If a prospective candidate can’t answer this question directly and succinctly, that candidate should be disqualified from further consideration.

Why can’t reporters ask questions like this on a daily basis? (Oh, and demand answers?) There is no rule that says reporters have to be nice – and indeed, if we’ve learned anything over the past 6 years, it should be that reporters and politicians should not be on friendly terms…

What question would you ask a potential presidential candidate?

A US-based person who drives 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket is 3 times more likely to be killed in a car accident while driving to buy the ticket than he is to win the jackpot. Another indication that the US education system is broken…apparently, we’re all bad at math.

If you’re going to get involved in an accident, it may as well be for a good reason…see below.

Well, it’s been some time since I last talked about the diet and part of that is, I’ve stalled out this summer; losing and gaining the same 5 pounds (2.25 kg) over and over. The good part of this is, I seem to be able to maintain my new lower weight, the bad news is, I’m still 15 pounds (6.75 kg) from my overall goal.

One of the most undervalued bits of successful dieting is routine. As I look back at my daily food and exercise log over the last 2 months, it’s clear that there hasn’t been much routine relative to the first 5 months of the year. There were multiple trips, a vacation, special summer activities with the family and all of this contributes to the summer stall I think. The antidote to this (I hope) is to get back into a steady routine.

That’s another undervalued aspect of successful dieting, keeping focus on the goal. Rather than dwell on the larger overall goal, I have been taking it in 2.25 kg increments celebrating each along the way. I keep the larger goal at the back of my mind and really focus on those 5 pounds at hand now. This summer, I haven’t had that same focus and intensity that was maintained earlier in the year.

Well, August is a new month and I will refocus and return to routine in an attempt to break through the summer stall and achieve the long term goal and then successfully maintain at that level. If anyone else is having a similar experience, keep the faith, you can work through it. And, if anyone else has suggestions about how to break through the summer stall, please leave a comment.

This made me chuckle when I saw it recently. Since I know a large segment of our readers are not technical, I’ll briefly explain. What makes this funny is that when a user requests a web page that doesn’t exist it is recorded as a “404 – Page Not Found Error” in web server logs. Thus, the positioning of the Yahoo advertisement next to the 404 foot marker in the ball park creates an unintended message of “Yahoo page not found.”

When my daughter was born in 2003, I was lucky in making a decision that has had an interesting impact thus far in her short life. That decision was that I wouldn’t buy her toys (aka plastic crap,) instead, I would attempt to provide her with interesting experiences. The rationale I had for the decision at the time was that since she was the first grandchild on one side of the family and the youngest on the other side, that the collective family attention would result in no shortage of material objects during special events (boy, was that right!) But the material overload reason is the least of the benefits by far, so it was simply lucky to decide this early on since the other more important bits escaped me at the time.

A reason I didn’t quite understand then, but I am coming to understand now, is just the time spent going to a favorite spot (Exploratorium, SF Zoo, Monterey Bay Aquarium, or Moss Beach Park) is as important, if not more important than the event/experience itself. Sure, I still hear about the giant robot giraffe that would coo when pet we visited at the Maker Faire earlier this year and she’s very excited to attend a rodeo at the Driscoll Ranch this weekend, but the uninterrupted time away from home and distractions allows for interactions that wouldn’t otherwise occur.

For example, recently while on an “adventure” my daughter gave me a complete run down on the snakes of the world. She talked about the difference between vipers and constrictors and asked numerous questions about different kinds of snakes and how to behave if one encounters a snake. She’s very impressed with cobras and pythons at present. She proceeded to tell me that snakes start with the letter ‘s’ and wanted to know how to spell the whole word. We passed a deer crossing sign on the road and she asked if snakes crossed the road and if there were snake crossing signs. She then talked about how pythons could eat small deer, but she wonder how they ‘got the antlers off’ to swallow the deer. I’m convinced that this kind of exchange doesn’t happen at home that frequently because there are too many other distractions, but being out and about allows it to come to the surface and blossom.

If you have children and have any inclination, try the experiences vs. stuff approach. The experience doesn’t have to cost money (park, tidepools, hikes, visiting farm animals, etc.) and the quality time is irreplaceable.