It wasn’t too long ago that stealing catalytic converters was a profitable trade. However, since converters have small amounts of platinum and palladium in them with prices of platinum tripling (per troy ounce) and palladium doubling, it’s become more of a lucrative prospect.

Thieves take these catalytic converters to scrap yards and get anywhere from $50-$100 for each one. For a consumer to head out and replace theirs, they can expect to pay around $200 for a universal converter or up to $1000 for an OEM model.

Thieves can remove catalytic converters within mere minutes. There is a solution called CatClamp which is kind of like a cage around your cats and is extremely tough to get off. They do start at $250 however.

As floating speculation grows on former Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre’s next move, reports of inappropriate dialogue between Favre and the Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell has inevitably caused the Packers to file tampering charges on the Vikings. Favre, still technically a part of the Green Bay orginazation, has clearly shown his disgust for the teams’ refusal to release him by publicly grinding the Packers’ GM Ted Thompson. The Packers’ reason for not wanting to release the living legend is due to their fear that they believe he would transfer over to the Vikings.

As for the Vikings, if the NFL comes back with substantial evidence to prove them guilty, they could suffer the heavy cost of fines or even lose draft picks.

Neither the Vikings nor Farve have admitted to any wrong doing however we can only wait to see what will happen in these unfortunate turn of events. It looks as though both Green Bay and Farve’s fans are forced to judge either against or with their hometown hero.

Originally designed by physicists at Rutgers University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the State University of New York in Buffalo, the nano-sized electronic circuit which is 100 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair is able to detect light in the far infrared spectrum.

What this enables researchers to do is trace faint amounts of light from the universes earliest stars. As they move further away from us, stars approach speeds close to that of light itself. The light that they emit is strongly red induced. Since the earth’s atmosphere absorbs far infrared light, conventional current telescopes cannot detect these early stars.

The hot electron nanobolometer measures the heat produced through absorption of photons and is said to be 100 times more sensitive than that of previous bolometers. The new device is slated to be able to detect as little as one photon of far infrared light which will give researchers the opportunity to analyze the earliest stages of star and galaxy formation.

 

According to physiotherapist Angela Growse, improper posture, eye straining squinting, neck craning are all things we are doing while on our BlackBerry’s. All of this bad posture has started to surface itself in various forms of ailments such as phantom vibrations, neck pain and weight gaining.

While thumb inflammation of people who power text is an obvious ailment, the other stories of upper body pain as a result of overusing a handheld device have gone unstudied. Canadian researcher Dr. Richard Wells of the University of Waterloo plans to investigate this situation further as he feels there is substantial reason to do so. It should be mentioned that it is unfair to single out the BlackBerry as the sole culprit. Pain does not discriminate! I can happen with the overindulgence of other hand held devices.

In turn of the large auto maker’s decline in sales, CEO Rick Wagoner is preparing to make a second announcement of the corporations’ revision of its infrastructure. The purpose of this plan is to cut costs and regain investor confidence.

At the forefront of the cost cutting are the jobs of GM’s white collar workers such as engineers and managers. As a result of this news, GM shares did regain their position by as much as 5%.

Included in the plan to cut costs is also the trimming down of its vehicle lineup that some would argue that a lot of it is a large overlap. Engineers have been halted on the design of the companies’ next generation of trucks such as the Silverado and Yukon. The staff of designers who will remain on board after the lay offs will be designated to work on small car innovations in order to create a product line that compliments today’s marketplace.

Chris Coleson of Quinton Virginia proved that a diet solely based on McDonalds can yield weight loss results. Coleson says that his benchmark weight is to be 185lbs. He’s lost a total of 79lbs since December when he started out at 278lbs and is now currently at 199lbs.

Due to the inspiration of his children and a blind war veteran as well as the convenience that McDonalds provided, Coleson ate not the burgers and fries, but rather the apple dippers, salads and wraps.

This page was created to have useable and interesting content on it to give the site some more spice. As of right now, we have put a currency converter and Google page rank checker on it for public use.

Over time, we will be adding more great content to that page for our readers to enjoy. For now, we hope that you will find use in what we’ve put up and will continue to update you on any other changes made to it.

As a notion to make our site more reader friendly, we’d like to have your comments on what other things that YOU think should be added to the Extras page!

This is something that I’ve had to fight with in my yard. The problem that arises from planting anything on a sloped surface is that water tends to drain downwards before it gets a chance to seep into the soil and hydrate the plant. Chances are that the soil around the plant will also erode over time. So something that I’ve done in the past is I’ve created a level space in which to put the plant by building up the bottom end of the slope. In extreme cases where the slope is steep I ended up building terracing using treated 4″x6″ timbers. Hope that tip helps!

This is not necessarily a bad thing although Google investors might have disagreed last week when they saw Google shares fall sharply. A report written by comScore indicated that the drop in paid clicks was related to improvements that Google had made within its ad platform. Some of which included Google’s efforts to weed out low quality leads for advertisers by placing fewer, better targeted ads. This in turn did reduce the clickthrough rate of ads. However, what that means is that the well targeted ads by Google take fewer clicks to get through for consumers to find just exactly what they’re looking for. Market weakness was not a factor either as other large search engines’ paid click ads did not decline.

As a result of Colombia’s raid 1.2 miles into Ecuador to kill a top FARC rebel leader in a remote village, Venezuelan President Chavez ordered a huge mass of his military to guard the Colombian border. Chavez warned the U.S. backed Bogota government that this could lead to a South American war. He claims that although he does not want war, he will act militarily if anything of the like happens on Venezuelan soil.

Diplomatic ties are further weakening between Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as Chavez is under the impression that the Colombian government is running a “terrorist state” and compares Uribe to a criminal. For now, Chavez has shut down his embassy in Bogota in protest to the raid.