… Watch Your Salary Grow Online, Programmed for Chocolate Lovin’ and MORE.

Executives Admit They’re Overpaid
Most U.S. corporate leaders believe they’re overpaid.

The National Association of Corporate Directors polled about 70 CEOs and company presidents during the summer and found that almost 66 percent believe their pay isn’t relative to their performance. About one-third said they felt their compensation is “just right,” and 2.2 percent reported being underpaid, The Financial Times reports.

Not surprisingly, more than 80 percent of outside directors agreed that CEOs are definitely overpaid.

SciAm’s Cars of the 1907 Auto Show
This week’s IMT newsletter was all about automotive, and Scientific American’s blog this week offers a photographic supplement to an entry in the 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago section of the magazine’s November 2007 issue. The excerpt comes from a November 1907 issue and notes that the “buggy-type machine and the two-engine automobile” were the dominant style of car at the time.

Here’s the Cadillac 10-Horse Power Coupe:

Credit: Scientific American

Click HERE for more samples of the exhibits on display 100 years ago.

Adding Value on Forms
An oldie but goody, variations of this started making the rounds on the Internet back in 1997. According to Snopes, it may or may not be an authentic claim.

Either way, some of these are pretty hilarious.

After every flight, pilots for Australian airline Qantas fill out a form called a “gripe sheet,” which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The maintenance engineers correct the problems, document their repairs on the form and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. The following are some supposed maintenance complaints actually submitted by Qantas’ pilots.

P = Problem logged by the pilot
S = Solution and action taken by the engineers

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire

P: Something loose in cockpit
S: Something tightened in cockpit

P: Dead bugs on windshield
S: Live bugs on backorder

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-feet-per-minute descent
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear
S: Evidence removed

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick
S: That’s what friction locks are for

P: Suspected crack in windshield
S: Suspect you’re right

P: Aircraft handles funny
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious

P: Target radar hums
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics

P: Mouse in cockpit
S: Cat installed

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel; sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer
S: Took hammer away from midget

(Thanks, Fred.)

Watch How Your Salary Grows Online
Enter your payment amount at cashto.net. You can choose hourly, weekly, monthly or annually. The program then calculates the money you make per day, per hour, per minute and per second, and you can watch how bills and coins you earn make it into your pocket.

(Don’t cry.)

Programmed for Chocolate Lovin’
In a new study, Swiss and British scientists have linked the preference for chocolate to a specific, chemical signature that may be programmed into the metabolic system and is detectable by laboratory tests.

The study, which is scheduled for publication in the Nov. 2 issue of American Chemical Society’s Journal of Proteome Research, links the type of bacteria living in people’s digestive system to the desire for chocolate.

The Associated Press reports:

Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate’s allure.

Basically, the signature reads “chocolate lover” in some people and indifference to the popular sweet in others, the researchers say. Or, put simply, either you’re programmed to love chocolate or you’re not.

Mmmm, Antimatter…
If you’re looking for 8.4 fluid ounces of patent-pending Antimatter, LiveScience recently pointed out a small, privately held company Albuquerque, N.M.

Founded in 2006, Microgravity Enterprises, Inc. (MEI) is now “cranking out drinkable products produced from ingredients that have flown in space courtesy of suborbital rockets.”

Antimatter(TM) is an energy drink produced from “ingredients that have been flown in space,” according to the company. It is specifically designed to help improve your mental focus, reaction time and physical stamina — using “spaceflight-enriched vitamin power complex.”

Another product is purified water with spaceflight-enriched electrolytes.

According to LiveScience in August, the drinks made a big splash at the Small Satellite conference in Logan, Utah.

Dust in the Quasar Wind
Dusty grain can be seen blowing in the winds of a quasar — or, an active black hole — in the artist’s concept below. According to NASA, astronomers using the space agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence that such quasar winds might have forged these dusty particles in the very early universe.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cheers.