CompUSA stores to close after the holidays

CompUSA throws in the towel.

Computer retailer CompUSA plans to close all its stores after the holidays.

CompUSA, owned by the Mexican based firm Grupo Carso SA, has 103 stores in 68 markets.

In recent years, CompUSA has struggled against other big-box retailers such as Best Buy and Internet-based companies such as CDW.

CompUSA was founded in 1984 and rose to national prominence under the guidance of Nathan Morton.

As chairman and CEO, Morton led CompUSA from two stores and $60 million in sales as SoftWarehouse to its standing as a multibillion-dollar national retailer in less than five years.

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Electronic toilet paper dispenser

Wave your hand under this gadget and it will give you five sheets of toilet paper.

Kimberly-Clark is developing this oddity. They feel that most people will be satisfied with five sheets and use 20 percent less toilet paper.

I say: gimme a break!

The new product research team at Kimberly-Clark really do need to get out more!

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Police unmanned spy planes to fly over American cities?

Two police departments, the Miami-Dade police department and the Houston police department, were given permission by the FAA to experiment with the drones.

Houston has already begun testing. The photo shows a Houston Police Department drone flying over the city.

The Houston unmanned plane project was intended to be secret but KPRC Channel 2 took the photo shown here.

This may be a common sight in the sky over major U.S. cities in the future.

Link here and here.

Take a college course by cell phone in Japan

There is a mobile phone college class available in Japan.

Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, they can take a university course.

Cyber University, the nation's only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.

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Polar bears on the brink? Only in the minds of warming alarmists

In the 1970’s the planet was in a cooling cycle. That’s when many people tried to alarm us that we were going into another ice age.

Now we are in a warming cycle just as our planet has done many times before. It’s just that this time Al Gore has found a way to make money with ‘carbon credits’ and become famous at the same time by scaring the bejabbers out of us.

There is an article at the link below titled: 'Polar bears on the brink? Don't you believe it.'

The article is about filming polar bears near Churchill, the so-called Polar Bear Capital of the world, located on the banks of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada.

Now it’s not only polar bear watchers who come flocking to Churchill.

With the clamor over global warming, it has become a magnet for an army of environmentalists and climatologists who have given Churchill an air of impending doom.

The Arctic ice-cap is shrinking fast, is their message, and as it disappears, so too will the polar bears.

Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).

Yet, we are repeatedly warned, if the planet continues to overheat at the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.

"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.

The photo below is that now-famous photograph of polar bears appearing to be stranded on an Arctic ice-flow, melting faster than ice-cream on a muggy day.

(click on picture to enlarge)

For a while, this picture became a powerful symbol of the perils of global warming - until it was revealed to have been taken three years ago and during the height of summer!

Link

Monkey beats college students in computer game

A young chimp beat college students in computer “game”.

Think you're smarter than a fifth-grader? How about a 5-year-old chimp?

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

Link

Cell phone subscriptions equal to half the global population

The number of global cellular subscriptions is now equivalent to half the planet's total population!

Subcriptions have surpassed the 3.3 billion mark, a staggering achievement for any electronics product.

Growth is so fast, cell phones are already ingrained with otherwise impoverished countries such as China and India, with some tentative steps being made into Africa

National economies have in some cases benefited greatly: much of Finland's financial health is dependent on Nokia, and among South Korea's corporate giants are Samsung and LG.

Link here and here.

She won’t have babies because they're not eco friendly

A British woman believes pregnancy is bad for the environment so she had an abortion 10 years ago and later was sterilized.

She feels that having babies is not eco friendly because they would raise her carbon footprint.

If her mother had felt the same way, this British lady wouldn’t have a carbon footprint to worry about.

Link

Scotland has a stunning new slogan

Airport signs in Scotland say: "the best small country in the world."

After spending six months and $282,000 on a new slogan, Scottish tourism officials have come up with ... "Welcome to Scotland".

Stunning indeed!

Seems to us they could have saved a lot of time and money by consulting with a Wal-Mart greeter.

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