What else is new?

iPad. Why?

2010-01-27T13:11:00.000-08:00

[url]http://www.apple.com/ipad/[/url]

Is it just an iPhone without the phone?

1. No apps that have not been approved by Apple. By which I mean, you can't download your favorite apps off some web site somewhere. You are strictly limited to the app store.

2. No camera.

3. Microphone, but apparently... no voice calls.

4. eBook reader only through iBookstore. No word about loading your own books/PDFs.

5. Network is GSM-based. That rules out Verizon for your choices.

6. No multitasking. This isn't OSX. It's not a laptop. Or a mini-laptop. Or even, apparently, a netbook. It's the stripped-down iPhone OS.

7. 16 GB for $500. 64 GB for $700. Some are complaining about the price because of the limited functionality.

8. No video out? Does that docking station allow video out, or is it just for the keyboard?

9. Apple doesn't like to sell apps in the app store that duplicate apps it already has. So does that mean that Ray Kurzweil will NOT be able to run the Blio ereader software on this thing because it already has Apple's iBook?

10. no full internet just crappy mobile safari (i know i own a touch)

11. no usb ergo no cheap memory expansion (external HDs)

12. itunes syncing (no drag and droping files from pc to ipad) pain in the ass

13. no webcam, awkward IMing

14. no VLC. i regularly watch movies in my netbook, no way i could wait 3-4 hours to trascode them to stupid apple codec.

15. no Flash. Redundant but without flash you don't have Internet you have a crippled and frustrating experience specially cause it means no streaming FREE PORN.

16. underwhelming specs. 1ghz CPU unknown RAM (doubt it is more than 1gb) unkown GPU . kiddie apps. no full blown OS ergo eternal app store and assorted crapware tie in.

17. The only netbook that cant multitask.

18. I am curious about the battery times. I wonder if that's 'standby' like sleep or active standby. I'm guessing it's more like sleep where it can't receive information over air. And if that's the case, then I wonder if the 10 hours is on but idle or actually using the processor.

19. This seems like it lives in a no-man's land of devices. If you want portable access to do "basic" stuff, like check e-mail, get directions, and things like that, a smart phone is a much better idea. It fits in your pocket and is truly portable.

as for the games? i say WTF? that FPS looked like something from 2003.

In the wake of the Christmas bombing.

2010-01-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

TSA, that bastion of morality, issued a security directive which states that starting on Jan 4, 10, anyone flying into the US "traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening," thought "enhanced screening" is not defined. The 14 countries are: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen. Fair enough, but what is that going to change? And where is North Korea on the list? Cuba a state sponsoring terrorism? Really? Presonally, I think its really dangerous to be labeling innocent people terrosts just because their country supports terrorism.

On wall street and profits.

2009-10-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Wall Street banks have had profitable quarters. JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion in profit (more than $1 billion per month). Goldman Sachs was only slightly behind, at $3.2 billion. These profits supposedly came from “trading.” I asked a friend who has worked in the money business how this was possible. “For someone to make money trading, there has to be someone on the other side of every trade who is losing money. Where does each bank find someone who can lose $1 billion every month?”

He explained that “carry trade” would be a more accurate description of what they’re doing. Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.

I asked if they were taking any risk in order to earn this return. “If interest rates went up to 20 percent, even though the bonds are short-term, the price of the bond could fall enough to make the trade a money-loser.” (Though since the banks are too big to fail, they would simply be bailed out with additional taxpayer funds.)

What kind of bonds are they buying? Are they investing the money in American business? “No, they are mostly buying Treasuries.” So the money is just being shuffled from one Federal bank account to another, with each Wall Street bank skimming off $1 billion per month for itself? “Pretty much.”

[An more old-fashioned way of making supranormal returns is insider trading, which was perfectly legal until the Crash of 1929 (history). The New York Times ran a story yesterday on Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge fund manager who invested heavily in inside information. Rolling Stone published "Wall Street's Naked Swindle" on October 14. The story is much more sensational and entertaining than anything from the Times. It covers a guy who spent $1.7 million on out-of-the-money put options on Bear Stearns on March 11, 2008. The options would become worthless on March 20, just 9 days later, unless Bear Stearns basically went bust. Bear Stearns collapsed the next day and the guy made a $270 million profit. He has never been identified by the SEC.]

Next stop - paying to breath the air

2009-09-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

British Airways passengers will have to pay to choose their seats before they travel from October, the airline says. The charges will affect those seeking to ensure they sit together on a flight and people with a preference for window, aisle or emergency exit seats. People will pay from 7 October. Prices range from £10 per person for European economy flights, to £60 for long haul trips in business class.

BA said it would "give customers more control over their seating options".

The airline currently allows passengers to reserve seats in the 24 hours prior to departure. The new charge - aimed at passengers wanting to reserve seats earlier than this - will be £20 on long-haul economy or short flights in business class, while a seat in an emergency exit row will cost £50.

This can be booked between 10 and four days before take-off.

A BA spokeswoman said: "Customers frequently request specific seats, but in the past we've only been able to confirm them 24 hours in advance or on the day. "We know people want to secure them in advance and have real control over their flying experience. This will allow them to do that."

1 - 0 to the Mad Men

2009-09-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

"This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology," said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. "You don't put children's personal information at risk."

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Five other makers of parental-control software contacted by The Associated Press, including McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., said they do not sell chat data to advertisers.

One competitor, CyberPatrol LLC, said it would never consider such an arrangement. "That's pretty much confidential information," said Barbara Rose, the company's vice president of marketing. "As a parent, I would have a problem with them targeting youngsters."

The software brands in question are developed by EchoMetrix Inc., a company based in Syosset, N.Y.

In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms.

EchoMetrix CEO Jeff Greene said the company complies with U.S. privacy laws and does not collect any identifiable information.

"We never know the name of the kid — it's bobby37 on the house computer," Greene said.

What Pulse will reveal is how "bobby37" and other teens feel about upcoming movies, computer games or clothing trends. Such information can help advertisers craft their marketing messages as buzz builds about a product.

Days before "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opened in theaters on July 15, teen chatter about the movie spiked across the Internet with largely positive reactions.

"Cool" popped up as one of the most heavily used words in teen chats, blogs, forums and on Twitter. The upbeat comments gathered by Pulse foreshadowed a strong opening for the Warner Bros. film.

Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out.

But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

According to the agreement, the software passes along data to "trusted partners." Confidentiality agreements prohibit those clients from sharing the information with others.

In recognition of federal privacy laws that restrict the collection of data on kids under 13, the agreement states that the company has "a parent's permission to share the information if the user is a child under age 13."

Tech site CNet ranks the EchoMetrix software as one of the three best for parental control. Sales figures were not available.

The Sentry and FamilySafe brands include parental-control software such as Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (SentryPC is made by a different company and has no ties with EchoMetrix).

The Lite version is free. Others range from $20 to download and $10 a year for monitoring, to about $48 a year, divided into monthly payments.

The same company also offers software under the brands of partner entities, such as AmberWatch Lookout.

AmberWatch Foundation, a child-protection nonprofit group that licenses its brand to EchoMetrix, said information gathered through the AmberWatch-branded software is not shared with advertisers.

Practically speaking, few people ever read the fine print before they click on a button to agree to the licensing agreement. "Unless it's upfront in neon letters, parents don't know," Aftab said.

EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

None of those companies would comment when contacted by the AP.

EchoMetrix has been losing money. Its liabilities exceeded its assets by nearly $25 million as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing that said there is "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."

To get the marketing data, companies put in keywords, such as the name of a new product, and specify a date range, into Pulse. They get a "word cloud" display of the most commonly used words, as well as snippets of actual chats. Pulse can slice data by age groups, region and even the instant-messaging program used.

Pulse also tracked buzz for Microsoft Corp.'s "Natal," a forthcoming Xbox motion-sensor device that replaces the traditional button-based controller. Microsoft is not a client of Pulse, but EchoMetrix used "Natal" to illustrate how its data can benefit marketers.

Greene said children's conversations about Natal were focused on its price and availability, which suggested that Microsoft should assure teens that there will be enough stock and that ordering ahead can lock in a price.

Competing data-mining companies such as J.D. Power Web Intelligence, a unit of quality ratings firm J.D. Power and Associates, also trolls the Internet for consumer chats. But Vice President Chase Parker said the company does not read any data that's password-protected, such as the instant message sessions that EchoMetrix collects for advertisers.

Suresh Vittal, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said EchoMetrix might have to make its disclosures more apparent to parents.

"Are we in the safeguarding-the-children business or are we in the business of selling data to other people?" he said. If it's the latter, "it should all be done transparently and with the knowledge of the customer."

Few more questions

2009-08-05T09:23:00.001-07:00

1. If you were designing your own superhero costume, how would you accessorize?
a. Cape
b. Scarf
c. Sidekick
d. Gun
e. Stack of fliers saying you are a superhero

2. What part of Canada would you most like to sleep with?
a. Victoria
b. Regina
c. Moosejaw
d. Calgary
e. Prince Edward Island

3. Burrito is to Chimichanga as
a. Jonathan Silverman is to Matthew Broderick
b. Gary Busey is to Nick Nolte
c. Paul Rieser is to Richard Lewis
d. Kelsey Grammar is to anyone else with an enormous freaking forehead

4. What's the worst thing you can say to a mugger?
a. Mom?
b. Don't forget to check my other shoe.
c. I don't think you're man enough to fire that gun
d. Now that you mention it, there may be something in my rectum

5. Your butler tells you that your yacht cleaner will take two hours longer than expected. What do you do?
a. Shoot them both in the face.
b. Shoot just the yacht cleaner in the face, cause hey, it's not your butler's fault.

6. You fall into a space-time portal and land in Hitler's 7th birthday party. What do you do?
a. Devote the rest of your life to mentoring him, so that he'll grow to be a right and just member of society.
b. Molest the shit out of him.

A few questions

2009-07-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

1. You just got change, and you have a Canadian penny. What do you do?

a. Demand a real penny, damn it, not one of these cheap knock-offs

b. Check with those nearby to see if you really are in Canada, and if so, find out why

c. Swallow it, quick, before they find you

d. Unwrap it and eat the chocolate

2. You find an eclair in your sock drawer. You:

a. Put on a pair of socks

b. Put on the eclair

c. Look for the other eclair, cause there must be a pair

d. Pinch yourself cuz you must be dreaming

3. What can I say to God to get into heaven?

a. Do you have any idea who I am?

b. I just need to get in for a minute I want to see if my friends are there.

c. I can make your life very difficult

d. Come on god, be cool, man, be cool

4. If you were a tree, where would you go out to eat?

a. Miracle-Gro Casino Sunday Morning Champagne Brunch Buffet

b. Taco Bell because trees always seem to be broke

c. Tree food court at the tree mall

d. Red Lobster

e. Anything off the trunk of a $1000-a-night tree hooker

5. You catch your lover in bed with C-3P0. You:

a. Congratulate the better man.

b. Ask for a C-3some-0.

c. Get really C-3P.O.'ed.

d. Ask him to autograph the VCR.

e. May as well watch, because it's hard to picture how this goes down

Pharma companies gone to pettle

2009-07-22T09:05:00.001-07:00

I am so pissed off about the pharma companies. There is a Latisse spot may appear to be just another by-the-numbers pharma spot, but in fact it's the greatest bad pharma spot ever. Let's count the ways:

1) "The first and only approved FDA treatment for inadequate and not enough lashes," "also known as hypotrichosis."
Hypotrichosis has all the makings of a fake illness: enough of a medical basis to sound real (it's a condition of "no hair growth") and yet vague enough to invite creative interpretation. In December, the same month the FDA approved Latisse, someone at Allergan--the company that makes the drug--repeatedly tried to alter the Wikipedia entry of hypotrichosis to include eyelash hypotrichosis. Fortunately, Wikipedia moderators caught the changes and removed them (here and here).

2) Brooke Shields as spokesperson
In case it wasn't perfectly clear that eyelash hypotrichosis is a fiction, we're asked to believe that Brooke Shields--a woman with well over 30 years in modeling--isn't pretty enough without this new drug for her lashes.

3) "May cause eyelid skin darkening, which may be reversible, and there is potential for increased brown iris pigmentation, which is likely permanent."
Also "itchy eyes and eye redness" and, though the commercial never says it, the active ingredient in Latisse is also linked to optic nerve damage and blindness. Ok, so you get longer, dark lashes, but your eyes might turn brown, itchy, and useless.

4) "Full results in 12 to 16 weeks" and "If discontinued, lashes will gradually return to their previous appearance."
So you have to wait four months for this stuff to work and as soon as you stop, you're back to your old bald lids. It's worth noting that the message about discontinuing Latisse appears only as text on screen at the same time that the voice-over lists side effects. The makers of this commercial are hoping to cram the drawbacks in as little space as possible to free you, the consumer, from reflection.

5) "Find a doctor at Latisse.com."
Gee, I wonder what those doctors will think of Latisse.... Perhaps this serves a useful purpose, though: any dermatologist on here is probably one you'd want to avoid.

Words women use

2009-07-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the football before helping around the house.

3. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

4. A Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer quickly to No 9 for the meaning of nothing.)

5. That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

6. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add a clause here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot', which is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' - that will bring on No. 7).

7. Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying, "F-- YOU!"

8. Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to No. 4.

9. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in "Fine".

10. We: read as I. You are not included in plan making. We (I) made plans for something.

Ever wondered if those testimonials are real?

2009-07-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

US firm apologizes over use of murdered couple’s photo

AN AMERICAN company has been forced to apologize after using a picture of murdered honeymooners Ben and Catherine Mullany in an online advertising campaign.

An image of the couple, who were shot dead in Antigua last summer, was used by the US firm MyDishBiz alongside in an area of its website featuring testimonials from satisfied customers.

The company last night apologized to the couple’s family, and said it had “not knowingly included the picture” on its site.

But its appearance has been criticized by Welsh Secretary Peter Hain as “diabolical”, while a friend of the family described it as “like some kind of terrible joke”.

Ben and Catherine, both 31 and from Rhos, near Pontardawe in the Swansea Valley, were shot dead in a bungled robbery at their holiday bungalow on the Caribbean island of Antigua on July 27 last year.

It was the last day of their honeymoon.

Catherine died instantly from head wounds while Ben died a week later having been transferred in a coma to Morriston Hospital in Swansea.

The picture used on the American website showed a smiling Ben and Catherine, and was accompanied by text suggesting the pair were “Frank and Mary from New York”, complete with a gushing testimonial purportedly from them about MyDishBiz.

The picture had in fact been taken in the run up to the couple’s wedding in the Swansea Valley a year ago this weekend.

The image of newly qualified GP Catherine and trainee physiotherapist Ben, an ex-soldier had apparently been downloaded from an internet tribute to them, and paired with the bogus testimonial.

The testimonial said: “We have made $1,000 alone with your MyDishBiz internet business opportunity.

“We are very happy with this program. This is the best opportunity we’ve ever seen online. Thanks again.”

The company has now issued a humble apology and has blamed either a disgruntled ex-employee or someone “with a warped sense of humor”.

Mr Hain, who is the MP of the murdered couple’s family, said: “This is diabolical.

“It may have been a mistake but it should never have happened.

“The couple’s memory should be cherished not abused.”

Ben and Catherine’s family in Pontardawe are said to be “upset” that the photograph is being used with a false identity.

And a friend of the Mullanys said yesterday: “It sounds like some kind of terrible joke or prank in which someone has gone to the trouble of downloading the photo from the internet and putting words alongside it.

“The company may not have known what was going on but surely there should have been more checks done on something like this before it went out?”

Internet company MyDishBiz based in Wintersville, Ohio, yesterday confirmed it has now removed the offending photograph and sent apologies to Ben and Catherine’s families.

A spokesman said: “We are trying to track down who sent the testimonial and picture for inclusion on our website.

“It may have been a disgruntled affiliate or someone who has a very warped sense of humor.”

“Deepest apologies are extended to the families of the victims.

“Our company did not knowingly include the picture of the deceased on our website.”

Two Antiguan men – Avie Howell, 18, and Kaniel Martin, 21 – are due to stand trial on the holiday island later this year charged with murdering the newlywed couple.

And a third defendant, Georgette Aaron, who has been charged with perverting the course of justice by trying to help Martin and Howell, will stand trial alongside them.

Aaron, 32, had also been charged with being an accessory to murder, robbery after the fact and conspiracy to make a false statement but those charges were withdrawn.

She is accused of receiving, harboring, maintaining and comforting Martin and Howell.

Tourism on Antigua has been badly hit since news of the Mullany murders swept around the world following their brutal killing.

The size of the police force on the island has been increased considerably since the Mullany murders and efforts are still being made to modernize detective and forensic work.

Sting nabs sticky-fingered JFK airport workers going through luggage

2009-07-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

Sting nabs sticky-fingered JFK airport workers going through luggage

A sting captured by security cameras nabbed two sticky-fingered airport workers who swiped electronics planted by authorities, officials said.

Brian Burton, 27, and Antwon Simmons, 26, stole a laptop and cell phone from the decoy luggage as it moved through Kennedy Airport, Port Authority officials said.

"When air travelers check their luggage with an airline, there is an implicit trust that their bags and their contents will meet them at their destination," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. "The defendants are accused of betraying that trust."

Burton, an officer with the Transportation Security Administration, was videotaped July 7 pilfering through the Miami-bound suitcase in an airport screening room while Simmons, a baggage handler, looked on.

The thieves also switched the luggage tags, hoping to conceal their handiwork, officials said.

The suitcase was a trap set by the Transportation Security Administration and Delta Air Lines.

They stuffed the luggage with a lap top, an iPod and two cell phones, prosecutors said.

The pilfering pair - who had been on cops' radar, a source said - took the bait, failing the so-called integrity test.

Burton, of Queens, and Simmons, of Brooklyn, were awaiting arraignment last night on charges of grand larceny, possession of stolen property and falsifying business records.

They face up to four years in prison if convicted.

UK Border agency

2009-07-14T06:36:00.001-07:00

There are no words in the thesaurus of insult that quite do justice to the UK Border Agency and the minister for borders and immigration, Phil Woolas.

So let's just agree that new rules barring artists from visiting this country and so enriching our culture are some of the most contemptible ever devised, even by this narrow-minded apology for a government.

A few weeks ago I commented on the shameful treatment received at Gatwick airport by the Canadian singer Allison Crowe and two band members who were fingerprinted, held in cells then sent home under new laws that mean that artists have to submit to a set of expensive and time-consuming procedures to get their visa and further restrictions on their movements while they are here.

Now news comes from the Ledbury Poetry Festival, which is under way, that three poets who were due to appear have been barred from entering Britain. There could no more depressing example of the way in which this government's populist obsession with immigration damages artistic life.

Dorothea Rosa Herliany, according to the festival, is one of the most important poets writing in Indonesia today. She is a feminist, note the Muslim society in which she works, and has eight volumes of poetry to her name. Currently resident for a short time in Germany, she received this crushingly dim response to her application for a visa.

"You have provided an invitation to participate in the Ledbury Poetry Festival in the UK, however you have failed to provide any documents showing the funds available to you or demonstrating your current circumstances in Germany. I note that you only arrived in Germany in April 09, and have limited leave to remain until 30/07/09. I am therefore not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that you are a genuine visitor, that you intend to leave the UK at the end of your visit."

The festival only learned about the ban two weeks ago and did not have the time to make representations on her behalf. In the event she was given a visa for the day after she was due to appear. The only possible course for Woolas and the UK Borders Agency is to make an apology to Herliany and to the people who attend the festival, but we shouldn't hold our breath because there is clearly some kind of campaign against poets with strange sounding names and of Muslim origin who want to come to this country.

Also barred were Hassan Najmi and Ouidad (Widad) Benmoussa, two Moroccan poets who were due to appear today for an event entitled Moroccan Food and Poetry. The festival press officer, Simon Steven, outlines their credentials. "Hassan Najmi has published four collections of poems, one novel and two books of essays. He was president of the Moroccan Union of Writers from 1998 to 2005 and is presently director-general of the book and publications department of Morocco's Ministry of Culture. Ouidad Benmoussa has published two collections, including Between Two Clouds in 2006. Her first collection, The Imminent Root (2001), established her as a poet to watch."

Both were messed around by the agency that handles applications in a way that must shame anyone who cares about Britain's reputation abroad. It is a wretched irony that Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon (who were to host the Moroccan poets) have been invited to Morocco for a literary festival this summer and they won't need visas.

Steven said, "This is like holding a dinner party and finding you have a bouncer on the door who is barring guests." Joan Bakewell, who is chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, emailed me yesterday with this comment. "I am shocked by what has happened at Ledbury. The NCA has laboured long and hard with the Home Office explaining repeatedly and in the greatest detail how much the arts are international and depend on the exchange of artists to fuel the great appetite people now have for work that sustains the human spirits.

For such worthwhile and peaceful events to be snarled up by slow-moving and inappropriate bureaucracies is a failure of values and competence."

We need to hear from Woolas, or his boss, Alan Johnson. It's time these nasty and absurd restrictions were lifted.

House cats know what they want and how to get it from you

2009-07-13T10:22:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

The rather crafty felines motivate people to fill their food dishes by sending something of a mixed signal: an urgent cry or meowing sound embedded within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result is a call that humans generally find annoyingly difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." She suggests that this form of cat communication sends a subliminal sort of message, tapping into an inherent sensitivity that humans and other mammals have to cues relevant in the context of nurturing their offspring.

