Apple is the kind of marketing machine that will be discussed in business classes for decades to come.  It is a mega-giant corporation that makes its young, progressive users feel individualistic and rebellious.   Its chairman, Steve Jobs, gives almost no money to charity, was caught illegally obtaining stock options (yet got no penalty) and controls what you can put on Apple tools but is fondly regarded as a man of the people while Microsoft chairman Bill Gates donates billions and is reviled as a monopolist even though people can install Flash or anything they want on their PCs.

Outside of Chernobyl, you may not have heard of these 10 most polluted places on Earth.   But luckily Our Amazing Planet has and Earth Day seems like a good time to highlight it.Progressives won't be thrilled at the common denominator in 7 of them - communist control - and the other two are in socialist countries, which means it's unlikely government can solve problems related to the environment.    All 10 of them were or are very poor which reaffirms the point that if Earth Day advocates would focus on helping poor people first instead of telling everyone to go back to the Dark Ages, we would get greener.

If you followed renewable energy in the 1980s and 1990s, all you heard about was ethanol.  Despite a lack of evidence it would be beneficial, activists - and a government point guard in Vice-President Al Gore - insisted ethanol would save us from fossil fuels.In 2005, ethanol was finally mandated and subsidized but activists can't take the blame - it was President Bush and a Republican Congress that passed it.   Only then did environmentalists and their staff scientists finally give it a critical look and ethanol turned out to be expensive, inefficient and worse for the environment.

Wait for it, wait for it...yes, you can drink and drive with the swanky new Octane 120 Beer Arcade Machine but it will cost you as much as a darn good used car - $6,000.   It has a wheel, and foot pedals, but when you are bored weaving around Talladega you can also play classic arcade games.   The clincher is the kegerator behind the rear seat - it even has a secondary tap in the dash in case your main goes out.  That's good engineering, people.The force-feedback steering wheel is fully adjustable, it has a Full HD projector up front and comes with 200 racing and arcade video games.   PS3 connectivity is also thrown in.

Simcha Jacobovici says he has discovered two of the nails used to crucify Jesus - and a movie (naturally) is showing up at a propitious time, just a few days before Good Friday (naturally).A publicity stunt?  Hard to say.    Jacobovici claims to be simply making a 'strong' case, which is what archeology does.  Previously, Jacobovici said he found the lost tomb of Jesus. The site is an ancient Jerusalem grave discovered in 1990 which may have been the burial place of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who in the New Testament presided over the trial of Jesus and sent him to the Romans, which led to his death.

Overtly political movies are a tough sell.  Hey, so are overtly religious movies (see the collapse of the "Left Behind" movies despite bestseller stats) and dated movies are not so great either.

You can learn to play guitar better watching YouTube videos - it doesn't replace practice, it helps inspire and educate by bringing talented practitioners to the world in a way not possible 40 years ago.Why not surgery?  Otolaryngologist Martin Young writing at KevinMD.com argues that because he has learned so much from watching more experienced surgeons work, peer-reviewed videos might be the wave of the future - obviously a South Korean teenager may be fun to watch play guitar but he is not going to be a source for best surgical practices.   

If you want to take Easter away from religious people, you create Easter eggs and Easter bunnies and Rankin-Bass cartoons.  But what if the very term 'Easter' is offensive to schools in progressive Seattle?   Then you have to get another degree away and insist Easter eggs be termed 'spring spheres'.A sophomore in high school, 'Jessica', volunteered in a third grade class.   "At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that," Jessica said.   Why would she be concerned?  Due to a meeting earlier in the week where she learned about "their abstract behavior rules."

Forbes has done its annual Fictional 15 ranking of the richest fictional characters.    Why?  It doesn't matter why.   #1 is, as you'd expect, Scrooge McDuck, and #2 is Carlisle Cullen who, I am told, is one of the sparkly vampires in that sparkly vampire series that delved into important issues like how important it is to have a boyfriend.

An analysis funded by conservation charity the John Muir Trust has found wind turbine claims are overstated and output was low during the times of highest demand, producing below 10% of capacity for more than a third of the time.