Outside of chronic degenerative diseases, the top cause of our demise has long been accidental death. This broad category of mortality – which includes much more than simply dying from falling into a ravine or meat grinder – is often taken for granted, yet it is one of our country’s most important strengths. You may be tempted to accept that 4.8% of fatalities in the United States being attributed to unintentional causes is adequate. After all, accidents are already the fifth-largest cause of death, second only to heart disease, cancer, stroke, and respiratory disease. I, however, know that we can do better. Although we are off to a great start, much remains to be done if our nation is to remain a viable world superpower and truly progress in the future. Unless we commit right now and adopt the “I don’t think, therefore I am not” attitude, our once-great nation will swiftly fail. (Read More »)
In 2007, the US Mint produced 2,089,500,000 new dimes. Two trillion! Averaged evenly across the year, this equates to over 66 dimes per second.
A single dime is 0.705 inches in diameter. Lined end-to-end, the dimes produced last year alone would stretch over 23,249 miles. For comparison, the circumference of the Earth is 24,800 miles.
A single dime weighs 2.268 grams, so there are 200 dimes in one pound. 2007′s dime production weighs in at over 10.4 million pounds. For comparison, my car weighs 2,800 pounds, and the world’s heaviest record land mammal, an African elephant found in Angola, weighed 27,000 pounds.
As cool as Google Chrome is, many of us have been reluctant to switch due to the lack of AdBlock Plus. With a few quick tweaks, however, you can give Firefox some of the same look and feel:
Of course, you’re not getting Chrome’s performance improvements by doing this, but it’s at least a start. Shown above is my Firefox 3 looking like the Chrome browser [running in Linux with the chrome-like GTK theme and the MurrinaChrome Emerald theme]. Here is what I did to achieve this:
Credit cards are awesome. If you’re not using a credit card for every purchase, you should be. Apart from the free benefits that pass many people by — like automatically doubling your warranty up to an extra year on almost all purchases (including electronics) and refunds on prior purchases in the event of a price drop (remember the first iPhone?) — credit cards allow you to earn cashback and other rewards. Of course you won’t be able to quit your day job, but free money is free money. As long as you have some self control, you can make the system work for you instead of against you.
This post lays out how I run my credit cards. You should first familiarize yourself with the video clip Don’t Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford. To make this work, you must never pay any fees and you must never pay any interest. With that in mind, let’s get started. (Read More »)
I’ve launched an AdBlock Plus filtering list. If you’re using AdBlock Plus, click below to add it and catch some text ads and other annoyances not found on the included EasyList.
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