Apparently any airplane that lands or takes off at Gibraltar's airport has a lot in common with chickens... They both cross the road to get to the other side! Originally built in 1939 as an emergency landing base for the Navy, the runway was extended onto reclaimed ground extending out into the bay... Which means the road to Spain crosses the middle of the runway... So every time an airplane lands or takes off the road has to be closed! Check out some pictures

Due to complaints, the pictures previously shown here have been removed

The Police Department in Kaduna, Nigeria has a new task force... But this task force is not for drugs, guns, terrorists, or any of the usual suspencts... This task force is specifically to arrest cows! And dangerous cows, at that... In July, an Air France airliner taxied into a herd of cows on the airport's runway... And car accidents caused by people swerving to avoid cows in the road are common... So now the police are arresting the cows... A Kaduna official said the fine would be $15 per cow per incident and any owners who did not pay the fine will see their cow auctioned off...

(I wonder if the police could be mooooved to leniency under any circumstances?)

As you may have guessed, I am a big fan of the space program in general and the Space Shuttle in specific... Which is why I always watch launches on TV - and then go out on the Internet afterwards looking for more interesting angles! Sure, the closeup view of the Space Shuttle through the entire launch is cool, but what about spending more time with the onboard camera looking back at the Earth as slowly shrinks into the distance? And what if I prefer the classic launch shot from the top of the tower as the rocket slowly climbs past? Well, thanks to a NASA, a plethora of cameras recorded yesterday's launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery... And now you can control what cameras you want to see using a neat little Flash interface over at MSNBC.com! Pick any three cameras out of a dozen and see the launch the way you always wanted to! Or mix and match as the Space Shuttle rockets into space!

(And don't forget to check in on NASA's Return to Flight page as more pictures and video are made available!)

There is something awe inspring and amazing in watching a Space Shuttle rocket off into space... And the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery this morning was no exception! It is absolutely amazing to watch something that weighs 4.5 million pounds (~2,200 tons or 2 million killograms) reach a speed of 400 mph (~640 kph) in less than 35 seconds, and 17,400 mph (~28,000 kph) in about 8.5 minutes! And, due to the increased video recording of the launch - there were over 107 cameras recording - there are impressive sights never before witnessed by people on the ground:

• Liftoff of the Shuttle as seen from above! NASA had a high altitude chase plane record the entire launch... There's a view you don't see every day!
• See the separation of the external fuel tank from the Space Shuttle!
• The only known casualty of the day... "One of the birds didn’t get out of the way," said John Shannon, manager of space shuttle operations...

And more video and pictures will be coming over the next several days as the film from all the cameras is retrieved and processed... So be sure to check out the multimedia section of NASA's Return to Flight page - the pictures are outstanding and the video is amazing!

(God Speed Discovery - our prayers are with the entire crew as we all look forward to a successful mission and a safe return!)

I've always said chocolate is good for you... Now I find out how true that is! Mars Inc. - the maker of M&M's, Milky Way, Snickers, Twix and more - announced today that they are in talks with several large pharmaceutical companies for a licensing or joint venture to develop medications based on flavanols... Flavanols are some of many natural chemicals and compounds that can be found in cocoa bean and, therefore, in chocolate!

"The mounting scientific evidence is extraordinary," said Dr. Norm Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, which has collaborated with Mars on cocoa research... Cocoa-based flavanol molecules produce a blood-thinning aspirin-like effect... Two clinical trials have found that cocoa flavanols can boost the flow of blood to key areas of the brain, perhaps helping to treat dementia and strokes... Plus another study showed how flavanols improve synthesis of nitric oxide by blood vessels can aid treatment of vascular complications associated with long-term diabetes!

Add all of this to the medical studies that have shown:

• Eating chocolate during pregnancy may make for happier, livelier babies
• Chocolate not only helps stop coughs, it does so better than codeine
• Chocolate is high in antioxidants, lowers your cholesterol, and is as good a cancer fighter as broccoli

Mars has already launched CocoaVia, a nutrition bar containing 80 calories and specially preserved flavanols... Other products may follow, especially if Mars finds some pharmaceutical partners...

(So remember... Chocolate is not just good, it's good for you and your health!)

Ever wonder if it was possible to love your underwear a little too much? Well according to the debut single from The Fruit Guys, that's just not possible! Although this is their first music video, I think they are probably the most colorful band I have ever seen! I can't wait to see what their next song is about!

GP Robin Parry noticed something fishy about the packet of Scottish salmon he purchaced at his local Safeway in Caernarfon, Wales (UK)... The picture on the front - representing a Scottish Highland mountain, was actually a picture of Mount Snowdon in Wales! A spokeswoman for the store, now owned by Morrisons, apologized for the mishap, adding, "The people of Wales should be flattered that somewhere as beautiful as that is being used to promote Scottish salmon..."

