Major water bond is headed for California's ballot: "With more dams and more miles of aqueduct than most of the world's countries, California is a monument to the manipulation of waterways. Two-thirds of its 34 million people live where only one-third of its precipitation falls, and so it sends artificial rivers over mountain ranges, irrigates the desert, and transports mountain snowmelt to seaside resorts through a vast network of concrete channels and pipelines. Although many of these huge dams and aqueducts were built for Californians by the U.S. government, a gift it has bestowed on many states in the semi-arid West, many were also built by the state itself, generally financed by issuance of taxpayer-approved government bonds. Such water bonds are as familiar as summer reruns to California voters, who have considered at least 16 of them on statewide ballots since 1960 - the year voters narrowly gave Gov. Pat Brown the go-ahead to spend $1.75 billion to build the State Water Project."
Dust storm talks stir up plans for cross-strait data exchanges: "Scientists from across the strait yesterday concluded a two-day academic seminar on dust storms that have affected the people and the environment in China, Taiwan, and other regions of East Asia. Part of the discussion focused on measures adopted on both sides to stop the desertification process - such as water conservation and a better management of the soil - and on an improved monitoring of dust storms to mitigate the respiratory health hazard to the public."
Best 'find' in someone else's trash? "In 1996 when RAM was like gold, the company I used to work for upgraded our QMS Postscript network printers. The swapped out the main CPU boards and piled the old ones in boxes marked 'Trash' in the empty hallway leading to my office, I picked one up just to take a look to see how they were made. I was looking at the board and I spied ZIP memory, a form of high speed SDRAM, I took down the number and called a memory recycler I saw in the back of MacWeek magazine. Well lo and behold they said they would give me $100 a piece for each one I sent them, there was 16 per board and I had 20 boards sitting in and around my office! They wanted the whole board so they could remove them without damage. I packed them up and used the company's own UPS account to ship them off, two weeks later I recieved a check for $35,000! There was also other types of memory on the boards I wasn't aware of! "
Melting Metals In A Domestic Microwave: "The microwave work was triggered by a short reference to the refining of rare earth metals, at Illawara Technology Centre, which was mentioned by a visitor to the Central Saint Martins foundry, Dennis Glaser. Since these metals melt at temperatures above 800 degrees Celcius, it seemed possible that the method could be adapted to melt and cast small objects in the workshop or studio. If this could be done a domestic microwave would, effectively, become a cheap and accessible furnace."
If you're name sounds like "Ricky" and you're in Las Vegas, please send me an email.
Brazil beat Germany 2 to 0 to win the World Cup.
Its over. Turkey takes third place. Three to two.
Freezing mountaineer saved by telemarketer: "A hiker is stranded in South America's Andes mountains when a blizzard begins. He reaches into his backpack for his cell phone -- only to find his prepaid minutes are up. Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time."