Forrest Bird’s invention, the respirator, has saved millions and, at age 88, he’s still living his life to the fullest, flying his planes and working long days. Morley Safer reports.

For those who care, I’m trying out the latest and greatest Firefox (3.5.4pre) code named “Shiretoko” and I’m absolutely loving it.  It is lightening fast, I would argue it is just as fast as Chrome which is really saying something.  I can’t speak to the Windows/Mac version but the Ubuntu version has been rock solid for me and I’m loving the performance boost.  Looks like it isn’t going to be released until October but I’m impatient and am glad I am because it is really awesome.  Has anyone else tried it yet?  Oh and for those running a Mac, they say it is also comparable to Chrome speed.

Gary sent me this recipe because he knows I love my breakfast of champions food…Pop-Tarts!  OK I’ve been given a hard time for eating them so I have cut way back but man they are tasty.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons cold water for mixing
• 1 cup homemade preserves/jam from organic fruit such as apple, apricot, cherry, wild blueberry, cherry, mango or your favorite fruit flavor
• Powdered sugar
• Note: Choose an organic store bought jam if you don’t have time to make your own.

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the flour in a bowl with the salt, sugar, and cut the butter into small pieces. Work the flour and butter together with your hands, until the mixture is well blended. Sprinkle the water over the mixture to smooth out the any small irregular clumps. Work the dough vigorously until it is relatively smooth. You may also use a food processor, if desired. Wrap in plastic and let the dough rest 30 minutes.
2. Roll out the tart dough on a cold lightly floured surface. The dough should be about 1/8″ inch thick. Cut rolled out dough into 3″ by 5″ shapes, using a postcard as a visual gauge. (For smaller tarts, simply use a smaller measurement.) Cut 8 rectangles, and use a pastry scraper to place 4 bottoms onto cookie sheet lined with parchment. Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of jam onto the center of each pastry of the 4 bottoms. Place the 4 pastry tops onto the jam centers, aligning the corners. Press the edges with a fork, until each tart is closed, working around the entire rectangle. (These may be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated or frozen.)
3. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tarts are golden brown. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

“Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Peace is not the absence of conflict.  It is the ability to handle conflict through peaceful means.”
– Ronald Regan

“This summer, some Boston University students thought they were attending a morning lecture by a renowned cultural anthropologist in an advertising class. But the 14 students unknowingly became stars in a new McDonald’s TV commercial for iced and hot coffees, which will begin airing nationwide on Sept. 1. The 30-second ad is similar in concept to those unscripted “Truth’’ national antitobacco ads that surprise people on the street and capture their raw reactions. McDonald’s wanted to use the stunt-style shooting concept to promote its breakfast and McCafe brands: The company used hidden cameras to get real student reactions to people showing up with a variety of McDonald’s coffee options during a long, morning class lecture.”  Source: Boston.com

When I was driving back from Portland almost a month ago I took this picture using my iPhone.  I stopped for a milkshake at Burger King (I love me some ice cream), but found the drink recipes fascinating so I took a picture of it.  If you try them let me know if they are any good.

A young man struggles against the pressure to Twitter his life away.  From SuperNews! An animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV.

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OK I won’t get on my open source soap box too much but this is yet another example of what open source allows us to do (innovate)!  Brad Fitzpatrick has a great post over on his site about enabling manual synchronization of your contacts between Facebook and Gmail.  It basically looks at all of your friend’s contact information within Facebook and then compares that information to what you have in Gmail and synchronizes it for you in just a few easy clicks.  The good news is you have to use Firefox so you can’t use Internet Explorer you Microsoft lovers you!  The other prerequisite is you need to have the Greasemonkey extension installed within Firefox in order for it to work (try doing this with proprietary software).  OK so once you have Firefox and Greasemonkey installed (Firefox restart required), click the link below from Brad’s site and GreaseMonkey should ask you to automatically install it.

http://bradfitz.com/greasemonkey/facebook_phonebook_export.user.js

Follow the instructions and then go to your Facebook Phonebook.  Then within Firefox click Tools > GreaseMonkey > User Script Commands… > and you’ll see Export Facebook Phonebook (you have to be on the Facebook Phonebook page in order for it to not be grayed out…took me a while to figure that out). That will then page through your phone book (you should probably start on page 1: it’s kinda flaky) and extract the data, and then POST it to AddressBooker for you, which will then guide you through merging it into your Google Contacts.  Be sure to thank Brad for his time over at his site via this link if you found this helpful (I did).

The RCVLab at Queen’s University demonstrates Deep Green, a pool playing robot, and ARPool, an augmented reality system for teaching the science of pool.  Maybe I’m a geek but this is really cool to me and obviously a glimpse into the future of what technology will provide us in sports and other areas of our lives to help us become better at tasks.