Dr Parry said: "I was surprised but not offended - perhaps they feel the Welsh mountain is more attractive than the Scottish ones."

(Ouch! For those keeping score, that's Wales 2, Scotland 0)

When people talk about having a small web site, they usually mean they don't have much content, everything is on only one page, etc... When Alan Outten says he has a small web site, he means he has a small web site... In fact, Quimp.com, at 18x18 pixels, is billed as the world's smallest website! But that doesn't mean it is lacking in content... On the contrary! This little web site has games (pong, pacman, space invaders, pinball), a blog, pixel art, scrolling new headlines, and links to other sites... And all in a teeny, tiny, little site... So break out your magnifying glass and go check it out!

Retired Suffolk elementary school teacher Liz Beattie believes failure is not an option... In fact, she is petitioning the Professional Association of Teachers in the UK "to delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary, to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'..." The argument is based on the idea that being told they have failed a class or test could put children off education for the rest of their lives... "I think we all need to succeed at something... You need encouragement rather than being told you haven’t done very well," Mrs. Beattie said...

Ah, yes... Mollycoddling at its finest! I'm sure this will help kids prepare for the real world out there... Adults are always "deferring success" with no consequences, right? I'm all for encouraging kids (and adults) and giving them an opportunity to try again, but really! If you always succeed (just to varying degrees), how are you supposed to find out what you are really good at? What ever happened to learning from your mistakes? If you haven't failed, why try again?

Time and energy would be better spent trying to teach kids how to react to failure or showing them ways to avoid it... When they fall down, show them how to get back up and try again - don't teach them that lying there is as good as finishing what they were doing... Teach them how to identify where they need more help, not be afraid to ask for assistance, and to learn from the past - show them that seeing a potential failure and avoiding it is a skill best learned early and polished to perfection over time... And the only way to really learn this is to actually fail at something now and again...

James Doohan went to a better place today... And considering that he will best be remembered for living in the 23rd Century as Chief Engineer on a Starship, that's saying something... Mongomery Scott (Scotty) was one of the most loved characters on Star Trek (The Original Series), and James Doohan was who made him memorable... And if you think his only claim to fame was Star Trek, check out the obit on the BBC...

(Maybe now the "Miracle Worker" will get the chance to work some real ones!)

So you think you have a good home theater system, eh? Think it's good enough to take over the surround sound galaxy? If not, then hurry over to eBay (UK) and check out the Death Star Subwoofer! With a 36 inch (~91.5 cm) diameter, and housing a 12 inch (~30.5 cm) subwoofer speaker, this fine addition to your speaker fleet will certainly inspire Imperial ambitions - or at least the need to pump up the volume of your favorite movies... Some Q&A from the auction:

Always in motion, the future is, so hurry over to the auction before it ends on July 20th - otherwise you will have to build another one...

(And we all know what can happen when you try to build a second Death Star, don't we...)

Computers are everywhere these days... For many, it is hard to consider (much less remember) what computers were like when they were first being introduced into mainstream business and society... Which makes the How It Works... The Computer books from Ladybird Books LTD all the more fascinating...

Especially since these are scanned copies of the original 1971 and 1979 editions! Put it this way, the first sections cover "computers do not have brains and they cannot really think for themselves"... And then you get into how each computer is made to do only one thing - if you want to do something else you need to buy a different computer - well, by 1979 that was just "usually" how they worked... And punch cards? The most advanced computers use paper tape!

And don't forget output! There is a printer that is able to "print a complete line at a time," but it involves "a series of 132 revolving wheels"... Or you can use the VDU - the Visual Display Unit! Or, if you prefer, you can save your data on a magnetic cylinder...

So jump in the Way Back machie and read the book - it's only 50 pages long and has lot's of interesting pictures... If nothing else, you'll have a whole new way of looking at the computer you are using now!

Image, if you will, that your favorite software company is opening a store that looks and feels the same way their Operating System does... What would the stores be like?

