US Overtook Russia as Worlds Largest Gas Producer last Year

Two interesting articles on Shale Natural Gas which is a new method of extracting Gas from Shale rocks via process called "Fracking".

Apparently the US overtook Russia as the world's largest producer of Natural Gas and it promises to make the US energy self sufficient for the next 100 years.

Articles from The Economist and The Financial Times,

Imagine turning your Nokia Phone into a WIFI Router - For Free.

Sounds incredible, but that is what you can do with Joikuspot. (www.joikushop.com)

I just downloaded it, installed it in 2 minutes and had my laptop on the web straight away. There is a premium edition for 9 euros.

Strikes me that this is an excellent corporate solution for companies wondering what is the best way to give their employees laptops mobile internet access.

S

Mark Twain: "[You are the] scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link."

Letter from Mark Twain to an early w20th century Spammer trying to sell him medicine. (Think of those Viagra emails.)

Comes from here where the original is reporduced.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/youre-idiot-of-33rd-degree.html

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

Ulysses has been "translated" into a comic

See link here

http://www.ulyssesseen.com/comic/us_comic_tel_0002.html

and good old "Plump Stately" below.

S

Can you guys arrange some printing for later today

Let me introduce Hayes's corollory to Murphy's law, which states that "The chances of the printer running out of ink are directly proportional to whether or not you print on the morning of the presentation."

This is based on O'Tooles corlolloray to Murphy's Law which states that

"The chances of the toast landing buttered side down are directly proportional to the cost of the carpet"

This then gives rise to the Buttered Cat theory of levitation. It comes from this. As we know a Cat always lands on its feet, and buttered toast always lands on the butter, so if you butter the back of a cat and threw it out the window, would the cat levitate just above the ground while the two forces battled it out.

Somewhere along the line, You also get Schrodingers Cat, but I am afraid that one is a bit beyond me.

Referneces (THere from Wikipedia so I suppose I will get an F, but anyway)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_righting_reflex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat

S :-)

PS, I think I will edit the Wiki entry to bring in my O'Tooles Corollory.