It was announced last week that the Target security breach was more serious than originally thought. Back in December Target announced that a data breach affecting 40 million of its customers had taken place. Now Target is saying that the breach affected 70 million customers. Whether you have been personally affected by Target’s security breach or…
In order to be admitted into the United States as a state in 1896 the state of Utah was required to write into its constitution a law banning polygamy. Skip ahead to today. Just in time for Christmas, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying the law “conflicts with…
This was the week of the long-awaited Des Moines Quilt Show. Once again the show did not disappoint. One of the highlights of the show for me was a group of quilts from Caohagan, a tiny island in the Philippines. About 15 years ago a quilter moved to the island and started teaching the natives to quilt.…
The August, 2013 issue of Financial Insights from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans has an interesting article about speculative investing. The article talks about stock market participants who “buy the rumor, sell the news.” According to the article, here’s how it works: Suppose XYZ Corp. is known to be developing a new product that savvy outsiders…
A fail-safe device is one that is capable of compensating automatically and safely for a system failure. A common example is traffic lights. Traffic lights have a controller known as a conflict monitor unit to detect faults or conflicting signals. When conflicting signals are detected the fail-safe unit switches all the lights at an intersection to flashing red. The traffic…
What, to my surprise, was the topic of conversation among the second and third graders during snack time at Vacation Bible this year? The angelic little darlings were talking about zombies and vampires! Then they proceeded to get up from their snacks and act out being zombies with great enthusiasm. At one point one of the…
Health Day News reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Tuesday (April 30) approved the over-the-counter sale of Plan B One-Step, a version of the so-called “morning after” pill, for use as emergency contraception by girls and women aged 15 and older. One thing that struck me about this decision is how it…
If anyone had any doubts about how well things have been going for farmers the last few years, they only had to go to the North American Farm and Power Show in Owatonna March 14-16. Looking over all the equipment on display I realized that farming is big business and definitely not for amateurs. You…
Another tragic shooting occurred in our country on December 14, 2012; 20 children and 6 adults were shot to death by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This follows other shootings at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, a movie theater in Colorado and a shopping mall in Oregon. These shootings all involve guns…
According the Associated Press out of London, England, fantastic fibbers gathered at a remote pub in northwestern England on a recent Thursday in November to compete for the title of world’s biggest liar. The contest was held at the Bridge Inn in the town of Santon Bridge. Contestants had five minutes to impress the judges with a whopping but convincing…
Mirror Neurons 