Larger Nicaragua Canal Looms Over Panama

Panama's greatest fear, other than the rise of another Manuel Noriega or of a somewhat lesser risk, the return of another Mussolini-like Ricardo Martinelli, is the threat of competition to its world-famous and immensely lucrative Canal (revenue of about two billion US dollars or so each year).  And who uses this "Eighth Wonder of the World" the most are the world's larger ships. Not the biggest ones, mind you, because they are too big to fit into it. 

That's why Panama embarked a couple of years ago on a second canal that's going to cost the country 5 or 6 billion dollars, assuming they can finish the thing after the people building the locks suddenly said they needed tons more money because they lied about the building costs in order to get the contract in the first place. 

Putting all of that aside for the moment, here's Panama's main problem. It seems that it ain't gonna be big enough. There's this company called Maersk that happens to make humongous container ships, the world's biggest, and they just happen to be the just about the world's largest shipping company. And there's been floating around this idea to build a really big canal that will not only handle these biggest of the biggest container ships, but is also about 800 kilometers further north to where everything goes, so much further in fact that it's, unfortunately, not in Panama but in Nicaragua. 

Well, there goes the ball game. Maersk has decided to throw its considerable weight behind the idea of building the Nicaraguan Canal, a project that has until now been surrounded by distrust from the outside world and, not at all the least, from its competitor in Panama. This represents the first time that one of the world's shipping carriers has publicly voiced its support in favor of the colossal construction project.

"Building a Nicaragua Canal seems to make good sense. The canal is projected to have room for the biggest ships, while also saving 800 kilometers on a journey from New York to Los Angeles. We generally support infrastructure improvements. It brings improved opportunities for transport, and thus trade. When we built container ships 20 years ago they were scaled according to the Panama Canal, but the ships today are bigger than the 4,500 ton that could fit on the biggest ships back then. Even after the expansion of the Panama Canal, the biggest ships won't fit there," says Keith Svendsen, Head of Daily Operations at Maersk Line. He adds that there is currently a waiting period for sailing through the Panama Canal, and that the expansion of the canal - expected finished in early 2016 - will only make it possible to handle ships of up to 336 meters. Maersk Line's new Triple-E series clocks in at 400 meters, and estimates in the maritime community say that this magical barrier will soon be breached, so that ships will become even longer.

The Nicaragua Canal will be three times the length of the Panama Canal, and - according to plan - the new canal will cross the major Lago de Nicaragua, one of the largest freshwater reservoirs in the region, a fact that has led to criticism from various environmental organizations.

The somewhat unknown Chinese business man and investor Wang Jing, backed by several state-owned Chinese companies, has managed to win the 50-year concession for the canal, which is estimated to have a construction cost of USD 40 billion in 2014-prices. Estimates say that the feasibility studies alone are approaching a price of around USD 1 billion.

Meanwhile, as Russia continues to take strategic initiatives that put the United States on the defensive, Russian President Vladimir Putin has teamed up with China to help construct the new canal, giving Moscow an even greater foothold in Washington’s area of influence. The prospect comes as Moscow not only intends more massive arms sales in Latin America but, is also moving to establish a base in Nicaragua besides using existing facilities for refueling for aircraft and port calls for Russian warships. (In addition to Nicaragua, Moscow also is looking to establish bases in Cuba and Venezuela.)

The establishment of permanent Russian bases and a major Russian presence in the Western Hemisphere will challenge U.S. policies and threaten to diminish Washington’s influence in the region. And like a repeat of events leading up to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, it will give Moscow a basis to stage offensive weapons in the Western Hemisphere, placing another formidable challenge to U.S. homeland defenses from potential missile threats. “The Russian Federation considers itself to be a global power that is active everywhere and that, whatever Russia’s leadership might publicly claim, is challenging the United States anywhere that it can,” said Stephen Blank of the Washington think-tank Jamestown Foundation. “One such arena is Latin America,” Blank said. “Even as the Ukrainian crisis rages, Moscow is steadily trying to increase its profile throughout the Western Hemisphere.” And Moscow’s Latin American focus for establishing a base will be Nicaragua. 

The current plan is that China would do the construction while Russia would provide security and take on other yet undefined roles in connection with the canal. In bringing in the Russians, Chinese businessman Wang Jing, who has a concession to build the canal in Nicaragua, also is said to hold a concession to build a deep water port in Crimea, a strategic area of Ukraine which recently was annexed to the Russian Federation. According to Blank, Nicaraguan opposition deputy Eliseo Nunez Morales said that the planned Nicaragua Grand Canal project doesn't have a “declaration of neutrality.”

In the event of a conflict, the maritime route would not remain neutral. In addition, the canal concession also allows for the establishment of a military base. “Therefore, granting Russia the security concession could be a cover for a military base, which, in turn, would afford excellent cover for the introduction of a host of covert agents and programs and for laundering criminally obtained profits,” Blank asserted.

Several of the biggest Western infrastructure companies are also working to evaluate the key elements necessary to realize the Nicaraguan project. American McKinsey is looking at the finances of the project. Australian mining company MEC Mining is reviewing the scope of the digging work through the country's jungle, while British ERM is handling the environmental consequences, and consulting engineers SBE, of Belgium, will present a proposal for the dimensions of the massive water locks necessary to realize the project.

Panama's economy over the last few years has been amazing, making Panamanians the second richest in all of Latin America (Only Chile has a higher per capita income). Most of this wealth has come either directly or indirectly from the ships that use the Panama Canal. Even with the new Canal expansion, the world's largest ships will still not be able to cross the middle of Central America. If the Nicaragua Canal is built, those ships will use it instead. Panama will face competition in an area it can not compete. Add the fact that by mid-century, because of global warming, even ordinary shipping vessels will be able to navigate previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, and the future of Panama and its Canal may not be as robust as in the past.

Juan Carlos Varela Surprise Winner in Presidential Election

Against almost all odds, Panama's amicable Vice President Juan Carlos Varela has won election as the new president of this Central American republic.  Varela was declared the victor yesterday, thwarting an attempt by former ally President Ricardo Martinelli to extend his grip on power by electing a hand-picked successor.

With 60 percent of ballots counted, officials said Varela led with 39 percent of the votes, compared to 32 percent for former Housing Minister Jose Domingo Arias, the preferred choice of Martinelli. Juan Carlos Navarro, a former mayor of the capital, was in third place in the seven-candidate field with 27 percent.

Varela, who takes office July 1, dedicated his victory to Panama's democracy when the Electoral Tribunal's chief magistrate notified him by telephone of his victory. The incumbent party has still never won re-election to Panama's presidency since the United States' 1989 overthrow of military strongman Manuel Noriega.

