this post has nothing to do with st patricks day, i just wanted to say that.

I started doing twitter a while back, and have not really found much use for it. i post some silly haikus on it sometimes… what is it supposed to be used for? I think im just too web old-school.

Hmm, some links…
I love looking at old photographs, and Shorpy has some of the coolest old pictures in very high resolution. I love finding pictures of fashionable ladies and very serious looking children.

The St Petersburg Times has set up a website to track President Obama’s promises that he made on the campaign trail. So far he’s doing pretty well!

Totally Lost I love Lost. I’m so hooked, I keep my Wednesday nights clear so I can watch it. EW has a great blog on Lost, and while it might not be as home grown as some other Lost blogs and forums, its a one-stop shop for me. Jorge Garcia aka Hurley aka Hugo, has a great blog. It isn’t completely Lost oriented, a lot of it is just stuff going on in his life, and its very entertaining.

Why Would You Knit That? As my interest and skills with knitting has grown, so has my list of knitting sites that I frequent. This is a pretty funny one, I wish they would update more often, but who am I to complain?

Another knitting site I recently discovered, and love, is Ravelry. If you knit or are interested in starting to knit, I recommend that you become a member. Its free, and its an awesome community of knitters. There are a ton of free patterns. I just finished a hat that came from a free pattern from Ravelry. I will be posting some photos of that next.

A couple of years back I used to post a list of silly things I find for xmas gift ideas. While I still may do that, I’m going to post some really neat gifts too.

Delightfully Innovative Chop2Pot

I already have about a dozen cutting boards, but I am a little tempted to buy this one. I hate it when I’m scraping chopped veggies off the cutting board and they missing the pot entirely. Brilliant (and cute).

The world’s experts are meeting at Oxford University on Thursday to attend the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference. A few of the happy subjects being covered: “What to do if a large asteroid were to be on a collision course with our planet”, “The unintended consequences of new technologies, such as superintelligent machines that, if ill-conceived, might cause the demise of Homo sapiens” and the “Movement towards the merger of man and machine”. Oh to be a fly on the wall at their after-conference social mixers.

an interesting fact has emerged in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Washington DC’s handgun ban, according to CNN.com:

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation’s nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I’m personally not comfortable with owning a gun, I try not to judge others who chose to do so, but it is alarming that most firearm deaths are self-inflicted.

Tired of the usual summer vacation trips to the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, theme-parks, etc? Consider these vacation destinations, Beautiful Messes: A Travel Guide to Man-made Disasters.

but they are interesting to read. This power-point presentation on the collapse of the 3 World Trade Center buildings makes some good points. Read more on the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth’s website.

We’re not sheep.. lets at least ask some questions..

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” – 1984, George Orwell

today at lunch i encountered an incident regarding ‘minimum transaction amounts’ that some stores/restaurants require to process a credit card. Usually its no less than $2 or $5. I had heard that they actually can’t do that. The situation wasn’t resolved very happily on the restaurant’s part and it motivated me to google it. (im an eager researcher) Sure enough, it’s a violation of the major credit card companies’ agreements with the merchants to impose a minimum charge amount.

The Consumerist wrote a very lengthy and complete article regarding this fact. There are links to the credit card companies’ merchant agreements that very clearly state that merchants cannot require minimum charges.

Mastercard states: 9.12.3 Minimum/Maximum Transaction Amount Prohibited

A merchant must not require, or post signs indicating that it requires, a minimum or maximum transaction amount to accept a valid MasterCard card.

Visa states: Dollar Minimums and Maximums – Always honor valid Visa cards, in your acceptance category, regardless of the dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase amounts is a violation.

Discover states: 3.6 Minimum/Maximum Dollar Limits and Other Limits
You may not require that any Cardmember make a minimum dollar purchase in order to use a Card and, other than when we have not authorized a Cardmember’s transaction, you may not limit the maximum amount that a Cardmember may spend when using a Card.

So there! Maybe the stores need a gentle reminder of the agreement they made with the credit card companies when they started accepting the cards. I understand that there is a fee that the merchant must pay per transaction, and I do try to impose my own limit.. Perhaps the merchants need to band together to lower the per-transaction fees on the smaller amount charges.