According to flood experts, St. Louis and Sacramento are the two most-likely metropolitan areas in the U.S. to see flooding disasters, mostly due to increased development in regions flooded by ten feet or more of water in the last century, surrounded by insufficient levees. In fact, according to one UC Davis professor, there stands a better than 2 in 3 chance that in the next 50 years, there will be a "catastrophic levee failure" in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

He says, "In California we know we have two kinds of levees -- those that have failed and those that will fail. We are reinventing Katrina all over again."

In addition to over-crowding and under-planning, the Sacramento region is particularly vulnerable due to seismic activity native to California, and increased warming, which is promising heavier storms coming in from the Pacific Ocean.

The story: St. Louis, Sacramento face flood danger: experts

Apple (AAPL) makes a lot of wonderful products with great quality: their laptops, iPods, Cinema Displays and the overwhelming majority of their products work very well, have long-lasting stability and simply do things better than the alternatives in the Windows world. However, they have not impressed me with the quality of their power adapters for the iBook and PowerBook lines. The adapters easily wear out, stop charging and can bend with any kind of force - meaning we are pushed to pay the "Apple tax" and re-up for another adapter or two per year in our house, even while the laptops keep chugging along.

In 2002, when I moved from Belmont to Palo Alto, I made a choice to ditch my home desktop and purchased the first laptop I'd ever had - a G4 Titanium PowerBook from Apple. With it came the standard software package and power cable. But when I made the switch to live the laptop lifestyle, I didn't expect the cord would become such a limiting factor. I've probably purchased four or more additional power adapters from myself or my wife since moving to laptops. We recently, doing a household cleanup, must've tossed out two more dead ones. Now, we know we have two working, one each for "his and hers", and we'll see how long that lasts. But so far, we've been unimpressed.

In parallel, I've utilized a Dell (DELL) laptop from the office over the last four years, and have never had trouble with the power cords. They're definitely an ugly piece of junk, but at least they work. Apple should learn how to ruggedize their cords - it's one place where function always wins out over form.

Four of the most beautiful words in the English language! Spring Training is off and running today, with the A's pitching and catching staffs reporting to Phoenix, Arizona, in an attempt to regain the playoffs after two promising but ultimately frustrating seasons. This year, after the acquisitions of Frank Thomas, Milton Bradley and Esteban Loaiza during the winter months, many are picking the A's to do very well this season, challenging the LA Angels for first place.

The A's have drawn national attention and praise for their thrifty road to success, and the utilization of statistics over physical appearance to determine a player's value. The "Moneyball" phenomenon is much bandied about and often not understood, as those who read only the headlines could assume players with OBP and HRs are the only targets, when instead, the A's, using similar strategies to those in the investment community, have learned to buy low and sell high, and look for players whose worth is undervalued. As a result, when one group of teams zigs, the A's zag. In fact, while the A's were long considered a defensive joke, their fielding statistics and ability are among the leaders in the league, on top of their well-known pitching prowess and consistent hitting, especially with the off-season acquisitions.

This will surely be a fun season. The A's are expected to play very well, and I intend to be there as often as I can. We've got partial season tickets, spring training tickets, and a full-time season pass to Athletics Nation, so if you're not on the bandwagon, now is the time to jump on, for the A's are going places.

Related Links:

OaklandAthletics.com: A's Plan to be Leaders in Arms Race
Athletics Nation: Spring Hopes Eternal, As Pitchers and Catchers Report

In the late 1990s, not many financial analysts were more prominent than Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker and Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget. The pair could make or break an Internet stock with a single forecast, and made headlines that were self-fulfilling, on eBay (EBAY), Amazon (AMZN), Yahoo! (YHOO) and many others. But Blodget went down hard, going to trial for conflicts of interest.

Now in 2006, Henry is freed to write on basically anything he likes, on his own blog, Internet Outsider, where he gives his honest opinions on tech stocks, just like the old days. In recent weeks, he's covered the latest happenings at Google (GOOG), Amazon's ill-fated idea to launch a music service to compete with Apple's (AAPL) iTunes and iPod combo, and continued issues at Time Warner (TWX) and AOL. While he now lacks the big name of Merrill Lynch as a backer, his comments still ring true and are an interesting take. Whether he should have been banned from the world of financial analysis is a different issue, but it does seem after so many made and lost millions in the market so quickly, a scapegoat was needed.

Check out Internet Outsider. Bookmark it.