Sunday, January 22, 2006

Shop at Whole Foods This Tuesday (Jan 24)

George and I discussed "Free Farmed" certification back in 2002. It is awarded by the American Humane Society to food producers who treat their animals humanely. Currently, there are nine certified farms and dairies in North America, which doesn't seem like nearly enough.

Last week, George sent me the following:

But it seems Whole Foods Market is taking up the slack and then some. I had read that they had instituted humane-treatment standards for their suppliers, and today I saw a poster there for the Animal Compassion Foundation, which was started by Whole Foods Market and is funded by a day each year when 5% of customer purchases are donated to the Foundation.

Tuesday 1/24 is the day this year, so if you have anything that you might want to stock up on from Whole Foods that might be a good day to do it.

I agree! Be sure to stop by your local Whole Foods Market this Tuesday.

Find out more about Whole Food Foundations, including the Whole Planet Foundation.

Thursday, January 5, 2006

Prime News

Almost three years ago, George and I talked about the discovery of what was then the largest known prime number. Back then, the newly-discovered prime was 213,466,917-1, which has 4,053,946 decimal digits.

It was
reported Tuesday that a new champion prime number has emerged:
230,402,457-1. This one has over 9.1 million digits!

In both cases, the prime numbers were identified as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, an effort involving people around the globe who contribute spare processing from their own computers.

Mersenne primes are special prime numbers which are powers of 2, minus 1. Also, the exponent is itself a prime number.

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Another Million-dollar Idea

George alerted me to someone else's million-dollar idea: The Million Dollar Home Page. This Reuters story gives all the details, but the bottom line is that some college student found an easy way to make a million.

21-year old Alex Tew wanted to make money to pay the bills, and decided to create a web page 1000 pixels high and 1000 pixels wide. He then sold advertising space on the page, with each pixel selling for $1. For a spot 10 by 10, you would pay $100 (and there is still space available).

I don't know if readers are flocking to the site, but enough advertisers have that Alex won't be having any trouble paying the tuition.