In the final days of 2009, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) filed a patent for an invention that will determine and then automatically display the meaning of shorthand terms (such as LOL and IMO) within text. Upon receipt of a text message that has been channeled through IBM's invention, any shorthand terms included in the message by the sender would be "translated" into whatever IBM thinks it should be and then sent on to the message recipient.

December 10th is the last day to sign the petition to put the following initiative on the ballot:

Mandatory Drug and Alcohol Testing for Members of the Legislature

Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 -- approximately one year before the start of the recession -- to the most recent unemployment data available today.

Gloria La Riva, a labor, community and socialist activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation has announced that she is seeking the Peace and Freedom Party nomination to run against Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in the 2010 election.

Geologists have confirmed that the African continent is being torn in two, forming a new ocean. An international collaboration has shown that a 35 mile long rift in the Afar region of the Ethiopian desert, which opened in 2005, is likely to be the beginning of a new sea.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/New_ocean_forming_in_African_desert

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that LAPD officers won't be charged for rioting at the 2007 May Day event.

"PVC stands for processed vegan crap. You know the kind of awful stuff that comes in boxes and packages and has colored labels, big ads in veggie magazines and such. Usually PVC imitates PC (processed crap made from animal sources) in the form of fake meat and imitations of other items that vegans supposedly want to avoid. Many people believe that being vegan means that you go from consuming processed crap to processed vegan crap and suddenly you are a better person.

According to Ballot Access News...

"On September 10, the California legislature passed AB 30. It lets any citizen who is 17 years old complete a voter registration form and submit it. The county would process it, but it would not take effect until that individual is 18 years old. Under current law, 17-year-olds can only fill out a voter registration form if they will be age 18 by the next election."