Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You're not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets.

Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University's Center for Health and Homeland Security.

Really good explanation of OTC derivatives' contribution to the current economic crisis.

Our Confusing Economy, Explained : NPR

Giving you the Future of a Modern World, we present our latest product the 'Cozy Suite'

A first for the economy cabin, a seat design offering you a truly relaxed sleeping position. It has a contoured shoulder area specifically profiled for sleeping. The shape was derived from numerous prototype and passenger trials to minimise the step-back of the seats. You do not feel like the seats
are even staggered, allowing interaction between you and other passengers, while reinforcing a high level of privacy.

The Cozy Suite can be installed from 31" to 38" pitch.

OMG, dignity in coach!

Innovative Aircraft Seats | Cozy Suite

Stylish submit buttons

Author: Dynamic Drive

Most people would agree the default look of submit buttons is rather dull and unattractive. Using CSS and a nice gradient background image, it's easy to transform a form button from a duck to a swan.

Lots of help for the CSS inept here.

Dynamic Drive CSS Library- Stylish submit buttons

Providing fault tolerance as well as the ability to scale beyond the capacity of a single server, load balancers are practically a necessity for any commercial site. Because loads on a given Web site can fluctuate by several orders of magnitude (five or six, in the case of sites like Victoria's Secret or the World Cup Soccer site), and given that thousands of dollars a minute may be lost if the site is unavailable, being able to spread the load across many servers and ensure that users can still connect, even if one or more physical servers fails or stops responding, is crucial.

The latest load balancer available from Coyote Point Systems is the Equalizer E550si, a 1u (1.75"-high) appliance that offers 20 10/100/1000 ports, all the load-balancing features necessary to set up a sophisticated Web farm or other type of virtual cluster, and excellent performance, at a cost of $10,995 US.

Quick Takes - Coyote Point Equalizer E550si Load Balancer

Talked to these guys, and they gave me warm and fuzzy feelings about scalability.

DedicatedServerCity - Load Balanced Servers :: Linux Dedicated Servers | Windows Dedicated Servers | cPanel Dedicated Servers | Plesk Dedicated Servers

Siegfried Woldhek knows faces -- he's drawn more than 1,100 of them. Using sophisticated image analysis and his own skills as an artist, he's come up with a fascinating discovery about Leonardo Da Vinci.

Leonardo Da Vinci's life and work is well known -- but his own face is not. Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Here, he walks viewers through exactly how he did it.

What did Da Vinci look like? - Boing Boing

Finally, a USB mic that’s not only easy to use, but sounds as good on your desktop as it does in a professional recording studio. Meet the Snowball,™ theworld’s first professional USB mic.

This is the best PC mic I've ever used.

BlueMic :: Blue Microphones

McDonald's USA Restaurant Locator

Going somewhere? Feeling skinny? Pack some fat on your ass multiple times each trip with the McDonalds Trip Planner!

Restaurant Locator - Trip Planner

But any consolidation involving Continental — the No. 4 carrier in the U.S., which holds coveted positions in New York and has a growing international network — would be complicated by the relationship between it and Northwest.

Northwest holds a so-called "golden share" in Continental, which gives it the right to block mergers involving the Houston-based carrier, according to Continental filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The unusual relationship dates back to 2001 when Northwest agreed to sell its shares in Continental after it was sued for anti-competitive behavior by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The share "forces Continental to negotiate with Northwest if there's a transaction that results in a change in control," said airline industry consultant Robert Mann.

NW's Golden Share in CO: Want to marry Continental? Ask Northwest first - USATODAY.com

Two Node MYSQL HA Cluster with Heartbeat and MON

This document describes how to build a two node MYSQL Failover Cluster using Heartbeat and MON. I have tested this on Linux ( Redhat ) , but this should work on any *NIX distributions.

Kishore Jalleda - ��� Mysql failover with Heartbeat and MON