McComb said that she was inspired by her own cat, who consistently wakes her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. She learned in talking with other cat owners that some of their cats too had mastered the same manipulative trick. As a scientist who already studied vocal communication in mammals, from elephants to lions, she decided to get to the bottom of it.

It turned out that wasn't so easy to do. The cats were perfectly willing to use their coercive cries in private, but when strangers came around they tended to clam right up. Her team therefore had to train cat owners to record their own cats' cries.

In a series of playback experiments with those calls, they found that humans judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts, even if they had never had a cat themselves.

"We found that the crucial factor determining the urgency and pleasantness ratings that purrs received was an unusual high-frequency element—reminiscent of a cry or meow—embedded within the naturally low-pitched purr," McComb said. "Human participants in our experiments judged purrs with high levels of this element to be particularly urgent and unpleasant." When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.

McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might get overlooked by poorly trained people.

In those instances, she said, cats seem to find it more effective to stick to the standard meow.

How to prepare for becoming a parent

2009-07-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Lesson 1

Go to the grocery store.
Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
Go home.
Pick up the paper.
Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their:
Methods of discipline.
Lack of patience.
Appallingly low tolerance levels.
Allowing their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it, because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

To discover how the nights will feel...
Walk around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
At 10PM, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
Set the alarm for 3AM.
As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink.
Go to bed at 2:45AM.
Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
Sing songs in the dark until 4AM.
Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years.
Look cheerful.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...
Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
Then rub them on the clean walls.
Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a jar of paint, turn it into an alligator.
Now take the tube from a roll of toilet paper. Using only Scotch tape and a piece of aluminum foil, turn it into an attractive Christmas candle.
Last, take a milk carton, a ping-pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Puffs.
Make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Lesson 7

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
Get a dime. Stick it in the cassette player.
Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat.
Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
There. Perfect.

Lesson 8

Get ready to go out.
Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour.
Go out the front door.
Come in again. Go out.
Come back in.
Go out again.
Walk down the front path.
Walk back up it.
Walk down it again.
Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way.
Retrace your steps.
Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you.
Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Lesson 9

Repeat everything at least (if not more than) five times.

Lesson 10

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full- grown goat is excellent).
If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 11

Hollow out a melon.
Make a small hole in the side.
Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the
swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine-month old baby.

Lesson 12

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV for at least five years.

Lesson 13

Move to the tropics. Find or make a compost pile. Dig down about halfway and stick your nose in it. Do this 3-5 times a day for at least two years.

Lesson 14

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying "mommy" repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each "mommy"; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 15

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the "mommy" tape made from Lesson 14 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Will the bitching ever stop

2009-06-25T07:45:00.001-07:00

I must not be the only person who bitches about the state of air travel. I estimate that 99% of all people who travel will say that air travel sucks. The other 1% travel first class or have no sense of what air travel should be. I will give you an example. After a lot of funfair, Clear blue program was rolled out to mass populous at $99 per year with the promises of no lines and fast service. With your shoes on. So I didn’t sign up. I am that dumb. I will stand with the unwashed masses in the general queue while the clear blue line has no people in it. And I think that was the problem. No one signed up. No wait, people did sign up, but they didn’t get to keep their shoes on because the company that was manufacturing the device that blows the puff of air and then does the analysis – GE – didn’t actually say that you get to keep your shoes on. So after some time in the pilot program, TSA approved the use of those machines with Clear Blue system only to shut it down a couple of days ago. I am thinking because no one signed up.

The program was targeted at frequent fliers and people who didn’t want to wait at the queue with the unwashed masses. The problem is that the frequent flyers already did have the gold status and didn’t need to wait with the unwashed masses. So that’s about 75% of targeted audience for Clear Blue. The other 25% could not possibly sustain the cost of running the program at the current cost level and everyone who cared knew that they would raise the prices. And they did. Almost doubling it. That was the final straw that broke the air puffing camel. With no customers it was pretty evident that the end was near.

But I wasn’t expecting the program to just shut doesn overnight like it did. Literally overnight, the program closed, releasing its staff. The CEO resigned in March. That was another sign of things to come.

I’ll give you another example. I was flying recently from La Guardia in NYC to Chicago on United Airlines. I checked in online and didn’t have any luggage. My flight was scheduled for departure at 8.15pm. I was at the airport at 6pm. The flight was cancelled. Why? No one was able to give me a straight answer, but I think it was because there wasn’t enough passengers to justify flying. I was rebooked on a flight leaving at 7 pm. Great! The flight was supposed to leave at 7.00pm and land in Chicago at 8.45 local time, so a 2 ¾ hours flight. We landed at 8pm local time. Now Why would you list the flight time of 2 ¾ hours I the flight is only 1 ¾ hours? I’ll tell you why. On the way back, my flight from Chicago to Newark on United was scheduled for 6.15pm. Only it was 1 ¾ hours delayed. But, we boarded the plane, left the gate and sat on the tarmac for 1 ¾ hours. When we got to Newark, the flight arrived on time. And it left on time because it left the gate on time in Chicago. No explanation was given to why we are sitting in a tin can for 1 ¾ hours. They are probably watching me now because I dared to ask.

Another thing that bugs me is why there is so much document checking required when flying. You present your boarding pass with your id to the security guy before you get to present to another guy who checks it before you go through the metal detector and then you get it checked again after you went through. Once you are done there, you get to the gate and they check it again to let you on the gate jetty. Then there is a random security check where a TSA agent gets to check it again. Why? I just gave it to the gate agent to check. Then the stewardess checks it again. WTF? So there are possible 6 times that you have to give your boarding card and id to 6 different people just so you can get a pleasure of being charged for a drink. There is no need for the guy to check it after you pass the metal detector. Nor there is a need for the stewardess to check it. There is no need for random security check right after the gate agent checked it. Pointless. And why do I need to give my id to the person checking the boarding passes before you give it a TSA guy who checks it again 20 yards behind the first guy. Unless you can sneak into the walkway through the building walls there is no way that someone can get though without authorization. And do they not trust the Gate agent to check the ids that’s why they are doing random security checks? The problem, I think, is that a lot of these people have been hired after 9.11 and now there is not much use for them, but because they are government employees it’s hard to get rid of them.

The final question for now. Behind United check in desks at La Guardia, there were TSA agents. Why? There are only 3 people checking in people. And there are 3 TSA agents standing there observing. Why? Waste.

Is Guardian trying to stir some trouble or are they onto something?

2009-06-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

The UK government's official anti-terror law watchdog says that the thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/17/stop-search-terror-law-met

Terror law used to stop thousands 'just to balance racial statistics'

Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government's official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he has got "ample anecdotal evidence", adding that it was "totally wrong" and an invasion of civil liberties to stop and search people simply to racially balance the statistics.

"I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice," he said. "But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches."

The official reviewer of counter-terrorist legislation said there was little or no evidence that the use of section 44 stop-and-search powers by the police can prevent an act of terrorism.

"Whilst arrests for other crime have followed searches under the section, none of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in a conviction for a terrorism offence. Its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing," said Carlile.

He added that such searches were stopping between 8,000-10,000 people a month.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the "section 44 stops" allow the police to search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. But Carlile is critical of the use of the powers used by the Met police, saying he felt "a sense of frustration" that the force did not limit its section 44 authorisations to some boroughs or parts of boroughs but used them across its entire area.

"I cannot see a justification for the whole of the Greater London area being covered permanently. The intention of the section was not to place London under permanent special search powers."

None of the many thousands of searches had ever led to a conviction for a terrorist offence, he said. He noted, too, that the damage done to community relations was "undoubtedly considerable".

Examples of poor, or unnecessary use, of section 44 abounded. "I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop."

The Met has announced a review of how it uses section 44 powers. And the home secretary, Alan Johnson, is to issue fresh guidance to the police, warning that counter-terrorism must not be used to stop people taking photographs of on-duty officers.

Carlile uses his annual report to endorse complaints from professional and amateur photographers that counter-terror powers are being used to threaten prosecution if pictures are taken of officers on duty.

He said the power was only intended to cover images likely to be of use to a terrorist: "It is inexcusable for police officers ever to use this provision to interfere with the rights of individuals to take photographs." The police had to come to terms with the increased scrutiny of their activities by the public, afforded by equipment such as video-enabled mobile phones. "Police officers who use force or threaten force in this context run the real risk of being prosecuted themselves for one or more of several possible criminal and disciplinary offences," he warned.

He mentioned an incident in which two Austrian tourists were rebuked by officers for photographing Walthamstow bus station, in east London.

2009-05-10T21:16:00.001-07:00

Once, the idiots were just the fools gawping in through the windows. Now they've entered the building. You can hear them everywhere. They use the word " cool" . It is their favourite word. The idiot does not think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn't cool. Stuff & shit is cool. The idiots are self-regarding consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality. They sculpt their hair to casual perfection, they wear their waistbands below their balls, they babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their cool friend made it. He's an idiot too. Welcome to the age of stupidity. Hail to the rise of the idiots.

If they are so badly injured, why is everyone I know is still broke?

2009-05-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

We're supposed to take heart in the fact that the Treasury Department's bank "stress tests" didn't come out worse. No, our biggest banks aren't insolvent, exactly. In fact, enough cash was printed to guarantee that they should be able to survive the rest of the recession. Worst case, with a little late-night printing and lending by the central bank, even the worst of them - like Citibank - should be able to hobble through. Our Treasury Department wants us to be reassured.

True enough, as long as banks are understood by many as fueling the economy, this should be good news. By this logic, banks disperse the capital that allows businesses to do their business. As so many have explained to me, it all starts with the banks. Banks lend businesses money, and then those businesses turn it into something real - like products, salaries, or innovation.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Labor might make money, but money doesn't make labor. And while we can certainly point to the fact that assembly lines and mixing boards cost money, neither are required as the first step in creating a car company or a musical act. Yes, in a well-functioning economy, good production yields income, part of which goes to making production better. A great company dedicates part of its winnings to R&D.

But the notion that enterprise and production starts with banking is just another artifact of Renaissance-era currency monopolies. Back before the first central banks, production and yield actually created money. (That's what all this hoopla about complementary currency is about.) Money was not lent into existence by a bank. Instead, farmers brought their grain to town and received receipts for the grain. These receipts served as the local currency. Currency was worked into existence. There was as much money as there was grain.

The problem with this scheme was that people got too wealthy - especially in comparison with the feudal lords and fledgling monarchy, who had always been used to getting rich, well, by being rich. So they went and made all the grain-based currencies illegal, and forced everyone to use coin of the realm - central currency. While this coin was better for long distance trade and collecting taxes, it was lousy for local transactions. People lost their ability to live off the land, took jobs with early corporations, got poor, less fed, and eventually the economic downturn in Europe led to a plague that killed half the population. This isn't economic interpretation - it's just fact.

Eventually, with only half the population to deal with, Europe's new economic scheme proved basically sufficient to the task. And we got the rules that have - in one form or another - defined economics to this day: people don't make money, banks do. The chief function of money is for money to make money - not for it to be used for successful transactions.

But today we may be smart enough, information may travel around fast enough, for many of us to realize just how transparent a fraud we're witnessing unfold before us today - how the bailouts of AIG were really funding Goldman Sachs, how intimately involved are bankers - Rubin or Paulson, are with Treasury chiefs like, er, Paulson and Rubin. How government and banking are one and the same, both after the same centralization of authority, both inextricably linked with the biases of lending-based wealth schemes, and both utterly incapable of serving as the source of anything.

Iraq war stats. Why so serious?

2009-04-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

Long time ago, when GW was still president and Obama was only a sparkle in the votes eye, the news about the Iraq and how many solders were dying there were as abundand as the money that flowed in Washington DC's veins. Now that Obama is actually the President, I ask you this - when was the last time you heard anything about Iraq? Did you notice that more than 80 solders dies in Iraq in February. Is this the change you were looking for?

Extreme measures

2009-04-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

So you think youve cut your spending? Here are some ideas you probably havent thought of.

These are extreme times. Do they call for extreme measures?

There's no question that widespread layoffs, shrinking retirement accounts and rising prices have families buckling down financially. But are they thinking of everything they can? Should they be cutting back in ways that might never have occurred to them?

Even if families have enough savings to live on for the next few months, or even years, the future seems scarier now than it once did," says Carl Johnson, a Peterborough, N.H., financial adviser.

So what's a family to do? Here are four unorthodox strategies for saving money. People have already managed to save by following at least one of these strategies.

Enroll Your Kids in a Virtual School
One way to cut your family's education costs is to enroll the children in virtual public schools.

Though not available in all states, a number of companies have started virtual schools that conduct elementary- and high-school classes online. Students take the classes at home, usually tuition free. Funding for the programs typically comes from the state.

K12 Inc., based in Herndon, Va., operates virtual public schools in 21 states. Its Web site, www.k12.com, shows where. K12 gives each of its high-school students his or her own computer -- in a family with more than one grade-school student enrolled, the kids may have to share -- and subsidizes the Internet connections. Its curriculum includes Advanced Placement classes.

Mary Ann Ridenour's daughter, Anna Marie, 15, and son, Aaron, 17, have been attending Ohio Connections Academy, run by Baltimore-based Connections Academy, since 2003. The children previously attended private school, and Ms. Ridenour estimates she is saving $7,000 to $10,000 a year per child by switching to the virtual school. The local public schools, she says, weren't challenging enough. The family also saves on clothing, doctors' bills and food, she says. Her stay-at-home kids feel no peer pressure to buy the latest in clothes and gear, rarely get sick and eat lunch at home.

Susan Fancher, vice president of marketing for Connections Academy, says virtual school works for many students, but it's not right for all. Students work with teachers online, but many also have learning coaches -- usually a parent who serves as a face-to-face resource and helps the student stay on track. "This often means families make sacrifices for students so they can be there every day," she says. The company's Web site, www.connectionsacademy.com, lists the states where its classes are available.

Go Back to Bartering
Barter is back, thanks to Web sites that make it easier to match up people wanting to exchange specific goods and services. For families, barter Web sites offer an innovative way to get a new video game, plumbing repairs or even a vacation rental without cash.

"Its back to the cave, where the earliest form of commerce was barter," says Michael Satz, chief executive of the recently launched barter Web site BarterQuest.com. Each trading partner determines what is a fair exchange, he says. Barter especially makes sense for parents, because their children constantly require new things, and for students who are always short of cash, says Mr. Satz.

BarterBee.com allows consumers to trade CDs, DVDs and games. Craigslist.com has a barter section, too. Bill Brady, who is semiretired in Boca Raton, Fla., is using Craigslist to barter an informal time share for his West Palm Beach, Fla., one-bedroom penthouse.

Bartering does have its challenges. It's not always simple to find an interested partner for the other half of your trade, even on the Web, and a certain amount of trust is required from each party. Bartered goods and most services are considered taxable revenue, too, and must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service in the year in which they are obtained, says George Papadopoulos, a Novi, Mich., financial adviser and certified public accountant.

You can improve your chances if you focus on an equitable trade, are upfront and detailed with barter terms and are willing to get creative, experts say.

Tiffany Gentry, an out-of-work executive assistant in New York, is looking on Craigslist.com for someone who can train her in office-productivity software programs like QuickBooks and Photoshop. In return, she is willing to give English lessons or assistance in organizing and cleaning. "It's a great to time to increase my skills," she says, "and I didn't want to spend money on a class."

Cut Out the Extras for a Month
If you're willing to make some sacrifices, declare a "want-free" month, says Ramsey Bova, a Lexington, Ky., financial adviser. Want-free months refer to a one-month period in which a family only spends money on necessities such as bills, food and shelter.

"The purpose is to witness how much money we are wasting on items that provide no real benefit," says Ms. Bova. Although the challenge might feel extreme at times, it could be critical for families who don't have adequate emergency funds stashed away. (Ms. Bova recommends about 12 months of emergency savings during tough economic times.)

The challenge might be harder for a larger family, but planning can make it doable. Ms. Bova's clients Angela and Rick Conner, who have three children under the age of 3, saved a few hundred dollars during their want-free month by cutting out fast-food stops while running errands, and avoiding restaurants in general.

"It was nice to know there is more we can do to stretch the budget if we need to," says Ms. Conner, who adds that the experience has helped change the family's spending habits permanently. The family no longer buys reserves of groceries, for instance, unless there is a sale item or they have coupons.

Jeb Collier, a New Bern, N.C.-based financial adviser, says a "want-free" month will only work if families do it right. "If they only go half-way, the exercise is moot," says Mr. Collier. A half-hearted attempt, he says, could be thinking that a "necessity" is whatever falls within current spending habits. He says the biggest challenge is being honest about what is a "necessity." Participants also might come out of the exercise like someone coming off a diet, and binge to make up for what they missed, he says.

Stop Supporting Adult Kids
"One of the hardest expenses to cut out is assistance to adult children," says Morris Armstrong, a Danbury, Conn., financial adviser. If a son or daughter is counting on parents to help pay rent, health-care bills, or get an education, suddenly stopping that support could throw the child's life into financial chaos. Some advisers have seen parents helping more in recent years as adult children carry large loan payments and face possible layoffs.

But while it's a difficult move, ending assistance to adult children may be necessary for parents who only have a few more working years of their own in which to rack up savings for retirement, or who have seen their savings dwindle due to the market turmoil.

Cutting financial ties may help parents feel a greater sense of security in their later years. It may also allow them to help their children again when times improve.

It's best to break the news in person, says Atlanta psychologist Mary Gresham. "It's a bad move if you do it suddenly without notice and you are breaking a promise you made to your child," she says. Dr. Gresham says the ramifications depend on how the situation is handled. In the worst case, she says, "the relationship is broken."

What do I do now?

2009-04-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Despite recent gains in the stock market, portfolios remain badly damaged by the market performance of the past 18 months. With jobs still falling away at a rapid clip, the recession is still a serious concern and policymakers are scrambling to implement expensive and complex solutions.

As we wade through these difficult times, how should you think about your own financial situation? A good starting point is to remember what Kipling wrote: Keep your head about you as everyone is losing theirs.

It's a great temptation in times such as these to think things will never get better. But if history shows us anything, things do eventually improve. In fact, judging by the standards of past economic shocks, this recession is getting long in the tooth. The average recession since World War II has lasted 11 months, and the longest was 16 months in 1981-82. Our current crisis is 15 months old.

Also, hints of bottoming are starting to surface. Oil prices have begun to rise, indicating some increased demand. China is importing aluminum again. In addition, the stimulus plan will start to kick in later this year, creating jobs and, perhaps, helping soothe some of the enormous fears in the marketplace.

So, there are definitely brighter times ahead. Until then, here are some strategies to help you keep your head about you: five things that you definitely should do and five things you definitely should not do, as you weigh how to protect and build your assets.

Let's start with the five things you should definitely do:

1. Reduce Your Expensive Debt
Too many of us overextended ourselves during the past decade with credit cards and other debt. These bills now hang over people like the Sword of Damocles.

The first order of business is to reduce this expensive debt, even before saving for retirement or investing in the stock market. One smart strategy is to take advantage of much lower gasoline prices. One year ago, gas cost more than $4 a gallon in much of the country. Today, it's less than half that. You should devote the money you save to eliminating your credit-card debt.

2. Get On a Budget
Thrift is the new black. That means getting on a budget, measuring exactly what you spend and looking for ways to save money. Perhaps you are eating out more than you appreciate or spending too much on a cup of coffee. Budgeting is a lost discipline for many people and one that should be rediscovered.

There are several free Web sites, such as Mint.com, Quicken.com and Wesabe.com, that can help you sort out your spending and give you a sense of where you can save money.

You upload password information for your credit cards and other accounts, and the sites aggregate and sort the data, so you can see how much you're spending on, say, groceries, eating out and movies. You can then track your spending habits over time and make adjustments to save money.

What's more, some of these sites, notably Wesabe, also have active communities discussing various budgeting issues. If you are just getting started on developing budgeting discipline, talking with others who are doing the same can help make it easier.

3. Guard Against Inflation
Currently, inflation is a relative nonissue, and most commentators -- not to mention the Federal Reserve -- believe that it won't become a problem anytime soon.

Yet, many things are taking place that could raise the specter of inflation in rapid order.

For starters, the federal government is spending money like a drunken sailor. There's the nearly $800 billion stimulus program, a proposed budget of $4 trillion (up from $3 trillion in the previous year) and hundreds of billions more in bank, real-estate and credit-rescue packages. On top of that, short-term interest rates, set by the Fed, are essentially at zero and quite low in other countries as well.

All of which is like so much kindling waiting for a spark. Once that spark hits, growth and inflation could come roaring back to life.

For that reason, it's smart to have a portion of your fixed-income investments in Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS. These bonds are backed by the U.S. government, like normal Treasurys, but also have built-in protections that boost returns to account for inflation.

Another inflation-hedging strategy is to invest in commodities. When growth resumes, demand for oil, copper and other commodities will rise, making their prices increase. A warning, though: Given the volatility of commodities, financial planners recommend that investors have no more than 5% to 10% of their portfolio in this sector.

4. Have a Stock-Market Strategy
Despite the recent sprint in share prices, investors remain leery of the stock market. It will take more than a four-week rally to soothe the pain caused by the stock market since it tumbled from its late-2007 highs. When so much doubt surrounds the stock market, it's usually a time to think about investing in equities. Despite the horrid pain most of us have suffered in the market during the past 18 months, stocks, like the economy, will not remain down forever.

That doesn't mean going whole-hog into the market, however. Consider coming at stocks first through your retirement account. For many of us, that account has a longer time horizon and built-in tax efficiencies, and often comes with a corporate match -- which is essentially free money.

