In lighter news...

The power of eBay to track what Americans desire (or want to get rid of) can never be underestimated as their top search terms of 2004 have been announced. The trends for the year seem to be electronics, recreational vehicles and anything pink. (Hmmm...wonder if anyone went searching for pink RVs with satellite television and GPS?) From CNN.com (via USA Today):

If you think of eBay as a mirror of our times, then the year 2004 was one in which consumers displayed their love for gas-guzzling cars, high-tech gizmos, everything "pink" and plenty of "weird" stuff.
Why use the eBay (Research) indicator? Because more than 125 million people use the Web site and $1,060 worth of products flow through it every second, the paper said.
...
But perhaps the most disconcerting conclusion drawn from eBay's statistics, the report said, was that people appear to be getting weirder.

For example, in 2003, the oddest item sold on eBay was a tissue used by Paul McCartney. In 2004, there was a plethora of strange and often bizarre items on both the seller and the buyer side.

Among them, a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich marked by scorches that seem to look like the Virgin Mary, or someone who listed her father's cane along with her father's ghost, the paper said.