• DOS Warehouse – A nondescript warehouse in the "bad" part of town... There is one customer service representative, but he only speaks broken English... You have to find everything yourself and that can be difficult because the entire warehouse is lit by three 40 watt light bulbs... The prices are decent and everything laid out in a fairly orderly manner, but all of the merchandise is at least 20 years old... Only the oddest of folks still shop here...
• Win World 95 – A cheap (but large) selection of merchandise and (at their height) millions of locations worldwide... Unfortunately, they have odd and annoying business practices... For example, they tend to stock the lighters right beside the gasoline and the guns right beside the antidepressants... Periodically when you try and pay with your VISA card all of the store employees will pull out bats and beat you within an inch of your life... Also, once a day somewhere a store burns completely to the ground - no one knows why... Business once was very strong but now few people come here...
• Win World 98 – Many 95 stores were remodeled into 98 stores (it mainly involved repainting the building and upgrading some of the products)... The wide variety of goods along with the decent price continue to be selling points... Oddly enough, for some reason people just adapted to shelves that break periodically... In spite of better stores many people can be found who still shop here because "it’s what they know..."
• Win World ME – An upgrade performed to some 98 stores, this was a store designed by a blind, gay, masochistic schizophrenic... Doors opened into walls, some lights are blue, some are red and some arc electricity at you in hopes of killing you... The carpet in the clothing department was decorated with those optical illusions that make your head hurt if you look at them too long... The floor in the hardware department was polished bronze coated with Vaseline... The employees would no longer beat you with sticks but they would set your car on fire... Repeat business was not good... Win World eventually closed these stores after just a few months of operation and burned the empty buildings down just to be safe...
• Win World XP – These stores tend to range in size from "small cites" to "small countries"... Almost everything in the world can be found at a decent price in an XP store, though it can be rather difficult to find due to its size... The main downside to XP stores is the crime level... Unscrupulous individuals masking as employees roam the aisles attempting to part you from your cash... You can hire robotic guards to protect you, but the crooks sometimes sneak past them...
• Win World Longhorn – This store hasn’t opened yet but Win World Inc. has been promising for the last five years that any day now it will fling open its doors to throngs of adoring shoppers... The biggest problem appears to be indecision on just what to put in the store and what changes to make to separate it from the other Win World stores - first the build a brand new foundation, but then scrapped it and put the old style back... Then they tried a new layout and look to the whole store, but they would have to charge people more and give them special glasses to see it all... This store is still under construction...
• Mac Classic Center – Mac Centers tend to be brightly lit, colorful and quiet places to buy artwork and other upscale amenities... All of the employees look the same because they are all clones... Everyone knows you by name and the store gives you a personal assistant to help you shop - unfortunately high prices and a small selection have prevented many people from shopping there...
• OS X Unlimited – Frank Lloyd Wright personally designed each sales center, making each unique and drawing people in who would not normally shop there... There are also more products available, and the staff can quickly locate any of them, but they don't always work with the other products in your house... The most difficult part is that everyone works differently than every other store, like the fact that the elevators, ATM keypads, and registers all only have one button - what it does depends on context... The upside is that you feel better than everyone else while shopping there...
• UNIX Depot – This was originally an enormous factory that was converted (mostly) into a retail center... It is made entirely of steel and concrete... The walls, floor, doors, stands, racks, employees and most of their products are painted gun metal gray... Only serious customers shop here... This is the only store in which you can walk in and buy - off the shelf - an aircraft carrier, a hydrogen bomb, a division of infantry, a communications satellite and a refinery but not find a candy bar... The sales associates can tell you detailed specs of every part of every product they sell, but they refuse to smile while doing so...
• Linux Outlet – This is more of a roving collection of gypsy tents than a store per se... Each version is loosely associated with every other one, but they do not guarantee to carry compatible products... People come and go and buy, sell and trade a wide variety of things... Sometimes it can be hit and miss... For instance they will have 50,000 different types of T-shirts but only four different types of coats... Many things are given away free... You can get a brand new car for $5 - the only downside is tat the manual costs $30,000... There are no sales people... If you need help you must try and find the owner of the tent you are in... On the upside you can always count on random people coming over to help you or give their opinions on a product, though on the downside you never know if they have any idea what they are talking about... But free is free...

The long arm of the law just got faster in Italy... Last year the Italian Polizia Stradale was given a Lamborghini Gallardo by Lamborghini... With a top speed of 192mph (309 km/h), this officially gave Italy the fastest traffic police in the world...

Well now they have a second one! The Peretti Foundation of API Industries donoted another Gallardo at a recent celebration of the 152nd anniversary of the police force...

This means another (lucky) 8 officers will be assigned Gallardo duty! And people are twice as likely not to have a car fast enough to outrun the police...

A pest control man was at my house today to see about our ant problem. We had sprayed the collection of ants between the stove and the dog food bowl, but left them so the inspector could see what we had. He said that they don't know how they do it, but when ants are killed like that, somehow a chemical message gets transmitted back to the colony, and they step up "ant production" to make up for the lost ones.

