My birthday was a week ago and my son gave me an aquarium. Not just any aquarium -- a USB powered mini-aquarium from ThinkGeek . Now, when my laptop is on, my little fishes are swimming around in the blue glow of the LED aquarium light.

Every geek should have one.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile but is morally treasonable to the American public.

I am traveling on Delta airlines. This has the feel of a very corporately managed, bottom-line oriented company. That is, it is providing just enough service to make the maximum amount of money.

This shows up as meals to purchase on the flight ($5 to $15 and $2 snicker doodles ), complementary drinks but you don't get the can and totally automated, bar-coded, self-serve-kiosk centric customer interactions.

Someone went in for deeply computerizing the system. I mentioned the kiosks for self-check-in, but the announcements in the waiting lounge are computer generated (no unintellegable gate attendent announcing over the speakers) and large LCD displays put up information on stand-by passangers and their status. Bar code scanners follow your progress from checkin to boarding. The database knows all.

I do wonder if some of these automations actually save money. The generated announcement system, for instance: It costs money to install, there must exist a maintance crew to repair them, there must be people generating the backup procedures if they fail and there are still times that the boarding crew has to make announcements so they can't get rid of the old system. The speech is clearer and the modulated male voice is reassuring, but did they save money over the old way?

Technology is not the answer to every question.

From the air, the area around the airport is full of large houses either in developments or in farms. The developments are large with lots at least an acre. The level of prosperity here in Northern Kentucky and southern Ohio is amazing. There are always haves and have-nots , but there are an amazing number of "haves" here and they are doing pretty well in their 4000+ square foot homes with swimming pool in the back.

I have business meetings on the East Coast on Monday and Tuesday so I'm traveling this Sunday. The first leg was from Portland to Cincinnati. -- I flew from the cool green in Oregon to the hot and humid green in Kentucky. I'm in Kentucky because the "Cincinnati Airport" is across the river in Kentucky.

Flying in here, I noticed something that I've seen around the East -- large tracts of trees. There are clearly farms that consist of half field and half stand of trees. What economic or cultural or agricultural impetus causes this to happen? In the Northwest, most of the expanses of trees are owned either by large logging companies or the Federal Government (who manages them for the large logging companies). So, trees are cut or they are clearly growing so they can be cut. But here, from Ohio to New York, it looks like half of the land is in forest. And the forest does not have that patchy look of clear cuts that we get in our western forest. What economics is allowing or promoting the existence of all of this "unproductive" land? Something is happening in the East. I'll have to do some research.