Hillary Rehearsing

Apparently, there was a hidden camera in Hillary Clinton's hotel room.

Mike Murdoch

I've linked to this site before, but it's gotten better: The Wisdom Center. It's the site of Mike Murdoch -- perhaps the holiest man in Fort Worth, Texas.

Long-time readers will recall that he's written more than 5,700 songs. Clearly, he's not just in it for the money. He's out to save souls. Maybe yours?

Some have called him a false prophet. But I just want to know who designed his Web site.

Fuel Surcharge

Last week I sent a banjo to Minnesota, via UPS. The cost included a fuel surcharge of $2.31. I guess that's the new way of raising prices without actually raising prices. Airlines do it, and I guess everyone else will jump on the bandwagon.

I won't be surprised if gas stations start charging a fuel surcharge to account for the fact that it costs more to get their gas delivered.

At least UPS doesn't charge a convenience fee -- yet. After all, it's much more convenient for me to ship it using their service than drive it across the country myself.

Running On Empty

The Tank on Empty site attempts to answer the question:

How far can you go after the gas light in your car comes on?

It's has a bunch of reader-submitted stories. For example...

So my SUV runs out of gas leaving downtown Houston, on the freeway, in the fast lane. Manage to coast across all 5 lanes, then made it up an overpass, and down an offramp, across 3 lanes of feeder road and into a parking lot with no problems!

It would have been nice if the power steering had functioned through the incident.

The point here is that the QX4 has amazing coasting range, and you can go for a good 30-40 miles on empty. It's when the gauge is about 3mm below the empty line that you need to think about just pulling over at the next station!

Note: The QX4 shown here is able to coast uphill.

New Airline

In these times of financially troubled airlines, it's kind of surprising to read about a new one: Fly the un-friendly skies.

TERRORISTS have formed their own airline -- because they're afraid of getting on a plane that could be hijacked by other terrorists!

That's the incredible claim made by Amir Humad, a Saudi terrorist who was recently captured and is being held in a top-secret location.

"No one's going to hijack a plane when everyone else on the plane is a crazed terrorist," Humad says. "Sure, terrorists are crazy, but we're not crazy enough to get on a plane that might be hijacked."

Ironically, El-Al Queda, as the new airline is called, is the result of increased security on other airlines. "It's hard to be a good terrorist when you can't even take a pair of box cutters on a plane," Humad says.

I didn't believe it at first, but it's from a credible source.

Happy Mother’s Day

To all of the mothers out there, happy Mother's Day.

Here are some Celebrity Mothers, including Jay Leno's baby picture.

High Interest Rate

Desperate, or just really dumb? Trapped by Web loan with the 842% interest rate.

Rochelle Parker needed money for Christmas gifts and medicine, so she went online and found a Web site promising easy money. After a few key punches she was zapped a $300 loan, but one that charged an astonishing 842 percent annual interest.

The recently retired fingerprint technician for the Chicago Police Department had several other online loans that drained her financially and forced her to move in with her daughter. But getting another loan was so easy on the Internet.

"As my mother said, I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul," Parker said with a shake of her head and a sigh of regret.

People like Parker are falling through one of the newest trapdoors in the cash-strapped economy-online payday loans. Such loans typically were the province of payday loan storefronts that cater mostly to the working poor and low-middle-income workers, short on cash until payday. Now online loans are spreading to the middle class as a result of rising gasoline and food prices, tightening credit, the subprime mortgage fallout and the ease of home computer access to the Web.

It seems like a good business.

"It's insane. It is growing like wildfire," said Henry Coffey, a Baltimore-based stock analyst who tracks the payday loan industry. One factor in the growth of online loans, which charge as much as 2,000 percent interest, is that they effectively hook borrowers into cycles of debt, often forcing people to take second and third loans to cover ballooning debts."If you are paying over 1,800 percent interest, you will never get out of that debt," said Elizabeth Schomburg, an official with Family Credit Managing Services, a Rockford-based credit counseling agency.

Here's an example of the finance charges for a typical online lender. If you borrow $500 and pay it back in 7 days, you owe $593.10 -- which works out to a 970.9% APR.

Note: The photo is not Rochelle Parker. It shows some other random borrowers.

Just The Yellow Stuff

Today I was playing around with another feature of my Canon SD870 IS -- Color Accent. In this mode, you select a color and subsequent photos you shoot are black and white, except for the selected color.

The palo verde trees are all in bloom now, so I did some photos that display only the yellow flowers in color (click for a larger image). As you can see, there's some leeway. Quite a bit of the green also appears.

