According to a Reuters survey released on Yahoo yesterday, 89% of Americans will shop at Wal-Mart this holiday season. Holy cow. With about 300 million people living here, that means around 267,000,000 people will shop at the world’s largest retailer before the end of the year in the U.S. alone. Just look at that number. Almost our entire nation will be buying cheap plastic presents imported from China or Mexico at our favorite store.

Hoo hoo! The Nintendo Wii has never looked so real until now. Actually seeing it coming out of packaging causes drooling. No more photoshopped fan art; This is the real thing. The Wii gets Un-boxed

How do things work? People (myself included) are incredibly ignorant as to the workings of everyday devices and services. I recently performed surgery on a toaster, and I still don’t know exactly how it works. I don’t really know how a CD stereo works; How does it read the stream of 0’s and 1’s off of the disc, and then how does that translate into sound at the speakers? The sound has to be within certain frequencies, or I won’t hear it.

The work of aliens, or some neighborhood punk? Who knows, and who really cares? Crop circles are an amazing form of art no matter who (or what) does them. Check out these amazing pictures.

TechWeb compiled the Microsoft’s stated requirements for each major Windows release since 1990’s Windows 3.0. It also lists the average prices for desktop computer – monitor included – and portable PCs have been noted for all releases except Windows 3.0. It’s pretty amazing to see “how far we’ve come” (har har). See it here.

Google Notebook is now accessible. It’s another incredibly slick product from Google. It’s pretty much just an easy way to keep track of things on the web. You can also publish your notebook, so it’s kind of like a blog. If you’re using Firefox (which you should be anyway) you can download the extension and it integrates very nicely. Check it out.

While I was perusing the Constitution, I found this acutely confusing clause, under Amendment 20, Section 4: If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

The DS Lite is going to have application capability, and these are screenshots of the web browser for it. It’s going to rock! read more | digg story

Sony has announced the price of the PS3. It will retail at $500 with a 20 GB hard drive, and $600 for a 60 GB hard drive. This is about the worst move Sony could make. With the Wii rumored to retail at only $200, the choice is obvious. Read more, or see the digg story. Also, pictures of the PS3 controller have been released. See ‘em.

If you haven't heard of the Honda Fit, hear about it. It an really cool little sedan with an incredibly customizable interior. It also has the affordable price tag of $13,850. I just found out that its already gas-efficient engine will be getting a hybrid partner in 2008. The Honda Insight hybrid engine just happens to fit perfectly between the front wheels. With its new hybrid engine, it will get about 50 miles per gallon.