Over the last five hundred years, billions of people have pulled their families from generations of poverty by applying their intellects to become literate. With this crucial skill, people were able to market themselves better to employers, earn better salaries, and send their children to school. These educated children could do more than their parents, so entered the workforce with better skills to market. They also ensured their children when to school. This cycle repeated itself generation after generation until, finally, the luxury of completing high school and a few years of post-secondary was so commonplace that it became a requirement for the simplest of part-time jobs, let alone long and rewarding careers. But something's changing ....

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A recent editorial in The Japan Times is calling for Japan's power companies to bury most of the electrical lines that run overhead to ensure access roads are not blocked with fallen utility poles after a major earthquake like we experienced in March of this year, and this sounds like a capital idea. For far too long the power lines that have delivered the electrical current powering factories, businesses, and homes have been mounted to utility poles, creating a possible hazard should they fall into traffic's path. In a nation that is known for it's earthquakes, why hasn't this been done already?

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Waiting for me this morning as an email from O'Reilly Media. I've been doing book reviews for them since last year and, as a result, I'm able to purchase eBooks from them with substantial discounts. But saving money isn't the only advantage to purchasing digital books from O'Reilly, as they do something that's even more important: revision updates.

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Analysts, journalists, and blogists all over the web are falling over themselves to write about HP's recent decision to effectively kill off their year-old, $1.2-billion acquisition of Palm, and what will eventually come afterwards. Of all the crazy theories that have been bandied about, the one posited by Nicholas Carlson seems the most logical: Facebook should buy WebOS.

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Sometimes it seems that fact is stranger than fiction. In a report titled "Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis", three authors suggest that humanity prepare for contact with an advanced species from somewhere in space and prepare for some of the possible events that may transpire as a result.

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