You Talkin' To You?
"It is believed that people primarily blather to themselves when alone so as not to appear nuts," says The Wall Street Journal. "But those of us in the cube farm know better."

Talking to ourselves starts early, beginning as crib speech for the fun of it and becoming toddlers' repetition of rules they're learning to live by, according to researchers. Later in life -- say in your cubicle -- researchers say as much as 96 percent of people talk to themselves aloud. Even deaf people have been observed signing to themselves while answering test questions.

"The irony is that self-chatter [...] is both most suited and least suited to the workplace," says the WSJ.

The upside to self-talking in the workplace: self-regulation (goal-setting, problem-solving, decision-making and planning).

The (obvious) downside: It's disruptive to those around you (and, let's face it, makes you look a little bit cuckoo).

This Week in Inventor History
Chemist Albert Hofmann, who created the hallucinogenic drug LSD in 1938, this week died in Switzerland at age 102.

From BBC News:

Mr. Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus. He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: "Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror." He argued for decades that LSD could help treat mental illness, but in the 1960s it became a popular street drug.

Hofmann authored 100+ scientific articles and wrote a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child.

Online Spam Aggravates for Celebrates 30 Years
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of spam. (That's spam, not Spam.)

On May 3, 1978, a marketer at a now-defunct computer firm "sent an e-mail to 393 users of Arpanet, the U.S. government-run computer network that eventually became the Internet," according to New Scientist.

Now a multi-million dollar industry, spam today makes up 80 percent to 90 percent of all e-mail sent -- around 120 billion messages per day -- New Scientist notes. Targets today include Web sites, blogs, social networking sites and cell phones.

As most of our readers know, the number of these unsolicited e-mail messages bombarding our In-boxes is insane.

That is why spammers face heavy penalty for deploying what used to be minor annoyances. A news lede from The Denver Post this week:

A 35-year-old Louisville man who ran a "spam" empire, sending hundreds of thousands of unsolicited e-mail solicitations to computer users around the world, has been sentenced to prison and fined more than $700,000 by a federal court. Edward "Eddie" Davidson was sentenced Monday to 21 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $714,139 to the Internal Revenue Service.

Davidson used sub-contractors to pitch a wide variety of products, from penny stocks to watches and perfumes. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in June.

'Ya dig?

Patently Improving Marriage Proposals
Ryan Thomas Grace of Omaha, Nebraska, filed a patent application with the USPTO as a "method and instrument for proposing marriage to an individual":

From the actual application:

The purpose of this invention is to provide an improved method of proposing marriage to an individual. The method of proposing to an individual generally comprising the steps of meeting the individual; exchanging names with the individual; dating the individual (not necessary); drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. The government document may be a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor [sic.] will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor [sic.] could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. The patent application could be the actual marriage proposal.

(Source: Neatorama via Boing Boing)

The Latest Rising Currency...
...is dolphin teeth.

Apparently, dolphin teeth are an appreciating commodity and people in the Solomon Islands are pouring their savings into them.

"This traditional currency is gaining prominence after years of ethnic strife have undermined the South Pacific," according to the WSJ.

Ideas for Spending Economic Stimulus Rebates
This week the Internal Revenue Service began transferring economic stimulus payments to millions of Americans, some of whom should have seen payments in their bank accounts as early as Monday.

Are you eligible? If so, what do you plan to do with your economic stimulus check? Some suggestions, off the top of the head:

• Satisfy the Bush Republicans by putting the rebate toward that new family gas-guzzler;

• Convert it to yuan;

• Betray the Bush Republicans by donating your rebate to one of the Democratic presidential candidates;

• Convert it to euros;

• Cash in for $1 bills and reface them all;

• Convert it to dolphin teeth; or

• Spend it in Canada.

Humorist Dave Barry explains the rebates:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Chaos in the Print Shop
Rube Goldberg, eat your heart out.

Cheers.