Election day began with opinion polls pointing to a tight race among the top three candidates, but none of the major surveys had Varela with a lead. Most gave a razor-thin edge to Arias. Although Martinelli wasn't on the ballot, the billionaire supermarket magnate's presence loomed large during the campaign, with many worried that he would be the power behind the throne if voters chose Arias, a soft-spoken newcomer.

As the race narrowed in recent weeks, Martinelli crisscrossed the isthmus inaugurating hospitals, stadiums and Central America's first subway system while warning the 3.2 million Panamanians that record low unemployment and economic growth averaging more than 8 percent since he took office in 2009 could be jeopardized if his opponents won. His use of the bully pulpit drew widespread criticism, as did his decision to place his wife, Marta Linares, as Arias' running mate on the Democratic Center ticket.

Varela, a 50-year-old engineer, is the scion of one of Panama's richest families and owner of a namesake rum distillery. He left the 2009 presidential race to throw his conservative Panamenista party's support behind Martinelli in exchange for the vice presidency.

But the political marriage didn't last, and Martinelli (seen above) dismissed him from an additional role as foreign minister in 2011 for refusing to back a plan for a referendum to allow presidents to serve consecutive terms. Since then, Varela has been the president's fiercest critic, accusing him of numerous shady deals including taking kickbacks for a government radar system contract. Martinelli denied the charges. In turn, Martinelli all but marginalized Varela from decision-making and criticized the vice president for collecting his government paycheck without doing any work.

A free-market conservative, Varela also has strong social credentials, having been the architect of a popular program at the start of Martinelli's presidency to provide a $100 monthly stipend to Panamanians over age 70 without a pension or retirement benefits.

As campaigning turned ugly in the final stretch, Varela was hit by accusations that he had received payments from the daughter of a political ally convicted in the U.S. of laundering money for an illegal online gambling ring. Varela vigorously defended himself after the accusations first appeared last month on a Florida-run website, Diario Las America, and he accused Martinelli of leaking the story trying to derail his campaign. He said the checks he received from accounts managed by Michele Lasso were connected to legitimate business dealings with her father, a former Panamanian ambassador to South Korea, and donations to his 2009 presidential campaign, which he reported to the nation's electoral tribunal.

Team Pays $3M Settlement for Texting

Jerry Wojcik is a Buffalo Bills fan, and he signed up for a text service from the team. The agreement said he'd get no more than five texts a week, but when he got 13 in two weeks, what did he do? Hey, this is America, so of course he sued! And won! 

The suit, filed in 2012, said the Bills' behavior was a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Well, it seems that this law was created to protect real people against unwanted spam. Some might argue he was getting precisely the sort of messages he wanted, but just a few too many, but that's a no-no according to the law. The Bills apparently decided not to pursue the case in court and have now settled for the sum of $3 million. 

No, you might ask, Mr. Wojcik didn't become $3 million richer. It was a class action lawsuit, so $2.5 million will be paid to the approximately 39,750 people who signed up for the text alert service. And, the money will not be paid in cold, hard cash. Instead, the Bills will issue debit cards that can be used at the team store. This seems rather a nifty proposal, given that all the people so heinously affected were supposedly Bills fans, desperate for information about their team. 

Mr. Wojcik himself will receive $5,000 for leading the class action. Of course, the remaining $562,500 will be going to Mr. Wojcik's lawyers. This is America, right?

Your Tax Dollars at Work (Again)

A watchdog report has been released showing that over a thousand employees of the IRS received bonuses even though they had disciplinary issues, including over $1 million paid to employees who didn't pay their federal taxes. And the bonuses weren't just monetary. Employees with tax problems received a total of 10,582 hours of paid time off — valued at about $250,000 — and 69 received permanent raises through a step increase. 

The report looked at bonuses just in 2011 and 2012, who knows about those other years? Employees' tax problems included "willful understatement of tax liabilities over multiple tax years, late payment of tax liabilities, and underreporting of income," the report said. "We take seriously our unique role as this nation's tax administrator, and we will strive to implement a policy that protects the integrity of the tax administration system and the reputation of the service," IRS chief Human Capital Officer David Krieg said in a written response to the audit. (Do people actually talk like that?) 

The IRS said it has instituted a policy to take conduct into account when handing out bonuses to senior executives. (They never thought of this before?) In fiscal year 2012, the agency awarded bonuses of $86.3 million in cash and almost 490,000 hours of time off. About 69% of the agency's 98,000 employees received some kind of bonus. Apparently non-payment of taxes by federal employees is a government-wide problem. The IRS says 311,536 federal employees were tax delinquents in 2011, owing a total of $3.5 billion. Huh? Bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to fire federal employees with seriously delinquent taxes. Better late than never, I suppose.

Survey Says Public Often Wrong

And the survey says .... Well, here you go. Few Americans question that smoking causes cancer. But as we get farther from our own bodies and the present, a new poll shows Americans have much more doubts in other concepts that scientists say are basic truth: global warming, evolution, and their largest question mark was in the Big Bang that created the universe. While scientists believe the universe began with a Big Bang, most Americans put a big question mark on the concept. Yet when it comes to smoking causing cancer or that a genetic code determines who we are, the doubts disappear. When considering concepts scientists consider truths, Americans have more skepticism than confidence in those that are farther away from our bodies in scope and time: global warming, the age of the Earth and evolution and especially the Big Bang from 13.8 billion years ago.

Rather than quizzing scientific knowledge, the survey asked people to rate their confidence in several statements about science and medicine. On some, there's broad acceptance. Just 4 percent doubt that smoking causes cancer, 6 percent question whether mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain and 8 percent are skeptical there's a genetic code inside our cells. More — 15 percent — have doubts about the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines. About 4 in 10 say they are not too confident or outright disbelieve that the earth is warming, mostly a result of man-made heat-trapping gases, that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or that life on Earth evolved through a process of natural selection, though most were at least somewhat confident in each of those concepts. But a narrow majority — 51 percent — questions the Big Bang theory.

Those results depress and upset some of America's top scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, who vouched for the science in the statements tested, calling them settled scientific facts. "Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts," said 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine winner Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley. The poll highlights "the iron triangle of science, religion and politics," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. To the public "most often values and beliefs trump science" when they conflict, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the world's largest scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Political and religious values were closely tied to views on science in the poll, with Democrats more apt than Republicans to express confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change. Confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change decline sharply as faith in a supreme being rises, according to the poll. Likewise, those who regularly attend religious services or are evangelical Christians express much greater doubts about scientific concepts they may see as contradictory to their faith. "When you are putting up facts against faith, facts can't argue against faith," said 2012 Nobel Prize winning biochemistry professor Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University. "It makes sense now that science would have made no headway because faith is untestable." But evolution, the age of the Earth and the Big Bang are all compatible with God, except to Bible literalists, said Francisco Ayala, a former priest and professor of biology, philosophy and logic at the University of California, Irvine.