Outside of your retirement account, be sure to maintain a diversified approach among stocks, bonds and cash. A good rule of thumb is to use your age as the percentage of assets you should have in safer bond investments. Thus, if you are 50, you would be split 50-50 between stocks and bonds. If you want to be more conservative, you'd carve back some of the stock exposure and leave it in cash.

Even with the recent runup in stocks, you still might have a larger-than-usual chunk of your assets in bonds these days, because bonds did well last year and have remained solid this year. If that's the case, rebalancing toward stocks makes sense, especially with their prices so low.

5. Preserve What You Have
One of the lessons of the past few years is that the stock market and your home are not ATMs. They are assets that can rise and fall. Having a strategy to preserve your gains is prudent in these challenging times.

Along with diversification of assets -- stocks, bonds, cash -- maintain diversification in the stock market, as well. Buy broad, low-fee index funds, rather than individual stocks, to lower your exposure to risk.

And maintain a rainy-day fund in safer places, such as TIPS, certificates of deposit or highly rated municipal or corporate bonds. A good rule of thumb is to have a reserve of six months' earnings in case of a job loss.

So, what should you definitely not do?

1. Don't Bury Your Money in the Backyard
With things the way they are, it's tempting to simply opt out altogether. Fear of financial-system failure, the uncertain nature of the stock market and just a sense of foreboding have people thinking that it's smarter to keep their money in the backyard, a mattress or an empty can.

But it really isn't. The bank-insurance system works for holdings under $250,000. I know because my bank once failed, and the transfer of assets was seamless. So, at least keep your cash in certificates of deposit earning some sort of return. An overabundance of fear and caution can cost you money; don't let that happen to you.

2. Don't Chase Returns
This is a great temptation in any market, but especially so today. Bonds had a great run last year, but some analysts believe they may just be the next bubble waiting to burst.

In short, don't double down on an asset that has had such a tremendous run. You are likely coming to the game too late, since most of the gains have already been made. That can skew your portfolio too sharply in a single direction, making you vulnerable to a decline in previously hot asset groups.

Look at it this way. In the past few years, the temptation to chase returns led people to buy too many houses, invest too heavily in a soaring stock market and aggressively bid up oil. All of it ended badly.

3. Don't Abandon Diversification
There's a great desire now to stay safe by holding only cash or only Treasurys. This kind of behavior is really just the same as chasing performance. Be disciplined. Stick to a diversified strategy and rebalance your holdings every year to reduce your exposure to the high-fliers.

4. Don't Stop Saving for Retirement
In times of turmoil, we tend to focus on what's right in front of us: the current bills, the savings account and what the day will bring. But we are all still going to want to retire at some point, so that means remaining disciplined about saving for retirement.

Employer 401(k) programs remain a good vehicle, even if the stock market has smacked their holdings. These programs allow you to invest money tax-deferred, and many companies, as noted, provide a corporate matching program.

Rather than ignoring your account statements, as many of us have done, take a look at them and make sure that your holdings are diversified and balanced. Ignoring your savings -- or discontinuing them -- will come back to haunt you when you want to leave off working and relax on the beach.

5. Don't Ignore Common Sense
Much heartbreak in the recent past has stemmed from an ignorance of common sense. Fraudsters promising overabundant returns snookered many investors. Some people viewed housing and the stock markets as never-can-lose gambits. Others spent far more than they had.

Personal finance, at its heart, boils down to common sense. You have to eliminate your high-cost debt and get on a budget. You must save for retirement. And you need to make sure that you own a home you can afford and enjoy, as opposed to seeing it as a get-rich-quick scheme.

In short: Be prudent, save money, invest wisely. Getting back to these very basics will help all of us rebuild our portfolios and set sail for a better day.

Banks should wake up and realize whos moey this is

2009-04-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Banks should wake up and realize whos moey this is
Bank of America Corp. is raising interest rates on as many as four million U.S. credit-card customers who carry a balance, becoming the latest bank to crack down on people who don't pay off their bill every month.
Starting with June account statements, any credit-card customer who carries a balance and has an interest rate below 10% will see his or her rate jump into double-digit territory. A company spokeswoman declined to provide an exact number, saying the changes would affect less than 10% of the bank's card customers in the U.S. The bank has 70 million card customers world-wide, but doesn't break out the number of customers who are in the U.S. "It impacts a small portion of our cardholders," said Betty Reiss, the spokeswoman.
The bank's move follows similar rate increases that other banks, including Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and American Express Co. have implemented in recent months. The banks, facing rising delinquencies, blame the economic turmoil. Many have been tightening the screws on people with less-than-perfect credit, but now they're pinching a broader range of customers who have good credit records, but carry a balance.

On Tuesday, Tamara Smith of Burlington, Vt., got a notice from Bank of America that her 7.9% rate will increase to nearly 13%. She immediately called the bank and opted out of the change. That means she keeps the 7.9% rate on her roughly $2,000 balance, but can't use the card for new purchases without having the higher rate apply to her entire balance.
So Ms. Smith is shopping around for another card. And while she has found a 0% promotional rate from Citi, she's planning to open a credit card with her local credit union instead. "I just don't have any assurance that Citibank won't pull the same thing," said the 51-year-old co-owner of a computer-software company.
The rate increases come as many Americans are losing their jobs and losing easy access to other forms of credit, like home-equity loans. That makes millions of cardholders even more dependent on their credit cards to get by.
The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators passed rules in December that would limit banks' ability to raise credit-card interest rates. But that doesn't start until July 2010.
Now, Congress is considering separate bills that would impose stronger restrictions on banks much sooner. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee approved its version of the legislation, which is waiting for a full Senate vote. A House subcommittee passed similar legislation last week.
The banking industry has said that the new federal rules and the proposed legislation will restrict its ability to manage risk and will force issuers to be stingier with credit and promotional offers. In a presentation to investors in February, Chase executives laid out various strategies they were exploring to deal with the new regulatory environment, including implementing annual service fees, shortening the duration of introductory interest rates and offering higher interest rates for new customers.
Bank of America said it started notifying customers of the rate increases last week. "The increase on these accounts reflects the current economic conditions where our cost of providing credit has significantly increased," Ms. Reiss said. The average annual percentage rate on the affected accounts is 8.5%.
Consumer advocates see another motive. The banks "want to mess with people before they can't," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "Every day they can earn income at a higher interest rate is more profits for them."
Credit.com, an educational credit Web site, started hearing from customers complaining about Bank of America's rate change on Saturday, said spokeswoman Emily Peters. She advises customers to pay off their balances, if possible, but keep the card open since closing the accounts could hurt their credit scores. "The best possible option would be to leave the card dormant and use it every six months" to prevent the issuer from closing down the account, she said.
In January, Chase Card Services changed the terms for thousands of customers who had low interest rates but were carrying a balance. In Chase's case, customers had to agree to pay at least 5% of their balances every month instead of the previous 2%. If they couldn't meet the higher minimum payment requirement, they would have to give up their promotional rate and accept a higher one instead.
Chase's change sparked a number of class-action lawsuits from angry consumers who had taken advantage of the bank's promotional offers. Separately, Citi and American Express raised the regular interest rates by two to three percentage points across many of their cardholders last fall.
In some cases, banks are offering carrots to get customers to pay down their balances. In February, for example, American Express offered select customers a $300 AmEx prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts.
Sandra Frye of Phillips, Wis., said the recent tightening by banks has prompted her to pay off her balances more quickly. "I won't be adding to the economy because I'm going to pay these guys off and get them out of my hair forever," said the 66-year-old. Ms. Frye, an adult home-care provider, said Bank of America notified her that it was going to raise her variable rate to 13.74% from 9.74%. She is in the process of transferring her $1,700 balance on the card to a credit card with Wells Fargo & Co. offering her a promotional rate of 0%.

The Rising Price Of Credit
As banks face higher costs, they're repricing more customers' accounts. Here's what to consider:
Higher rates typically affect customers who carry a balance.
Customers should be able to reject the higher rates -- although they may have to close the account or stop using the card.
New federal rules will limit rate increases -- but only starting in July 2010.

Something America should consider.....

2009-02-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

The United Arab Emirates is considering legislation that would criminalize publication of anything that would "harm the economy." Already, the local press is pulling back from their coverage of the steep decline in Dubai property values and the rise in deportations, voluntary departure, and abandonment of unsaleable assets, such as cars. Instead of moving toward greater transparency, the emirates seem to be moving in the other direction. A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000). Some say it is already having a chilling effect on reporting about the crisis. Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai’s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher. “At the moment there is a readiness to believe the worst,” said Simon Williams, HSBC bank’s chief economist in Dubai. “And the limits on data make it difficult to counter the rumors.”
-----i cant beleive we didnt bomb them yet-----

Obama administration will defect the telecom immunity

2009-01-20T08:41:00.001-08:00

Say hello to the new boss....... Same as the old boss......

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/obama-to-fight.html

The incoming Obama administration will vigorously defend congressional legislation immunizing U.S. telecommunication companies from lawsuits about their participation in the Bush administration's domestic spy program.

That was the assessment Thursday by Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for attorney general, who made the statement during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A court challenge questioning the legality of the legislation is pending in U.S. District Court in San Francisco -- where the judge in the case wanted to know what the Obama administration's position was.

"The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress," Holder told Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah), who asked whether the Obama administration would continue the legal fight to uphold the legislation that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to overturn.

"Unless there are compelling reasons, I don't think we would reverse course," Holder added.

At a San Francisco hearing in EFF's case last month, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker wondered aloud whether the incoming Obama administration would continue to defend the legislation, which passed in July. Obama opposed immunity but voted for it because it was included in a new spy bill that gave the Bush administration broad warrantless-surveillance powers.

"We are going to have a new attorney general," Walker said from the bench, wondering whether he should delay a decision, pending guidance from Obama. "Why shouldn't the court wait to see what the new attorney general will do?"

The EFF is also accusing the nation's telecoms of funneling Americans' electronic communications to the Bush administration without warrants in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Holder's comments came the same day a secret federal appeals court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, released a declassified opinion (.pdf) approving 2007 legislation that gave the government broad powers to eavesdrop on international communications — even those in the United States — without warrants.

The court, hearing a challenge to the Protect America Act from a telecommunications company it did not name, said the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not breached because the right to be free from unreasonable searches did not apply to foreign intelligence gathering.

The August 2007 Protect America Act expired six months after its passage and was revived as part of the immunity legislation Holder addressed Thursday. The secret court's opinion did not address the Bush administration's once-secret eavesdropping program — which was not authorized by Congress — initiated in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks.

The Justice Department lauded the opinion, which was rendered in August but just released Thursday after it was declassified. "The Court of Review upheld the lawfulness of the directives, concluding that the surveillance at issue fell within the foreign-intelligence exception to the warrant requirement and was otherwise reasonable under the Fourth Amendment," the department said.

The immunity legislation at issue was crafted after Walker had refused to dismiss the lawsuit EFF brought in 2006 against AT&T, accusing the telco of violating its customers' civil liberties. At the time, Walker's initial decision allowing the case to go forward was idling on appeal before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which dismissed the case as moot after President Bush signed the immunity bill.

All of the nation's leading telecommunication companies have been added to the litigation — the merits of which have never been decided.

The Bush administration had argued that the original case should be dismissed on the grounds that it threatened to expose government secrets, a legal privilege judges routinely rubber-stamp. The EFF, in a bid to revive the lawsuit, challenged the immunity legislation on the grounds that Congress was prohibited from legalizing what the EFF termed was unconstitutional activity by the telecommunication companies.

Walker's decision on the immunity legislation is pending.

While my guitar gently weeps for Easyjet

2008-12-10T06:28:00.001-08:00

Easyjet 'threatened to derail stem cell transplant'
The pioneering windpipe transplant carried out by doctors in Barcelona was jeopardised by easyJet when airline staff refused to allow the transportation of stem cells needed for the operation, it has been claimed.

The crucial stem cells had been grown in a Bristol lab by a team of British doctors but had to be flown to Barcelona ahead of the world-first operation last June.
Doctors claim they sought special permission for a package containing the 60 million cells used to treat Colombian mother of two Claudia Castillo, 30, to be transported from Bristol on an easyJet flight.
But staff from the budget airline allegedly refused to allow the package on board claiming that because it contained more than 100ml of fluid it "posed a security risk".
The cells, which took five months to grow, had to arrive in Barcelona within 16 hours of their removal from the Bristol lab before becoming unusable.
Professor Martin Birchall, one of the lead researchers at Bristol University, says he begged airline staff to make an exception but they refused.
"On arrival they said it couldn't go on because it would be a security risk - but I had been talking to people on a regular basis," he said.
"I was so furious, trying to explain months of work.
"The clock was ticking. We'd taken the cells out of their culture media an hour before.
"We thought about driving to Barcelona, but that would have taken too long."
A German medical student, Philip Jungerbluth, who was due to accompany the cells on their flight, came to the rescue and contacted a friend with a pilot's licence.
"Philip said he had a friend from medical school who used to fly and within a couple of phone calls he got him to leave Germany and be with us and he said he would charge us cost only," said Prof Birchall who added that without the offer the operation would have been cancelled.
The professor paid the 14,000 pounds it cost to charter a private jet out of his own pocket, though the cost was later reimbursed by Bristol University.
A spokesman for easyJet said: "We do not have any record of the passenger's request to carry medical materials on board the flight.
"However as a gesture of goodwill easyJet has refunded the passenger for the cost of his flight."

Why CNN struggles to cover the economic crisis

2008-11-26T06:26:00.001-08:00

The current economic collapse is a difficult story for TV. It's a peculiar period in between an election and an inauguration. This most important story, this great-or-not-so great depression, is also the hardest for CNN to tell. I have more than enough reasons why in this late-night rant.
1) It's not a hurricane so Anderson Cooper of CNN is unable to position himself in the middle of the storm for optimal drama. In other words, TV anchors can't get wet and windblown, while viewers worry about their safety. The state of the economy is a disaster but not a natural disaster. Nobody's leaving the studio for this one. There's no place to go.
2) It's like a war and we keep losing ground each day. In the place of casualties, we have falling stock indices but it's hard to show the real damage. There's only so much you can do with oversized charts to tell a story. The war on terrorism featured a real enemy. We've just never been able to find them, no matter who goes after them. (Maybe it's not so different.) Campbell Brown ("No Bull, No Bias") should say that what the capitalism's finest did to themselves and to us was worse than any terrorist could have imagined.
3) Few CEOs, fewer economists, and almost no one in the financial industry, want to step forward and say with conviction what will happen. A year ago we couldn't get them to stop telling us what great things to expect in the next quarter. Not now. They don't know what's coming and they aren't willing to say even that much. They are MIA. Insider information is at an all-time low.
Memo to all American CEOs: don't presume in ten years' time to write business books about your leadership skills; maybe there's a gripping survival story to be told about how you held on to your job.
We want them to face the music. Even the Watergate hearings, which had a large cast of characters, were compelling to watch day after day.
4) There is not a President at the center. Bush is just not there. Like us, he's watching TV to find out what to think. Reporting from the White House doesn't have any relevance today. Moreover, the satisfaction in blaming Bush for everything is diminishing.
In addition, with the election over, reporters can't simply ask the candidates to react to the day's bad news. It seldom produced much insight anyway but it filled time. Now Obama is filling time, and he keeps repeating that "there's only one President" but there's really not a President. There's a leadership vacuum waiting to be filled by Obama. (BTW, this story is much bigger and more important than Obama's election and I think he understands that.) Bottom line is we're waiting for a central figure to emerge.
5) Real experts are hard to find, especially ones with big hair. So over-present talking heads such as Suze Orman ramble on and on in front of Larry King and others. Here's an incredible ramble from Suze Orman on CNN:
People feel they need medication because they are panicking. It’s as if the economy right now is in the I.C.U. unit of a hospital. We are in intensive care and they are throwing everything type of medication at us to cure what is going on. They are panicking because why? Nothing is working. They tried this, it didn’t work. They tried that medication, it didn’t work. They are running out of prescriptions to give it. We are going to be in the I.C.U. unit for a while. Eventually, I don’t know when that will be, six months, a year, year and a half, we will get out, we’ll be in the hospital then. We’ll stay in the hospital for about a year or two. After another year or two we will end up in rehab and then we’ll be okay. This is a long stretch. People have to stop panicking. CNN link Makes me think of Amy Winehouse singing "They try to make me go to rehab, I say no, no, no." Rehab is taking place over on CNBC.
6) Where are the winning and losing teams? We have learned more about Al Queda cells and Saddam Hussein's Elite Guards than about the people in power behind CITI, Goldman Sachs, Lehmann Brothers, AIG, etc. We know more about the New York Jets than we do about CITI Bank. Are the slow-moving Detroit Manufacturers competing head-to-head against the fast-talking Wall Street Financiers? Please tell us more about these teams as we're entrusting them with such large amounts of public money. Maybe we need to start thinking that, as with football, we care because we're betting on teams to win. We have our money at stake.
7) I can almost hear producers wondering each night if there isn't a better story to lead with. "Isn't there a story we can do on Sarah Palin? Like her or hate her, people can't get enough of her." At least that appears to be the thinking behind her getting the most air-time in the week following the election. Would you rather hear about Sarah Palin pardoning a turkey or David Gergen saying no one knows what to make of the economic mess? At least, the Palin piece will have something interesting going on in the foreground and the background.
8) "Why can't this be happening to Russia or China? If it was only happening there, and not here, we would know how to cover it." CNN would send Christiane Amanpour there. "Live from...". We don't have visuals like people knocking down walls, rushing into the streets or standing in lines. The Fall of the Berlin Wall is the Fall of Communism, the fall of Saddam's statue -- now these are stories of new freedoms. In America today, we have a big fall without a distinctive symbol, without a video loop, without an exotic locale.
Also, how do you explain that China is providing the bail for the bailout? As David Gergen said tonight on CNN, "China's become our banker." Even harder to tell that kind of "freedom" story.
9) The problems aren't going away and there's no timeline. So, where's the equivalent of "America Held Hostage: Day XN"? Nightline evolved from a special report to become a nightly hard-news program to follow the ongoing story of Iran holding American hostages during the Carter Administration. Why isn't this economic story played front-and-center in the same way? Isn't there a TV journalist saying "Holy Christ, this is the biggest story of my career and I'm going to bring it to you every night"? Ted Koppel, Edward R. Murrow, where are you?
Here's my list of names for a new Nightline-like special series on the economy:
America's Panic Attack
The Joke's on US
Invisible Hand-Wringing
Capitalism on the Ledge
The Economy on the Couch
Future Shock & Awe
Hitting the Wall And Falling on the Street.
America Sucks Right Now
US: Out of Order
10) Lastly, the TV media is no better off than we are at understanding this complex crisis. On a gut level, viewers know what the story is, that it's about them, their future and their children's future. They have specific questions that are difficult to answer (see the Suze Orman blog on CNN where it is promised that she'll answer these many, many questions; she doesn't, of course.) and they have general worries (should I panic?) that are hard to resolve. While we try to absorb as much information as possible, we keep having the same conversation over and over: Q. What's going on? A. I don't know. It's hard to tell.

On banks

2008-11-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

We get no treatment from banks. The bank manager himself irritates people by writing to them immediately they owe the bank forward. I advise you if you’ve had this trouble in the past, but are now in credit, to write to your own bank manager pointing out that he owes you money and would he please drop in and have a word with you about it. The banks themselves they’re all in business of making money, so when they get hold of yours they make it as difficult as possible for you to get any of it back. For this end theyopen just after you arrive at work and close two hours before you leave. And should you sacrifice your lunch-hour to join the angry queue in the street outside, don’t blame the single cashier on duty for the slowness of the service. After all, the cleverer cashiers are out atlunch!
In this way banking hours have been carefully tailored to the needs of two classes of persons: the unemployed and bankrobbers. Actually, the increase in the number of bank robbers in the world is not as horrifying as it sounds. It is now known that over 70 % of them are only frustrated customers trying to get at their money. Yes, banks are maddeningly greedy!

Ram challenge.

2008-11-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

Since mid-October, Dodge has been rolling out its 2009 Ram truck with a set of commercials that run during NFL and college football games and elsewhere testosterone flows. These ads "feature" Dodge Ram trucks being driven into flaming buildings and around, through and over other kinds of obstacles. The slogan is "Never Back Down." The "shock-and-awe" ads direct you to a Yahoo website: ramchallenge.com for a series of webisodes. Here's the trailer, all part of a multimillion, multimedia extravangza that's enough to make you sick.
What we have here are four groups of grunting set-extras billed as actual contestants on a pseudo-reality show set in a hostile environment. They are labelled: Military, Cowboys, Contractors, and Firemen, which made me think of the Village People. Presumably each pair reflects a well-researched segment of the American truck-buying population who might just get so excited by these commercials that they'd actually buy a gas-guzzling Ram truck, something that many will have trouble affording.
Remember, during this same period Chrysler has also been desperately trying to persuade GM to buy them. Step back from the flash and fury here and you'll see a metaphor for the challenges faced by US auto industry; you'll see these ads as a story about what's happening not in the desert but in Detroit.
Quick, jump in an oversized American-made truck, see how fast it can go downhill without crashing, next tow a heavy trailer (pensions?) along hair-pin curves without tumbling down a hillside, and then go try to build and cross a makeshift bridge without dropping into a deep gully. During this race to the finish, you're running out of time and trying to avoid disaster. The media in helicopters hover above you, following your every move, waiting to move in. Even if you make it, the group that finishes last is eliminated. It's like we're watching a dream sequence from a movie about a US auto industry exec! Wake up, wake up!
To place a bet this size selling the wrong product at the wrong time is like pushing all your chips to the middle of the poker table and bluffing with a pair of threes. Is there any way any of the auto companies win? Do you and other US taxpayers want to add your own money to their pile? Never Back Down? Never Surrender? How is this for a new slogan: "Hold On!" It's better than "Fold."
The oddest thing about the Ram Challenge reality-ad is the warning that accompanies it: "Chrysler, LLC, Dodge and its Agencies insist that no one attempt to replicate the activity on this site." No, few of us have this kind of budget, even if such "stupid fun" somehow made sense for anyone to want to do.
Perhaps Dodge and its Agencies should go back and look at this Depression-era truck ad also produced at a time when it was equally tough to sell cars. This is back when car companies could look their customer in the eye and speak with some honesty about their products.

