One of the Florida newspaper sites, possibly the Orlando Sentinel Local Puppy Trainer, features random Flickr albums. They had an album of signs yesterday that included this warning sign at a gardening store:

“Parents: Unattended children will be given expresso and a free puppy.”

Jimi was reincarnated as a finch. The BBC has an article on a new art exhibit that features Gibson Les Paul guitars, cymbals, and wild finches. Play the video and wait for the little dude with the twig at about 1 minute in.

Last year it was extratropical storm Klaus which cost over $5 billion, and this year it’s Xynthia

At least 50 people have been killed in storms that have lashed parts of Spain, Portugal and France, officials say.

Forty-five of the victims died in France, where many drowned or were hit by parts of buildings or falling trees.

Winds of up to 140km/h (87mph) caused chaos as they moved from Portugal up through the Bay of Biscay.

The storm system is moving north-eastwards and areas of France bordering Belgium and Germany are on alert for heavy rain and high winds.

They recorded winds of 120 mph at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it is pulling in supersaturated air that will cause major flooding. This may be the new “normal” for winter in Europe.

Jim Axelrod on CBS starts out with a good story in The Great American Paycheck Squeeze:

“We’re living through one of the worst times for wage growth ever,” said Larry Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit Washington think tank. “From 2002 to 2007, the hourly compensation of a typical college graduate or a typical high school graduate went up zero – didn’t grow at all.”
…

“Between 1989 and 2007, before the Great Recession, of all the income growth that was generated, the bottom 90 percent [of Americans] got only 15 percent of it. The upper one percent got 55 percent. And the upper tenth of the upper one percent, the one out of 1,000 households, got about a third of all the income growth.”

But then he had to find someone to offer an opposing view, because all stories have to be “balanced”:

[Read more →]

While the death toll has passed 700, the operation has to be hampered by aftershocks.

In the 24 hours following the initial earthquake there have been 100 seismic events, more than one every 15 minutes. Seven of them were between 6.0 and 6.9, 81 between 5.0 and 5.9, and 12 between 4.6 and 4.9. That means the people looking for survivors in buildings that failed, can expect to be inside when the next aftershock occurs, and possibly become trapped by debris.

Earthquakes are not single events – there are always aftershocks. That’s why you don’t immediately go back inside after one. That was just the first and the worst, but there will be encores.