Once again I’m running the Komen National Race for the Cure in June. In case you live under a rock, the Komen Race for the Cure raises money for breast cancer research, a cause that too many of us have a close connection to.

If you’d like to support their efforts, go to my site, and click on the “Komen Race for the Cure” link on the left side.

While you’re at my site, take a second to read the two narratives–one about my grandmother and the other about a friend who lost his mother to cancer. You’ll also see links to the American Cancer Society and the Australian Cancer Council, causes that are close to some friends.

On a less serious note, there is now a new photography page featuring some pictures I’ve taken during the last year, as well as some changes to the old photos page. Finally there’s a links section that will take you to some good work being done by some people I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

Peace.

But I’m pretty sure the fingernails on my right hand grow a lot faster than the ones on my left hand.

According to a scientist at Binghamton University in New York, nails grow faster on the hand that is used the most. Interesting, considering I’m left handed. Maybe I do more tasks with the right hand, but delegate the meaningless, easy ones to my non-dominant hand. That leaves the left rested and more able to carry out important tasks like exhibiting my exquisite penmanship.

And according statistics I’ve seen about this site, you haven’t been to the site. So go there. Now. Or aliens will abduct another cow.

If you’ve written a college paper in the last five years, chances are you know all about Turnitin.com. It’s a service that allows educators to screen student’s writings against a database for plagiarism, and now it’s the target of a lawsuit. By students.

High school students in Virginia and Arizona copyrighted their works before turning them into their teachers. They asked that they not be archived by Turnitin. According to a Washington Post story, the papers were added to the database. The students say that’s a violation of their copyright, um, rights.

The suit will test a system used by educational institutions all over the world, one that places no faith in students. Cheating happens in every school. Kids copy math homework, lift passages from essays and sneak a peak at their neighbor’s scantron during tests. It happens.

Instead of instilling students with a sense of accountability and personal pride—you’re only cheating yourself!—educators turn instead to systems like Turnitin as a panacea, wipe their hands of responsibility approach to the problem. What happens is sometimes good kids get accused of cheating when their writing happens to feature a string of words “too close” to one of the millions of papers already in the database. It doesn’t matter what relationship the kid may have with his teacher, how honest they are known to be. The system says they’re wrong, so they’re wrong.

The students filing the suit found a way to fight back. By copyrighting their work, they protected themselves from another entity making financial gain off of the students’ intellectual property. They are suing for $150,000 for each of the six papers they say were added to the Turnitin database. Since Turnitin charges a fee for institutions to use the database, they are, in turn, making money off of the kids’ intellectual property.

We’ll see how it plays out.

Businesses are only as good as the people who run them. Employees who know the product and operate in an honest and ethical fashion are irreplaceable and do nothing but help the company’s bottom line.

But business is a tough world. There are inevitable downturns where upper management must figure out how to keep the ship afloat. Often these decision makers are not down in the trenches and can take an oversimplified dollars and cents approach to meeting the bottom line.

The result is layoffs. Instead of figuring out how to make the product better, thus attracting and retaining customers—read $$$—the decision makers take the “easy” way out and simply cut the cost part of the equation. Car companies do it, retail stores do it, media outlets do it, everybody does it.

The Washington Post reported that Circuit City is now doing it. Faced with a necessity to cut costs, Circuit City is firing employees who get paid too much. Before you vilify the company, they are saying that those employees are free to reapply for their jobs after 10 weeks, at a reduced pay rate. The company says the move will allow them to hire cheaper labor to do the same job, and probably thinks that’s going to result in a huge financial turnaround.

But when the 3,400 employees—9 percent of the Circuit City labor force—leave, what’s leaving with them? Not only do they know how to work at Le City Cirquite, but if they’re “too highly paid,” they probably have been there for a while and know their products.

So when you go to Le City Cirquite next week to get a TV and have a question, and the three new guys in that section know less about TVs than your dog, remember that Phil the TV guru is sitting on his couch because he made too much money. And when Best Buy sees a huge increase in TV sales next month—read $$$$$$$$–maybe the suits at Le City Cirquite will realize that sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

I haven’t watched the NBC Nightly News in a while, so I’m not sure if the Brian Williams version features the segment called “The Fleecing of America.” The Tom Brokaw version definitely did, and in it they brought to light some practice or organization within the government or public sector that was basically ripping us all off.

I’m reminded of that segment with the release of the new dollar coins this week. Actually it’s not so much a fleecing, but maybe an economic reality that people don’t really know about.

So there are these new dollar coins featuring the presidents, one new one every three months. With the success of the state quarter program, the U.S. Mint is thinking we may finally embrace a dollar coin, though I think the only problem in the past is that no one knew how to spell Sacagawea. Yes, I had to look that up.

Before seeing a segment about the coins this morning on the CBS Sunday Morning show, I never thought about these new coins as anything but a tool of commerce. They are just new ways for us to spend the same money.

I never thought the mint actually makes a lot of money off these types of coins.

Especially since hearing that it actually loses money when it makes pennies because of the cost of copper these days. In case you haven’t heard, it costs about 1.4 cents to make every penny. That sounds like asking for trouble, and sure to bankrupt the mint, if not the country.

But then think about the state quarters. How many people do you know who have at least one, if not several from each state just sitting in their house? You get them from the bank or from a store for 25 cents. The bank or store got those quarters form 25 cents. It only costs the mint 9 cents to make each quarter. That’s a big profit.