Wednesday, January 9, 2008

JANUARY 9, 2008

ARE YOU A SHOWER MULTI-TASKER?
The people at SC Johnson just put out the results of a survey where they asked people: Besides cleaning yourself, do you do anything else in the shower? Two-thirds of people do. And here's what those people are doing...

. . . 64% daydream.
. . . 43% sing.
. . . 39% work on cleaning the shower or bathtub while they're in it.
. . . 34% talk to themselves.
. . . 17% brush their teeth.
. . . 11% dance.
. . . And 3% take their PET in with them, to play with or clean them.

GM SAYS OUR CARS COULD BE DRIVING THEMSELVES BY 2018
It's 2008. We still don't have robot butlers, or flying cars, or family vacations to the Moon, or universal healthcare. But we've still got to believe that ONE DAY we're going to get all that futuristic stuff we were promised as kids. And this is a big step forward.

Larry Burns, who's the vice president of research and development at GM, says that they're working on developing cars that DRIVE THEMSELVES.

And those cars should be on the market in less than ten years. They'll be testing the first one by 2015, and they should be on sale by 2018.

Burns says the biggest problems with self-driving cars aren't technical . . . between radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane changing warning devices, electronic stability control and GPS maps, most of the technology is already in place.

The biggest issues are HUMAN problems... like government regulation, liability laws... and people not wanting to give up driving.

Burns says that automatically-driven cars would seriously improve life on the road... they'd seriously cut traffic AND accidents. (Plus, drunk driving would completely disappear, which would be amazing.)

Quote, "Now the question is: What does society want to do with it? You're looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically, there should be no reason why we can't transfer to a totally different world."

MRS. FIX IT
Mrs. Fix It gave some tips for sorting out the mess from the holidays to spruce up your home for the new year. Remember the acronym S.O.R.T., she says... First, sort everything in a closet or drawer into four piles... SELL, ORGANIZE, RE-USE, and TRASH. Second, sell or donate the first pile, re-organize the second pile to fit your space, take the re-use pile somewhere else in the house where it is more useful, and trash the stuff in the last pile. Also, get different organizers for your different cabinets to help create extra space.