A lot of sites want you to sign up with your email to gain access.  It used to be easy enough to give a fake one, but now they tend to send a link or password to your address so they can confirm that it’s a real one.  Sometimes I don’t mind, but not if I’m just trying to check out if their site is any good.

For 24 hours, anybody can email me at wruleati7xf@jetable.org, courtesy of Disposable Email.  When you use the service, you can pick how long the address will be valid, and then it goes away.  And you don’t get weekly advertising from yet another company.

I just used it to check out a site that I don’t want them sending me stuff in the future.  Got their confirmation code, and then got access.  And after 24 hours they won’t be able to bother me.  Way cool!

Bummer.  Now I have to do research again.

In some alternate universe, a memorable conversation in the movie The Graduate might have gone like this:

Mr. McGuire: I just wanna say one word to you. Just one word.
Ben Braddock: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben Braddock: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: “Corn.”

It now seems that ‘corn’ may replace ‘plastics’ in some areas of this universe as well.  Containers which look like plastic but are made from corn have been tested in Colorado and Oregon, and will hit all stores by the end of March.  Although corn containers cost 2 or 3 cents more, making them uses fewer amounts of fossil fuels and emits lower levels of greenhouse gases.  Under the right conditions they can decompose in 30 to 50 days, far different from the 1000 years it can take for a plastic beverage bottle to decompose.

A couple of new examples of the government checking into our lives in ways they are not supposed to:

Attorney General John Ashcroft insisted Thursday that doctor-patient privacy is not threatened by a government attempt to subpoena medical records in a lawsuit over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.  At stake are records documenting certain late-term abortions performed by doctors who have joined in a legal challenge of the disputed ban.

The subpoenas seemed to be a tactic of intimidation comparable to a subpoena issued recently in a federal grand jury probe ordering Drake University to turn over names of certain anti-war activists.

And this is without the help of the Patriot Act.

It’s nice to see so many in one place.

Flash Helicopter game that’s fun, but fortunately not too addictive.

Thanks, Ron.

According to TiVo, the Super Bowl halftime half-exposure of Janet Jackson’s breasts was the most-watched moment to date on its device.  No surprise there:  recently the Super Bowl has been the most watched show every year.  TiVo also said users had watched the few seconds nearly three times more than any other moment during the Super Bowl broadcast.  No surprise there either:  that’s what rewind is for.

The only surprise for me was that they knew not only what you watched while it downloaded, but also what was played back.  Down to the second.

Courtesy of Terry:  If you missed the most over discussed moment in recent TV history, here is a still of the moment, and here is where to buy the jewelry.

… may not just be hot air

But why does your phone say you’re at the beach?

By December 31, 2005, your cell phone company will always know exactly where you are.  And maybe your friends, enemies and boss will too.

Oops:  The February Trail magazine contained a route that would lead climbers off the edge of a cliff on Britain’s tallest peak.

Today, January 29 is National Corn chip Day, and I almost missed it. It’s also National Whatever Days for a bunch of other things, just like every other day is.

Check out link1 and link2 for all sorts of other holidays and “nation fill in the blank day”.

It’s a start.

Not all of you, but your name can go.  NASA will put it on a CD that will go to Comet Tempel 1.  You can even print out a geeky certificate to prove you did it.

They quit taking names on Jan. 31.

This site lists items (like a USB Portable Flash Drive) that you can get for free after rebate.  Their motto is:  The best things in life are free (after six to eight weeks).

Russian soldiers were sent in to save the beer.

“The question is, where were you, Governor Bush? What would you do as commander-in-chief if someone in the National Guard did the same thing? At the least, I would have been court-martialed. At the least, I would have been placed in prison,” said Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii.

He was referring, of course, to the 12 month period where our Fearless Leader was nowhere to be found during his stay with the National Guard.

Michael Moore provides a number of links to news articles about the absence, and to Peter Jennings’ interview with Wesley Clark where he asked about Moore’s support.  Since the link is Moore’s entry page, the information will probably be gone soon unless you look for it within the site, probably in the Must Read section.

Shrubya will give his version tonight.  Here’s a sampling of numbers he won’t be talking about:

$113 million: Total sum raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, setting a record in American electoral history

$130 million: Amount raised for Bush’s re-election campaign so far

130: Number of countries (out of total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with an American military presence

58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling

And the last disturbing one is
53%: Percentage of American citizens who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 16 January, 2004

According to Advertising Age Research, last year’s Super Bowl had 88,637,000 viewers (138.9 million according to the NFL) at 43,433,000 homes watching commercials that cost $2,100,000 for 30 seconds of air time. That’s $23.69 per viewer over the course of the game, but less than 25¢ per 30 seconds. The first Super Bowl ads cost $42,000 ($239,167 inflation adjusted) for 30 seconds. This year, the price is up to $2.25 million. What will be eaten during this year’s 62 half-minute events?  Pizza. Super Bowl Sunday has evolved into a national party day:  The average number of people at a Super Bowl party is 17. More pizza will be sold Feb. 1 than any other day of 2004:

• Domino’s will deliver about 1.2 million pizzas, 42% more than on a regular Sunday, and its drivers will cover 4 million miles.
• Papa John’s expects its business will jump 70% in some areas.
• Grocery store sales of Kraft’s DiGiorno and Tombstone frozen pizzas typically jump 20% during Super Bowl week.

Pizza Hut, the world’s most powerful and influential pizza seller, will unveil what it considers its biggest product idea in years: four square, topped-to-order pizzas in one large pizza box, which, at $11.99, costs about the same as a regular large pizza. It will spend $50 million to launch the product, and fill the national airwaves with as many as 75 commercials throughout game day.

Personally, while pizza is probably my favorite food, I hate Pizza Hut pizza. And although their franchises originally didn’t want the new pizza, in part because they had to get new equipment to make it and it may reduce the number of two pizza orders, it should be good for them. Now it’s not only the edges of the pizza that won’t have topping, the lines separating the four parts will also be empty. What a great way to sell bread at a premium.

The musical history of the Electro-Theremin is at The Paul Tanner Electro-Theremin Page.  It was used on the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and the TV show My Favorite Martian.

As many of us thought, it turns out there isn’t any simple answer because it depends on the rain speed and direction, your running speed and size, wind, etc.

Here’s a Running in the Rain Calculator.

Thanks again, Terry.