The question was:

Compared to last year, will you be spending more or less this holiday season?

There were a total of 708 votes which breakdown like this:

Spending More (324 votes) [45.8%]
Spending The Same (236 votes) [33.3%]
Spending Less (148 votes) [20.9%]

Check out the new questions each week here on Slobokan's Site O' Schtuff.

Are you a Luddite?

Just because a person doesn't what the latest in technology, that doesn't make him a Luddite, a Purdue University associate professor says.

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"Ask yourself, is this newest video game system or MP3 player worth the several hundred dollars to upgrade from what you or your children already have? Or, are you just buying it so that you can have the newest, flashiest products? " Davis asks.

It's definitely about having the newest and flashiest products. Embrace the future. Seize the technology!

The crescent is out.

Designers of a Flight 93 memorial have made a circular, bowl-shaped piece of land its centerpiece, replacing the original crescent-shape design that some critics had said was a symbol honoring terrorists.

The new design, announced today by the memorial planning committee, features most of the same details of the original, which was unveiled in September after a worldwide design competition.

A tower with 40 wind chimes welcomes visitors to the crash site near Shanksville. There, they can walk to a large circular field ringed by 40 groves of red and sugar maple trees, symbolizing the 40 passengers and crew who died when hijacked Flight 93 went down on Sept. 11, 2001.

The circle enhances the earlier design by putting more emphasis on the crash site, according to details of the new plan, contained in the Flight 93 National Memorial's November newsletter. A break in the trees will symbolize the path the plane took.

[Source: Pittsburgh Live with a HatTip to In The BullPen]

Actress Jocelyn Brando, who appeared in more than a dozen films including two with her younger brother, Marlon, has died. She was 86.

Brando, whose married surname was Pennebaker, died Sunday of natural causes at her Santa Monica home, said her son, Martin Asinof of Tillamook, Ore.

Brando, who often defended and praised her better-known and controversial brother, made her Broadway splash in the late 1940s as the leading nurse in "Mister Roberts."

She appeared in more than a dozen major motion pictures, beginning with Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat" with Glenn Ford in 1953 and ending with "Mommie Dearest," which starred Faye Dunaway as mercurial actress Joan Crawford in 1981.

Rest In Peace, Jocelyn.

Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, created the classic children's books about the Berenstain Bears, has died at the age of 82.

Berenstain, who lived with his wife in Bucks County, Pa., died Saturday, according to a spokesperson for HarperCollins Children's Books.

Stan and Jan Berenstain, creators of the prolific Berenstain Bears series, at home in 2002. Stan Berenstain, 82, died Saturday. (AP Photo/Dan Loh)

Born in Philadelphia in 1923, Stanley Berenstain met his wife while they were students at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art.

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The couple eventually moved into book illustration and, in the early 1960s, began to develop their Berenstain Bears series under editor Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, who was head of children's publishing at Random House at the time.

Rest In Peace, Stan.