Marshall Brain was onto this about a decade ago.

I read to our kids every night, and after a while I got tired of wizards waving a wand to solve the problems. Wanting something non-fiction, I recalled The Kon-Tiki Expedition and it was perfect. The best part about Thor Heyerdahl's amazing adventure story is that it's true. As in it really happened. Trips to the jungle, strange sea creatures, a real scientific mystery, a shipwreck on an exotic tropical island, it's all in there. The book is still in print (a true classic) and if poke around a bit, you can find a beautiful illustrated edition that's great for younger kids. It's one of the best science adventure books you'll ever find.

I like how the journalist blindly accepts their claim to being the #2 e-reader, completely ignoring Google (aka Play bookstore), Apple, or B&N. This smells like a CEO blowing smoke in the hopes of unloading a money-losing business on somebody else.

Eudora still runs on my Win7 box. I have email going back to at least the early '90s. All plaintext and easily searchable.

Along with short battery life, I wonder how hot the thing gets. Hmm, might be handy to have a tablet that keeps your coffee warm. Or fries your eggs. Do they make non-stick Gorilla Glass?

Geez, NASA doesn't even follow their own rules. You may recall, part of the Apollo 12 landing involved a hike over to the Surveyor 3 landing site. They hack-sawed the camera and several other pieces off the Surveyor probe and brought them home. Still waiting to see if any of it gets posted in eBay...

(Kind of ironic that they took the camera; the Apollo 12 astronauts ineptly fried their camera by pointing it at the sun, and ruined the live TV coverage of the entire mission).

What, you're sucking up to MBAs now? Taco! Come back...we need you!

Our company has several Bloom boxes. Natural gas in, electricity out. They're -very- noisy, and you can can see soot forming around exhaust vents on the top. Are they really fuel cells, or...gas turbine generators? Gas-fired boiler heats H2O to steam, pushes it through a turbine mechanical generator, H2O condenses. This would explain the noise and the soot.

Anybody seen the insides of a Bloom box?

I've been burned by this. The "Amount Due for Bail Forfeiture" (i.e., the fine) was exactly the same amount as the "Amount Due for a Court Appearance". What a coincidence, huh?

John Ott was promoting the health benefits of natural light in the 1960s. Nothing new here...

I guess we'll have to wait before the cowphone can go 3G...

Be very careful to read the fine print on contests like this. I looked into one a few years ago (run by Hammacher Schlemmer, I think), and by entering you essentially wound up giving them your IP at pretty unfavorable terms. If you have a good idea, something like KickStarter is a much better bet.

My wife tried to order shoes tonight, and first the site insisted she change her password. Then it took -forever- for the address/payment info to appear before it would let the order go through. Trying to phone them got a "We're sorry - we cannot take your call at this time" recording - *very* unusual for Zappos. Makes me think this has them pretty bent out of shape. Wish I'd seen this before she placed the order. We may be buying some slimeball a lot of shoes...

Indeed. Remember the sick joke about NASA standing for "Need Another Seven Astronauts"? The shuttle has a terrible safety record, and a lot of the problems are fundamental to the design. Best to let it go.