In their final glorious moments, I had noticed they had quit running in a line, and had been gathering in these bizarre little circles. What does that mean? I know the crop circles were a hoax and not some message from outer space... but what about the ants?

Stephen Holloday of Oakland, California, really buys into the idea that consistency is everything... That's why he robbed the same Summit Bank branch 4 times in the last 4 months!!! Time number 5, however, proved to be his undoing - two tellers recognized him and confronted him just after he entered the bank... Holloday paniced, fled, and was picked up by police a couple blocks away with the note demanding money still in his pocket! "He was a creature of habit," Oakland police Sgt. George Phillips said... "He had a penchant for doing the same bank over and over..."

Amazon.com is ready for Harry Potter this weekend - over 1.4 million copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have been purchased so far in the U.S. and U.K! And all of them are scheduled for overnight delivery this Saturday! Put it this way - if they used the entire 24 hour period, Amazon would still be responsible for 58,333 book deliveries every hour!

Put it another way - 10 years ago this week Amazon was just opening on the web for the first time... In the first 6 months, they did $500,000 (about 409,000 Euro) in total business... Now, they are doing over $24.1 million (about 19.7 million Euros) with just this one book!

Now consider that Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, B.Dalton, Borders, Books-a-Million, and all the other book stores are going to sell even more of the Harry Potter book!!!

Now that is impressive!

If you've traveled by airplane in the United States in the last four years, then you are probably aware of some of the long list of items that are no longer allowed on airplanes... You have probably also seen the large bins at aiport security where Transportation Security Administration officers collect these items - because people keep bringing them... So what happens to all that stuff?

It used to be they would sit around, gather dust, and eventually be discarded...

For items collected at airports in Kentucky, Alabama, Pennsylvania and other states, they now go to the highest bidder! Pennsylvania's and Kentucky's Divisions of Surplus Property sell the items on the eBay... Alabama first tries to sell the items to nonprofit agencies before offering them to the public at live auctions... And apparently the money is pretty good! So good that Kentucky and Alabama are working with airports in other states to auction off their items too!

For example, lose a nice pocket knife to security at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood or Miami international airport in Florida? The states of Kentucky and Alabama will be glad to sell your item back to you - if you are the highest bidder!

There are some people who seem to have "Stupid" written on their forehead... Then there is Karolyne Smith of Utah who now has GoldenPalace.com tattooed on her forehead... Permanently!

Apparently she put her forehead up for auction on eBay and Gold Palance gave her $10,000, plus $5,000 more, (about 12,500 Euro total) to take her up on the offer... According to Smith, it is all for her child's private education... "I really want to do this... To everyone else, it seems like a stupid thing to do... To me, $10,000 is like $1 million... I only live once, and I'm doing it for my son ... It's a small sacrifice to build a better future for my son..."

And while the tattoo parlor (wisely) spent several hours attempting to talk her out of it, Golden Palace CEO Richard Rowe seems to take it all in stride, saying "I think this kind of advertising will become increasingly popular as time goes on... It is a perfect way to get attention amid the clutter of advertising that people see every second of every day... Conventional forms of marketing just don't cut it anymore... To get people's attention, you have to stand out from the crowd... In light of Karolyne's story and her intentions to improve her son's education, we have given her an additional $5,000 on top of the $10,000 spent on the auction..."

As everyone celebrated the announcement of London as the site of the 2012 Olympics, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge followed up with another little announcement on Friday stating, "Dear colleagues you have just decided that two sports, baseball and softball shall not be included in the programme of the 30th Olympiad in 2012..." And with those words, baseball and softball became the first sports to be dropped from the Olympics since 1936, when Polo was dropped...

Now how is it that baseball and softball got dropped? It can't be popularity... There are 122 baseball federations worldwide - there were only 60 in 1990 - and the sport is growing in popularity all through Latin America and Asia... It can't be making room for new sports or more room for women's sports because no new sports were added and softball is bigger with with women than men... And it can't be stadium space as London had already committed Regents Park to the sports as part of its bid...

Some have said it is because the U.S.'s Major League Baseball (MLB) would not take a break in the middle of the season so it's name-brand players could compete in the Olympics... Others have said it is a subtle dig at the United States by a mostly European IOC to have two born-in-the-USA sports dropped... There are even those who see this as a personal vendetta by Jacques Rogge, who has publicly been trying to drop the sports for several years now due to his disagreements with the USA and MLB...

Regardless, it appears that baseball and softball fans and players worldwide will be the casualties in all of this... For a sports competition whose very legacy is setting aside personal and national differences in favor of a level playing field and international camaraderie, this is a very disheartening turn... Apparently even the spirit of the Olympics can be sacrificed to politics (either personal or international)... One only hopes this does not set a precedent that sees track and field, gymnastics, or other international sports held hostage at the Olympics just to further someone's agenda...

