The wholesale replacement of typical incandescent lightbulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lights isn't the panacea that everyone seems to believe it is. Sure, they save energy, but they're quickly becoming the number one source of household hazardous waste, due to the amount of mercury contained within. Worse still, few people realize that they contain mercury, causing issues when they're disposed of improperly and contaminating homes when they shatter.

I figure I can suffer through a few more years of incandescent bulbs, until even more efficient and environmentally-neutral LEDs can replace them.

Note- I remember some years back a story about testing aircraft windshields using the "bird cannon" you mentioned.

I believe this test was done in England(?) but not sure.

Someone was told to get some chicken carcasses for the test and brought fully-frozen store-bought "birds" for the test!

For some reason the test windshield failed...ha!

NASA and a number of other flight certification agencies around the world test new aircraft against bird strikes, if their intended flight regime and passenger capacity meet certain criteria. For these tests, dead birds (of varying sizes and species) are fired, via a pneumatic cannon, at the structure that they are trying to test (windscreens, engines, wings, etc). You would be shocked what kind of damage a seagull will do at 200-300 Kts. (This is a pelican at less than 200 knots: http://www.bell47helicopterassociation.org/bird%20strike%202.jpg.)

The "Gentlemen, Thaw You Chickens" story goes back a long ways, and its veracity is dubious; the impact force of a frozen chicken is the same as a thawed one -- the tissue elasticity is the only difference. (http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.asp)

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Why isn't there some sort of grille-cowcatcher thing,something porous and extreme-heat-resistant, protecting the engines? Of course they must have thought of this and it must be impossible, but I wonder why.

The reason is pretty simple -- putting structures in front of an intake tend to prevent the intake from being very effective at taking-in air (at low mach, at least).

Sure, the F-117 has a mesh grille in front of the intakes, but it's not intended to prevent FOD ingestion, and it causes a number of issues -- ice formation being the primary one for the 'Wobbly Goblin.' (Yes, the SR-71 and its Oxcart cousins had very large spikes in front of their intakes, but they served aerodynamic purposes and were not very strong.)

Plus, there's the other issue with adding heavy-duty 'protective' structures onto an aircraft -- they weigh a lot. In order to prevent deformation due to the impact of a 20-30 pound bird at 400 knots, a 'cow-catcher' would likely be the heaviest single component of the aircraft.

Asher Steinberg wrote:

...he's been out of office for so long no one can blame him for anything that's gone wrong the past 8 years.

Asher, off the top of my head, I can think of one very minor decision that I'm pretty sure can be laid squarely at Guiliani's feet. It is minor, though; it only cost the lives of 343 FDNY firefighters and paramedics, so there's really no story at all.

I mean, really, who can blame the mayor for the lack of reliable, usable emergency response radios -- the problem was only identified in a report presented to the mayor's office 6 months before he took office.

And, he did try to help -- he asked his good friends at Motorola to give new radios to the firefighters, in a secret, no-bid award that only cost the city $14 million... I mean $140 million dollars. So what if it took more than 6 years, and the radios didn't work at all -- it's not as though the mayor had the time to test them, nor did he have an entire city's worth of staffers to get on the problem.

And just how ungrateful were the firefighters when he gave them back their old radios, in March of 2001? I agree with America's mayor: it was entirely unreasonable for the firefighters to expect radios that worked inside buildings taller than 10 stories. I mean, really, it's not as though New York has many buildings like that. It's not like we're talking about Duluth, here.

Although I was never thrilled with Senator Edwards' performance while serving my home state, his 2008 presidential campaign stuck a chord within me that neither Senators Clinton nor Obama have been able to do. His message seemed the most honest, yet hopeful of the frontrunners.

So, North Carolina has the chance at a presidential campaign debate for the first time since the Pleistocene and it just has to fall on my wedding day, precluding any and all possibility of me actually watching/attending.

Of course, it depends upon the whims of the Hillary campaign, which has already made it clear that they have no plans to campaign in the Old North State.

Wow. That's painful to listen to (and watch), but, hey, it's still better than the current edition of American Idol.