Berlin. Sundayadventureclub

2008-06-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

Got to berlin on Friday afternoon. slept a bit, then dinner, then went to Berghein/Panorama. Didnt get in. Weird. It was 3 of us - 2 from UK and 1 German.
Anyways. Went to Tresor. Good night.

Batterieraum - 1st floor:
-Blake Baxter (Tresor Rec. / Los Angeles)
-Mijk van Dijk (http://www.mijkvandijk.de/ / Berlin)
- Sebrok (Paso Music / berlin)

Tresor - the downstairs room:
- Cannibal Cooking Club (CCC / Plausen)
- Kriek (Tresor / Berlin)
- Mack (Tresor / Berlin)

It was supposed to be a tech-house night. It was definitely not. Tresor was playing hard german techno all night. Batterieraum was all about techno and and just a little bit of tech. Sebrok was a revelation. For some reason Sebo K didnt show up and Sebrok filled in and filled in nicely. Turns out that Sebo K was playing at Panorama.

So at 7am, I desided to bow out and my other 2 friends went to Bergheim/Panorama. They said it was amazing. This is the program from there:

Bergheim:
Mathew Johnson.
Len Faki
Marcel Fengler

Panorama:
Jesse Rose
Chris Duckenfield
Sebo K
Sascha Dive
Andre Galluzzi

So after that we got up, got ready for the main event - Sunday Adventure Club at Fritz nightclub. We got in no problem. No line whatsoever. The outside area already had Richie Hawtin plaing. He finished at 9 and everything moved inside into 3 huge rooms of naughtiness.

The line up was this:
Richie Hawtin
Josh Wink
Luciano
Matthew Dear’s Big Hands
Zip
Magda
Marc Houle
Loco Dice
Marco Carola
Guido Schneider
CassyKarotte
Tobi Neumann
Paco Osuna
Troy Pierce
Matt John
Steve Bug
Heartthrob
Konrad Black
Rebekah Aff

Points from the party:

The good:
Zip - a revelation
Loco Dice with Luciano - Great
Heartthrob - Great
Loco Dice with Marco Corola - Great
Luciano and Troy Pierce - Great

The bad:
Richie - bland and tiring
Magda - what the hell is all the hype about?
Mathew Dear - meh.

The ugly - trying to stay awake through the jorney home from Belin.

Definitely would do it again in a second. Come to think of it, I may do this:http://www.extrema.nl/

The original plan for the party was supposed to be 2 rooms, but there were 3 instead so a lot of dj playing together as a random thing - Luciano and Marco or Loco Dice with Troy Pierce. I only listed what was suppose to happen. A lot of stuff got mixed up.

How to survive a disaster

2008-06-11T02:59:00.000-07:00

When a plane crashes or the earth shakes, we tend to view the survivors as the lucky ones. Had they been in the next seat or the apartment across the street, they would have perished. We marvel at the whimsy of the devastation.The recent earthquake in China and the cyclone in Burma, not to mention the battery of tornadoes and wildfires ripping through the U.S. this season, remind us that disasters are part of the human condition. We are more or less vulnerable to them, depending where we live.But survival is not just a product of luck. We can do far more than we think to improve our odds of preventing and surviving even the most horrendous of catastrophes. It's a matter of preparation--bolting down your water heater before an earthquake or actually reading the in-flight safety card before takeoff--but also of mental conditioning. Each of us has what I call a "disaster personality," a state of being that takes over in a crisis. It is at the core of who we are. The fact is, we can refine that personality and teach our brains to work more quickly, maybe even more wisely.Humans are programmed with basic survival skills. When frightened, we get a shot of performance-enhancing hormones, and the blood pumps to our limbs to help us outrun whatever enemy we face. But in modern times, we're hardly aware of such natural skills, and most of us do little to understand or develop them.We could, for example, become far better at judging threats before catastrophe strikes. We have technological advantages that our ancestors lacked, and we know where disasters are likely to occur. And yet we flirt shamelessly with risk. We construct city skylines in hurricane alleys and neighborhoods on top of fault lines--as if nature will be cowed by our audacity and leave us be. And we rely on a sprawling network of faraway suppliers for necessities like warmth and food. If the power cuts off, many of us still don't know where the stairs are in our skyscrapers, and we would have trouble surviving for a week without Wal-Mart. Hurricane season starts June 1, and forecasters predict a worse-than-average summer. But for many of us, preparation means little more than crossing our fingers and hoping to live.Yet the knowledge is out there. Risk experts understand how we could overcome our blind spots and more intelligently hedge our bets. In laboratories and on shooting ranges, there are people who study what happens to bodies and minds under extreme duress. Military researchers conduct elaborate experiments to try to predict who will melt down in a crisis and who will thrive. Police, soldiers, race-car drivers and helicopter pilots train to anticipate the strange behaviors they will encounter at the worst of times. Regular people can learn from that knowledge, since, after all, we will be the first on the scene of any disaster.Of course, no one can promise a plan of escape. But that doesn't mean we should live in willful ignorance. As Hunter S. Thompson said, "Call on God, but row away from the rocks."Over the years, I have interviewed survivors of unimaginable tragedies. Most say that during their ordeals, almost nothing felt, sounded or looked the way they would have expected. Reality was in some ways better, in other ways worse. They say there are things they wish they had known, things they want you to know. Here, then, are three of their stories, accompanied by some of the hard wisdom of loss and luck:Panic Can Be Your FriendWhen disaster strikes, a troubling human response can inflate the death toll: people freeze up. They shut down, becoming suddenly limp and still. That's what happened to some people on Sept. 28, 1994, when the M.V. Estonia went down in the Baltic Sea, the worst sea disaster in modern European history.The huge automobile ferry had left its home port in Tallinn, Estonia, on a routine 15-hour trip to Stockholm. Although the weather had been stormy all night, the crew did not expect serious problems. A band was playing in the Baltic Bar, and the 10-deck vessel churned through the inky waters as it had for 14 years.Kent Härstedt, now a member of Sweden's Parliament, was then a 29-year-old passenger. That night he was hanging out in one of the ship's bars, with about 50 other passengers. "There was karaoke music," he recalls. "Everybody was laughing and singing." But just after 1 a.m., the Estonia suddenly listed starboard 30°, hurling passengers, vending machines and flowerpots across its passageways. In the bar, almost everyone fell violently against the side of the boat. Härstedt managed to grab on to the iron bar railing and hold on, hanging above everyone else."In just one second, everything went from a loud, happy, wonderful moment to total silence. Every brain, I guess, was working like a computer trying to realize what had happened," he says. Then came the screaming and crying. People had been badly hurt in the fall, and the tilt of the ship made it extremely difficult to move.Härstedt began to strategize, tapping into some of the survival skills he had learned in the military. "I started to react very differently from normal. I started to say, 'O.K., there is option one, option two. Decide. Act.' I didn't say, 'Oh, the boat is sinking.' I didn't even think about the wider perspective." Like many survivors, Härstedt experienced the illusion of centrality, a coping mechanism in which the brain fixates on the individual experience. "I just saw my very small world."But as Härstedt made his way into the corridor, he noticed something strange about some of the other passengers. They weren't doing what he was doing. "Some people didn't seem to realize what had happened. They were just sitting there," he says. Not just one or two people, but entire groups seemed to be immobilized. They were conscious, but they were not reacting.Contrary to popular expectations, this is what happens in many disasters. Crowds generally become quiet and docile. Panic is rare. The bigger problem is that people do too little, too slowly. They sometimes shut down completely, falling into a stupor.On the Estonia, Härstedt climbed up the stairwell, fighting against gravity. Out on the deck, the ship's lights were on, and the moon was shining. The full range of human capacities was on display. Incredibly, one man stood to the side, smoking a cigarette, Härstedt remembers. Most people strained to hold on to the rolling ship and, at the same time, to look for life jackets and lifeboats. British passenger Paul Barney remembers groups of people standing still like statues. "I kept saying to myself, 'Why don't they try to get out of here?'" he later told the Observer.Later, when interviewed by the police, some survivors said they understood this behavior. At some point, they too had felt an overwhelming urge to stop moving. They only snapped out of the stupor, they said, by thinking of their loved ones, especially their children--a common thread in the stories of survivors of all kinds of disasters.At 1:50 a.m., just 30 minutes after its first Mayday call, the Estonia vanished, sinking upside down into the sea. Moments before, Härstedt had jumped off the ship. He climbed onto a life raft and held on for five hours, until finally being rescued. All told, only 137 of the 989 people on board survived the disaster. Most of the victims were entombed in the Estonia while they slept. They had no chance to save themselves. Investigators would conclude that the ship sank because the bow door to the car deck had come unlocked and the sea had come gushing into the ship.Firefighters, police trainers--even stockbrokers--have told me similar stories of seeing people freeze under extreme stress. Animals go into the same state when they are trapped, evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. has found. Playing dead can discourage predators from attacking. In the case of the Estonia and other disasters, the freezing response may have been a natural and horrific mistake. Our brains search, under extreme stress, for an appropriate survival response and sometimes choose the wrong one, like deer that freeze in the headlights of a car.But the more encouraging point is that the brain is plastic. It can be trained to respond more appropriately. Less fear makes paralysis less likely. A rat with damage to the amygdala, the primitive part of the brain that handles fear, will not freeze at all--even if it encounters a cat. If we can reduce our own fear even a little bit, we might be able to do better.Fire drills, particularly if they are mandatory and unexpected, can dramatically reduce fear, should the worst come to pass. Just knowing where the stairs are gives your brain an advantage. Likewise, research into plane crashes has found that people who read the safety briefing cards are more likely to survive. These rituals that we consider an utter waste of time actually give our brains blueprints in the unlikely event that we need them.We can also help each other do better. A loud sound will cause animals to snap out of their stupor. Likewise, many flight attendants are now trained to scream at passengers in burning planes, "Get out! Get out! Go!" People respond well to leadership in a disaster, and then they can do remarkable things.We All Have Our Role to PlayEven in the most chaotic moments, our social relationships remain largely intact. That cohesion can have positive and negative consequences, but it helps to know what to expect.On May 28, 1977, one of the deadliest fires in the U.S. broke out at a place called the Beverly Hills Supper Club, a labyrinth of dining rooms, ballrooms, fountains and gardens located on a bluff 5 miles (8 km) south of Cincinnati. Darla McCollister was there. She got married that evening at the gazebo in the garden and then, as her party began to move inside for dinner, a waitress informed her that there was a small fire in the building. It had begun as an electrical fire in the Zebra Room, adjacent to the bride's dressing room. Before the night was out, the flames would tear through the Beverly Hills, led by a roiling advance of smoke. There were nearly 3,000 people packed into the sprawling club on that Saturday night. All told, the fire would kill 167 of them.The disaster delivered many brutal lessons. Some were obvious--and tragic: the club had no sprinkler or audible fire-alarm systems. But the fire also complicated official expectations for crowd behavior: in the middle of a crisis, the basic tenets of civilization actually hold. People move in groups whenever possible. They tend to look out for one another, and they maintain hierarchies. "People die the same way they live," says disaster sociologist Lee Clarke, "with friends, loved ones and colleagues, in communities."At the Beverly Hills, servers warned their tables to leave. Hostesses evacuated people that they had seated but bypassed other sections (that weren't "theirs"). Cooks and busboys, perhaps accustomed to physical work, rushed to fight the fire. In general, male employees were slightly more likely to help than female employees, maybe because society expects women to be saved and men to do the saving.And what of the guests? Most remained guests to the end. Some even continued celebrating, in defiance of the smoke seeping into the rooms. One man ordered a rum and Coke to go. When the first reporter arrived at the fire, he saw guests sipping their cocktails in the driveway, laughing about whether they would get to leave without paying their bills.As the smoke intensified, Wayne Dammert, a banquet captain at the club, stumbled into a hallway jammed with a hundred guests. The lights flickered off and on, and the smoke started to get heavy. But what he remembers most about that crowded hallway is the silence. "Man, there wasn't a sound in there. Not a scream, nothing," he says. Standing there in the dark, the crowd was waiting to be led.The Beverly Hills employees had received no emergency training, but they performed magnificently. The exits were few and hard to find, but Dammert directed the crowd out through a service hallway into the kitchen. "My thought was that I'm responsible for these people," he says. "I think most of the employees felt that way." McCollister, still in her wedding dress, ushered her guests outside. "I was pushing people out the door, kind of like cattle, to show them where to go," she recalls. She felt responsible: "This is my party. They were there because of me."Norris Johnson and William Feinberg, then sociology professors at the University of Cincinnati, managed to get access to the police interviews with hundreds of survivors--a rare and valuable database. "We were just overwhelmed with what was there," says Feinberg, now retired. People were remarkably loyal to their identities. An estimated 60% of the employees tried to help in some way--either by directing guests to safety or fighting the fire. By comparison, only 17% of the guests helped. But even among the guests, identity shaped behavior. The doctors who had been dining at the club acted as doctors, administering cpr and dressing wounds like battlefield medics. Nurses did the same thing. There was even one hospital administrator there who--naturally--began to organize the doctors and nurses.The sociologists expected to see evidence of selfish behavior. But they did not. "People kept talking about the orderliness of it all," says Feinberg. "People used what they had learned in grade-school fire drills. 'Stay in line. Don't push. We'll all get out.' People were queuing up! It was just absolutely incredible."All of us, but especially people in charge--of a city, a theater, a business--should recognize that people can be trusted to do their best at the worst of times. They will do even better if they are encouraged to play a significant role in their own survival before anything goes wrong. In New York City, despite the pleas of safety engineers, meaningful fire drills are still not mandatory in skyscrapers. Among other concerns, the city's Real Estate Board was worried that mandatory drills could lead to injuries that could lead to lawsuits. A lawsuit, then, is more frightening than a catastrophe, which is a shame. Because if a real disaster should come to pass, people will rise to the expectations set by their CEO or headwaiter, and they will follow their leader almost anywhere.How One Person Made a DifferenceIn every disaster, buried under the rubble is evidence that we can do better. Much of that work is physical--building stronger buildings in safer places, for example. But the work is also psychological. The more control people feel they have over their predicament, the better their performance. When people believe that survival is negotiable, they can be wonderfully creative. All it takes is the audacity to imagine that our behavior matters.When the planes struck the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Rick Rescorla embodied that spirit of survival. The head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter at the World Trade Center, Rescorla believed that regular people were capable of great achievements, with a bit of leadership. He got Morgan Stanley employees to take responsibility for their survival--which happened almost nowhere else that day in the Trade Center.Rescorla learned many of the tricks of survival in the military. He was one of those thick-necked soldier types who spend the second halves of their lives patrolling the perimeters of marble lobbies the way they once patrolled a battlefield. Born in England, he joined the U.S. military because he wanted to fight the communists in Vietnam. When he got there, he earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in battles memorialized in the 1992 book by Lieut. General Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young.He eventually moved to New Jersey and settled into the life of a security executive, but Rescorla still acted, in some ways, like a man at war. His unit, Morgan Stanley, occupied 22 floors of Tower 2 and several floors in a nearby building. After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Rescorla worried about a terrorist attack on the Trade Center. In 1990, he and an old war buddy wrote a report to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site, insisting on the need for more security in the parking garage. Their recommendations, which would have been expensive, were ignored, according to James B. Stewart's biography of Rescorla, Heart of a Soldier. (The Port Authority did not respond to my requests for comment.)Three years later, Ramzi Yousef drove a truck full of explosives into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center, just as Rescorla had predicted. Afterward, Rescorla had the credibility he needed. Combined with his muscular personality, it was enough to change the culture of Morgan Stanley.Rescorla implicitly understood that he could turn office workers into survivors. He respected the ability of regular people to do better. He understood the danger of lethargy, the importance of aggressively pushing through the initial stupor and getting to action. He had watched employees wind down the staircase in 1993, and he knew it took too long.Rescorla felt it was foolish to rely on first responders to save his employees. His company was the largest tenant in the Trade Center, a village nestled in the clouds. Morgan Stanley's employees would need to take care of one another. He ordered them not to listen to any instructions from the Port Authority in a real emergency. In his eyes, it had lost all legitimacy after it failed to respond to his 1990 warnings. And so Rescorla started running the entire company through his own frequent, surprise fire drills. He trained employees to meet in the hallway between the stairwells and go down the stairs, two by two, to the 44th floor.The radicalism of Rescorla's drills cannot be overstated. Remember, Morgan Stanley is an investment bank. Millionaire, high-performance bankers on the 73rd floor did not appreciate the interruption. Each drill, which pulled brokers off their phones and away from their computers, cost the company money. But Rescorla did it anyway. His military training had taught him a simple rule of human nature: the best way to get the brain to perform under extreme stress is to repeatedly run it through rehearsals beforehand.After the first few drills, Rescorla chastised employees for moving too slowly in the stairwell. He started timing them with a stopwatch, and they got faster. He also lectured employees about some of the basics of fire emergencies: Because roof rescues are rare and extremely dangerous, people should always go down.On the morning of 9/11, Rescorla heard an explosion and saw Tower 1 burning from his office window. A Port Authority official came over the P.A. system and urged people to stay at their desks. But Rescorla grabbed his bullhorn, walkie-talkie and cell phone and began systematically ordering Morgan Stanley employees to get out. They performed beautifully.They already knew what to do, even the 250 visitors taking a stockbroker training class. They had already been shown the nearest stairway. "Knowing where to go was the most important thing. Because your brain--at least mine--just shut down. When that happens, you need to know what to do next," says Bill McMahon, a Morgan Stanley executive. "One thing you don't ever want to do is to have to think in a disaster."On 9/11, some of the dead might well have survived if they had received Rescorla's warnings to always go down rather than up. But in the absence of other information, some people remembered that victims had been evacuated from the roof in 1993. So they used the last minutes of their lives to climb to the top of the towers--only to find the doors locked.As Rescorla stood directing people down the stairwell on the 44th floor, the second plane hit--this time striking about 38 floors above his head. The building lunged violently, and some people were thrown to the floor. "Stop," Rescorla ordered through the bullhorn. "Be still. Be silent. Be calm." In response, "No one spoke or moved," Stewart writes. "It was as if Rescorla had cast a spell."Rescorla had once led soldiers through the night in the Vietcong-controlled Central Highlands of Vietnam. He knew the brain responded poorly to fear--but he also knew it could be distracted. Back then, he had calmed his men by singing Cornish songs from his youth. Now, in the crowded stairwell, Rescorla sang into the bullhorn. "Men of Cornwall stand ye steady. It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready. Stand and never yield!"Between songs, Rescorla called his wife. "Stop crying," he said. "I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." Moments later, he had successfully evacuated the vast majority of Morgan Stanley employees. Then he turned around. He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the tower collapsed. His remains have never been found.Rescorla taught Morgan Stanley employees to save themselves. It's a lesson that has become, somehow, rare and precious. When the tower collapsed, only 13 Morgan Stanley colleagues--including Rescorla and four of his security officers--were inside. The other 2,687 were safe.

Rules for guys to live by......

2008-06-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

* You should never have to match your socks, other than to separate black from white; buy 18 pairs of identical socks in each color and throw them all out every six months.

* Pants with pleats get cuffs; pants without, do not.

* Avoid large faced watches if you have thin wrists.

* Sunglasses may only be worn indoors after 1 a.m.

* Carry around those small bottles of hand sanitizer and use some before you eat.

* Business casual was invented to prevent younger people from dressing better than their bosses. Rebel and wear a suit or jeans.

* If you need to put stuff in your hair to add shine or hold, you are washing your hair too often.

* Yes, you do have to floss.

* If you are handling a small baggy in a bathroom stall, face away from the open toilet and you will never drop it in there.

* When a friend calls after a drunken night, never say, “You were so funny.”

* Avoid staying out past midnight three nights in a row.

* You can ignore the three-night rule if something really good comes up on the third night.

* You will regret your tattoos.

* If you wear a baseball cap in bars, the girls will suspect you are bald.

* Go to more baseball games.

* Time is too short to do your own laundry.

* When the bartender asks, you should already know what you are ordering.

* Learn how to speak before groups.

* An undershirt will prevent you from perspiring through your overshirt.

* Yes, you do have to go to the gym.* Complaining about other people smoking makes you an ass.

* Stop talking about where you went to college.

* When people don’t invite you to parties, you really shouldn’t go.

* Sometimes even when you are invited, you shouldn’t go.

* You can ignore those rules about parties if it is a really, really good party.

* Drink plenty of coffee.

* People are tired of you being the funny, drunk guy.

* When in doubt, always kiss the girl.

* Tip more than you should.

* If a book is too big to carry around comfortably, cut it up and carry the pages you can read.

* Yes, you do have to have your shoes shined.

* It’s okay to arrive late.

* You probably use your cell phone too often and at the wrong moments.

* Do not spend very much money on sunglasses or umbrellas. You will lose them quickly.

