November 21, 2008

Sagacity is the word of the day

sagacity

Wisdom and good judgment often seem in shorter supply than the words to describe them, such as this one, ultimately from a Latin root meaning "seek." It would be a pretty good guess to think it was related to sage ("wise person"), but in fact the latter, though also going back to Latin, is separately derived via French.

Click here to look up the word of the day in the Visual Thesaurus!

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November 20, 2008

National Report Ranks South Carolina Last in Protecting Kids from Tobacco

Ten years after the November 1998 state tobacco settlement, South Carolina ranks worst in the nation in funding programs to protect kids from tobacco, according to a national report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.

South Carolina this year is scheduled to spend $1 million on tobacco prevention programs, which is 1.6 percent of the $62.2 million recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All of this funding is from a federal grant. South Carolina is the only state that is spending no state funds on tobacco prevention this year.

Other key findings for South Carolina include:

The tobacco companies spend more than $280 million a year on marketing in South Carolina. This is more than 280 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.
South Carolina this year will collect $114 million from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend less than 1 percent of it on tobacco prevention.

The annual report on states' funding of tobacco prevention programs, titled "A Decade of Broken Promises," was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

South Carolina continues to lag behind other states in its efforts to protect kids from the dangers of tobacco. In addition to years of inadequate tobacco prevention funding, the state has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 7 cents per pack, compared to the national average of $1.19 per pack. The state has not increased its cigarette tax in two decades despite widespread support for an increase among South Carolinians. In contrast, 44 states and the District of Columbia have increased cigarette taxes since Jan. 1, 2002, many more than once.

"South Carolina is the most disappointing state in the nation when it comes to funding programs to protect kids from tobacco," said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "On this 10th anniversary of the tobacco settlement, we call on South Carolina leaders to raise the state's lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax and use some of the revenue to increase funding for tobacco prevention. Tobacco prevention is a smart investment that reduces smoking, saves lives and saves money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs."

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November 17, 2008

Photos: Vidistar Big Check Presentation

Photo's from Friday's SC Launch! Big Check Presentation to Vidistar .

Click here to download:

Photos_Vidistar_Big_Check_Pres.zip (573 KB)

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November 17, 2008

Twilight Turtle - Sweet Dreams for Kids and Adults

We talked about the Twilight Turtle on today's Your Day. Everyone, young and old, loves this adorable plush turtle that projects a starry night onto the ceiling of a darkened room.

Show Notes: Eric Rodgers talks with Phil Yanov, executive director of the GSA Technology Council and blogger at ThinkHammer , about the Twilight Turtle that projects a starry sky onto the ceiling of a child's room.

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November 17, 2008

Photos from today's Tour de Bulb in Spartanburg

Photos from Tour de Bulb Press Conference held today at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, SC.

John Warner, Ron Fulbright, Joe Milam, and Mayor William Barnet III appear.

Visual Thesaurus Bonsai

I love the way Visual Thesaurus lets you explore words. It's play really, and to some extent it even lets you arrange the results into something that might be have something to do with the word you are exploring. Thanks to Josephine for reminding me to play with Visual Thesaurus again.

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November 15, 2008

Weekends are full of fabulous kid stuff

A few photos from this weekend and last. More at Flickr. Kid pictures are the feature here.

Click here to download:

Weekends_are_full_of_fabulous_.zip (1331 KB)

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November 15, 2008

What’s New in Firefox 3.0.4

This morning I was automatically updated to Firefox 3.0.4. Upon starting, I got the list below of all the new features. All I really care about is stability. I probably should care about security as well. Thanks for the update guys. I appreciate your hard work.

Firefox 3.0.4 fixes several issues found in Firefox 3.0.3:

Fixed several security issues.
Fixed several stability issues.
Official releases for the www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html#languages">Icelandic and Thai languages are now available.
Beta releases for the Bulgarian, Esperanto, Estonian, Latvian, Occitan, and Welsh languages are www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html#beta_versions">available for testing.
Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
Fixed an issue where the IME input tool used to enter Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters was covered by the "Add Bookmark" panel. (bug 433340)
Enabled additional EV root certificates. (bug 451305)
Fixed an issue where some passwords saved using Firefox 3.0.2 did not work properly. (bug 457358)
In some cases, Firefox would not properly save proxy settings for protocols other than HTTP. (bug 446536)
See the www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.3/releasenotes/">Firefox 3.0.3 release notes for changes in previous releases.

See the complete list of bugs fixed.

Posted via Google Chrome .

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November 14, 2008

Smoking! I own Phil Cigar

On the internet everyone is just one inch tall... and some of us smoke cigars.

I learned today that I own (gwn?) Phil Cigar on Google image search.

Thanks to Google Explorer @agautsc for this discovery.

Click here to download:

Smoking_I_own_Phil_Cigar.zip (325 KB)

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November 14, 2008

A $4M enforceable oral contract? Perhaps only in TV Land.

'Flip This House' Creator Richard Davis Awarded $4 Million in Case Against A&E

Richard C. Davis, creator-writer-co-producer and star of "Flip This House," a reality program about real estate and one of cable network A&E's most successful series, was awarded $4 Million in damages by a federal jury yesterday. Davis had claimed that the network had a "50/50" revenue sharing agreement with him and his company, Trademark Properties, Inc., and although it was an oral agreement, the jury returned the landmark decision after only five hours of deliberation.

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