(As the British are fond of saying, "Really bad form, old chap...")

Like to celebrate New Year's? Like to watch the ball drop in Times Square as everyone counts down to the new year? Ever wonder if maybe they have the time wrong? I mean, this has got to be correct to the second, right? Otherwise it's just so arbitrary and everyone gets out of sync...

Now before you start laughing, think about this - 2005 is going to get a leap second! The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), part of whose job it is to ensure that time is always correct, has decreed that this second be added at the end of 2005 - so the time will go from 11:59:59 PM to the leap second and then to 12 Midnight...

Why? Because the Earth is getting slow in it's old age... It used to be that a second was 1/86400 of time it took Earth to rotate once on it's axis relative to the Sun... That way noon was always when the sun was overhead... But then scientists and others started getting picky about how inexact that was so in 1967 the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures established a second to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium 133 atom's resonant frequency... The problem is that the two measurements get out of sync because the Earth is not spinning as fast as it used to - so the IERS makes sure the clocks stay in sync - kind of like a leap day every 4 years keeps the calendar up to date...

Which gets us back to the original issue - how should people plan for New Year's Eve? Should we wait until 9 seconds before new years and then count down from 10? Would it be more exact to start the countdown at 10 seconds and then say 1 twice? Are there rules to this sort of thing?

Modulgraf, an Italian company specializing in wine labels, thinks your wine bottle has been quiet for too long... "The idea is to bring the oenologist to the table so that each wine can explain itself in the first person," said comapny owner Daniele Barontini... "It could tell you how to enjoy the wine, where it came from, everything you'd hear from a sommelier," Barontini said... "You could even have music..." All made possible by a small chip implanted in the bottle tht could be listened to with a small external device... While the product is not being launched until Milan's wine fair in November, some of Italy's finest wines have already expressed interest...

(I can just see this going a little too far... White wines refusing to be served with red meat... Expensive wines turning up their noses at more relaxed dinner settings... Of course, if you could download your own romantic music into the label, that might be interesting...)

The European Commission is getting a reputation for laws, rules, and regulations - namely, they've got one for everything... Recognizing this, the Commission recently put in place guidelines stating that, given the amount of legislation on the books, staff should consider a do nothing option... "Tackling the identified problem doesn't mean that you need automatically choose a regulatory option such as a directive or a regulation... Consider the full range of alternative actions available to the commission," according to the guidelines...

But remember, doing nothing has a cost - the staff was also told that even if they choose to do nothing, they must fill out paperwork indicating they have taken no action!

Everyone makes mistakes at work... Few end up costing the company over 8 Billion dollars (Taiwanese)! In this case it was a trader working for Fubon Securities Co, Taiwan's second-largest brokerage... Merrill Lynch International had asked Fubon Securities to place an order for NT$80 Million (about $2.5 million U.S.) for a basket of stocks in small and medium size companies... The trader was unfamiliar with the new trading software and mistakenly entered a trade for NT$8 Billion dollars in stocks (about $250 million U.S.)!

"Something like this is difficult to explain to superiors," a Fubon executive said...

One dark night outside a small town in Wisconsin, a fire started inside the local chemical plant and in a blink of an eye, it exploded into massive flames... The alarm went out to all the fire departments for miles around...

When the volunteer fire fighters appeared on the scene, the chemical company president rushed to the fire chief and said, "All of our secret formulas are in the vault in the center of the plant... They must be saved... I will give $50,000 to the fire department that brings them out intact!" But the roaring flames held the firefighters off...

Soon more fire departments had to be called in as the situation became desperate... As the firemen arrived, the president shouted out that the offer was now $100,000 to the fire department who could bring out the company's secret files... But no one could get close to the safe...

Then, from the distance, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight... It was the nearby Norwegian rural township volunteer fire company composed mainly of Norsk Vikings over the age of 65...

To everyone's amazement, the little run-down fire engine roared right past all the newer sleek engines that were parked outside the plant... Without even slowing down, it drove straight into the middle of the inferno... Outside, the other firemen watched as the Viking old timers jumped off right in the middle of the fire fought it back on all sides...

It was a performance and effort never seen before...

Within a short time, the old timers had extinguished the fire and had saved the secret formulas... The grateful chemical company president announced that for such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave fire fighters...

The local TV news reporter rushed in to capture the event on film, asking their chief, "What are you going to do with all that money?"

"Vell," said Ole Olson the 70-year-old fire chief, "Da first thing ve gonna do is fix da brakes on dat truck!"