* Do thirty-push ups before you shower each morning.

* Eat brunch with friends every other weekend.

* Be a regular at a bar.

* Read more.

* And not just biographies.

* If her friends hate you, it’s over.

* A glass of wine with lunch will not ruin your day.

* It’s better if old men cut your hair.

* They should charge less than $20.

* If you smoke pot, you probably smoke too much.

* Learn how to fly-fish.

* Ask for a salad instead of fries.

* Pretty women who are unaccompanied want you to talk to them. Ask someone for an introduction.

* You cannot always make amends with people.

* Buy furniture that you think is too small for your apartment. It isn’t.

* Cobblers will save your shoes.

* Figure out what kind of knot you like in your ties and stick with it.

* The first round of drinks is on you.

* When a bartender buys you a round, tip double.

* Hang your clothes up when you take them off.

* Except sweaters. Those get folded.

* Piercings are liabilities in fights.

* You’ll regret much more the things you didn’t do than the things you did.

* Do not buy the product insurance.

* Except for mobile phones. Always insure the phone.

* Celebrate mothers on Father’s Day, and father’s on Mother’s Day.

* You may remove your jacket and roll up your sleeves. The tie may not be loosened.

* It’s not that you’re unphotogenic. That’s just how you look.

* Do not use an electric razor.

* Deserts are for women. Order one and pretend you don’t mind that she’s eating yours.

* Keep rugs and carpets to a minimum.

* Carry a pocket knife.

* Buy a tuxedo before you are thirty. Stay that size.

* Subscribe to a small-circulation magazine.

* It should have a cork-screw. The knife. Not the magazine.

* One girlfriend is probably enough.

* After one day of hanging, your tie should be rolled and placed in a drawer.

* People will dance if the music is loud enough and the lights are dim enough. You should too.

* Throw parties.

* But don’t clean up during or after your party. Hire someone else to come do that the next day, which you’ll be spending somewhere else.

* You may only request one song from the DJ.

* Take pictures. One day it will be fun to laugh at them.

* When you admire the work of artists or writers, tell them.

* And spend money to acquire their work.

* Sleep outdoors when you can.

* Your clothes do not match. They go together.

* Yes, you do have to buy her dinner.

* Staying angry is a waste of energy.

* Revenge can be a good way of getting over anger.

* Go to the theater.

* Always bring a bottle of something to the party.

* Ask cab drivers not to speak on the phone.

* When the bouncer says it’s time for you to leave, it is.

* Do not make a second date while you are still on your first.

* Avoid the “last” glass of whiskey. You’ve probably had enough.

* If you are wittier than you are handsome, avoid very loud clubs.

* Drink outdoors.

* Drink during the day.

* Date women outside your social set. You’ll be surprised.

* If it’s got velvet ropes and lines, walk away unless you know someone.

* You should probably walk away anyway.

* See more bands than you have been.

* You cannot have a love affair with whiskey because whiskey will never love you back.

* Place-dropping is worse than name dropping.

* The New Yorker is not a high-brow magazine.

* You aren’t really a great DJ. Those people are dancing because they are drunk.

* Don’t let that discourage you. If they’re having fun, you are doing your job.

* If you believe in evolution, you should know something about how it works.

* No-one cares if you are offended, so stop it.

* Eating out alone can be magnificent. Find a place where you can eat at the bar.

* Get out of the city every now and then. The parties you miss won’t miss you. And you won’t really miss them either.

* Never date an ex of your friend.

2008-05-17T20:03:00.001-07:00

When are women going to learn that man flu, really is a lot worse then any kind of sissy girly flu they might have had in the past!

A manly runny nose is in fact worse then child birth, and when combined with a nasty cough is like giving kryptonite to superman! Although the symptoms may appear on the surface to be like any other strain of flu, I can assure you that man flu is like flu extra strength “now with added mucus”. It’s nothing like the common cold; it doesn’t even bear relation to the regular influenza. And should be reclassified as such! This is a class A; viral, we are not putting it on, or acting up for attention! We are at war with the beast, and are doing everything in are power to prevent more innocent men being infected with it! So that’s why we refuse to move, and going out of the house is out of the question!

Getting the most out of your man flu,

1, sighing, it’s important to sigh as loudly and as often as possible, this not only is away of forcibly expelling your germs a greater distance, but also has a satisfying sound. This can also help raise the sympathy stakes

2, runny nose, this feature should be welcomed, as it’s not only is it a visible sign of illness, its away of making wiping your nose on your sleeve, acceptable (use it while u can) plus with practice you can create huge snot bubbles from your nose

3, coughing, the tickler the cough, the better. Nobody wants to waste there time with some sissy single cough, not when u can have whole coughing fits that can be used in conjunction with sighs for extra effect (see tip1) Remember after coughing, if your eyes are not watering, you didn’t do it right!

4, sleeping, while the actually act of sleeping is useful for gaining a little extra energy, its not actually worth doing unless u can combine it with any of the above symptoms. Your better of sprawling across the couch, with a quilt wrapped round you. This way nobody will have time to forget how ill you are, and the TV remote control is still firmly yours!

5, alcohol, not that any real man needs an excuse to consume hard licker before breakfast, Its nice to have a whole arsenal of old wives tales and urban myths relating to how drinking can help relive the above symptoms. Use it while you can, hot toddies, Irish coffee’s, and straight shots of the hard stuff are all acceptable as traditional remidys. Dont let that stop you making up storys regarding tequila's remarkable healing properties

6, tissues, although not totally needed during this near death experience, they can provide some entertainment. Seeing how far you can throw the snot filled balls, and then seeing others struggling to pick them up without touching any of your free flowing nastiness. At this point you can use the now perfected sighing to deflect any evil looks that might be given to you by your offical carer. note: only man flu can create huge mountains of used tissues from one small box.

So now you have no excuse not to get the sympathy you deserve!.. Girls ringing your friends and relatives up and announcing we only have a cold, is not only dangerous to other male visitors, it’s a complete lie! I don’t know who you think you’re helping by committing such crimes!

Choose your life

2008-05-17T19:58:00.001-07:00

Choose chav
Choose wearing your collar turned up high. Choose balancing your cap on the very top of your head. Choose hoodies. Choose wearing every piece of jewellery you have at all times, making sure as much as possible is visible by hanging your cheap chains on the outside of your t-shirts. Choose buying your clothes from a man on the estate. Choose talking with Jamaican or American accent depending on your taste. Choose smoking cheap weed on street corners. Choose to swing your arms when you walk in an effort to make yourself look bigger. Choose stealing cider from the local shop. Choose to tuck your jogging bottoms in to your socks or rolling one leg up. Choose buying the exact same things as everyone else in your group. Choose social disorder. Choose benefit fraud. Choose believing that knowing all the words to the latest Eminem album is better than knowing the alphabet. Choose dirty looks and losing fights in pubs. Choose visiting cash converter’s twice a week. Choose fake or stolen designer clothing (or by the time it gets to your estate stolen fakes).

Choose Goth
Choose wearing black clothing. Choose hanging chains from your pockets. Choose burning candles while writing down how much the world hates you and you hate it. Choose listening to dark music with virtually no understandable words. Choose painting your lips and nails black. Choose avoiding the sun. Choose sitting in a darkened room, walking around with your head down and sighing at every given opportunity. Choose smoking Marlboro Reds, while wearing pants that have the legs strapped together by tethers. Choose crying in your closet where nobody can see you because you think nobody understands you. Choose listing to the most out dated music you can find and believing that people don’t like it coz its to hardcore for them, Not because its utter shit!

Choose geek
Choose dungeons and dragons and star trek. Choose IRC. ÇHöö§Ë måkîñg üþ ¥öü® öwñ üßË® |ËËt Hå×ö® §þËËk. Choose comic books, mint limited editions. Choose Linux. Choose UNIX. Choose any nix. Choose Warcraft 1. Choose asthma. Choose random spouts of hyperactivity 0MFUG!1!! L0L!!!!1111!1shift111!!one11!!!! Choose pwning your foe. Choose watching Star Wars movies in you perants basement untill your 50. Choose chronic masturbation.Choose being really anal about the slightest detail in the most pointless of subjects.

Notes: Of course these are just high exaggerated stereo types, but we all know whot they are. For are US viewers a chav I guess is a cross between trailer park trash and wiggers. Goths can come in many forms some more extreme then others, but all from the same bloodline. Geeks…. Err we all know what a geek is!

Something you didn't know about New Yorkers.

2008-05-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

In my experience, many people believe that New Yorkers are smarter than other Americans, and this may actually be true. The majority of people who live in New York City were not born here. Indeed, more than a third were not born in the United States. New Yorkers, then, are people who left another place and came here, looking for something, which suggests that the population is preselected for higher energy and ambition.
Also for a willingness to forgo basic comforts. Compare that with California, where even middle-income people have a patio on which they can eat breakfast and where almost everyone has a car. In New York, only upper-income people enjoy those amenities. The others would like to share them. I sometimes get into conversations with taxi drivers, and since most of them are new to the city, I often ask them what they miss about the place they came from. Almost always, they name very ordinary pleasures: a slower pace of life, a café where they could sit around and talk to friends, a street where they could play kickball without getting run over. Those who miss these things enough will go back home. That means that the rest of us, statistically, are more high-strung, hungry and intent on long-term gains—traits that quite possibly correlate with intelligence.
But I think it's also possible that New Yorkers just appear smarter, because they make less separation between private and public life. That is, they act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising and that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze, making them seem empty-headed. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this. That may be because so many of them grew up outside the United States, and also because they live so much of their lives in public, eating their lunches in parks, riding to work in subways. It's hard to keep up the smiley face for that many hours a day.
It is said that New Yorkers are rude, but I think what people mean by that is that New Yorkers are more familiar. The man who waits on you in the delicatessen is likely to call you sweetheart. (Feminists have gotten used to this.) People on the bus will say, "I have the same handbag as you. How much did you pay?" If they don't like the way you are treating your children, they will tell you. And should you try to cut in front of somebody in the grocery store checkout line, you will be swiftly corrected. My mother, who lives in California, doesn't like to be kept waiting, so when she goes into the bank, she says to the people in the line, "Oh, I have just one little thing to ask the teller. Do you mind?" Then she scoots to the front of the line, takes the next teller and transacts her business, which is typically no briefer than anyone else's. People let her do this because she is an old lady. In New York, she wouldn't get away with it for a second.
While New Yorkers don't mind correcting you, they also want to help you. In the subway or on the sidewalk, when someone asks a passerby for directions, other people, overhearing, may hover nearby, disappointed that they were not the ones asked, and waiting to see if maybe they can get a word in. New Yorkers like to be experts. Actually, all people like to be experts, but most of them satisfy this need with friends and children and employees. New Yorkers, once again, tend to behave with strangers the way they do with people they know.
This injects a certain drama into our public life. The other day I was in the post office when a man in line in front of me bought one of those U.S. Postal Service boxes. Then he moved down the counter a few inches to assemble his package while the clerk waited on the next person. But the man soon discovered that the books he wanted to mail were going to rattle around in the box, so he interrupted the clerk to tell her his problem. She offered to sell him a roll of bubble wrap, but he told her that he had already paid $2.79 for the box, and that was a lot for a box—he could have gotten a box for free at the liquor store—and what was he going to do with a whole roll of bubble wrap? Carry it around all day? The clerk shrugged. Then the man spotted a copy of the Village Voice on the counter and laid hold of it to use it for stuffing. "No!" said the clerk. "That's my Voice." Annoyed, the man put it back and looked around helplessly. Now a woman in line behind me said she'd give him the sections of her New York Times that she didn't want, and she began going through the paper. "Real estate? You can have real estate. Sports? Here, take sports." But the real estate section was all the man needed. He separated the pages, stuffed them in the box and proceeded to the taping process (interrupting the clerk once again). Another man in line asked the woman if he could have the sports section, since she didn't want it. She gave it to him, and so finally everything was settled.
This was an interesting show, to which you could have a wide range of reactions. Why didn't the box man bring some stuffing? If the clerk hadn't finished her Village Voice, why did she leave it on the counter? And so on. In any case, the scene sufficed to fill up those boring minutes in line—or, I should add, to annoy the people who just wanted to read their newspaper in peace instead of being exposed to the man's postal adventure. I won't say this could happen only in New York, but I believe that the probability is much greater here.
Why are New Yorkers like this? It goes against psychological principles. Psychologists tell us that the more stimuli people are bombarded with, the more they will recede into themselves and ignore others. So why is it that New Yorkers, who are certainly confronted with enough stimuli, do the opposite? I have already given a few possible answers, but here's one more: the special difficulties of life in New York—the small apartments, the struggle for a seat on the bus or a table at a restaurant—seem to breed a sense of common cause. When New Yorkers see a stranger, they don't think, "I don't know you." They think, "I know you. I know your problems—they're the same as mine—and furthermore we have the same handbag." So that's how they treat you.
This belief in a shared plight may underlie the remarkable level of cooperation that New Yorkers can show in times of trouble. Every few years or so, we have a water shortage, and then the mayor goes on the radio and tells us that we can't leave the water running in the sink while we're brushing our teeth. Surprise! People obey, and the water table goes up again. The more serious the problem, the more dramatic the displays of cooperation. I will not speak of the World Trade Center disaster, because it is too large a subject, but the last time we had a citywide power failure, and hence no traffic lights, I saw men in business suits—they looked like lawyers—directing traffic at busy intersections on Ninth Avenue. They got to be traffic cops for a day and tell the big trucks when to stop and when to go. They looked utterly delighted.
Another curious form of cooperation one sees in New York is the unspoken ban on staring at celebrities. When you get into an elevator in an office building and find that you are riding with Paul McCartney—this happened to me—you are not supposed to look at him. You can peek for a second, but then you must avert your eyes. The idea is that Paul McCartney has to be given his space like anyone else. A limousine can bring him to the building he wants to go to, but it can't take him to the 12th floor. To get there, he has to ride in an elevator with the rest of us, and we shouldn't take advantage of that. This logic is self-flattering. It's nice to think that Paul McCartney needs us to do him a favor, and that we live in a city with so many famous people that we can afford to ignore them. But if vanity is involved, so is generosity. I remember, once, in the early '90s, standing in a crowded lobby at City Center Theater when Martin Scorsesy walked in. Everyone looked at him and then immediately looked down. There was a whole mob of people staring at their shoes. I was glad that we had been polite to him.
Of course, the rule with celebrities, which forbids involvement, is different from the other expressions of common cause, which dictate involvement. And since few of us are celebrities, the latter are far more numerous. As a result, New Yorkers, however kind and generous, may also come off as opinionated and intrusive. Living with them is a little like being a child again and having your mother with you all the time, helping you, correcting you, butting into your business. And that, I believe, is another reason why New Yorkers seem smarter. Your mother knew better, too, right?

Your money at work

2008-05-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

1. In Seattle, a fifty-six-year old man died last Thursday after being refused a liver transplant because he had followed his doctor's recommendation to use marijuana to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C. From the Associated Press story:
His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class…
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.
At some, people who use “illicit substances”—including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it—are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months.
The cruelty and stupidity of this beggars belief. This patient did not need “drug treatment.” He was already undergoing drug treatment. Nor did he need to get “clean.” He was already clean. It’s the drug war that’s dirty. (H/t: John Leone.)
2. Until about a week ago, Marie Day Walsh was a hyper-respectable fifty-three-year-old housewife living in suburban comfort in Del Mar, California, near San Diego, with her husband of twenty-three years. They have two grown daughters and another still in high school. Then came a knock on the door. She was arrested and carted off to jail.
The back story: In 1975, when she was a nineteen-year-old hippie in Saginaw, Michigan, and her name was Susan LeFevre, she got arrested for peripheral involvement in a heroin deal. While awaiting trial, she took college courses. Hoping for mercy, she pleaded guilty. The judge, full of righteous wrath, sentenced her to ten to twenty years in prison. After a year or so, she walked away from a prison work site, escaping as she had offended: nonviolently. She had never been in trouble before and has never been in trouble since. Now she will probably be extradited to Michigan and imprisoned until she is in her sixties. Take a look at her and see if you think she is a menace to society - http://www.knbc.com/news/16082632/detail.html.
3. Two years ago, a large-scale study by Dr. Donald Tashkin, of U.C.L.A., a pulmonologist whose previous studies of marijuana had been used by drug-enforcement authorities to support their view that pot is dangerous, unexpectedly concluded that there is no connection between marijuana smoking and lung cancer, even among heavy pot smokers, which he defined as people who had smoked more than twenty-two thousand joints, i.e., a joint a day for sixty years. The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, further suggested that pot might actually have some preventive effect.
The story didn’t get a lot of publicity, though the Washington Post did run a story on page A3 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html?nav=hcmodule). It will not surprise you to learn that it has had no effect on the nation’s drug “policies.”
Dr. Tashkin reiterated his findings last month before an audience of doctors and nurses. According to Fred Gardner's detailed report (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html?nav=hcmodule),
Tashkin and his colleagues at U.C.L.A. conducted a major study in which they measured the lung function of various cohorts for eight years and found that tobacco-only smokers had an accelerated rate of decline, but marijuana smokers—even if they smoked tobacco as well—experienced the same rate of decline as non-smokers. “The more tobacco smoked, the greater the rate of decline,” said Tashkin. “In contrast, no matter how much marijuana was smoked, the rate of decline was similar to normal.” Tashkin concluded that his and other studies “do not support the concept that regular smoking of marijuana leads to COPD [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease].”
On the other hand, imprisonment, disqualification for organ transplants, and the activities of the federal drug harassment industry remain hazardous to your health.

Put young children on DNA list, urge police

2008-03-23T14:37:00.001-07:00

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database - the largest in Europe - but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. 'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to an excerpt from a 'science fiction novel'. One teaching union warned that it was a step towards a 'police state'.

Pugh's call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a 'negative' way.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any plan to target youngsters. 'Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science fiction novels,' she said. 'The British public is highly respectful of the police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our innocent kids is a step too far.'

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers' Association, said most teachers and parents would find the suggestion an 'anathema' and potentially very dangerous. 'It could be seen as a step towards a police state,' he said. 'It is condemning them at a very young age to something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.'

Davis admitted that most teachers could identify children who 'had the potential to have a more challenging adult life', but said it was the job of teachers to support them.

Pugh, though, believes that measures to identify criminals early would save the economy huge sums - violent crime alone costs the UK £13bn a year - and significantly reduce the number of offences committed. However, he said the British public needed to move away from regarding anyone on the DNA database as a criminal and accepted it was an emotional issue.

'Fingerprints, somehow, are far less contentious,' he said. 'We have children giving their fingerprints when they are borrowing books from a library.'

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent.

Concern over the issue of civil liberties will be further amplified by news yesterday that commuters using Oyster smart cards could have their movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.e

2008-02-29T02:10:00.000-08:00

Having spent more time lately in the U.S., one thing has become abundantly clear - Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is the nastiest beverage ever created. If ever there was a product that proved that American ingenuity is dead, it's Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi.

My theory on how Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi was created is that someone was wandering the desert in the Southwest, stumbled across an ancient spittoon, took the ingredients from said spittoon, re-liquefied it, added a tiny amount of carbonation, and then started selling it.

If Rocky 6 was a carbonated beverage, it would be Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi -- all preachy yet hard to understand, stupid and in bad taste.

If you haven't tasted Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, but would like an idea of what it tastes like, do this - keep a straw in your pocket and wander around outside until you find a pigeon or squirrel that's been dead for, oh, say three months. Stick the straw into the dead animal and suck. Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi tastes like that, except worse. Plus, the taste lingers in your mouth for months. And gradually gets worse until it's like your mouth was invaded by the notoriously rare and deadly Asian Shit Ant.

What gets me is that they had high-paid executives sitting around a table, drinking this dreck and all nodding approvingly, "Oh yes, this is what America wants, a 'light, crisp, refreshing' beverage that tastes like Cheney sputum."

You want to defeat terrorists? Force them to drink Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi. I'm sure it would violate the Geneva Conventions, but they'd immediately tell you anything they knew, then hang themselves. Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is torture in a 12-oz can.

I'm not an extremist. Really. I don't believe immigration will destroy the U.S. I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don't believe a group of guys hiding in caves will emerge and force us all to live under sharia law. I don't believe that allowing same-sex couples to marry will eventually lead to men marrying the rare and deadly Asian Shit Ant.

But having tasted Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi once, I'm certain that the end of civilization is about three weeks away. Even the irritating gold, white, red, blue and black can should be enough to tell you that.

But hey, don't take my word for it, go ahead and find a way to get a free sample of the stuff (if you pay for it, you'll just encourage the folks at Pepsi to make more). You'll quickly see that I speak the truth: Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is the worst tasting thing on this, and very likely any other, planet.

Go to sleep, America! Your government is in control!

2008-01-18T02:23:00.000-08:00

White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes From 2001 to 2003

Is noone else surprised?

E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were "recycled," the White House's chief information officer said in a court filing this week.

During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed.

From 2001 to October 2003, the White House's practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. "We are continuing to analyze our systems," Fratto said last night.

The court filing said tapes were recycled before October 2003, and at that point, the White House "began preserving and storing all backup tapes."

Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record, and some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed.

"There certainly could have been hugely important materials there . . . and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public," said presidential historian and author Robert Dallek. "Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here. I hope we'll get an investigation."

The White House's electronic record-keeping system has been under scrutiny for months by congressional Democrats and is the subject of several lawsuits, one of which prompted the latest disclosures. The administration has previously acknowledged problems with the White House archiving system, but until Tuesday had not disclosed its practice of recycling backup tapes before 2003.