Beyond religious belief, views on science may be tied to what we see with our own eyes. The closer an issue is to ourselves and the less complicated, the easier it is for people to believe, said John Staudenmaier, a Jesuit priest and historian of technology at the University of Detroit Mercy. Experience and faith aren't the only things affecting people's views on science. Duke University's Lefkowitz sees "the force of concerted campaigns to discredit scientific fact" as a more striking factor, citing significant interest groups — political, business and religious — campaigning against scientific truths on vaccines, climate change and evolution.

NY Police Twitter Campaign Backfires

This is hilarious! The New York City Police Department has a Twitter account, and somebody there thought it would be a good idea to ask people to post images of themselves and NYPD officers on Twitter, just to show how much they meant to the community. I guess they had images in their head of kindly benevolent officers helping little old ladies cross the street or handing out candy to children or something like that. "Do you have a photo with a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook page," the department posted on its NYPD News Twitter feed. Of course the idea was to fuel a feel-good, low-cost public relations campaign. 

Well, guess what? Those are not the kind of images and tweets they got back. Some samples of the deluge of pictures they received were of alleged police brutality, including many arrests of demonstrators that included such presumed low-lights as an officer pulling the hair of a handcuffed young black woman and another of the bloodied face of an 84-year-old stopped for jaywalking. Another image showing police after striking a protester brought the remark "Here the #NYPD engages with its community members, changing hearts and minds one baton at a time." Also largely criticized was the department's unpopular "stop and frisk" policy, which many argue unfairly targets minority youth. The NYPD so far has yet to post any happy shots on its Facebook page from its request for public submissions.

Oops!

Bacteria Infects Thousands of Your Dollars

Researchers have discovered that thousands of bacteria live on the cash you carry around with you. In the first comprehensive study of the DNA on dollar bills, researchers at New York University found that currency is a medium of exchange for hundreds of different kinds of bacteria as bank notes pass from hand to hand. By analyzing genetic material on $1 bills, the NYU researchers identified 3,000 types of bacteria in all—many times more than in previous studies that examined samples under a microscope. Even so, they could identify only about 20 percent of the non-human DNA they found because so many microorganisms haven't yet been cataloged in genetic data banks. One cause appears to be acne. Others were linked to gastric ulcers, pneumonia, food poisoning and staph infections. "It was quite amazing to us," said Jane Carlton, director of genome sequencing at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology."We actually found that microbes grow on money."

Paper money is one of the most frequently passed items in the world. Hygienists have long worried that it could become a source of contagion. "A body-temperature wallet is a petri dish," said Philippe Etienne, managing director of Innovia Security Pty. Ltd., which makes special bank-note paper for 23 countries. Central banks and state treasuries usually worry more about counterfeiting and durability than microbiology, currency experts say. Talk about dirty money. Yecch!

Powdered Alcohol Approved by FDA

This is gonna be something else. The Food and Drug Administration has just given the go-ahead to market and sell an alcohol in powder form called Palcohol. It will be available in liquor stores this fall, according to the company website. Interest in the curious new product has already driven thousands of people to the official website, which at the moment is still under construction. 

There are going to be four flavors to choose from — Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Powderita, and Lemon Drop. You mix the powder into five ounces of any liquid you like to create a drink that contains just as much alcohol as a standard cocktail. The powder can even be sprinkled onto food, though as the website warns, the intoxicating food should not be given to minors. 

I don't know about this, but it'll probably sell like Kool Aid. What'll they think of next?

Wikipedia Tracks Flu Better Than CDC

Researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital have concluded a study comparing Wikipedia articles that included terms related to flu-like illnesses and similar data from the Center for Disease Control and found that Wikipedia can estimate flu levels in the US up to two weeks sooner than the CDC. 

The researchers analyzed the data from Wikipedia on how many times in an hour a certain article was viewed, and combined their data with flu data from the CDC, using a model they created. Looking at data spanning six flu seasons between December 2007 and August 2013, the new system estimated the peak flu week better than Google Flu Trends, another data-based system. The Wikipedia-based system accurately estimated the peak flu week in three out of six seasons, while the Google-based system got only two right, the researchers found. The research team wanted to use a database that is accessible to everyone and create a system that could be more accurate than Google Flu Trends, which has flaws. 

When a pandemic strikes, people search for news stories related to the pandemic itself, but this doesn't mean that they have the flu. In general, the problem with Internet-based estimation systems is that it is practically impossible to tell whether people are looking for information about an illness because they are sick, the researchers said. In the new system, the researchers tried to overcome this issue by including a number of Wikipedia articles "to act as markers for general background-level activity of normal usage of Wikipedia," the researchers wrote in the study. 

However, just like any other data-based system, the Wikipedia system is not immune to the issues related to figuring out the actual motivation of someone checking information related to the flu. Therefore, it's important to view systems such as Google Flu Trends and the Wikipedia system as complementary to data from official sources such as the CDC, McIver said. "We are not trying to create something that will replace the CDC or anything like that," he said. Rather, the researchers' goal is "to get both things to work well together, to give us a more holistic view of what is going on," they said.

Homesick Robber to be Sentenced Again

Walter Unbehaun has spent nearly all of his adult life in jail, so it's not surprising that he faces sentencing Thursday for yet another crime. His reason for robbing a bank is that he was homesick for prison. 

On Feb. 9 last year, he entered a Chicago-area bank with a cane but no disguise, displayed a loaded revolver in his waistband to a teller and told her softly over and over, "I don't want to hurt you." Then, with $4,178 in loot shoved in his pockets, he drove to a nearby motel and waited for police to arrive. Confronted by authorities in the motel parking lot, the bald, portly Unbehaun dropped his cane, raised his hands and startled police by his apparent joy at getting nabbed. He told them that he wanted to do something that would guarantee that he would spend the rest of his life in prison," an FBI affidavit said. One officer observed, "(He) was happy to be going home to prison." 

Now, the judge in Chicago sentencing Unbehaun faces a dilemma, prosecutor Sharon Fairly said in one filing: Sending Unbehaun to prison would be more reward than punishment to him, but setting him free would risk him committing another serious crime.

