I am so excited about social media and social bookmarking!

You may well find this hard to believe, but I have been online for ten years and only just discovered social bookmarking in the last few weeks! Since when I have joined around twenty sites and am currently exploring more.

Some social bookmark sites allow you to catalogue a comprehensive list of your favourite sites for yourself whilst others like Digg are more into projecting what you have found into the public eye so you can share your online finds! Obviously, this is a closer definition of “social”!

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1. Pioneer Elite PRO-1150HD Plasma TV

Part of the Pioneer Kuro series, this PDP gets the thumbs up not only for its looks, but its performance as well. Its resolution of 768p isn’t off-putting, since it’s capable of displaying at a 1080p level as well. The deep blackness of the screen is the springboard for rich, vibrant colors that usually never fails to impress. Plus, this HDTV’s networking and connection capacities make it easier to organize a home entertainment system.

2. Pioneer Elite PRO-110FD 50″ Plasma TV

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P. Raja. Love Teaches Even Asses to Dance. Publishers: Busy Bee Books, D-88, Poincare St., Olandai-Keerapalayam, Pondicherry – 605004, October 2006, pages 210, Price: Rs.250/- Euro 15/-. ISBN 81-87619-12-0

Love Teaches Even Asses to Dance is a collection of fifty-two essays by P. Raja, a poet-critic, whose mastery of words, or sound and sense, convinces me that like poetry, prose too needs to be written (and read) carefully and thought about considerably for continuing rewards in experience and understanding. The essays are readable and memorable because the writer, like Walter Benjamin, knows, “work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.”

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Sleep deprivation is a major factor in the stress, unhappiness and dissatisfaction of hundreds of thousands of people. And these hundreds of thousands of people have the same reasons you have for not doing anything about it. As a counselor, I can tell you that I’ve had people walk into my office feeling lost, trapped, numb, ready to pay me whatever-it-takes to get their life back, and increasing the amount and quality of their sleep was all they needed.

Sleep can seem like something else we have to “hurry up and do,” and we get frustrated when we say jump and our inner sandman doesn’t say “how high.” Bossing the sandman around doesn’t work, but there are ways to elicit his cooperation. Some of them you may have heard before, some you haven’t. Some will fit your situation and some won’t, but the ones that do are well worth the effort, especially if you’re feeling less than enthusiastic about your life right now.

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The first three weeks of this year, I had a brief, superficial but more intimate-than-usual glimpse into the hiring process and practices of the National Football League. I came to the conclusion that the owners were spineless, two-faced slugs; the head coaches back-stabbing; the players self-absorbed and self-centered; and the fans thought they knew the game better than the entire NFL organization.

According to Michael MacCambridge, I’m right! His meticulously researched book, America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation is a close look at the history of football from the end of WWII to the present. Like Anya Seton, another author that uses exhaustive research for her stories, MacCambridge starts slow, almost painstaking, in the first two-thirds of the book, stating facts and figures and events in a somewhat chronological order up to ca 1970, about 25 years. He tends to backtrack, spring forward, and then backtrack again within chapters. The pace picks up considerably toward the end of the book, covering more than 30 years in the last one-third.

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If you have a Microsoft Vista operating system, then you automatically have one of the best voice recognition systems available, and it works pretty much right out of the box with 96-98% accuracy from the time you plug it in, go thru the tutorial and try it out. Is it better than Dragon Voice software? Yes, actually considering it is better actually and it comes already pre-installed on your computer without paying an extra $199 to purchase it.

Below is my first try with Microsoft Vista voice recognition software and this is as is without fixing any mistakes, I simply began speaking off the top of my head to test the accuracy, below is about 50-seconds worth of voice speaking: continue reading »

The hype about hybrids is a lot like any other trend with tons of conflicting opinions and pushes towards going eco-friendly. The fact is, though, no matter how green you may want to go, there’s got to be something in it for you, the consumer, right? Otherwise, while self-sacrifice is noble, it doesn’t exactly help when the car payment comes. So, let’s take a look at some actual benefits you’ll personally see when you own a hybrid car.

1. Lay Off, Uncle Sam!

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I think these firefighters should be honored next fire season, these pilots give it all and they lose at least one pilot per year, since it is a very dangerous job flying low level in little or no visibility during the drop, with dead trees with no vegetation on them that stick up 40 feet plus high. During 9-11 ceremonies in 2005 we ought to think of all the fire fighters who give it all including these pilots, because each year they risk life and limb to battle the big ones. Fires, which threaten to destroy vast amounts of wilderness and whole cities and towns as we have seen on our TV sets and reports from FEMA. The costs are very serious also. Protecting the people at home are these people who are part of our first responder teams.

Fire Fighter Aircraft were in the news in 2002, 2003 and 2004. We have had issues also with tanker planes:

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