Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings  
Tax the Rich

Website Wednesday 

OK, I didn't listen to the State of the Union speech last night but I heard that the networks had a video insert on the TV screen during the speech of that burning cabin/surrounded "killer" drama going on in CA so all us multi-taskers wouldn't get bored. The Huff Post has a quote from O's speech saying: If you work hard, you can get ahead. Well, shit! That's one big lie. Ever been really too sick to work, or too poor and hungry to care, or just not mentally aware enough to put it all together? The world is not a mass producer of Horatio Alger heroes. Bad things happen to people, very, very bad things. Even those dirty, lying, commie bastards understood that: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Or, thanks to Wikipedia, as Marx would have said it: "Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!" But you can't say that to rabid, non-thinking capitalists. They would go bat shit crazy.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/ 

Since the girl is interested in engineering, I asked her the other day: Why can't they build a shorter, lighter, but sturdy treadmill? With the increase in American body weight, wouldn't it be great to have treadmills available which didn't take a large amount of floor space to use nor the muscles of Popeye to install? Now, that's an engineering miracle for you.

All this lead me to the Popular Mechanics site above which says of itself: We buy how-to-do-it articles on home improvement, home maintenance, energy-saving techniques, and shop and craft projects. These must be well illustrated with drawings and photos. 

PM has been around since 1902 and currently you can read online about: 101 Gadgets Which Changed the World (duct tape is 101) and 10 Smart Tips When Building a Shed. It's information for everyone and not written on the level of a scientific paper so you don't come away muttering: Say what? 

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1368006921001_2103830,00.html

OK, I've been fiddling around with this Time site and what I can figure out is that it gives you short videos on areas of current interest. You can listen to 10 questions posed to people like Daniel Radcliffe and Ron Paul,  Or click on the right column links for the most popular videos in the last 24 hours. However, it doesn't stop there. After all, Time has been around for a long time also. There is a labyrinth of information on this site in articles and videos. If you start clicking around you might not come up for air for days. But it's one of those sites for those days when you think: I'm bored. I don't need hand-wringing angst. Entertain and inform me. For those many times, this site's for you. It won't disappoint.

http://consumerist.com/

Consumerist is a subsidiary of Consumer Reports. It looks like a sleeked-down version of the magazine and it has a lot of interesting, current information you should know. I'm not going to guide you through this site because I hope you are all familiar with Consumer Reports. There's some stuff here you should just read and forget but there is also so much more stuff you should read and remember. Right now, you can learn about credit ratings and LinkedIn, UPS delivery problems, and the life expectancy of a $700 microwave. Good stuff to know. Or you can read about the horrible two days those stranded cruise ship passengers had and think: I'm happy I stayed home with Nemo. 

That's it for today. See you next week.