My Saturday Morning Delight

Time flies so fast.. its Saturday again and time for me to enjoy listening to my favorite radio shows: Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, and CSPAN commentary. I also like to use this time to review favorite magazines like This Week and Bottom Line Health. In case you do not have the time (or inclination) to do as I do, let me tell you what I am learning today.

01. The lack of sleep has now been linked to hardening of the arteries. We all need to get at least 6 hours of uninterupted sleep each night. (Ben Franklin didn't think much of sleep. Two of his quotations: "Plough deep while sluggards sleep." and "There will be sleeping enough in the grave.")

02. Time magazine has an article titled: The Future of Work, in which 10 educated predictions are made about the workplace of the future. Widespread working at home will be a major change. Managers who are just as technically knowledgable as their workers will be commonplace. Clashes between Baby Boomers who won't retire, and Generation X'ers. Etc.

03. Atlantic Magazine has an article Do CEO's Matter? Why do companies continue to pay a lot of money to the very CEO's who have taken them down?

04. President Obama has nominated the Republican Governor of Utah for Ambassador to China. He has spent lots of time in China and is respected there.. also, he speaks Mandarin. When he is confirmed, he will be one less potential adversary for the next election. But.. mainly, I think it is a good move in Obama's attempt at making his administration more bi-partisan.

05. Somebody with a Mac computer keeps trying to break into my home computer network. I wonder if there is some way to track by the numbered id. I know that this can be done through some virus checker programs but I don't know yet about Trend, which came with my laptop.

06. Wolfram Alpha debuted last night. It is a new search/computational engine. I went out to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ and tried it out. First, I keyed in my birthdate and found that I was born on a Thursday. (But, I had programmed for that back in the 1970's.. so what else is there?)

Next, I keyed in "New Bedford" and it assumed I meant New Bedford, Massachusetts and not one of the other ones in the US. It told me that the population is now 93,102 (down from 110,000 in its heyday..) and it told me that it is part of a metro area that contains 1.612 million people. Then, it gave me an excellent satellite picture of the city so that I could see the top of a house that I had lived in. (Are Google's satellite pictures from the same source?)

A couple of times, a pop-up said that I had lost connectivity to Wolfram Alpha, but that wasn't true.

Next, I tried the computational part. I keyed in 95,000 x 200. I can multiply this in my head in 5 seconds or less.. the answer didn't come back to me from Wolfram Alpha for almost a whole minute. Perhaps that would not be a problem with a more complicated problem.

Finally, I keyed in General Motors and recieved an enormous amount of information about the compay.. except that it did not give the current price on the market. It also told me that they are currently paying $1 per share dividend. I don't recall ever getting a dividend from them, but I will check it out.

So.. it was kind of fun going to Wolfram Alpha, and I highly recommend it. It will get better and faster in time.

07. A man was attacked in a WalMart store by a nutria.

08. Miss California blamed a gust of wind for her "toplessness".

09. Sexual assault victims in someplace in Texas have to pay $700 to cover the emergency room rape kit used in their case.

10. A 17-year old Amish boy was busted for having beer in his buggy.

11. My screen just had a pop-up that said: Is Santa so jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live?

12. Scientists enjoy looking at the 75 KM high plume of gas and dust that spews from a volcano on IO, one of Jupiter's moons. It's called the Prometheus Plume. (Looks like Old Faithful)

13. Because of its health claims, Cheerios must now come under the scrutiny of the FDA.

14. Toothpicks can now be used by acupuncturists when their patients are scared of needles.

15. If you play on the computer while at work, you are now engaging in "weasure time."

16. A Baptist school suspended a student for dancing at his girl friend's prom. (I was once kicked out of a function for my Baptist church's Sunday school because I had a deck of cards in my pocket. But then again, I was also rapped on my head for nodding off at a Quaker meeting.)

17. The aroma from your home can now be put into an aerosol can and taken with you on vacations. You can then spray it in your motel room so you won't feel so homesick.

18. A HAZMAT crew rescued office employees overcome with noxious fumes from decaying leftovers in an office refridgerator.

19. An irate consumer called his local grocery store to complain that his frozen pizza had no topping. It looked like just baked dough when he took it out of his oven. After ranting and raving for a while, he realized that he had baked it upside down!

BASTA!