporters that once fed them. At the
same time, the growth of the Internet and increasing availability of
tools for content production has fueled hopes that citizen journalism --
a combination of blogs and news-focused sites run by members of the
community they cover -- might pick up some of the slack. A survey of
citizen journalism sites, however, suggests that we're a long way from
replacing what has been lost, and the legacy news sites have gone a long
way towards adopting current technology and practices.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:45 PM MDT
Tags: News
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09 July 2010
.: abracadabra :.
Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible -- Wired
In a magic trick that only geeks can pull off, researchers at MIT have
found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they
would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there.
Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen
hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the
computer responds. It’s one step beyond cordless. It’s an invisible
mouse.
The project, called “Mouseless,” uses an infrared laser beam and camera
to track the movements of the palm and fingers and translate them into
computer commands.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 9:15 PM MDT
Tags: Computing Science
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.: free is bad? why? :.
Linux Doesn't Cost Anything - But Maybe It Should -- LinuxInsider
Discussions, theses, theories and memes abound around Linux's inability
to gain traction in the desktop marketplace. Some think the Linux
Desktop is too hard to learn (it's not). Others say Linux Desktop is
deficient (it's not). Linux elite (or 1337) say Linux wasn't really
meant for the general users anyway (not true). Microsoft says Linux in
general is evil (see the Halloween Memo) (oh, and by the way, it's not).
I submit yet another theory: Linux isn't expensive enough!
Why, you wonder, when all along we've sung the FOSS praises of GNU/Linux
(hereafter referred to as the more simple "Linux," with all deference to
Stallman) and that Linux is free? What could be better than free?
If Linux Desktop is free and can't gain more marketshare (estimates
range somewhere around 1 percent Linux Desktop market penetration) then
one or a combination of the above reasons must be why Linux fails. If
Linux passes all points in the opening paragraph, what gives?
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:48 PM MDT
Tags: Computing Linux
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.: it must be the music :.
Concert ticket sales decline. Is it the economy or the music? -- CSM
Concert ticket sales are down, says Pollstar, who report that gross
revenue for the top 100 tours in North America in the first six months
of 2010 is down nearly $200 million from last year.
That's a 17 percent drop in an industry that seemed impervious to the
weakening economy just a few years ago. The total haul of $965.5 million
was the lowest for the first half of the year since 2005 when gross
revenue was $730.9 million.
Ticket sales also were off. The top 100 acts sold an average of 6,951
tickets per show, down about 9 percent from 7,639 during the same period
in 2009.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:23 PM MDT
Tags: Music News
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.: a new direction on immigration raids :.
Illegal Workers Swept From Jobs in 'Silent Raids' -- NY Times
The Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and
farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to
scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers.
While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such
workers, the "silent raids," as employers call the audits, usually
result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not
deported.
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted
audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has
levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses
that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures.
Thousands of those workers have been fired, immigrant groups estimate.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:18 PM MDT
Tags: News Politics
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.: a new dinosaur name comes out of thin air :.
From Museum Basement, a ‘New’ Dinosaur -- NY Times
When Nicholas Longrich stumbled upon a fossilized fragment from a
previously unknown dinosaur genus in the basement of the American Museum
of Natural History in New York, he rejected the traditions that usually
govern dinosaur nomenclature.
Those conventions would have Mr. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate at
Yale, name the dinosaur after the area in which it was found, or use a
Latin or Greek root for a physically distinctive feature. That is, after
all, the method he used for three other genera he has named:
Hesperonychus, Albertonykus, and Texacephale.
Instead, over a round of drinks with fellow paleontologists, Mr.
Longrich struck upon, almost out of thin air, a name that would end up
bringing him more publicity than any of his other discoveries:
Mojoceratops.
Read on ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 5:34 PM MDT
Tags: Science
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.: wwrd? :.
What Would Reagan Really Do? -- Newsweek
Grown men don't tend to worship other grown men -- unless, of course,
they happen to be professional Republicans, in which case no bow is too
deep, and no praise too fawning, for the 40th president of the United
States: Saint Ronald Reagan.
His name is invoked by candidates for offices high and low, from
aspiring state assemblyman Anthony Riley of Hesperia, Calif., who
constantly referred to himself as a "Reagan Republican" before losing in
the 59th district last month, to Danny Tarkanian of Nevada, who framed
his failed 2010 primary run for the U.S. Senate as Reagan’s "last
campaign" and frequently repeated what has to be one of the most tired
lines in politics: "We're going to win this one for the Gipper."
For conservatives, Reagan is more than a president. He is a god of
sorts: wise, just, omniscient, infallible. Being Republican has long
meant being like Reagan -- or at least saying you're like Reagan. The
writer Dinesh D'Souza neatly captured the conservative CW when he
suggested that the right "simply need[s] to ask in every situation that
arises: what would Reagan have done?" Period. Problem solved.
Read on ...
Definitely an interesting read.
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 5:30 PM MDT
Tags: Politics The Written Word
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08 July 2010
.: a 1947 headline from today :.
Read more ...
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 8:03 PM MDT
Tags: Ect...
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