Portland dumps 38m gallons of water with pee

The Portland, Oregon, water supply is now safe again after the city dumped 38 million gallons of water from its reservoir after discovering that a teenager urinated into the water supply. The kid was caught on closed circuit television at the Mt Tabor reservoir "deliberately contaminating" the water according to Portland water administrator David Shaff. Although the health risk was small, he says customers "don't anticipate drinking water that's been contaminated by some yahoo who decided to pee into a reservoir.” Upon learning of the contamination on Wednesday, officials immediately removed the affected reservoir from service, took water quality test samples and will replace it with fresh water from another of the city's water supplies. Portland emptied 7.5 million gallons of water from the same reservoir in 2011 after another man urinated into it. Mr Shaff said, "While animal waste often found its way into the reservoir without any public health risk, there was at least a perceived difference from my perspective" on human waste. He said the city had plenty of water to meet demand and that replacing the 38 million gallons would be "easy. We're not in the arid South-west. We're not in drought-stricken parts of Texas or Oklahoma." But critics disagree saying the process is extremely wasteful and that even if urine reached the main water supply, it would not harm anyone.

Squirrel Causes $300,000 in Damages to New Building

In Fort Wayne, Indiana, they've been working on transforming an old ice arena into a nearly $2 million community center for sports-related activities including basketball and track & field. The center was supposed to open in June, but now may take a little longer. Apparently security was not as great as it should have been and it seems a wayward squirrel somehow found its way into the place and discovered a cozy little spot to set up home. The problem, however, was that his (or her) new domicile happened to be located in an area where some brand new and pretty sensitive electrical equipment had been hooked up. While making him (or her) self comfortable, the little creature must have disrupted something in the place which caused a rather large power surge that not only fried the little rascal to a crisp but also burned up a great deal of the building's new heating and air conditioning equipment plus some parts of the boiler system. Officials say the total damage is going to amount to around $300,000. Gosh, that must have been quite a shock!

Your Tax Dollars At Work (Again)

As you probably know, the Windows XP operating system has been around for over 12 years and a lot of people would rather keep it than move on to something newer, but Microsoft terminated official support on April 8th and that was that. Many organizations had taken the six years of warnings to heart and migrated to another operating system, but not the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Only 52,000 of their 110,000 Windows-powered computers were upgraded to Windows 7. Now they have a problem. If they follow the rules, and you'd think they will, they'll have to pay Microsoft for Custom Support. How much? Well, using Microsoft's standard rate of $200 per PC, it'll be $11.6 million for one year. That leaves $18.4 million of their $30 million budget to finish the upgrades themselves, which works out to $317 per computer. Another fine example of our government's inability to do much of anything right.

Pa. Man Trashes $1.25M Lottery Tickets

Oh gosh, this guy must feel really, really awful. Back in December one of the regular customers of a convenience store in York bought his normal 20 or 25 Quinto tickets, and then threw them away after he misread the winning numbers. The Pennsylvania Lottery put out a news release back in February, warning whoever held the tickets with the wining numbers of 4-3-4-1-8 that they had until March 13 to cash them in, figuring that the person may have tucked them away in a kitchen junk drawer or had them in a wallet or pocketbook and hadn't bothered to check them. Since the guy always played the same numbers, 4-3-4-1-8, it's pretty obvious that he had the winning tickets. Except that he threw them away. The 25 tickets were worth $50,000 each - $1.25 million total. "He was mad," a convenience store employee said of the day he found out that he threw away more than a million dollars. Lottery officials had been mystified about what happened to the tickets. When told what had happened, lottery spokeswoman Lauren Bottaro said, "Oh no! Wow." Bottaro said the lottery hates for tickets to go unclaimed and said this instance emphasizes the importance of players checking their tickets. The $1.25 million jackpot will now remain in the state Lottery Fund. Bottaro said unclaimed tickets are very rare, composing maybe 1 percent of the number of tickets sold in the state. "We do what we can" to notify winners, Bottaro said. "But sometimes, it's just not enough."

Man Makes Paper Car, Hired By Red Bull Racing

Paul Bischof is a student in mechanical engineering at the Graz University of Technology in Austria. Since the age of eight, Paul has been building model planes out of paperboard. In 2004 he fell in love with Formula 1 racing and in October 2011 he decided to undertake the massive project of building a race car out of paper. Now, some three years later, he has finished the project. Paul's model of the Red Bull RB7 has around 6,500 parts, including a fully-detailed engine, suspension, and cockpit. You'd be hard pressed to tell any of it was made from paper. In fact, the model was so good that it didn't just impress a lot of people on the Internet, but also the top brass at Infiniti Red Bull Racing. Paul was offered a job in the team's engineering department, where he's now working on the 2014 RB10 car. While Paul has traded paper and scissors for carbon fiber and modeling software, he views both as two facets of the same pursuit: designing objects in two dimensions, and making them in three dimensions. "It's basically my hobby," Paul said of his job at Red Bull. Talk about doing what you love.

Doctors Forgot to Remove Appendix, Patient Sues

Forty-three year-old William McCormack of Bronxville, New York needed an appendectomy and went to a local clinic for the operation. Apparently the doctors were distracted by something because some time later he began having stomach pains and when they checked him at the hospital it was discovered that his appendix was still inside him. Apparently no one from the hospital, nor the doctor or anyone from his office called Mr. McCormack to advise him that apparently something had run amiss in the operation and that the appendix was not removed. McCormack is now suing the hospital. The hospital pathology report says what had been removed was "a three centimeter yellowish mass", but not the appendix.

Amazon Offers Employees $5,000 to Quit

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is offering its warehouse employees up to $5,000 to quit their jobs, even as the company is in the process of adding workers and locations. The "Pay to Quit" program, which was announced by CEO Jeff Bezos in his letter to shareholders last Thursday, is an effort to make sure that the Internet retailer's employees really want to be there. According to Bezos, "The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want," he wrote in the letter. "In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don't want to be isn't healthy for the employee or the company." Bezos said the offer is made under the headline "Please Don't Take This Offer." The company has experimented with this program in recent years, but rolled it out to its 40,000 warehouse employees in January, according to a company spokeswoman. Newer employees are offered $2,000 to quit. The plan is to increase that offer by $1,000 each year until the amount hits $5,000. Fewer than 10% of the employees who got the offer took it and left the company.

Scientific Proof: Life Gets Better As You Get Older

Apparently there are two major peaks of satisfaction in life. The first is when you are about 23 and the second when you are around 69. According to a recent study, after your early 20s, happiness was generally found to decline until the mid-50s, after which point it increased again into the 80s. Other studies (notably, a large 2010 Gallup poll) have corroborated this finding, suggesting that happiness tends to be positively linked with age. The Gallup poll found that 85-year-olds are generally more satisfied with themselves than 18-year-olds. In other words, life isn't a downhill decline, it's basically a U-curve.

