Call it fair play, call it publicity, call it whatever you want, but just one business day after the Yahoo yodeler filed suit against the company for using his yodel for six years and paying him only $590, it's been settled. Both parties are "very happy" with the result, so you know some bucks were involved.

I bought a Cuisinart Custom 11 food processor with lots of accessories years ago, because I believe in buying those things once and not again. Lately, though, I haven't been able to get the bowl on or off it very well, so I looked up the Web site and figured out I needed a new bowl.

It didn't say it fit my specific old model, though, so I called, and I'm glad I did. Ruth, on the other end, walked me through looking at all the parts of the lid, and I discovered that not only was nothing broken, that everything really worked fine -- it's just that, over the years, I forgot how to assemble the thing. (Bowl, lid, stovepipe food pusher). I'd been putting everything together and then trying to put it on or take it off, and that doesn't work.

Ruth saved me $40 plus shipping and handling. I wanted to buy a citrus juicer attachment with the money I saved, but they don't make them anymore, so I saved even more money. The thing is at least 13 years old and still works like a champ despite all the storage and moving it's been through. Buy Cuisinart.

However, unable to wait in case he passes on suddenly, the Scripps-Howard news service has prepared 2-page and 12-page tributes for Reagan, online at a secret URL (found via MetaFilter). It's an unfortunate but safe bet that Reagan's public days are over, so there's not much risk in preparing tributes now.

(well, of course, we don't really care if it affects species on other planets, but that headline just cried out for some kind of possessive adjective)

More and more science finds global warming here and hazardous. Or is this just more "propaganda" because oil companies don't agree with it? All this just as the US Senate is about to debate doing something about global warming. Republicans, naturally, are opposed to even reporting emissions of warming gases:

The White House opposes mandatory reporting requirements, echoing the views of the utility and energy industry which says mandatory reporting would open the door to eventual limits on carbon dioxide emissions.

Wow. We now have proof it's harmful, but we can't even monitor it because that might lead, someday, to restricting something known to hurt the planet. How horrible that would be.