You can, of course, do the same thing with photo editing software, but it's kind of fun do it right inside the camera.

Computers OK In Cuba

If you're in Cuba and you're rich, here's some good news: Cuba lifts ban on home computers.

The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access. This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.

Crowds formed at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana, though most had come just to look. The desktop computers cost almost $800, in a country where the average wage is under $20 a month.

That's the equivalent of a person making $5,000 a month buying a computer for $200,000.

Play Like Tom Brown

In 1923, everyone wanted to be in a clown band. Buescher Saxophones made it easy to be the Tom Brown of Your Town.

You may have the talent to develop into a Saxophone wizard like Tom Brown, of the famous Tom Brown's Clown Band, the highest priced musical act, and enjoy this most pleasant of vocations. Buescher Instruments have helped make famous Tom Brown, Paul Whiteman, Joseph C. Smith, Clyde C. Doerr, Bennie Krueger, Dan Russo, Paul Specht, Carl Fenton, Ross Gorman, Arnold Johnson, Nathan Glantz and thousands of others. $500 to $1,000 weekly for but two hours a day is not uncommon for musicians of such ability to earn.

Bonus link: More about the Brown Brothers.

Should Bush Be Kicked Out Of His Church?

Don Boys, Ph.D., thinks Bush should be kicked out of his church!

George Bush should be removed from membership in his church! I voted for George Bush and have supported many of his positions; however, recently I realized that if I were his pastor, I would have no choice but to confront his heresy and unchristian living, request his repentance and if he refused, have him voted out of our membership!

Here are some specific reasons:

• Bush repudiated the Christian faith on Good Morning America when Charles Gibson asked: "Do Christians and non-Christians and Muslims go to heaven in your mind?" The President replied: "Yes, they do. We have different routes of getting there." That is heresy.
• Bush also showed his universalism in Houston when he said: "I don't talk about a particular faith. I believe the Lord can work through many faiths, whether it be the Christian faith, the Jewish faith, Muslim faith, Hindu faith." Bush's reply denigrated the Bible and denounced millions of faithful Christians who died for their faith in Christ down through the centuries.
• Bush blasphemed God when he said at the Islamic Center of Washington that the "Koran is God's word." However, the Koran is a mishmash of convoluted Jewish and Christian teachings mixed with paganism. It is filled with hatred and has numerous scientific and Biblical mistakes, yet Bush called it "God's Word."

And the list goes on.

Please discuss among yourselves.

Money Marinade

Anyone this stupid deserves to be scammed: Man loses 35,000 dollars in 'marinaded money' scam.

A Vietnamese man in Norway lost around 35,000 dollars after he was led to believe that mixing the cash with a special liquid would double its value, Norwegian media reported Saturday.

A 32-year-old Frenchman is set to stand trial in a lower court near Oslo next week on charges that he cheated a gullible Vietnamese man out of 180,000 kroner (35,00 dollars, 23,000 euros) earlier this year, local daily Romerikes Blad (RB) reported on its website.

The victim of the con, who was not identified, was reportedly told by the Frenchman to leave a mixture of real cash with blank bills to marinate in a special liquid overnight, and the next morning he would have double the amount of cash at his disposal.

But when he showed up the next morning to collect his prize, both the cash and the suspected con-artist, whose name was not revealed, had disappeared.

Man Regrets Not Killing Daughter At Birth

Another person driven insane by religion: 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'.

Two weeks ago, The Observer revealed how 17-year-old student Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father after becoming infatuated with a British soldier in Basra. In this remarkable interview, Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant - and how police backed his actions.

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said...

'I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,' he said, his voice swelling with pride.

Bowling Blind

He beat his previous best score by one pin: He's blind and 78, but this bowler still sees a perfect 300.

As he held his 16-pound bowling ball in his hands and looked down the lane toward the pins standing before him, 78-year-old Dale Davis saw only a blur.

He couldn't see the lane. He couldn't see the pins. He couldn't see the people who had gathered behind him to see whether the blind man could accomplish something no one else at this alley ever had...

But on the evening of May 3, none of that mattered. After bowling a 160, a 150 and a 185 in his three previous games, Davis had rolled 11 consecutive strikes in his fourth and final game of the 2007-08 bowling season. All that stood between him and bowling perfection was one more strike.

He had come close before, once throwing 11 strikes before pulling the 12th ball and settling for a 299. But that was many years ago.

Related: American Blind Bowling Association.

Caption Contest

Another Sunday, another contest that no one ever wins...