"Mankind is wrong to dread aging," The Economist writes. "Happiness arcs through the average individual's lifespan. Life is not a long slow decline from sunlit uplands towards the valley of death. It is, rather, a U-bend." On average, happiness declines from youth to middle age until you hit the "midlife crisis" point, at which point people head towards old age and they experience surging levels of happiness and life satisfaction. The U-curve of happiness has been documented in countries around the world, and applies to both global well-being and emotional wellness. Why? Probably because decreased ambition and greater acceptance seems to play a significant role. Whether you're old or young, chances are you think of young people as being happier, even though science has proved that this isn't the case. A study at Duke University that asked groups of 30-year-olds and 70-year-olds which age group (30 or 70) they thought would be happier, both groups pointed towards the 30-year-olds, but when they rated their own happiness levels, the 70-year-olds scored higher. In another study, both the young and the old believe that happiness declines with age, but older adults described themselves as being happier than the younger adults did. The older we get, the more we seem to appreciate the little things. Also, Psychology Today reports, "As we age, we have the opportunity to accept who we are, instead of focusing on who we feel we need to become. We relax into being ourselves. Our faces start to look like who we are. And the world settles into more and more familiar patterns. That acceptance brings diminished anxiety and a higher degree of enjoyment."

Fortwo Tipping Hits San Francisco

The Smart Fortwo is a really small little two-passenger car made by a division of the company that makes Mercedes Benz. It's made in France and until recently couldn't be imported into the US because it didn't pass safety standards and most people thought it would look silly among American cars that are two or three times as large. Well they got it to pass the import restrictions and now you can actually buy one in America. The problem is that the thing only weighs 1800 pounds and some folks in the US appear to think it would be really cool to have a few drinks and go out and find one of the cars and tip it up on it's nose. Maybe they had more than just a few drinks. But anyway, it's the latest thing, at least in the San Francisco area. It's called "Smart tipping", and last weekend three, count 'em, three of the cars were rolled onto their front or rear ends Sunday night. A witness described seeing between six and eight individuals carrying out one of the dastardly deeds. Why is this happening? Well, it could be that SF is finally catching up to other parts of the world, where fortwo tipping has been a "thing" since 2009. Or perhaps SF has been infested with a bunch of urban cowboys who mistakenly think that cow tipping is real. But the most likely bet is that the city's growing hatred for high-tech "Glassholes" has spilled over from boycotting buses to flipping cars. Moral of the story: if Oprah gives you a Smart fortwo and you live in the Bay Area, keep it locked in the garage.

Daylight Saving Time Mistake Blows up Car Bomber

Here's another reason to be wary of Daylight Saving Time. Apparently on April 1st, during the wee hours of the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, a bumbling bomber in Dublin. Ireland accidentally blew himself up by setting the timer on the bomb he was planting to go off an hour earlier than expected. Police theorize that the "bomber got his timings wrong" and "the timer went off too soon." The unidentified bomber was seen fleeing from the wreckage of a ruined Volvo SUV on Sunday evening, while “dripping in blood” after the device that was attached to the vehicle went off early. "It could be a case where he didn’t put his watch forward on Sunday [at 1am] and the timer went off too soon,” according to the London Daily Mirror. After the explosion, the man was seen getting into a taxi. Supt. Dave Taylor of Ireland’s Garda press office stated. “It was a very extensive explosion and it was a very frightening experience for the people on Long Lane.”

Texas woman calls cops to complain about poor quality marijuana, gets arrested

Someone forgot to tell Evelyn Hamilton that marijuana hasn't been legalized for recreational use in her home state of Texas just yet. Hamilton called the police Monday to complain that the marijuana her dealer had sold her was of terrible quality, and that he refused to refund her money for the bunk skunk after she asked for her cash back. She bought $40 worth of pot, but told cops it was mostly just “seeds and residue.” The police sent an officer to the 37-year-old’s house in Lufkin to investigate the complaint. When the officer got there he asked Ms. Hamilton whether she still had the product in question. She produced it immediately, pulling it “from her bra.” At this point, Evelyn was arrested. Although the latest national polls find support for legalizing marijuana, unless you live in Colorado or Washington, do not call the cops about some bum weed.

Spider infestation prompts Mazda recall

Mazda is recalling more than 40,000 cars because of the venomous yellow sac spider. It seems the little guy likes to make his web in the vent hoses of the Mazda6 model. This increases the risk of fuel leaks and fires. The spider is attracted by the hydrocarbons found in petrol and is able to access the Mazda6 engine vent – even after the company began using vent covers in 2011 to try to prevent the problem. The recall will affect 42,000 cars in the US, specifically those with a 2.5-litre engine built between 2010 and 2012. Repairs will be free of charge. So far, Mazda says it is not aware of any car fires that might have started due to infestation by the yellow sac to date. That's reassuring.

Beer is Good For You!

Researchers in Finland have found that each bottle of beer a man drinks daily lowers his risk of developing kidney stones by 40 percent. There's more. Italian researchers found that moderate beer drinkers had a 42 percent lower risk of heart disease compared to non-drinkers. And according to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, when 40 men watched a movie while completing verbal puzzles, beer-buzzed guys with a blood alcohol content of .075 solved the problems a few seconds faster than their sober counterparts. And Dutch researchers analyzed 38,000 male health professionals and found that when men who weren't big boozers began drinking moderately over 4 years, they were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Increased alcohol consumption over time didn't lower the risk in men who already had a couple drinks a day, so moderation is the key word here. Stick to a beer or two at happy hour tonight. 

And move over, Gatorade—a heady brew could also aid in workout recovery according to a Spanish study. Researchers asked students to exercise until their body temperature reached 104 degrees, and then had them re-hydrate with beer or water. As it turns out, people who had a post-workout pint were more hydrated than those who had just water. 

PLUS! British researchers found the more drinks people consumed, the more attractive they found themselves. In a second study, the researchers asked participants who had consumed either a real or fake alcoholic drink to give a speech. When asked to evaluate how good-looking, smart, and funny they felt they were during their talk, people who thought they imbibed gave themselves more positive self-evaluations—regardless of whether or not they were actually buzzed. And Canadian researchers have found that one daily beer—especially a lager or stout—increases antioxidant activity that can stop cataracts from forming in the eyes. The kicker: The scientists found an opposite effect in participants who had three or more drinks a day. Beer can also lower your risk for hypertension, research suggests. In one study, Harvard researchers found that moderate beer drinkers are less likely to develop high BP than those who sip wine or cocktails. 