Although the White House said in the filing that its practice of recording over the tapes ceased after October 2003, it added that even some e-mails transmitted through the end of 2005 might not have been fully preserved. "At this stage, this office does not know" whether additional e-mails are missing, said the affidavit filed minutes before a court-ordered deadline of midnight Tuesday night by Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the White House Office of Administration.

The White House disclosure was filed with the D.C. District Court in response to a lawsuit filed by two advocacy groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, which alleged that millions of e-mail messages sent between 2003 and 2005 are missing from White House servers.

CREW filed the lawsuit after a confidential informant asserted that an undisclosed study by the White House Office of Administration concluded that e-mails involving certain officials were missing from particular days in that period. The lawsuit was primarily meant to force the White House to release a copy of the study.

Payton's affidavit confirmed that a chart prepared by an official whom she did not name "appears to have concluded" that White House records contain no e-mails from certain days or a "lower-than-expected" number on certain days. She said her office has "so far been unable to replicate its results or affirm the correctness of the assumptions underlying it."

Accordingly, she said, "this office has serious reservations about the reliability" of the study. A new study of the matter is underway, Payton said.

Since the controversy arose, the White House has acknowledged that some of its e-mails may be missing but that it is unsure how many because officials are still investigating possible "anomalies" in the records. Payton said in her affidavit that the recycling of backup tapes was "consistent with industry best practices related to tape media management."

Payton, who said she oversees the computer system relied on by 3,000 "users and customers" in the presidential and vice presidential offices, said the backup tape system was created to preserve records in case of a disaster. She did not cite any other federal agencies subject to records preservation requirements that routinely recycle such tapes.

Anne L. Weismann, chief counsel for the ethics group, said the disclosure raises new questions about the Bush administration's management of public records. "They didn't have what any archival person would consider to be an electronic record-keeping system," Weismann said. "These are not the steps of a White House committed to preserving records or meeting its obligations under the law."

Fratto criticized the plaintiffs for making "inflammatory" accusations. He said that "I don't know what the specific reason was" for changing the tape retention routine in October 2003, but he noted "that was around the time of" the Plame investigation, when the White House was told to produce internal e-mails relevant to the probe. He also emphasized that for the period after October 2003, White House "technical people cannot conclude based on that document that any e-mails are missing."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the National Archives in a letter last month that White House officials had told his investigators they found "numerous days with few or no emails for certain White House components" during a 2005 review of White House computer servers.

"More than two years after this problem was first discovered by White House staff," Waxman said, "the White House still has not identified the cause of the problem, determined the volume of emails lost, or developed a plan for restoring those emails that were lost."

In a related controversy, House investigators have determined that hundreds of thousands of e-mails from former presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House aides are missing because they were sent using external accounts set up by the Republican National Committee.

While my guitar gently weeps.....

2008-01-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

When the credit squeeze struck last summer, the widespread view on Wall Street and in the City of London was that the five-year boom in investment banking bonuses had come to an end. If large banks had suffered losses, it seemed logical that their highly-paid employees would share the pain. The reality is likely to be more complicated. Though several institutions have not yet reported their results, it increasingly looks as if the bonus pot shared between employees of the world's largest investment banks will be larger than ever before.

Even though several bulge bracket banks have suffered catastrophic losses on investments linked to the US subprime mortgage crisis, many parts of their business enjoyed a record year in 2007. Moreover, not all banks have been equally affected. This has produced some surprising results. Take Morgan Stanley, for example. Despite reporting a huge fourth-quarter loss and raising $5bn in new equity from a Chinese state investment fund, the US bank paid out $16.6bn in compensation last year - an increase of 18 per cent. This pushed the ratio of compensation to revenues - a closely watched measure of cost discipline - to 59 per cent for the year. Most investment banks aim for a ratio below 50 per cent.

But Morgan Stanley is unlikely to be alone. Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which are both due to report fourth-quarter results this week and have both been forced to seek fresh capital, face a similar dilemma, as does UBS, which is due to inform staff of bonuses later this month. The problem is not just about how to reward good performers in spite of scarce financial resources. Uncertainty over the economic outlook also makes it hard for banks to predict which business areas will be active this year, and therefore which staff they need to keep happy. Some parts of the industry, such as the structured finance desks that created complex fixed-income securities, have been scaled back. But in other areas, such as commodities, banks are still looking to expand and human capital remains scarce.

"The major risk to our business is people. For each vacant seat there are probably only around five people out there who could do it. We're hoping [rival] banks screw up and underpay this year, which could make it easier for us to hire," says the head of commodities at one European investment bank. The challenge is reflected in the variety of ways in which banks have tackled the problem. At one end of the spectrum are those institutions - such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers - that have escaped large losses in the fixed-income business. For them, the bonus round has been almost business as usual, with top performers well rewarded. Those identified as poor performers will have received little or no bonus - a bank's way of suggesting they should start looking for another job if they do not want to be ignominiously presented with a bin bag and told to clear their desk.

Even so, the slowdown in corporate activity and the weakness in the bond markets has curtailed overall rewards even at the healthier institutions. At Lehman, for example, individuals whose contribution was up 10 times would have seen their bonuses rise about seven times, according to a person familiar with its compensation policy this year. That helped to soften the blow for talented individuals who happen to work in the slower areas of the bank. So a valued employee whose contribution was 10 times less last year might have seen his or her bonus fall only four times.

Merrill's compensation ratio - pay and benefits as a percentage of net revenues - is expected to rise to more than 70 per cent as it seeks to cushion key staff from feeling the pain of the bank's losses. Some observers believe it could exceed 100 per cent if the bank reveals fresh losses on subprime securities. Merrill is believed to have increased its bonus pool for its investment banking division, although not by as much as its revenue contribution rose last year. It is thought to have been brutal with its fixed income division, including staff not directly responsible for losses. UBS, meanwhile, has taken the controversial decision to cap cash bonuses and make up the difference with shares. Executives argue that the bank's depressed share price makes this more attractive than in other years. Nevertheless, UBS's rivals are expecting a rash of senior defections in the next few months.

Coming after a year of losses, it seems odd that so many should be receiving large bonuses. Wall Street's apparent largesse to its staff is hard to square with senior bankers' expectations. Most predict that revenues derived from the US will be flat to down, with Europe flat at best. Growth is being pencilled in only in Asia. Yet even if the investment banks are behaving rationally in attempting to hang on to staff, this year's bonus round is bound to be controversial. The prospect of institutions whose behaviour helped create the current financial crisis continuing to reward its staff lavishly is likely to add to pressure on banks fundamentally to rethink their compensation structures. The crisis has revived the debate about whether investment banking bonuses encourage excessive risk-taking. This argument suggests that traders have a huge incentive to pile on risks because the rewards for success - a large bonus - are much greater than the consequences of failure, which is unemployment.

Writing in the FT last week, Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, argued that banks should claw back payments to risk-takers who cream bonuses in good years but whose actions sow the seeds for large future losses. It is an idea that appeals to investment bank managers and is being taken up by some institutions. For example, Credit Suisse each year holds back some of what it pays its proprietary traders, who take risks with the bank's capital. If the traders do well again the following year, the retained bonus is released, plus an extra reward. But if their strategy blows up, they lose the retained part of the bonus.

However, investment banking executives insist the scope for such schemes is limited by intense competition for talented traders, particularly from hedge funds, where the rewards for success can be even greater. They also argue that the current crisis was largely caused by other factors, such as poor risk management and a lack of discipline with capital. "There is an assumption that compensation was the cause of the crisis and I don't think that was the case," says one senior executive. "It is a very competitive market and we don't believe we can change the system."

This is scant consolation to shareholders in investment banks, who are effectively subsidising the payout. Their only consolation is that if the broader business slows down this year, as expected, it will be some time before the bonuses reach such heights again.

Oh what a wonderful worls it would be....

2008-01-07T01:38:00.000-08:00

I hate the TSA. I don't want to be blown up on a plane, but the security theater is just ridiculous. In my head, I sometimes play a small 16mm film where a pure white background, similar to THX-1138, is presented.

In the future..

[calming flute music plays]

United States Department of Edutainment presents:
JILL RIDES AN AIRPLANE!
FASCO Films Department: (c) 2015

Jill is 23. She is going to fly from Newark, New Jersey to Los Angeles to see her grandmother, whom she hasn't seen since she was 11.

A few months ago, Jill had to go to her state-approved physician to apply for a Right to Fly exam (a FASCO class C exam). She had to submit blood tests and take a basic psychological profile exam (30 minutes of 500 questions). Her doctor passed her, and she was able to apply to the Federal Air Safety Control Office for a FASCO 101 compliance. In her paperwork, she had to detail her arrival and departure time, purpose of visit, a list of people she would see on her visit, a list of her last 4 previous addresses, and a list of all places she has visited for more than 1 hour 20 miles or more away from home. In addition, she has to provide the names and contact information of two witnesses who can vouch for her status as a citizen where one of them has to already have FASCO clearance within the last 5 years. The entire form has to then be notarized, submitted with some DNA samples, a fingerprint, and a current photo. Upon completion, Jill submits the entire set of forms, and waits 4-6 weeks.

Jill's boss, Mr. Sterner, flys frequently. He only has to submit a FASCO 201 when he wants to fly. He has to reapply for his FASCO 201 status every five years, but it only takes 2 weeks to get his 201 authorization back. After all, Mr. Sterner is a very important man!

Six weeks later, Jill gets her authorization which is good only for the flight she applied for. Should the flight plans change, she will have to reapply, but only use a FASCO 103 to reassign her destination time and dates, and that process takes only 1-2 weeks, or just a few hours if she drops by a FASCO office in person. Her authorization packet contains a copy of her submitted paperwork and her authorization, printed in a small booklet with color shifting ink and holograms to prevent forgeries.

Just before she left, Jill put her travel needs into a box and had it shipped to her destination using her favorite commercial carrier. She went to the airport wearing only comfortable casual clothes, her identification, and a small bag with some books to read, and a disposable one-day use cash card with a balance of all the money she should need for the day. Jill has read her homework, and is prepared to fly into safety!

She takes a cab to the airport arrival station. It's a large building in front of a securely guarded airport. As she passes by the throngs of people saying goodbye to loved ones, she makes sure she has her papers and smiles in anticipation of her safe and comfortable flight.

The arrival area is far away from the actual airport. She steps up to the line to her ticket booth. Gone are the lines to various carriers, they already know you're coming! She merely separates into lines for those who had FASCO Class 1, like herself, as well as Class 2, for people like her boss, and Class 3 for government or emergency workers.

When she gets to the counter, a uniformed woman takes her booklet, and compares it to her ID. She asks for a fingerprint scan. Uh oh! There's a problem. Jill can't remember what finger she used! But the lady helps her out, and within minutes, she's approved to go into the disrobing chamber. The lady gives her a neck tag, stamps Jill's forehead, and sends her on her way past the many guards down a hallway.

Jill knows what to expect. Helpful pictograph signs show her what she will be doing when she gets to the disrobing room. At the end of the hallway, she steps into a free closet, and strips down naked. Don't forget those earrings and hair bands, Jill! Jill remembered that the safety of her personal belongings could never be guaranteed, so she came wearing nothing she couldn't afford to lose. She puts her belongings in a plastic bag, and seals it nice and tight. She sees herself in the mirror. Oh my, Jill. We have been gaining a little weight, haven't we? Better lay off those desserts at the buffet when you're in Los Angeles, Jill!

Then she puts her tag around her neck, and inspects the red stamp on her forehead. It identifies that she's been passed by Desk 34 in Newark. The New Jersey seal of safety approval shines like a beacon of safety, letting Jill relax and know she's in capable hands. It helps in a crowd of people to identify she's authorized to be a passenger. It does not rub off until she will later wipe it off with a mild alcoholic solution. But for now, it is a reassuring red mark that she has safe and will be taken care of.

She takes the sticker off her sealed bag, and puts it in the designated area in her booklet. This will assure her that she can be identified with her belongings upon her arrival. Looking in the shelf, she grabs an "airplane gown," a form-fitting elastic jumpsuit similar to the snuggly pajamas she wore as a little girl. As the soft microfiber adheres to her skin, she admires her figure with small pale FASCO logos on them. She then grabs a set of disposable airline slippers and puts them on.

Now she's ready to fly!

[swell of orchestra music]

Taking her bag, she submits it to a guard near a line of people, waiting to go onto the security conveyor system. Like the sidewalks of tomorrow, they roll passengers past a series of safety rays, which scan for bomb and drug residue, as well as X-ray for any unauthorized implants of concealed cargo someone might carry. Good thing you didn't eat this morning, because they could tell you what's making you a little pudgy, Jill!

At the end of the line, you are told to go through one of several gates by a random number assigned to your ID tag. Randomly, you might be selected for extra deep scanning. Jill has not been selected, and from the sounds of the young well-developed teen ahead of her who was, it doesn't sound pleasant! Don't worry, Jill. That young girl is very safe thanks to a series of trained men who will keep her private and snug behind sealed doors. The deep scanning is to make sure that nobody is an enemy agent in league with a bad FASCO employee. While no enemy FASCO agent has ever been reported, it's thanks in part to random deep scanning and time-trusted series of rapid questions. After a few minutes with those boys, that girl would tell them anything they need to know! Including her boyfriend's secret nickname! And thanks to overhead safety laws used by US Customs, nobody can use the US Constitution against the rest of America. So don't worry, Jill. That girl is as safe as you are!

Once sorted and scanned, Jill is put on a bus, which will take her to the actual airport. Jill is excited, because she will get to be on a real airplane! While she has trouble containing her glee, Jill remembers that no talking is allowed on the bus with other passengers. After all, that driver has to concentrate on the road with almost no windows on the bus!

Once a tangled mess of confused people, airports are now modern areas of traffic efficiency! As the bus unloads its stream of warm and clean passengers, Jill is only minutes away from her airplane gate! In the olden days, this would take hours, and she would be led astray with the confusion of hallways, excess traffic, and merchants pestering here. But now as she follows the crowds to their scanning points, uniformed guards will scan her tags, and helpfully tell her where to go.

A turn to the left [beep]
A turn to the right [beep]
Down that hall [beep]
And then...

[music swells]

The airplane!

[chorus of angels]

Jill sits in the waiting area. The pilots and mechanics want to make sure that the airplane is juuust right for Jill's visit to her grandmother. Hours seem like minutes until she is escorted down a long hallway to the airplane itself.

Soothing music plays as Jill is seated. Everything has been taken care of for her. And while the seats seem awfully small, it won't matter once they get to flying. Jill is so excited, she hopes she can stay awake for the takeoff!

The plane is quickly filled and humming with the anticipation of a good flight. The captain states the flight information and remind people to lie back and relax as he rolls the airplane down the runway and the armed attendants put on their masks. Jill does not even hear the gentle hiss of the gas as it fills the cabin with its flowery smell. Just think Jill, the plane needs perfume just like you do! She knows that she's not going to have a reaction to the sleep gas because she had an exam from her physician! As she drifts to sleep, she gets the sensation of flying with a small smile on her lips...

... and landing! Jill awakens slowly. To Jill, only minutes have passed, but her muscles are stiff. Weather complication during a layover added an hour or two to their arrival time, but their tags have already been updated for them due to the modern computer system that keeps track of all its little passengers. The attendants give Jill some bottled water with a mild stimulant to help wear off the effects of the sleep gas. They are just like mom, always making her sleepyheads are awake!

When they get to the gate, Jill is filed off the plane and scanned. Her legs are stiff and sore, but quickly flow with new blood as she awaits her turn to be sorted and moved to a bus that will take her to the airport arrival station in Los Angeles. Her heart skips a beat when she sees the older airport towers of the retired LAX Museum of Flight. She can't believe she's really here!

Jill stands patiently in line, awaiting her clothing. It seems to take forever! They match her booklet and tag, find her sealed bag, and send her to a disrobing room to change into her normal clothing. She keeps the disposable slippers as a souvenir of her grand journey.

Is that Grandma outside, behind the two fences and barbed wire? It might just be...

[grand music plays and Jill and grandma hug one another]

Grandma! Oh, how she's missed her little girl! And that long nap has made Jill look refreshed and radiant! The stamp on her forehead glistens in the California sun as they go to Grandmas house and talk about Jill's exciting day...

On an airplane!

[music swells, credits play]

30000 feet up viiew

2007-07-27T03:08:00.001-07:00

As background, no conversation about airline security should take place without at least trying to conceive of the almost incomprehensible size of the air transportation system. The size of the system is the reason everything the public and policymakers “think” should work in airline security doesn’t, and the reason our entire approach to airline security is almost completely ineffective against a threat like Al Qaeda — and the reason security almost always fails when tested by covert testers, innocent civilians and, occasionally, persons with intent.

At this moment, there are roughly 5000 commercial airliners in the skies above you. There will be 28,000 flights today, and 840,000 in the next month — every month. The U.S. fleet consists of some 6000 aircraft — almost all of which will be parked unattended tonight at a public airport. We will carry almost 7 billion passengers this year, the number increasing to 10 billion by 2010, barring an exogenous event like another 9/11.

There is simply no deployable technology that has a prayer of keeping a motivated, prepared terrorist out of the system every time — even most times. TSA misses more than 90% of detectable weapons at passenger checkpoints in their own tests, and it is not their fault, because of the limitations of technology and the number of inspections they must conduct. This doesn’t count several classes of completely undetectable weapons like composite knives and liquid explosives.

What is TSA’s fault is their abject failure to embrace more robust approaches than high visibility inspections, and their accommodations to the Air Transport Association’s revenue interests at the expense of true security, while largely ignoring the recommendations of the front-line airline crews and air marshals who have no direct revenue agenda and are much more familiar with airline operations than are the bureaucrats (remember government ignoring the front-line FBI agents who tried to warn them about 9/11?). Deplorable amounts of money have been wasted on incomprehensible security strategies, while KISS [Keep It Simple, Stupid] methods proven to work have been ignored.

Aircraft on the ramp are just one example of this.

Immediately after 9/11, the Administration deployed the National Guard to airport checkpoints to reassure the public, though the terrorists’ objective was not the checkpoint, but the aircraft. The Airline Pilots Security Alliance (APSA) called for putting National Guardsmen on airport ramps to monitor anyone around the aircraft, conduct random ID checks, and protect the aircraft from anyone putting suspicious cargo in the holds or cabin. We also called for 100% ground employee security screening, which, while flawed, provided some layer of prevention against minimum wage employees planting illicit weapons on commercial aircraft; we also called for behavioral profiling of passengers at security checkpoints.

None of this was done, and the aircraft on the ramp were “protected” only by vigilant employees who had other, more primary responsibilities. These aircraft were still freely accessible to many other employees who worked on the strength of a background check that said they hadn’t done anything yet.

Today, RON (remaining overnight) aircraft are invariably unattended and unlocked all night. Commercial aircraft typically do not have locks in their doors. They are protected by roving airport police patrols and closed circuit cameras. Neither methodology is very robust. A skeleton crew of employees is also on duty who may see something suspicious, but most have gone home. Jetway doors prevent access from the terminal but the exterior aircraft doors are unlocked to anyone who pushes a stairway up to them.

There have been numerous breaches of airport perimeters (see www.secure-skies.org, How Safe Are You?, Airport Perimeter Security), often by people who weren’t even trying. At least one Al Qaeda sympathizer employed as a catering truck driver was arrested after driving onto airports for months, gathering intelligence.

It is certainly possible for a terrorist to jump the airport fence and walk to the airplanes, particularly at smaller airports, some with low fences and no or few cameras. But the greatest threat to RON aircraft is that anyone with an airport swipe card can get on board unsupervised. This includes third-party catering trucks coming in from outside the perimeter (almost impossible to inspect in any meaningful way), subcontracted cleaning crews, and unskilled ramp employees.

There have been at least three “rings” of employees arrested since 9/11: one for large-scale theft from passengers’ bags, and two for putting illicit guns and drugs onboard aircraft. The only reason these events did not result in a successful terror attack is because the bad guys were thieves and smugglers, not terrorists. If those guns had been planted in the cabin of an aircraft, a terrorist team could have simply cleared security with their fellow passengers the next day, and armed themselves once they were onboard.

This threat is mitigated by the fact that pilots, flight attendants, and ramp agents now routinely inspect the aircraft before flight each day, and this provides a measure of security. But it is not foolproof. Since there is little time to do a thorough inspection prior to passenger boarding, well-concealed weapons can be missed. A Maryland college student successfully planted hidden weapons in the lavatories of four or five Southwest Airlines jets several years ago. He carried them right through the security checkpoint. He was successful every time he tried. And in some cases, the weapons were not discovered for weeks. There is also a strong suspicion that weapons were “pre-planted” on some of the aircraft targeted on 9/11.

From a terrorist’s point of view, the downside of pre-planting weapons is that if they are found, the attack is thwarted literally before the plane gets off the ground, and warning is given to the entire air transport system. But remember: the terrorists are also warned of the find, and do not have to risk compromise — they just stay home. Conversely, if CNN isn’t broadcasting found weapons on airliners, the terrorists would know the operation has a good chance of succeeding, even before they arrive at the airport.

By the way, we constantly have to walk the line between sharing enough information to get fixes implemented, while not sharing so much it compromises our safety even more. Everything I’m writing is easily available to a motivated intelligence-gathering cell. There are other problems I won’t discuss, because the information is not publicly available. That doesn’t mean it’s not real.

What needs to happen across all segments of airline security is a philosophical change from trying to prevent an attack (which doesn’t work in a system this size) to defending against one (which does — a la Flight 93).

