• I am a geography novice. Took this quiz a few times. The first attempt was brutal. The next couple tries were better, but only because I was getting countries such as Germany and Brazil rather than ones I’d never heard of. Clearly, I could spend more time studying maps of Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the island nations.
• A cool animation of a day of flights over North America.
• The Lincolnization of Bush. On Friday, President Bush continued his effort to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. Asked about his weird comment on a “Third [Religious] Awakening,” Mr Bush responded:
  

  I’d just read a book on Abraham Lincoln, and his presidency was right around the time of what they called the Second Awakening, and I was curious to know whether or not these smart people felt like there was any historical parallels.

  Is our president learning American history? The Second Awakening actually occurred before Lincoln, primarily in the 1820s and 1830s. He might want to check that book again.
  But it gets funnier:

  I also said that I had run for office the first time to change a culture . . . to helping to work change a culture in which each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life. In other words, ushering in a responsibility era.

  Uh, Bush being part of a “responsibility era”? That’s stand up comedy material.

• Health/diet:
  

  The current [spinach E. coli] outbreak follows food-borne illnesses from cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupes and unpasteurized apple and orange juices over the last several years. In 2004, produce-related outbreaks surpassed those associated with beef, poultry or fish, with 86 outbreaks, compared with 29 in 1997, when the states started electronic reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Hmm, widespread problems with fruits and vegetables? What is safe to eat these days?

Interesting line from the White House yesterday. Here it is responding to a letter in which General Colin Powell states his opposition to Bush’s terror-detainee legislation:

Firing back, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Powell was “confused” about the White House plan. Later, Snow said he probably shouldn’t have used that word.
“I know that Colin Powell wants to beat the terrorists, too,” he said.

Wow, I’m glad we cleared that one up. It’s good to know that a decorated military commander and Bush’s own former Secretary of State “wants to beat the terrorists.” One might wonder why that issue was even implicitly questioned.
Oh, that’s right–Powell challenged one of Bush’s policies, thus it’s only natural to conclude that he supports the enemy. I’m glad Snow was able to confirm that Powell is still on America’s side.

Ahh, an immutable beauty of capitalism: if there is a way to rip unsophisticated customers off, some company is sure to do it:

A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.
Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones – the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger – in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.
Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones – $29.10 a month. Strogen’s granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills.
. . .
New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service, said customers were given the choice option to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said.
“We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them,” Skalko said.

Amusing how the writer saw fit to include a definition of a rotary phone–makes me feel a bit older (we had one when I was a kid).
Anyway, 750,000 people still leasing phones? I’d bet over 95% of the “demand” for this “service” comes from people who don’t understand they are being ripped off.

I’m sometimes have to scratch my head when reading about published research. Here’s another example’:

Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.
The study found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed.

Dr Ian Walker, study author and “traffic psychologist,” suggests “the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is because they see them as ‘Lycra-clad street warriors’ and believe they are more predictable than those without.”
In certain situations, there might be something to this; on some residential roads drivers may give a wider berth to an erratic-riding mountain biker than they give a steady road biker. But to confirm the paper’s conclusion, one would have to control for several factors that I suspect this study failed to do, such as road type, vehicular traffic speed, cyclist speed, cyclist riding style, et cetera.
Moreover, on more “dangerous” roads, drivers probably often can’t distinguish between helmeted and non-helmeted riders, either because: (1) they don’t have time to notice, or (2) the road is so narrow that there’s not much clearance anyway.
In any case, I’m going to continue wearing the helmet. Whatever minimal safety benefit there may be to this study, it’s clearly outweighed by the protection a helmet offers during a low-speed accident.

I generally don’t watch Larry King Live unless he has on a guest interesting enough to carry the show. Why not? Because too often King asks either stupid or shallow questions. If I wanted, I could compile a list of lame ones every show. But I’d have to suffer through the show in order to do that. So I won’t.
Here’s a funny example from King’s recent interview with Andre Agassi. He asks about the tennis star’s wife, Steffi Graf:

KING: Stephanie going to keep on playing?
AGASSI: No, she hasn’t played in seven years now.
KING: She won’t play again at all?
AGASSI: Well…
KING: She played for the last time.

Ooops.
I understand that when you interview a couple hundred people a year, you can’t possibly know everything about all of them. But you’d think if King knew enough to ask about Steffi, he’d know she hadn’t competed this century. And even if he didn’t, doesn’t he have a staff that does research?
If you want to know why CNN’s ratings have gone down the drain the past decade, part of your answer is in the 9:00 p.m. Eastern hour. I’ve wondered why the network continues to have this show. My best guesses are:
(1) King is like that old professor at a college department who no one is willing to fire because he’s been there for 40 years; or
(2) CNN wants to lock in the 80+ year old demographic.
Either way, it’s a waste of prime time air time.