AND, according to an Oregon Health & Science University Study, having one or two drinks a day might boost your immune system and fight infections. Scientists vaccinated monkeys against smallpox, then gave some of the primates access to alcohol while others could drink sugar water. The monkeys who drank moderately had better vaccine responses than those who consumed the sweet stuff. But the animals that drank heavily—you may now imagine a totally tanked chimp—had less of a response to the vaccine than those who kept their habit under control. Nasty breaks from drunken debauchery aside, a couple beers a day could actually strengthen your bones, according to a study at Tufts University. Plus, just one more thing. A couple beers a day could actually strengthen your bones, according to a study at Tufts University. Guys who stuck to one or two brews had up to 4.5 percent greater bone density than non-drinkers—but more than two beers was associated with up to 5.2 percent lower density, according to the study.

Low-Fat Dairy Products Make You Fatter

Good grief! You can forget about losing weight buying all that low-fat milk, cheese & yogurt. All the advertising has been hogwash, because consuming the regular old full-fat dairy products actually reduces your risk of becoming obese. According to leading nutritionist Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, there is a "dairy fat paradox" that if you opt for low-fat versions of dairy products you are actually more likely to become more obese than people who eat the full-fat versions.

According to a recent Swedish study of 1782 men in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, consumption of full-fat dairy products is correlated with a lower risk of developing central obesity – excessive weight gain around the abdomen. A separate and even more recent analysis of 16 relevant studies in the European Journal of Nutrition echoes the weight-gain link. Willett says the findings for body weight shouldn't be too surprising as many studies have not supported the idea that fat in the diet is specifically related to greater fat in our bodies. The idea that all fats are bad still persists in the minds of many people, despite layers of evidence that this is not true. If anything, low fat/high carbohydrate diets seem to be related to greater long-term weight gain.

Where did the idea that full-fat dairy is bad for you originate? This concept emerged in the 1950s and 60s when it was shown that saturated fat increased blood cholesterol levels. Because dairy fat has high saturated fat content (about 65 per cent), it was deemed to be harmful. Also, in the 1950s US physiologist Ancel Keys and his colleagues showed that areas with high consumption of saturated fat, largely from dairy fat, had much higher rates of heart disease than the Mediterranean countries, where dairy consumption is lower. To make matters even worse, many low fat dairy products replace the fat with sugar which almost certainly induces more weight gain than the full fat versions.

Tobacco Prevents West Nile Virus

And we all thought tobacco was evil, evil, evil. Well, a team of scientists at Arizona State University have conducted an experiment with a drug produced in tobacco plants that can be used to prevent death in mice infected with a lethal dose of West Nile virus. The study represents an important first step in the development of a treatment for the mosquito-borne disease that has killed 400 people in the US within the last two years. In the study, scientists introduced a gene into a "deconstructed" plant virus vector, then they introduced the vector into the tobacco plants. After about 10 days they were able to extract a substance from the tobacco plant, inject it into laboratory mice that were infected with the virus, and in 90 percent of cases, the mice evaded death and made a full recovery.

Tobacco plants are unique because they are capable of producing a large amount of proteins and seeds, properties that make them ideal candidates for scaling-up production of this type. Although the process has not yet been tested on humans, scientists plan to eventually use it to penetrate living brain matter and hopefully get the same results. According to the researchers, the tobacco plant might one day be associated with more than smoke-related cancer, as it could also help prevent thousands of people from suffering serious neurological complications, and even death.

Daylight Time Linked to Heart Attacks

A study of 42,000 hospital admissions in Michigan has concluded that Daylight Saving Time is responsible for 25% more heart attacks than usual. The impact of moving the clock forward and backward was seen in a comparison of hospital admissions from a database of non-federal Michigan hospitals. It examined admissions before the start of Daylight Saving Time and the Monday immediately after for four consecutive years. An average of 32 patients had heart attacks on any given Monday, but on the Monday immediately after springing the clock forward, there were an average of eight additional heart attacks. Later in the year when standard time returned, heart attack risk fell 21 percent on the Tuesday after the clock was returned to standard time, and people got an extra hour's sleep. The main conclusion of the study suggests that sudden, even small changes in sleep, seem to have detrimental effects.

New Mexico Peanut Butter Dumped 

This is so stupid. Almost a million jars of peanut butter have been dumped in a New Mexico landfill and bulldozed over. Why? Because US retailer Costco refused to take shipment of the stuff and wouldn't let it be donated to food banks or even repackaged and given to prison inmates. Costco wound up with the stuff after acquiring it from a bankrupt processing plant, and because some of the jars were leaking peanut oil, they wouldn't agree to any disposition other than it being dumped because, according to Costco, they were "not merchantable." Yep, that's 2.6 million dollars worth of peanut butter, 25 tons, 950,000 jars, and to top it off, the county had to spend $60,000 just to transport it to the county landfill.

Student discovers Font Change Could Save Government Millions

Suvir Mirchandani, a 14-year-old middle student of Dorseyville Middle School in Pittsburgh, noticed that he was receiving many more paper handouts than when he was in elementary school, and began thinking about the efficiency of that. So, as a science fair project, he analyzed a bunch of figures and determined that if his school switched to Garamond font instead of Times Roman, it could cut down on its the school's ink consumption by 24%.  That would save the school system a total of $21,000 per year. He then repeated his tests on sample pages from the Government Printing Office — which has an annual printing budget of $1.8 billion — and found the exact same results. If both the GPO and state governments switched their font usage to thinner fonts such as Garamond, they could save around $400 million per year in ink alone. Of course a spokesperson for the Government Printing Office one-upped young Suvir by noting that the administration is trying to become more environmentally friendly by moving content to the web rather than printing anything at all. However, Suvir responded in kind, noting that not everything will be moved to the internet, and changing fonts can still save money. It seems that I remember a number of years ago when they said paper was going to become obsolete because of the use of word processors. Yeah, right.

 House Being Built with 3-D Printer

You know about 3D printing, right?  Supposed to be the future way that parts for almost everything will soon be made. Well, some folks in Amsterdam have taken it a step further - they're building a house.  Yup. Dutch architects are now building a full size house using a 20-foot-tall 3D printer.   The project, known simply as the "3D Print Canal House," uses a super-sized version of the popular in-home 3D printer made by Ultimaker. Dutch architectural firm Dus commissioned the machine when it decided to take the scale-model rooms it was already 3D-printing and turn them into the real thing.  The printer is called KamerMaker, which means "room builder," and that's exactly what it does -- construct a series of rooms that can be basically snapped together to form an entire house.  Thus far, the printer has produced a corner of the house with a partial staircase attached. The piece weighed about 400 pounds. The building blocks that are currently being produced, and take about a week each to print, have a honeycombed internal structure that will eventually be filled with a foam that reaches a concrete-like hardness, lending support and weight to the finished house.  The architects see multiple benefits to 3D-printing a house, aside from the possibilities of near-limitless customization. "For the first time in history, over half of the world's population is living in cities," Vermeulen said. "We need a rapid building technique to keep up the pace with the growth of the megacities. And we think 3D printing can be that technique."  Wait a go, guys!