Almost six years after 9/11, it is inexcusable that — in an environment where TSA misses more than 90% of weapons, RON aircraft are not secured, and ground employees are not screened — fewer than 2% of our airliners have a team of armed pilots aboard, fewer than 5% have air marshals, and the flight attendants have no mandatory tactical or behavioral assessment training. $24 billion dollars later, we are not materially safer, except in the areas of intelligence that prevent an attack from getting to an airport. Once at the airport, there is little reason to believe the attack won’t succeed.

If these airplanes were appropriately defended, it would matter less who got onboard and with what weapon. We could then redeploy TSA assets to protecting RON aircraft, securing the ramps against suspicious persons, and randomly checking employee ID’s, as well as implement 100% cargo/baggage inspection and government funding for explosive-proof cargo compartments and missile defense.

It has taken six years, but TSA is now finally flirting with behavioral assessment training for screeners and random (but not mandatory) ground employee inspections. The airlines complain screening all ground employees would significantly hinder airline operations. They’re right — it would.

As usual, though, it has taken far too long for even these fixes, and there’s no action on the most meaningful improvements: dramatic expansion of the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, redeployment of air marshals on more specific, instead of random flights, and treating crews as critical assets, instead of as members of the general public, in terms of training and information sharing.

There is no question that we will get airline security right someday. My only question is whether, at this point, we will get it right before the next attack. After 9/11, we were given the gift of time and of awareness. I am very concerned we have squandered the gift of time — and there is little left before we are hit again — and we are losing the gift of awareness, as we truly forget what that morning was like. There is no question in my mind, based on everything I hear in my position, that Al Qaeda is actively, aggressively preparing to target the United States again, and that commandeering an airliner is still the easiest, quickest method of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. I am even more concerned that the next attack could be far worse than 9/11, which, while devastating, would pale in comparison to other available targets.

Recalling World War II, the Japanese didn’t surrender after Hiroshima because they believed there was only one atom bomb. It was only after another bomb hit Nagasaki — after we proved we could do it again — that their country collapsed. Similarly, another successful 9/11 would devastate our country in ways we can’t even imagine — probably much more than the first attack, as we realize they can do it again despite our “best” efforts.

Government and airline management are taking an awful chance in promoting the appearance of security, instead of using, as President Bush promised, “every resource available” in this new world war.

I know I’ve gotten pretty far afield of your topic, but I want to give you the sense that RON aircraft are just one small piece of a multilayered security system wherein every layer leaks like a sieve. The problem is much, much bigger than any single element.

In the end, we should be starting with defending the smallest spaces — the cockpits and cargo compartments, and working outward to the limits of our resources; instead of starting with the airport perimeter and working inward, ignoring the actual defense of those spaces that are actually the terrorist targets. And we should be using the resources already in place to the greatest extent possible, instead of trying to bring new, untried methods into play, then waiting to find out they don’t work nearly as well in reality as they do on paper.

Dave Mackett
President, Airline Pilots Security Alliance
www.secure-skies.org

Everything you need to know in life you can learn from Ferris Bueller

2007-07-17T05:20:00.001-07:00

There are quite a few documents out there that claim to be guides for a virtuous and productive life from the Bible, to the Koran, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and, of course, Big Tony Robbins's Unleash the Giant Within.

Recently, however, while watching my all time favourite movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it dawned on me that everything you need to know about life is contained in the 102 minute running time of this '80s classic.

As the school secretary points out, "the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore Ferris. They think he's a righteous dude," and I'd have to agree.

Ferris Bueller pretty much embodies everything I believe a man should be: a little dangerous, immensely charming, funny, an optimist, adventurous, challenging, a bit dodgy, curious, subversive, latitudinarian and a dab hand with the sheilas.

Anyway, what follows took far longer to produce than it looks, so please read on and discover the secret to life according to Ferris...

Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released by Paramount Pictures on June 11, 1986 to warm but not rabid reviews and went on to earn US$70,136,369 and just over a million bucks in Australia.

No one could have predicted it was to become the guiding light of cool for an entire generation of young hustlers, but then again, I couldn't predict if I was going to survive the weekend in 1986.

Be positive
The first words in the movie are "it is a beautiful day in Chicago."

Writer and director John Hughes could have gone with snow, wind, rain, or a heatwave but he chose the perfect day. I like it.

Bonus trivia: The opening shot of the Bueller home is actually shot in Long Beach, California. This apparently distressed Hughes somewhat since he wanted the movie to be completely filmed in Chicago, his native town.

I've often pondered why Ferris Bueller's Day Off is such a good film and I reckon it starts with Hughes, a true sponge for popular culture. Despite some of the cheese he's produced later in his career, Hughes managed to write some of the greatest teen films of the '80s including Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Pretty in Pink (1986), Weird Science (1985), The Breakfast Club (1985) and Sixteen Candles ((1984). That's a hot streak in anyone's book.

You are smarter than your parents
We all know the premise of the film, right? Ferris Bueller, perennial sickie-taker, throws his ninth of the year and has an awesome day off school. You and I know Ferris is faking it at the beginning of the movie, but his parents buy it in spades mainly because of...

The power of the reverse sell
Ferris has not pulled off his scam until he tries to get out of his sick bed saying, "I have a test today." His parents dutifully push him back into the pillow, assured by his academic vigilance.

This is called the reverse sell and it means stepping back, not being too keen to push your product or services, or sometimes even withdrawing your offer to get the buyer to commit.

Works very well in bars about 9pm on a Friday night.

Bonus trivia: Matthew Broderick wasn't the first choice for the role of Ferris. The part was originally offered to Michael J. Fox, a neat twist since Broderick was apparently the first choice to play Fox's role of Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties. According to Wikipedia, Jim Carrey and Johnny Depp were also considered for Ferris.

Little sisters are brutal
Jeanie Bueller nearly blows Ferris out of the water with her "dry that one out, it could fertilise the lawn" line, going on to say, "if I was bleeding out of my eyes you wouldn't let me stay home from school. This is so unfair."

Sweet baby Jesus, Jeanie, don't you know that...

Life is unfair
Suck it up, freaks. As Ferris says: "Please don't be upset with me, at least you have your health."

Bonus trivia: The opening scene in Ferris's bedroom had two sets of real lovers in real life: The actors playing the mother and father got married after shooting the film, while Broderick was putting away Jennifer Grey. Hey, that rhymed.

The art of clammy hands
I even used this at school myself. As Ferris says: "Fake a stomach cramp and when you're doubled over, moaning and wailing, just lick your palms. It's a little stupid and childish but then so is high school. Right?"

Bonus points: Get a sandwich out of your school bag, chew it up and spit a few mouthfuls into the dunny to show your parent/teacher. Works a charm and they never wanna get close enough to smell the gastric juice.

"Life moves pretty fast...
...if you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it."

An absolute mortal lock for line of the movie. Line of your life. Get it in a tattoo and read it in the mirror every time you feel like staying home to watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? instead of, umm, experiencing life.

Singing in the shower should be mastered
As should shampoo mohawkes.

Believe in yourself
Says Ferris: "Not that I condone fascism. Or any 'isms'. 'Isms', in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an 'ism'. He should believe in himself."

Slow clap for the second most profound line of the movie.

Have a rich buddy
Like Cameron. They can pay for stuff and usually own cars, boats and holiday houses down the coast and sometimes sport drug addictions you can coat-tail off.

All good if you ask me.

Bonus trivia: Did you know Allan Ruck, who played Cameron, was 29-years-old when he filmed the role? Amazing that he's done so little since, unless you count a role in Spin City as a move-up.

For the record, at the time of filming, Broderick was 23, Jennifer Grey was 25, Mia Sara was just 17, Charlie Sheen was 20 and Kristy Swanson was all but 16 years old.

Swanson, who went on to fame as the orginal Buffy in the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer cracks a small part as Simone Adamley, the eager-beaver classmate of Ferris who informs the economics teacher (played by a poker-faced Ben Stein), that Ferris is crook.

"You're not dying, you just can't think of anything cool to do."
Which relates to about 80 percent of people. No imagination.

There's always someone trying to hold you back in life
Like Edward R. Rooney, Dean of Students. Who's the Mr Rooney in your life?

85 percent of what you learn in school is useless crap
"In 1930 the Republican controlled house of representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of ... class? ... anyone ... anyone ... the Great Depression, passed the ... anyone ... anyone?"

Bonus trivia: Stein, who plays the teacher in this scene, holds a degree in economics, and ad-libbed the bit where he drones on about the the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act.

Never underestimate the power of gossip
So by the time we're 12 minutes into the movie, we've got chicks saying things like, "they said he's like on the verge of death. This guy in my biology class said that if Ferris dies he's giving his eyes to Stevie Wonder."

All I'm saying is make sure you're on the right side of gossip and people aren't talking about you and the gaffer-taped guinea pig.

Younger kids are feeble-minded and can be manipulated
Ferris tricks the freshmen at his school to spread more gossip and build the rumour of his sickness. I like to tell small children I can see through walls and that eating dirt makes you run faster.

Be able to move in all circles
As the school secretary points out, "He's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."

Yeah, I know I already used this quote - but you're still reading aren't ya?

Tell your parents you love them
Ferris does a lot of this. So should you. Your parents are worth it.

Be persistent
Cameron, who is also sick in bed at the start of the film, debates whether or not to go to Ferris's house but he knows he's dealing with a force of nature: "He'll keep calling me, he'll keep calling me until I go over," says Cameron. It's a good reputation to have.

Date hot chicks
Sloane is still smoking, even after all these years.

On an unrelated point, you'd have to admit FBDO was a bit of a career graveyard for the actors involved. No one save Broderick really did anything after it. Mia Sara's not exactly a household name is she?

Back up your bullshit
Sure the whole dummy in bed and snores on the stereo strained credulity but it provides another powerful lesson. If you're gonna play silly buggers, cover your tracks, kiddies.

Pity no-one told Kevin Rudd's brother.

The 1961 Ferrari GT California...
Hot cars do rule. But you know that, don't you?

Says Cameron: "Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring it. It is joy, it is his love, it is his passion."

"It is his fault he didn't lock the garage", replies Ferris.

Later in the movie Ferris even gives us the hard sell: "I love driving it. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

I got the bus to the work today. Sad Sam.

God won't save you
Cameron crosses himself when he realises Ferris is taking the Ferrari and we know where that gets him.

Bonus trivia: As Cameron states, less than 100 of the cars were made with no two being the same. They are valued at over US $3 million. However, the car used in the movie was actually a modified MGB.

Extra bonus trivia: According to Save Ferris website, "the Ferrari's personalised license plate was NRVOUS standing for, of course, nervous. Did you know that all of the Bueller cars' license plates were also personalised and referred to other John Hughes films?

"Tom Bueller's license plate reads MMOM referring to Mr Mom. Katie Bueller's reads VCTN referring to National Lampoon's Vacation and Jeanie's license reads TBC which, of course, refers to The Breakfast Club. Ed Rooney's plates read 4FBDO, standing for, For Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Have a plan
So if you're dating someone as hot as Sloane and she asks you, "what're we gonna do?", you need to have your ducks in a row, or as Ferris says: "The question isn't 'what are we gonna do', the question is 'what aren't we going to do?'"

I'm excited by that prospect and I'm not even a 17-year-old girl.

Bonus trivia: Did you know they made a Ferris Bueller TV show? God, it makes me wanna vomit my heart on whoever thought of this pile of crap. Thankfully it died a painful death but it did star Jennifer Aniston as Jeanie Bueller.
Bet she didn't bring that up at the casting for Friends.

Never trust a bloke who tells you to relax.
Like the garage attendant who takes off in the Ferrari and runs the mileage up on it.

"You fellas have nothing to worry about. I'm a professional", he says.

Didn't Conrad Black say that when he bought into The Sydney Morning Herald?

Expensive snooty restaurants blow
But it's cool when you get handed warm towels in the brasco by the piss-boy.

You can never go too far
"Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive", says Ferris.

Baseball is the greatest game in the world... you just don't know it.
"Ayy batter batter, sa-wing batter."

Bonus trivia: The Wrigley Field scene is shot on location there only because the Chicago Cubs were in town on the day of the shooting; otherwise it would have been shot at the old Comiskey Park, because John Hughes is a White Sox fan (pity they're ten games under .500 this year but they did win the World Series in 2005).

Art is cool
The paintings selected for inclusion in the Art Institute of Chicago scenes were chosen because they were favorites of Hughes, who spent many hours at the Institute while growing up. Included was Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks which was famously parodied by Gottfried Helnwein in his work Boulevard of Broken Dreams featuring Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, and Elvis Presley.

Karaoke rocks
And only soft-cocks and bores don't partake of it. If you don't have at least one great karaoke song in your repertoire, you should. Ferris has at least two including 'Danke Schoen' and 'Twist And Shout'.

When your girlfriend screams "get off the float!" [or stage], just make the pistol gesture at her with your fingers and keep singing.

Lucky rabbits' feet work and I don't care what you say
Ferris rubs his in the cab when they're pulled up next to his dad and they don't get sprung. It also leads to the next epiphany...

Your dad probably wants to shag your girlfriend
Creepy but true. Come on, have you seen how Mr Bueller looks at Sloane?

Attitude is everything
When Cameron says of Ferris, "As long as I've known him, everything works for him. There's nothing he can't handle. I can't handle anything. School, parents, the future. Ferris can do anything", you got the whole movie in one.

Ferris handles everything because he tells himself he can. Cameron can't handle anything because he tells himself he can't. Kids should have to watch this movie a hunnie times before Year 8, I'm telling you.

Musical interludes sometimes just work.
And the 'Twist and Shout' one in FBDO is one of the best.

Highlights include the gyrating construction worker and the shimmying window cleaner; the all-black dance team who come down the stairs, the identical triplet dudes with beards (wearing suits), the black guy who looks like he's having a fit when he's dancing, the chick who somersaults above the crowd, the little kid who covers his ears, Ferris' dad dancing in his office and the look Sloane gives Ferris while he's singing, like she wants to lick him everywhere that matters. Just gold.

The only other musical interlude that comes close in recent years for my money is the 'I Say a Little Prayer' rendition in My Best Friend's Wedding led by Rupert Everett. Advances the plot, gives you character information, is damn funny and you can't get it out of your head. I may be gay.

"Anyone who would nail me wouldn't go to a parade."
So says Ferris. Still trying to work out what this line means, 21 years later.

Parking inspectors suck
Even if they're ticketing Mr Rooney's car.

You gotta have friends
What can you say about buddies who'd send a singing nurse over to your house who recites: "I heard that you were feeling ill, headache, fever and a chill, I came to help restore your pluck because I'm the nurse that likes to..."

Don't marry the first woman you sleep with
Says Ferris: "Cameron's never been in love. At least no one's ever been in love with him. He's gonna marry the first girl he lays. And she's gonna treat him like shit because he's gonna kiss her ass for giving him what he's built-up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existance."

You all know my thoughts on promiscuity. Let's just say that having a few different shags before you commit to the one person for the rest of your life can save you some heartache. And cause some heartache. Damn, now I'm confused.

"You can't respect somebody who kisses your arse."
Translated from the American, as stated by Broderick: "She won't respect him (Cameron)because you can't respect someone who kisses your ass. It just doesn't work."

Tell me about it.

Bad boys do pull more roots
Charlie Sheen's character in the police station is a template for every bloke you should be scared of, if he's interested in your girlfriend. These guys are like crack cocaine for women; they know he's the worst thing possible for them, but the still pick up the pipe and pucker.

"Your problem is you"
When Sheen's character goes on to tell Jeanie Bueller, "you oughta spend a little more time dealing with yourself and a little less time worrying about what your brother does," he could be speaking for the planet. Third best line in the movie.

Bonus triva: FBDO won no major awards. Matthew Broderick did receive a 1987 Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Comedy/Musical). Guess who beat him? Paul Hogan for Crocodile Dundee.

Don't be scared
When Cameron sees the mileage has been run up on his dad's car, he goes into a 'coma', which then leads to the big emotional journey of the film.

After he 'wakes', he says he'd been meditating; "I sort of watched myself from inside. I realised it was ridiculous being afraid, worrying about everything, wishing I was dead, all that shit. I'm tired of it. This is best day of my life."

You said it brother.

You can't wind a speedometer back by going in reverse
Derr.

Sometimes you gotta take a stand
Cameron gets some beautiful lines in this movie. When he realises the speedo can't be wound back, it has a huge impact and reverberates through his whole attitude.

"I gotta take a stand. I am not going to sit on my arse as the events that effect me unfold to determine the course of my life."

And then proceeds to kick the shit out of his dad's car. An incredibly violent and moving scene, even all these years later.

Women love drama
When the Ferrari goes backwards out the window of the Frye garage, Ferris looks horrified. Sloane? She smiles.

"You killed the car"
Another great line, and it leads to Ferris offering to take the heat for Cameron. I've got a few friends who'd do this for me as well. That's why they're my friends. That's why I'd do the same for them. I'm tearing-up as I type. Really.

"It's gonna be good"
"When Morris comes homes we're gonna have a little chat," says Cameron. He's passed through the fire and is going to confront his father and it's gonna be good. He's made the decision that it's going to be that way and you believe him.

"For the first time in his life he's gonna be just fine," says Ferris to Sloane. Ferris sees it. We all see it. And if you've seen this film enough times you realise this, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is actually Cameron's story. It should be called Cameron's Frye's Transformation but that wouldn't be as snappy.

Cameron is all of us who need to step up and take charge of our lives, who sit on our arses as the events that affect us unfold to determine the course of our lives.

And you thought you wouldn't read anything cool in today's blog? Shame on you.

There's always time to talk to women
Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is when Ferris is running home and takes a moment to stop and introduce himself to two girls sunning themselves in bikinis (even though it's 6pm).

This, and other timing problems are discussed more fully in the The Ferris Bueller Timeline Problem , if you have the time to read it.

"You knew what you were doing when you woke up this morning"
Says Sloane of Ferris.

Do you? Or are you just floating downstream like a dead giraffe in Rwanda?

"Can you imagine someone sick as Ferris trying to walk home from hospital?"
On ya Jeanie. She finally comes full circle as well and helps Ferris deal with Mr Rooney.

So many people spend their life feeling jealous of friends and relatives, rather than grooving on their achievements and getting in on the fun. It's fun to be interested in other people's lives. Give it try. Just don't look in their bedroom window during sex.

"How'd you get to be so sweet?"
Asks Ferris's mum.

"Years of practice", he replies.

If you haven't been practising, it's not too late to start.

"Yep, I said it before, I'll say it again...
...life moves pretty fast... you don't stop to look around once and while, you could miss it."

Interestingly, in the shooting script dated, July 24, 1985, this is the final line in the movie, spoken by Ferris: "Yeah, life is a carousel. A great big crazy ball of pure living, breathing joy and delight. You gotta get one."

But the message is the same; suck the juice from the seconds people. You only get one life.

"You're still here?"
When you watch all the way through the credits, Broderick appears in his bathrobe, incredulous the viewer is still hanging about: "It's over. Go", he says.

And so should you.

Want an iPhone? Hold on a sec.

2007-06-29T01:33:00.000-07:00

Data that crawls: When AT&T's EDGE network debuted in 2005, it seemed zippy indeed, delivering data at up to 100 kilobits per second. But that was then. Today, with true 3G technologies delivering data at up to several hundred kbps, Apple's decision not to support AT&T's UMTS-HSDPA 3G network seems short-sighted--especially given the iPhone's investment in cool new Web browsing technology that doesn't suffer from the compromises of a mobile browser. In our limited hands-on tests a few months ago, downloading the New York Times' front page via EDGE took quite a few seconds. AT&T has tacitly acknowledged this potential problem by announcing upgrades to its EDGE network in anticipation of the iPhone launch. And of course, the iPhone will support Wi-Fi, which will make Web page downloads much more feasible if you're in range of a hotspot.

Limited third-party apps: Lots of cell phone power users get more value out of the applications they've loaded on their handsets themselves than the often lame or expensive offerings from their carriers. When the iPhone was first announced, third-party apps seemed shut out entirely, a move that prompted one online petition of protest. Now Apple says that developers can create iPhone apps that run in Safari. Only two problems with that: First, those apps may be fairly poky given the iPhone's slower EDGE network connection. Second, many developers seem to hate writing for Safari. As PC World forums member dazeddan said, "As a developer, we have more problems designing around Safari than any other platform. I wish it would just go away."
Where are the keys? The iPhone's software keyboard, with its on-screen key images, may work fine with Steve Jobs's single-finger hunt-and-peck approach, but it could prove problematic for those folks who have honed their thumb-typing skills on BlackBerry units, Treos, Motorola Q handsets, or other PDA phones with physical QWERTY keyboards. Things did not go well for one PC World editor when she tried typing on a prototype iPhone in January; even the best predictive text entry software would have been stymied by the string of incorrect characters. Plus, what happens when the on-screen keyboard covers up the very e-mail text you're trying to respond to?

It costs how much?! You've probably already heard about the iPhone's astronomical price: $500 for a 4GB model and $600 for 8GB. But you may not have calculated all the other costs associated with buying one. You'll have to make a two-year commitment to AT&T at a per-month cost that starts at $60, recent reports say (though that includes unlimited data access, something AT&T often charges $40 for on smart phones). And unlike with pretty much every other phone in the world, making that commitment doesn't knock down the price, it's just a requirement. Plus, if you're in the midst of a prior two-year commitment with a competing carrier, your cost of iPhone ownership could be further inflated by the early termination penalty you'll pay your current carrier. And finally, AT&T doesn't always receive high marks for its service. You may be okay with the deal now, but how will you feel in a year if the iPhone is no longer the coolest handset on the planet?

