Fiat Lux

Seven and a half cents
Doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.
Seven and a half cents
Doesn’t buy a thing.
But give it to me every hour,
Forty hours every week,
And that’s enough for me to be
Living like a king.

– The Pajama Game

Well, the issue today is 4 cents versus 8 cents, but the lyrics are close enough.

I’ll miss The Daily Show, but good luck to the Writer’s Guild.

Jason Perlow, the guy who helped me found the NYC Palm User’s Group, is also a food blogger, and his Off The Broiler has been nominated for the 2007 Weblog Awards in the “Best Food Blog” category.

If you haven’t checked out his blog and/or voted for him, here’s the link to the voting page.

If you haven’t heard the news, the Big Daddy of exercise podcasts, DJ Steve Boyett, has gotten a new sponsor. That’s great, but the downside is that his old, un-sponsored mixes are going offline.

So get over to his site or to the iTunes podcast directory before November 1 and download anything you haven’t already downloaded.

Great news!

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.

Although it will undoubtedly make the wingnuts’ heads explode, and give even more fodder to the UN conspiracy theorists (like Ron Paul).

This caught my eye tonight: the backstory of the Sputnik launch that kicked off the “space race” between the US and the USSR is finally coming out. Here’s a snippet, click through for the rest (it’s worth a read):

When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.

But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age.

And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket.

This sounds like a joke, but I found it on cbs5.com, so I’m assuming it’s legit.

A California judge says an Oakland carpenter caught hammering nails and sawing wood in the nude can legally work without wearing any clothes.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger found Percy Honniball not guilty of indecent exposure Thursday. The 51-year-old was arrested last year after the he was spotted building cabinets in the buff at a home where he had been hired to work .

Conger ruled that although Honniball was indeed naked he was not acting lewdly or seeking sexual gratification.

The carpenter has said he likes to work in the nude because it’s more comfortable and helps him keep his clothes clean.

Oy.

74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Well, at least I’m less addicted than Jeremiah Owyang is…..

Another week, another random mix.

1) Lohengrin Prelude - Wagner
2) Shape of My Heart - Backstreet Boys
3) Beat Box - Matisyahu
4) Blood Of Eden - Peter Gabriel
5) My Hometown - Bruce Springsteen
6) It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - REM
7) Not A Day Goes By - Mandy Patinkin Say It Isn’t So - Hall & Oates
9) Still Take You Home - Arctic Monkeys
10) my funny valentine - Sting

#2 is a little embarrassing. At least it’s the only song of theirs in my collection.

I am old enough to remember Hank Aaron’s drive for Babe Ruth’s record in 1973-74. It was a special day when he finally did it.

Today ….. not so much.

I console myself with the thought that if A-Rod stays healthy, there’s a good chance he’ll top 756 in the not too distant future.

A New York Times article on the millionaires of Silicon Valley is garnering mostly negative feedback today. And it’s easy to see why. It’s hard to have sympathy for people like this:

“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” [Gary] Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar

I can’t say I’m all that sympathetic to people who got themselves onto a money treadmill and now feel that they can’t get off it. You always have a choice, and if you think you don’t, it’s because you’re not looking in the right places for options. If your role models are the folks with a net worth of $50 million, then yeah, you’re a schlub for only having $5 million. Perhaps you might try spending a little time with people whose net worth is only $500 thousand instead? Is that too demeaning for you? Those people, after all, can’t afford a nanny for the toddlers and new Acuras for the teenagers. They might even — dare I say it? — rent their homes and join the Y instead of a country club.

Is that too much like “admitting defeat”?

Cry me a freaking river.

Here’s where I come from on this: I went to a very exclusive private school when I was growing up, and my family was on the lower end of the income spectrum for the school. Kids didn’t have ipods and multi-function cellphones and $200 Gucci sunglasses back then, but some things were the same; many of my classmates had brand-new cars, designer jeans, shopping sprees at Bloomingdales, and spring break skiing trips to Aspen. I didn’t. I’d like to say that it didn’t matter, but that would be a lie. Of course you’re going to feel bad if some people in your peer group have stuff you don’t. What’s important is how you deal with it.

If you’re lucky, you take away the lesson that ’stuff’ doesn’t necessarily make you happy, that somebody is always going to have more stuff than you, and to be happy with the stuff you do have. If you’re less lucky, you walk away with the ambition to get all that stuff, and then some, when it comes time for you to raise your own kids. And thus, a new generation of overworked treadmill-walkers is born.

Any accusations of sour grapes aside, there’s also a business lesson to be drawn here. I was interested to see that one of the subjects of the article earned much of her wealth from being an early member of the team at Handspring (and later a senior staffer at Palm). One wonders if that company’s ever-increasing inability to deliver products that people wanted might be linked to their own staff’s disconnection from what life for “normal” people is like.