The Linkage for May 4th

Here’s a quick look at what I was reading online from Apr. 26th to May 4th:

Ancient tsunami ‘hit New York’
Scientists now think that a huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. Or they may have just combined plot points from “Escape from New York” and “Escape from LA” and tried to pass it off as well-researched science.
Tags: history geology new_york weather

$51 million will keep quite a few backsides warm
Wondering how the Seibu Lions have been using that $51 million posting fee they squeezed out of the Red Sox for Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2007? Well, they used it to upgrade their stadium seating, put in some more concession stands, add a video board and – of course – slap in a heated toilet seat in every stall.
Tags: baseball japan funny red_sox seibu_lions

Roy O puts that tractor to use
Remember the tractor Drayton give Roy Oswalt after the 2005 season? He put it to good use recently – clearing land for a restaurant he’s going to open up in his podunk home town in Mississippi.
Tags: baseball astros food mississippi

Layoffs begin as shuttle program winds down
With retirement of the space shuttle program looming next year and just nine flights remaining, NASA managers announced the first major wave of job losses, saying 160 contract workers would face layoffs this week, the first of some 900 jobs that will be cut between now and the end of September.
Tags: space business nasa

Russia thinking about rockets for next-gen landings
As they design their next generation of spacecraft, the Russians are strongly considering using just a rocket-powered landing system (no parachute) to bring their cosmonauts safely back to the Earth.
Tags: russia space technology

GE unveils 500GB optical disc
Imagine chucking your backup hard drives and storing half a TB on a single disc. General Electric has fired the latest salvo in the optical storage race and their micro-holographic disc holds 10-20x more than the standard blu-ray disc.
Tags: general_electric technology computer

Tough times for the humble beer coaster
I don’t personally collect or get excited about cardboard bar coasters, but I can see how others might. Amazingly 97% of the disposable coasters in the U.S. are made by a single German company, which just filed for bankruptcy.
Tags: business advertising food germany

RIP GeoCities, my first home on the web
Before there was MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, we all had GeoCities accounts. Even with its clunky watermarks and lame ads, GeoCities and its free web hosting accounts were king of the hill in 1990s. Unfortunately, Yahoo didn’t do a thing with it since buying it for $3 billion a decade ago and now they’ve decided to shut it down. I’ll have to go back and archive my old site (which is still sitting there after all these years).
Tags: history computer net_issues yahoo

Forgotten Franklin letters found after 250 years
Yet another example of historical documents being rediscovered by random chance by researcher – this time a collection of 47 letters by and about Benjamin Franklin and his actions during the French and Indian War.
Tags: history united_states french_and_indian_war uk

Pro scouts didn’t have a clue with Big Unit
ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski sat down with Randy Johnson and showed him scouting reports from the early 80s – scouting reports that were all uniformly wrong, calling the teen who would become one of the most dominant pitchers of our time a worthless freak with a bad delivery. Guess you can’t nail them all, huh?
Tags: baseball giants

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