I thought that it might be nice to take a day and just discuss different things of interest. There are just so many interesting things going on in the world.

One thing that caught my eye was that last year an ancient skeleton was dug up in Rome. Why was I so interested in this fact when there are thousands of skeletons there? This one was different, it was from before Rome existed. The skeleton dated back to the tenth century B.C. well before the existence of the city. It was found under the Caesar's Forum in central Rome. It was the skeleton of a 5 foot 3 inch woman who was believed to have died at about 30 years old. She had been buried with some jewelry which consisted of an amber necklace and four pins. The area was an ancient necropolis. The latin meaning of the word necropolis means city of the dead. I guess we would call it a cemetery today. Think of what was found, this was a body of the ancient peoples that actually were responsible for the founding of the Roman Empire many years later. As long as we are talking about archeology here I would like to mention the fact that something very rare may have been found, or should I say dug up. The Morrision Natural History Museum in Morrision, Colorado has announced that it has found fossils and footprints in the same sandstone formations and that some of the footprints might be of yet undiscovered dinosaurs. Everyone seems to be interested in dinosaurs, so these things are always interesting. What makes this even more surprising is that such a small museum would make such an important find. So far the museum has found evidence for up to seven new species of dinosaurs. The smallest seems to be only the size of a sparrow.

All of a sudden it seems that the search for planets is swinging into high gear. We have the COROT space telescope in orbit from the French Space Agency and it will go online in about a month. The entire purpose of this mission is searching for planets and determining the makeup of their suns. This probe should be joined next year with Kepler, a larger space telescope with a similar mission. SETI, the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence is going full tilt and different astronomers are also searching for planets. You would think that with all this going on, that we would be working on space propulsion systems that would allow us to make interstellar trips. The human need for exploration is very powerful and I think that we should start to at least explore Mars.

Lotteries, they are all being offered everywhere. One could easily spend their paycheck every week on lottery tickets and not win anything worthwhile. Here is a question for you, why with the odds of winning so extremely impossible, are there some people that have won more than once? An 81 year old Waterloo Iowa man has won the lottery three times. He has never won the top prize, but he has won big money each time. The total for his three winning tickets was $81,000, not bad. Here is the other side of the coin, he spends $200 per week on lottery and scratch off tickets. Some big lottery winners have a hard time spending their money. I bet you never heard that before? Here is the problem, when you are poor all your life and you win the lottery, sometimes it is hard to buy expensive things. There are stories of people who have decided to redecorate their homes who hired interior decorators, but couldn't get themselves to buy the recommended furniture because it seemed too expensive. One couple stated that they just couldn't spend $18,000 on a new dinning room set. These people had just won over $37 million dollars. Believe it or not, I understand how they felt, I guess this is because of my poor childhood.

Advances in technology just keep zipping along. I bought a Canon Elph camera last year and it had what is known as an engine in it that provided up to 7.1 megapixels photos. Recently the company has replaced their photographic engines with one that produces over 10 megapixel photos. Where will all this end? The more megapixels the bigger a photo can be blown up and theoretically the clearer the photo looks. I say theoretically because in all truthfulness, I can't really see any difference, in normal sized photographs, between my camera's photos and the new one. But the megapixel race doesn't end here. A company has just produced a commercial chip that has the ability to create an astounding 111 megapixels on a photo. It may take years to create one like this for a consumer camera, or it may be just too much overkill. Where will this all end, how many megapixels are enough?

We are great believers in history in this country. Indeed, one of the most popular tv channels has become the History channel. But dare I say this? Oh what the heck, I will. Some of our history is completely wrong. I often think of this while watching programs or reading articles on history. You are probably wondering what I am talking about, aren't you? Let's talk about Galileo. Everywhere you go, you hear that he invented the telescope, don't you? No one is sure who the real inventor was, but it is know that it had been used at least a couple of times on the fields of battle to view opposing armies. Galileo may have been the first to aim it at the heavens, or at least the first one that we know of. The inventor of the telescope may have been Hans Lipperhey. Another thing we always hear is how we won the War of 1812. We actually lost this war and when we invaded Canada we were repulsed. The idea was to invade Canada because it was the closest British possession and it was felt that this was a good way to get even with England for invading us and burning the White House. So you see, the history we are taught is not always the correct history.

Notice how those tv prices are falling? You can now easily buy a 50 inch plasma tv in the New York area for about $1800. Usually when things like this happen it is for a reason. I remember when led calculators first came out. A simple calculator sold for over $300, then $169 then one day they went on sale for $69 and I bought one. Little did I know that lcd calculators were about to come out and they used much less energy, were far cheaper and smaller. We see this with cameras all the time. A model will drop until it has fallen from $600 down to $200 or less because new models with better technology are coming out. Here is a thing to consider about the tvs. The Japanese have figured out how to use lasers in combination with plasma released into thin air to create true 3D. When this is perfected you may be able to sit in your living room and watch a true holograph in the center of the room. Right now the device is only capable of creating about 100 dots per second and requires plasma generating devices. Look for this to improve as time goes by. This may make all tvs obsolete.

The next thing falls under the title of what will they think of next. Have you ever been annoyed by chanting at sporting events. Well this may become a thing of the past. Oh you are wondering how we are going to shut up all those thousands of annoying fans that keep yelling derogatory things at the teams? Simple, we will turn on our anti chanting system. The new system creates a carefully timed echo. The Dutch created the system to stop those racist chants at soccer games. The echo is said to completely confuse the chanters and results in chaos and destroys the ability to create a coherent chant in the first place.

Well I guess I blabbed on enough today. Thanks for letting me ramble on.