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Which is just another way of saying that the dollar isn’t worth what it used to be, of course.

“As your reward, I will give you a pigeon’s egg the size of a ruby….”

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Yet Another Cute Little Car.

Add a Vulcan mini-gun with heads-up display, and oh, baby….

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Yet Another Cute Little Car.

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It emerged that the S301 – now in trials with the SEALs in Hawaii – had cost just $10m to develop, which contrasted especially well with the $885m+ spent on the ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS).

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We’re urging him to call it ‘Obamacare’.

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Yeah, we all need more sticky stuff in our lives….

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We have the technology.

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The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel’s military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.

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Until some Muslim fundamentalists come along and blow it up, as happened in Afghanistan. Let’s take advantage of it while we can.

Get it.

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Beginning Monday, some of the more outrageous practices of credit card issuers will be outlawed. But just like a bully on a playground who doesn’t punch when the teacher is watching, lenders will find ways to continue pummeling consumers.

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The image of banks locking their doors to keep customers from making withdrawals during a bank run is what immediately came to mind when we heard that Citigroup was telling customers it has the right to prevent any withdrawals from checking accounts  for seven days.

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The fact is that expiration dates mean very little. Food starts to deteriorate from the moment it’s harvested, butchered, or processed, but the rate at which it spoils depends less on time than on the conditions under which it’s stored. Moisture and warmth are especially detrimental. A package of ground meat, say, will stay fresher longer if placed near the coldest part of a refrigerator (below 40 degrees Fahrenheit), than next to the heat-emitting light bulb. Besides, as University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza explained to me, expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.

David Friedman is joining the give-it-away economy.

My agent, whose opinion I respect, disagrees. Acting on her advice and my own inclination, have just put the entire text of Salamander, my as yet unpublished second novel, on the web for anyone who wants to read it.

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Just for you, Roy. Happy Birthday.

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It’s official: if you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps, then filling your face with chips will cheer you up, according to boffins at Aston University’s School of Life and Health Sciences.

Add some dead cow, and I’m in.

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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The 18-volume set, from 1797, which is still regularly used by its owner, Charlotte Hampson, has been discovered by Encyclopaedia Britannica after a search.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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But umami is not just an Asian thing. We taste it in other, western, favourites: parmesan cheese, canned anchovies, Parma ham, gherkins, olives and wild mushrooms are umami foods, along with wine and beer. The yeasts on a ripe piece of fruit have a degree of umami, and balsamic vinegar is packed with it. Favourite bottled sauces such as Tabasco and Worcester sauce lend umami to the blandest food….

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Financial institutions reap billions in profits from fees on consumers, many of whom lack the time or information to wade through the fine print.

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Works fine, lasts a long time, fails safe, and drains to the bilge.

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This is God telling you to stay away from foreign food.

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Splendid news on the health front this week, as it has emerged that drinking beer is good for you – and that soft drinks will kill you.

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A good trick, if it works.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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The first entry, of course, ought to be ‘government’, but one can’t expect that sort of insight from just anybody.

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Don’t look for the price to drop any time soon, though.

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Major textbook publishers have struck deals with software company ScrollMotion Inc. to adapt their textbooks for the electronic page, as the industry embraces a hope that digital devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPad will transform the classroom.

This will be helpful.

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Or maybe not. You decide.

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Be afraid.

An Informative Map

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The Quooker supplies instant boiling water through a tap, connected to a small tank hidden in a cupboard underneath the work surface or sink. The heavily insulated three-litre tank is linked to the water supply and heated electrically to keep it at 100C. There is a safety catch to stop children accidentally burning themselves.

I’d buy it.

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Well, that’s what they do.

The Other McCain is on the case.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Wouldn’t mind having one of these. They probably cost as much as a new car, though. As you can see, it’s designed to be stuck out in the yard, like a garden shed.

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The traditional method, which admittedly works better on a group-project basis, is to try some. If you throw up, get convulsions, or die, it’s poisonous. The scientific method, as explained in the U.S. Army Survival Manual, is to memorize the local edible plants prior to getting marooned. Too late for that? The implicit message of the manual is: soldier, you’re hosed. However, it does offer a plan B, namely the 13-step Universal Edibility Test. This boils down to cautiously trying whatever potential edible you have a lot of and seeing if you throw up, get convulsions, or die.

Don’t you feel better now? I know I do.

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Whoda thunkit?

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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We have the technology.

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Geek chic. If you find this article interesting (as I did), you probably need to Get A Life.

If you work with text files in any capacity — and what programmer doesn’t — you should know that not all newlines are created equally. The Great Newline Schism is something you need to be aware of. Make sure your tools can show you not just those pesky invisible white space characters, but line endings as well.

Indeed — got bit by that just yesterday; if you’re doing any kind of text matching, that can be one of the hardest bugs to track down because all that crap looks like a space in your normal viewing tools but it’s not a space.

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Your shoelaces will never be the same.

Of course you could do what I do, and not wear shoes with laces. But that’s me.

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Well, they’ve got to do something – it’s not as if the world’s navies are doing squat.

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Venus to follow presently?