Turns out the 450 may not have been on sale, but simply had its price reduced. (The 530 is on sale until May 31.) Still, better to not take a chance.

I purchased a Samsung 40" 720p LCD (LN40A450) today online from Best Buy. It was on sale for a hundred less than the price it had been listing for. For some reason, the order page said they couldn't deliver that item, so I selected in-store pickup. I have eight days to pick it up.

The main reason I'm purchasing this TV now is that my old TV went on the fritz as a result of moving. I was going to wait and use my small television, but seeing the sale encouraged me to go ahead and get it now.

The Samsung's resolution is actually 1366 x 768, like a lot of so-called "720p" sets. CNET had a very favorable review of Samsung's 32" LCD, which is essentially identical except for screen size, as explained here. The review is here.

CNET discussed the merits of 720p versus 1080p,
and basically came to the conclusion that for most viewers, at screen sizes
less than 55" there wasn't much benefit purely in terms of resolution,
if everything else is equal.

That pushed me to consider a 720p, but I still considered getting a 1080p, as there is a new Samsung 40" 1080p (LN40A530) for a couple hundred more than the 720p. The contrast ratio was 12,000:1 for the 530 and 10,000:1 for the 450, according to the Samsung website. While contrast ratio is important (probably more noticeable than 1080p versus 720p resolution, which is barely noticeable at screen sizes less than 50" or so) I thought it was better to save a couple hundred dollars, and I liked the idea of having the list price under $1000. The main concern if you're going to get a 720p is that the scaling technology is good, and I trust that Samsung does a pretty good job at this point. The 450 will accept up to 1080p source signals. Most television broadcasts are in 720p or 1080i, and few video games are made with 1080p resolution, so basically the only current common 1080p source is dvds, and I don't have a Blu-Ray player.

(The LN40A550 is a higher end 1080p than the 530 and is $500 more as it is not on sale. Judging by the product number, I would guess that the 550 is analogous to the 450. Typically prices for otherwise equivalent 1080p sets have been about 50% higher than the 720p sets. The 550 had a contrast ratio of 30,000:1.)

What if saturated fat isn't so bad?

For decades, Americans have been told that saturated fat clogs arteries
and causes heart disease. But there's just one problem: No one's ever
proved it.

Read about it here.

An appropriate amount of saturated fat might actually be a healthy part of a diet consisting of natural foods. There's certainly no hard evidence that it's bad for you. (Trans fat is still bad, though.)

David Gergen eloquently calls on Hillary Clinton to denounce racist voting.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/05/21/ec.seg.gergen.cnn

Iron Man is a pretty good movie -- though I missed the bonus ending, and will have to catch it at some point.

Here's a real life working robotic exoskeleton that responds to a person's natural movement and effectively amplifies strength and endurance. The key development thus far appears to be fast microprocessors and sensors that allow the suit to respond to a person's motions without significant time lag. A major obstacle is increasing battery life and decreasing energy requirements.

Pretty cool.

America's Decline Is Largely Self-Inflicted

Yet another reminder of the failures and (perhaps even more galling) the missed opportunities of the Bush Administration, though here Congress gets some blame as well.