21st Century Public Flunks Survey on Tech Terms

A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease.  The study was conducted by Vouchercloud.net, a coupons website, as a way to determine how knowledgeable users are when it comes to tech terms.  "Technology is a huge interest for our user base, and month after month we see thousands of people visiting our site to look for coupons and deals to use when purchasing their favorite tech products," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. "It seems that quite a few of us need to brush up on our tech definitions."  Besides HTML, there were some other amusing findings:

77% of respondents could not identify what SEO means. SEO stands for "Search-Engine Optimization"
27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device.
42% said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship." A motherboard is usually a circuit board that holds many of the key components of a computer.
23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file.
18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.
15% said they believed "software" is comfortable clothing. Software is a general term for computer programs.
12% said "USB" is the acronym for a European country. In fact, USB is a type of connector.
Despite the incorrect answers, 61% of the respondents said it is important to have a good knowledge of technology in this day and age.

The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older. The participants were not told that the study was specifically looking into their knowledge of tech terms. They were presented with both tech and non-tech terms and were asked to choose from three possible definitions.  "Hence why a mix of both normal and technology-related words were used," the company said in a statement. Although the origin and veracity of the survey have come under question by a journalism ethics website, the firm that conducted the survey, 10 Yetis Public Relations, said it stands by its work and has provided the full survey results.  The survey is "100% genuine, and it's a valid survey," said Leanne Thomas, a senior account executive for 10 Yetis Public Relations.

'Upskirting' Photos Ruled Legal by Mass. High Court

I don't know about this.  Seems to me when I was living in the States, this sort of thing would have been ruled illegal or at least an invasion of privacy or common decency.  The high court of Massachusetts has ruled that a man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not violate state law because the women were not nude or partially nude.  Michael Robertson was arrested in August 2010 by transit police who set up a sting after getting reports that he was using his cellphone to take photos and video up female riders' skirts and dresses, a process known as “upskirting.”  This past Wednesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overruled a lower court and dismissed the charges. The state has a variety of laws designed to protect against Peeping Toms, who seek to scope out their partially nude victims in dressing rooms and bathrooms. But the court decided the state laws do not protect mass transit riders who are clothed, though temporarily revealed. “A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is 'partially nude,' no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing,” the court said in its ruling.  State law “does not apply to photographing (or videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA,” the court said.

The ruling immediately prompted outrage and pledges to correct the law.  “What we have is not that the Supreme Judicial Court is saying this is OK,” Dist. Atty. Dan Conley said. “The statutory language just didn't quite fit the conduct.”  “This action is immoral and reprehensible; don't do it,” the prosecutor said, urging state lawmakers to change the laws' wording by the end of this legislative session.  State Senate President Therese Murray said she was “stunned and disappointed” with the court ruling. She said the state Senate will respond quickly.  “We have fought too hard and too long for women's rights to take the step backward,” Murray said in a statement. “I am in disbelief that the courts would come to this kind of decision and outraged at what it means for women's privacy and public safety.”

"Superstar" Stamp Up For Auction

This is a stamp, just a stamp, nothing more - and please tell me if you can see why anybody would care one thing about it.  You can't read anything on it.  The only thing even half-way legible is somebody's scribbled signature on it, and apparently nobody knows who's signature it is.

OK.  Here's the deal.  This is a 1-cent postage stamp from British Guiana in 1856.  It used to hold the auction sales record for a single stamp back in 1980 when the last owner, John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, bought it for $935,000.  It's now being sold by his estate and experts say it's poised to become the world's most valuable stamp again.

"You're not going to find anything rarer than this," said Allen Kane, director of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. "It's a stamp the world of collectors has been dying to see for a long time."  Measuring 1 inch-by-1 1/4 inches, the feather-light One-Cent Magenta hasn't been on public view since 1986. It is the only major stamp absent from the British Royal Family's private Royal Philatelic Collection.

"This is the superstar of the stamp world," said David Redden, Sotheby's worldwide chairman of books and manuscripts, adding that the stamp will travel to London and Hong Kong before being sold.  Printed in black on magenta paper, it bears the image of a three-masted ship and the colony's motto, in Latin, "we give and expect in return." The stamp went into circulation after a shipment of stamps was delayed from London and the postmaster asked printers for the Royal Gazette newspaper in Georgetown in British Guiana ─ the present day Guyana ─ to produce three stamps until the shipment arrived: A 1-cent magenta, a 4-cent magenta and a 4-cent blue.  To safeguard against forgery, the postmaster ordered that the stamps be initialed by a post office employee.

Are you ready?    Sotheby's predicts the stamp will sell for between $10 million and $20 million when it's offered in New York on June 17.  Get out your checkbook!

One in Four Americans Believes Earth Revolves Around the Sun

Welcome to the 21st Century.  A National Science Foundation survey offers a sobering reflection of knowledge in today's all-knowing world. According to the survey, 25 percent of Americans really do believe the sun circles the Earth. The statistics come from a survey of more than 2,200 people conducted by the National Science Foundation.  The survey is performed every two years, just to see if America has made any progress and will be included in a report to President Obama and US lawmakers later this year.  Fifty-two percent of Americans had no idea that humans evolved from animal species. (This may be the 52 percent of people who believe that mayonnaise comes from the mayo plant.) Thirty percent of people also said science deserves more government funding. There is no data suggesting that most of these people were the ones who believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

Iraqi militants accidentally set off car bomb at their own training camp

Seems the other day an al-Qaida breakaway group decided to set up a new car bomb making plant in an orchard north of Baghdad.  Naturally they filled it chock full of explosives and then sent out word for would-be car bombers to come and visit because one of their talented bomb-making instructors would be there to give the would-be recruits valuable lessons on how to go about putting car bombs together.  Must have been a festive occasion, eh?  Well, somehow something went wrong and the instructor accidentally set off a shit-load of explosives in his demonstration Monday.  BOOM!

Twenty-one of the hopeful bomb makers were killed and about two dozen others were arrested, including wounded insurgents trying to hobble away from the scene.  Let's see, each martyr is supposed to be met by seventy-two virgins upon his arrival in heaven, so 72 x 21 is ... well, that's an awful LOT of virgins, don't you think?  They probably had to send out a call for extra ones I suppose.  ;-}

Dr. House solves real-world mystery

We all knew the fictional Dr. Gregory House of Princeton, N.J., was good at solving medical mysteries. But it turns out he was so good he managed to solve a real one, in Germany, right around the time his Fox TV show went off the air.

A team of German doctors reported the other day in the medical journal Lancet that they used clues remembered from an episode of House to figure out what was wrong with a man who had severe heart failure. The unidentified 55-year-old patient had symptoms including fever, swollen lymph nodes, hearing loss and vision loss when he showed up in May 2012 at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg. He also had a metal hip implant, which had been put in as a replacement for a broken ceramic hip implant in 2010. Luckily, his doctors were not only House fans but actually had used a relevant episode of the drama to train medical students. As the doctors noted in their case report, the episode featured Candice Bergen playing the mother of House's love interest, Dr. Lisa Cuddy.

In the episode, it turns out that Bergen's character – who is suffering from all sorts of mysterious symptoms, including a fever and heart trouble – has been poisoned with cobalt from her metal hip implant. And that was the problem with the German patient. "We suspected cobalt intoxication as the most likely reason," because of the episode, the doctors write. They then found fragments of that metal near one hip and high levels in the patient's blood. They deduced that the man's new metal hip had been damaged by fragments of his old ceramic hip. The patient "stablilized and recovered slightly" after a getting new ceramic hip. House, which starred British actor Hugh Laurie, went off the air in May 2012 after eight seasons.

Brewery tests beer delivery by drone

Surely you've read about Amazon hoping to begin delivery of some of their products by drones sometime in the next four or five years, right?  Well this is even better.  Lakemaid Brewery in Wisconsin is currently testing out drones to deliver beer to ice fishermen! Yup, the brewers in Steven's Point Wisconsin have already videotaped themselves testing out drone technology on icy Lake Wacona.  Customers will be able to call in orders with their specific GPS coordinates, and then a clerk will take the order and ship the box of 12 brews to the exact location.

The idea hit Jack Supple, President of Lakemaid Beer, when he realized that frozen lakes are the perfect place to test out beer drones because there are no power lines, buildings trees, or anything else that may pose a safety issue.  At the moment however, Lakemaid is merely testing the idea as several issues still need to be worked out. For instance, there would need to be a way to check buyers' ids to ensure that they are of age, and unfortunately for Lakemaid fans and anyone else dreading a walk to the corner store, it's currently against the law to fly drones for commercial purposes or above 400 feet in the United States. The FAA is working on a comprehensive set of rules and regulations that will pave the way for commercial drone flight, but the legislation won't be ready until at least 2015 and drones might not be in the skies until 2017. Until then, thirsty fishermen must obtain their beverages through old-fashioned terrestrial delivery methods.

Flashing Headlights to Warn About Speed Traps Ruled Legal

Betcha didn't know that a Missouri Judge has ruled that you have a right to flash your lights to warn other drivers about speed traps!  Yes, over the past couple of years, drivers in Florida and Texas who have been ticketed for notifying their fellow motorists about speed traps have taken the case to court and in at least one case, they won. In Florida, Ryan Kintner simply flashed his high-beams to oncoming cars -- the international "Police ahead!" signal -- but in Texas, Ron Martin went so far as to create a warning sign and hold it while standing on the median, which resulted in his arrest. Both cases went to court. Though Martin's case is still pending, Kintner's turned out badly for Florida police: the judge decided that flashing lights are, in fact, the equivalent of free speech, and therefore that Kintner had every right to use his headlights to warn others.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the score has ramped up to 2-0 in favor of motorists, thanks to a similar decision in Missouri. That case was very similar to the one that unfolded in Florida: driver Michael Elli was ticketed for flashing his lights and alerting oncoming motorists to a speed radar trap. His fine was $1,000.  In court, Elli pleaded not guilty, and shortly thereafter, the city of Ellisville dropped the charge. But Elli wasn't content: he called the American Civil Liberties Union and sued the city for violating his constitutional right to free speech.

And now, he's won.  In court, lawyers for the city suggested that signaling other drivers with one's headlights might interfere with a police investigation, but then they backed down, insisting that officers no longer pull over drivers who flash their high-beams. U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey wasn't buying it. He ordered the city to end its policy of stopping, harassing, and citing drivers like Elli immediately. Though the city could theoretically appeal, it's unlikely that it will do so -- unless, of course, the city wants to spend more taxpayer dollars defending a practice that seems increasingly indefensible.

Nissan reveals 88 pound 400 hp engine

Nissan and NISMO, which is its motor sport partner, have revealed a 1.5 liter 3-cylinder engine that puts out an incredible 400 horsepower and weighs just 88 pounds. They plan to use it in their 2014 ZEOD RC electrified race car, which will compete in the Garage 56 experimental entry in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. NISMO chief Shoichi Miyatani is shown in the above picture actually holding the engine! In addition to its 400-horsepower peak power rating, the engine, code-named the DIG-TR, also develops a maximum 280 pound-feet of torque - numbers that make it almost comparable with some of today's V-8 engines still on the market.

At a ratio of 4.5 horsepower per pound, the new engine even has a better power-to-weight ratio than the new turbocharged 1.6-liter V-6 engines to be used in Formula One this season. In the ZEOD RC, the engine will form part of an advanced plug-in hybrid drivetrain. Nissan says the driver will be able to switch between electric power and gasoline power, and the batteries will be charged via regenerative braking. Both the electric and gasoline powerplants run through the same five-speed gearbox that transfers power to the ground via Michelin tires. The ZEOD RC will undergo an extensive test program over the next four months prior to it making its race debut at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours on June 14-15. Importantly, lessons learned from the development of the revolutionary race car will be used in the development of Nissan’s planned entry into the top LMP1 category of the World Endurance Championship, which the automaker today has confirmed will take place in 2015. Of course, as you might imagine, some of the knowledge gained will probably also be seen in Nissan road cars of the future.

CBS poll: Majority favors marijuana legalization for first time!

For the first time since the CBS News Poll began asking the question, a majority of Americans (OK, I agree, it's just a "slight" majority, but dammit it's finally MORE than 50%) now favor the legalization of marijuana use! Fifty-one percent say they think the use of marijuana should be made legal, while 44 percent do not.

Public opinion on this issue has changed dramatically over the past few years:  in October 2011 a slight majority (51 percent) opposed making marijuana use legal, and as recently as April 2013 public opinion was divided on this issue (45 percent supported, 45 percent opposed). Interestingly, in July 1979, when CBS News first asked the question, 69 percent thought marijuana use should not be made legal and only 27 percent thought it should be made legal.