Businesspeople need not apply: It's a safe bet that many professionals will want an iPhone. But BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian smart phones offer a long list of business-related features that the iPhone apparently won't, at least upon release. For instance, while the iPhone apparently will connect with Exchange servers, it will require some security trade-offs that could make your IT department nervous. There's no word on connecting to Domino servers. And though you can open Word and Excel files on the iPhone, you can't edit them.

Want an iPhone? Of course you do. It looks sexy, it's innovative, and--for a while at least--it'll be the ultimate status symbol. But in the fog of iPhone hype, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the latest Apple sensation will still have its share of disadvantages. We don't have the king of gadgets in our mitts yet, but judging from the information that has already been released, clearly some folks could have problems with the iPhone. So before you dump your current cell phone, consider these issues.

Unplugged Web plug-ins: The iPhone's Safari may turn out to be the most desktop-like browser ever to appear on a phone. But it won't offer the full complement of plug-ins, players, and other enhancements that today's sites require. And an iPhone without Java, Windows Media, Real, and Flash Video support will fall short of delivering an uncompromised Web experience. (Even its much-touted YouTube capability won't let you watch the full catalog of YouTube videos, at least initially.)

The battery life question: Apple says that the iPhone's battery will survive up to 8 hours of talk time, up to 250 hours of idle time, up to 6 hours of Internet use, up to 7 hours of video playback, and up to 24 hours of audio playback. And to explain how it came up with these numbers, the company has posted a list of footnotes and disclaimers that rivals the rules you find on a "free trip to Hawaii" sweepstakes form. We won't know the reality until we're holding the iPhone in our trembling, multitouching fingers. Apple's spec page says that the 8 hours of talk time was achieved when "the Wi-Fi feature Ask to Join Networks was turned off." So how disabled was the Wi-Fi when talk time was tested? Apple also doesn't make clear what combination of 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and EDGE was employed to achieve the 7 hours of Internet use. Macs have pretty good power management settings. What will the iPhone offer? Until more is known, be prepared to carry around the phone charger.

Off-limits battery: While we're on the subject of the battery, it's worth noting that, like the original iPod, the iPhone has its battery enclosed in a superslim case among tightly negotiated electronics and behind a top surface of glass--reducing the chances of a DIY battery replacement to next to nil. (Plus, we suspect that attempting a replacement voids the warranty.) So if your battery life dwindles to roughly 6.5 minutes per charge, or the battery malfunctions, you'll have to send your iPhone in for repair.

Finally, a few other issues that probably aren't deal-breakers but are still worth considering:

It's a thief magnet: Everybody wants an iPhone, including people who aren't above stealing yours.

Multismudge screen: You can use all five fingers on the screen at once? Better wash your hands first.

OMG no IM: Inveterate chatters won't be so :) about being limited to SMS.

Melissa Ethridge's wife wrote Larry King this letter

2007-06-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Melissa Ethridge's wife wrote Larry this letter after he bumped Michael Moore off the show iin favour of Paris Hilton:

“Dear Larry,

There are not many people who are blessed to have a position such as the one in which you find yourself today. I knew your name from years ago. I knew that if someone was on Larry’s show, it was a big deal. That guest would be smart, contributive, and poignant. I would walk away from your interviews, Larry, feeling as if I’d just been let in on a secret dinner conversation. I used to find your questions imaginative, original, and somewhat interesting and clever. Your suspenders, with matching ties… really, that is such a cute idea. It spells class all the way.
Your show used to have movers and shakers on it. Your show was once significant to the American society, as your show was not only entertaining, but educational and provokative as well. What a legacy you had going, Larry! Unheard of! Unprecedented! CNN! YOU! THE FIRST! GOOO LARRY!

Is it true you bumped Michael Moore from your show to interview a celebrity famous for her porn and drunk driving? Really? Remember Michael Moore? He made Farenheit 911? Changed how we Americans viewed the war? Perhaps your manorexia has caused your brain to eat itself, and you don’t recall. Or, maybe, CNN is owned by some neo-cons, and the decision wasn’t really up to you, it was up to the people who own CNN? Either way, Larry, I am sure you are hitting yourself. I know, I can’t imagine if I had to be you and sit there across fom some poptart who’s labia has seen more sunshine than Cheney’s drunk chrome on a hunting afternoon. I can’t imagine what you will have to tell yourself as you prep for that interview in the makeup chair. Just remember, Larry, as history is written, there will be proof spilled everywhere, like ink. The truth will berry-stain: impossible to forget stain… And you know what? I am going to look back at this time, a time when real journalists could have saved us all some grief by reporting truth instead of soaps, and I will laugh and say “Remember how Larry King dumped Michael Moore for Paris Hilton?”

Or maybe I won’t. I’ll probably have forgotten about you, Larry, and your gossip show. You just became forgettable.

Have a good interview, Larry. I’m off to see SICKO, and try to see about changing this world, not my ratings.

Sincerely,
Hollywood Farmgirl”

Inkjet printer manufacturers are filthy liers.

2007-06-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

A new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges when their printers are telling them they're out of ink, not when they necessarily are out of ink.
The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's Easyhare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.
That's the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren't, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left.
The second issue is a familiar one: multi-ink cartridges can be rendered "empty" when only one color runs low. Multi-ink cartridges store three to five colors in a single cartridge. Printing too many photos from the air show will kill your cartridge faster than you can say "blue skies," as dominant colors (say, "blue") are used faster than the others. Therein lies the reason Epson backed the study: the company is singing the praises of its single-ink cartridge approach, an approach which is necessarily more efficient in terms of wasted ink because there's only one color per cartridge, and thus only one cartridge to replace when that color runs out.
Single ink cartridges aren't exactly perfect, however. Such cartridges still were reported as empty with an average of 20 percent of their ink left, which means that an entire cartridge worth of ink is wasted for every five which are used. Given the sky-high prices of ink, this is an alarming find. Epson's own R360 posted the best numbers, with only 9 percent wasted. Yet again, Epson commissioned the tests, so we must ask what's missing.
The study did not measure how much ink is lost due to lack of use, or through cleaning processes. Inkjet cartridges are known to suffer from quality problems if they are not used for long periods of time, sometimes "drying up." This problem has been addressed in recent years, but it has not been eliminated.
The study also did not calculate the total cost per page, which arguably is more important than efficiency. If Epson's multicartridge approach is more efficient, it could nonetheless still be more expensive per page than multi-ink cartridge systems. In its defense, Epson and TÜV Rheinland said that their study focused on the ecological impact of inkjet printing. This is a familiar argument: hybrid cars have also been criticized for their supposed efficiency, with debates raging as to whether or not your average driver will ever see cost savings from better miles-per-gallon given the relative expensive of hybrid engines.
As such, anyone in the market for an inkjet printer still needs to compare specific models to one another to get a feel for efficiency, and Epson's efficiency claims needs to be weighed next to the comparative cost of competing inkjet solutions.Still, the unintended result of this study is that regardless of the battle between single- and multi-ink cartridges, inkjet printers themselves are significantly off the mark when it comes to reporting the fullness of their cartridges. As the Eagles would say, you're best off when you "take it, to the limit." (Or with a laser printer, one can always do the toner cartridge cha-cha.)

We are so done!

2007-06-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

Friday, June 8, 07

It has been seven long years since we first celebrated the wicked New Years Eve that began the coming of the new millennium. Seven years, six months, and eight to be exact. For one to say things have changed is a rather erroneous understatement.

America was a prosperous nation, for the most part at peace with the rest of the world. Sure, we had our problems, but in hindsight, those seem pretty petty to the adversities we now face. There was promise. Our future actually looked somewhat bright. It seemed as though, looking from a distance, that the world might actually turn out to be a better place after our first decade in double oughts were up. What a viscous mirage that turned out to be.

It is six years later and all that hope is gone, flushed down the toilet along with the good image that America once enjoyed like an unwanted piece of bacon fat by the wild eyed Texan and his diversified cabinet of falsified do-gooders that we elected to look after our best interests. No longer will any of us in this lifetime awaken to a calm world at peace. It seems somewhat more likely now that one day we will wake up to a nuclear winter.

Long gone are the days of Bill Clinton and his hilarious sexual escapades. They have been replaced by trigger happy vice presidents and made up weapons of mass destruction. The dreaded New Vietnam in the deserts of the Middle East has arrived with all the splendor and destruction of a sandstorm filled with rose thorns and shot nails. It all happened almost too quietly to notice.

Not to be outdone, nature has reared her powerful head over and over again. From the tsunami in Asia, the seemingly constant stream of earthquakes, and the ever popular Katrina, we have been shown time and time again that no matter how technologically advanced we may think we are, we are all still nothing more than the mere playthings of this Earths great elements.

It is time to wake up, fellow planet dwellers. It is time to realize that America, indeed, the entire world, will never be the same again. The utopia that was within our grasp those few short years ago is gone forever, lost in another timeline somewhere deep in an alternate dimension that does not include guys like George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. It was almost close enough to wave goodbye as those towers fell that ominous day in September nearly six years ago.

For some reason, it just doesnt seem right to blame ourselves. Sure, we may all have different political views, but we are not the ones who did this. It was all brought upon us by a small group of overly powerful fools. No matter which side of the conservative/liberal chalk line you may fall on, there is no denying the fact that we have somehow sailed up the proverbial shit creek. This time, instead of being without paddles, we gave them to someone else to guide us with. Now we are five minutes away from the waterfall and we can either watch the tree line complacently while we fall over the edge or we can throw the asshole with the oars out of the boat and row like hell away from the rocks.

Keep those metaphorical oars handy. One day soon we may have to brain the captain, and it will take all of us rowing at once to get ourselves out of this mess. What else is new....

You can make all your polish jokes now....

2007-05-30T01:25:00.000-07:00

Washington Post reports:
Poland's conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies. Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday, May 28th 2007, she was concerned the popular BBC children's show promoted homosexuality. She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

Poland's rightist government has upset human rights groups and drawn criticism within the European Union by apparent discrimination against homosexuals. Polish Education Minister Roman Giertych has proposed laws sacking teachers who promote "homosexual lifestyle" and banning "homo-agitation" in schools.

But in a sign that the government wants to distance itself from Sowinska's comments, Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said he had warned her against making public comments "that may turn her department into a laughing stock."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I' heard it all. I thought. Some overpaid psychologists analysing the Teletubbies for homosexual undertones? On a hearsay of some Polish watchdogg idiot? Puppets are not male or female. They are neither. These programmes are aimed at kids aged up to 3 years old who can barely talk in constructed sentences, nevermind sitting watching Teletubbies and thinking 'Mom, I could swear Tinky Winky is a homosexual.'

Its just ludicrous. This is the nanny state gone completely out its mind.

The middle ages

2007-05-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Quick, what does the following list suggest to you:
Lamaze classes;
baby showers;
“parenting skills”;
preschool anxiety all the way up to college;
transitional phases;
timeouts;
chronic credit-card debt;
the indiscriminate wearing of athletic garb;
political correctness;
anti-political correctness;
midlife crises;
couples therapy;
divorce mediation;
Botox;
dermatological fillers;
cosmetic surgery;
the new-and-improved menopause;
wearing sunglasses in winter even though you’re not famous;
comb-overs;
an obsession with the daily lives of the celebrated and merely notorious;
real estate as a means to an end;
a debilitating reliance on takeout dinners;
a preference for esoteric coffee beans;
an aversion to butter;
an uneasy feeling of identification with Bob Dylan;
a denial of death;
cilantro, cilantro, cilantro;
framing every photograph you’ve ever taken;
the belief that your dog/cat is you;
an excessively personalized vision of retirement;
older single mothers;
grandfatherly second-time fathers;
a fear that you’ve become your mother or father;
a free-floating feeling of grievance that you’ve failed to make obscene amounts of money as a hedge-fund manager;
a gut instinct that immortality might be just around the next technological bend.

If you still haven’t figured out that I’m talking about the so-called baby-boomer generation, you might consider the possibility that the reason you are having difficulty making out the fine print of any given subtext is because you need reading glasses.

Once upon a complacent time we may have thought that we were, to quote John Lennon, clever and classless and free. Nowadays, I wager that many of us have come to realize that we are stuck in the muck and mire of habit and convention. We have become chips off the old block, carrying around our parents’ voices in our heads even as we swat away their child-rearing beliefs, conservative spending habits and stoic acceptance of mortality. Behind all this busy reinvention of the wheel of life, of course, sheer dread lies in wait: the fear that we’re fast gaining upon that demarcation line where you stop being young and you start being something else entirely, someone belonging to a different order of nomenclature. (It might well be that the Sturm und Drang of middle age comes down to nothing more significant than a problem of taxonomy.) Heck, if we knew we were going to grow older this quickly, we would have frozen our youth like a carton of ice cream to be savored at a later date.

What generations before us were spared is the relatively recent invention of middle age as a sustained mentality — one predicated on an awareness of its own growing remove from that elusive property known as hipness. Indeed, the enshrinement of hipness as a long-term attitude — the idea that first you’re cool and then you’re uncool and then you die — is probably the worst legacy of the culture of the 60s. The result, the evidence of which is all around us, is a collective failure to maintain our generational integrity. Our lives are characterized by a sophomoric vicariousness: we behave as though our children’s triumphs and disappointments were our own and, facilitated by an increasingly euphemistic attitude toward extinction (now coyly referred to as “passing”), as if our deaths belonged to someone else entirely. They are not, we hurry to reassure ourselves, “ominous and intimately” our own, as John Updike, that connoisseur of waning potential, observed in “Rabbit at Rest.”

We are a strange bunch, we who belong to the New Middle Ages, half intractably cynical and half hopelessly expectant. Many of us, that is, believed we could put in for one order of rose garden, with a schmear on the side. We came of age convinced that life — far from being the vale of tears that people who lived in the Old Middle Ages conceived it to be — was supposed to make us happy in some ineffable but all the same transporting way. I remember many years ago, when I was a very unhappy young woman and had relayed my tale of what I perceived to be overweening early damage (this was before the rise of the ubiquitous dysfunctional family) to a dispassionate and renowned family therapist, he leaned forward in his chair and asked me, “Who gave you your expectations?”

At the time I was more than a bit miffed. Where was his famous therapeutic empathy? Or ordinary human understanding, for that matter? These days, however, I tend to see things more from his viewpoint. Which is to say that while I don’t whistle as I work, I do try to lead a productive life in my own inevitably hobbled way. For one thing, reality has hit me in the eyebrows, where I first started going gray some years ago and where I keep going grayer, underneath renewed coatings of eyebrow tint. For another, both my parents are dead now, which makes me an adult orphan. (Although there must be a statute of limitations on how old you can be and still reasonably consider yourself an orphan.) If there is no way out of it, there are ploys around it. The poet Philip Larkin, for instance, deftly avoided the encroachments of middle age — “This loss of interest, hair and enterprise,” as he characterized it in “Continuing to Live” — by insisting that he had never been youthful in the first place. In the poem “On Being Twenty-Six,” Larkin was already envisioning the dismal and definitive endpoint: “Talent, felicity —/these things withdraw,/And are succeeded by a dingier crop/That come to stop.”

But even Larkin was stumped by the reality of living in time: “Where can we live but days?” Where indeed. Fueled by an increasing fear and demonization of Old Age, ours is a generation bred on the notion of doing it our way, right up to our method of retirement. Given this curious and entitled perspective, middle age becomes a life raft that we can’t afford to fall off — because once we do, we’re going down, down into those depths for which there are no transitional phases or, God knows, “feeder” schools.

Hold on, now. Being young was never as great as it’s made out to be and being middle-aged is not as bad as all that. Take a deep breath. With a modicum of luck, there’s lots up ahead to hold your interest. There’s still time enough to soften your views and limber up your affections, still time to take chances. Still time, you never know, to undo having become exactly what you did not want to be. Bruce Springsteen, one of the very few rock stars to age gracefully, sums up our plight in his anthemic “Thunder Road”: “So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore.” And then, being Springsteen, he immediately offers us a way out. “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.”

No medals for UK Government over London Olympics security

2007-04-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

The London 2012 Olympics won't use security technology unless it's being provided by a major sponsor of the event. No matter how much safety your product would contribute to Londoners, there's no chance of it being used unless your company bribes the International Olympic Committee.

Giving an otherwise rather dull and predictable keynote speech at Infosecurity Europe about the IT security demands of running the London Olympics, Derek Wyatt MP has let it slip that UK Government hands are tied when it comes to security technology. He also made it clear that he has no idea where the security threat will come from stating “who are the enemy? I wish I knew” and “don’t ever underestimate the intelligence of the opposition, whoever that is.” But the biggest concern I have over the ramblings of the Right Honourable gentleman came when he started talking about the problems faced in identity management and authentication not only during the event but in the run up to it, with the construction of the venue. Wyatt sound quite upbeat about the possibility of using the London ‘Oyster’ card, used for public transport travel, which could be upgraded fairly easily to incorporate biometric data and turned into a mini-ID card. He also sounded quite impressed with the idea of using the Nokia based authentication system for mobile phones. Upbeat and impressed, and then he dropped the bombshell, which I hope will not be a bad choice of words for the future, when he casually revealed that because neither of these companies was a ‘major sponsor’ of the Olympics their technology could not be used.

Yes, you read that right, as far as the technology behind the security of the London Olympic Games is concerned best of breed and suitability for purpose do not come into, paying a large amount of money to the International Olympic Committee does.

So who has bought their way into being the security experts of choice, and with whom our security and that of the visiting millions will rest? Visa. Oh whoopy-doo, I admit to feeling much more reassured now, after all these are the same people who do not suffer from any problems with identity and authentication and fraud and crime on a huge scale within their own business sector after all. Not.

And in case you are wondering why anyone should get wound up by the ramblings of some MP you have never heard of, the fact that he was speaking in his official capacity as Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Olympic Group might just grab your attention as it did mine.

Even when questioned by a member of the British Computer Society Security Group who was as shocked as I, and expressed total disbelief that potentially far better technologies were to be overlooked simply because a sponsor had to be used, Wyatt gave a half-hearted shrug of the shoulders response along the lines of it is out of our hands.

Personally I find it beyond contempt that security decisions that will impact upon the whole country, and the billions watching around the world, come down to a money making opportunity for a sponsor rather than being a Government controlled process. Wyatt readily admits it is nothing to do with him, his committee or indeed the Government as the deals arrangements are between the IOC and their sponsors. He also readily admits he doesn’t see why the UK should have to foot the £1billion cost of security in that case.

But again, he misses the point. Security in this case should not be about money, or who foots the bill, but about preventing lives from being lost and terror winning a gold medal on the world stage.

Visa have, as of yet, to reveal what plans it has for the games…

I told myself that I would not......

2007-04-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I told myself that I would not. But I didnt have a choice - I was tired, sleepy and there was nothing else around.

Is there anyone who goes into Starbucks and wants to talk to people behind the counter?

Let me explain

So I am in glasgow. I am feeling miserable, tired and sleepy. Why the hell are employees in starbucks being overly nice to everyone who walks in? Who in their right mind walks into Starbucks in the afternoon for that cheerful pick me up from behind the counter? Shut up and give me my coffee! I dont want you to make small talk with me! I just want the shot of java! Shut up! I dont want you to ask me how my day is! Would it be a good day if I am in Starbucks at 2.15 in the afternoon?

An another thing - when I ask for a grande mocha, why do I get half a cup? Did I miss a memo saying that a grande one means fill it up as you feel like? I only noticed it when I took a first sip. I got back to the counter and told them. They filled it up again, but why do I have to ask? Its not like its busy - I am the only one at the counter!

I am just bitching. Sorry.

Thomas M. Menino 0. ATHF 1.

2007-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Mooninites coming to Hub: Theaters ‘toon’ out Tom’s plea
By Tenley Woodman
Boston Herald Features Reporter
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Score one for the Mooninites.
The “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie behind January’s marketing-stunt-turned-bomb-scare opens in Boston Friday (the 13th, no less) despite Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s plea to local theaters not to screen it “out of respect to the people of Boston.”
No such luck. “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters” opens Friday on two screens: AMC Boston Common and Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge. Elizabeth Wolfe, vice president of publicity for First Look Pictures, said the film’s distributor had no trouble getting Boston theaters to show it.

As of press time, the mayor’s office had no comment.
Boston came to a near standstill Jan. 31 when more than three dozen battery-powered light boards, some with dangling wires, were discovered around the city. Public safety officials launched an all-out terror response, only to discover the boards depicted the cartoon character Mooninite from “ATHF,” a cult-hit series on Cartoon Network.
The two men who posted the boards still face felony hoax charges; Cartoon Network’s parent company, Turner Broadcasting, and its marketing firm agreed to pay $2 million in restitution to city and state agencies that responded to the terror alert.
With the movie opening looming, the official response from those agencies - including the Massachusetts State Police, Boston Police Department and the attorney general’s office - was “no comment.”
Some pop-culture observers think that’s the most effective tactic.
“I think the worst thing the mayor can do it at this point is to give it legs that it doesn’t already have,” said Doug Quintal, undergraduate program director and executive in residence for the department of marketing communication at Emerson College. “If it was banned in Boston it would get bigger numbers nationally because it would be front-page news.”
January’s brouhaha may spark greater turnout from the film’s target audience, said Sasha Norkin, professor of broadcast journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication.
“I think too much was made of it and Turner stepped up and paid their end of it,” said “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” fan Jeff Burns, 28, of Brighton. “I’m going to go see it anyways.”

FBI illegal use of eavesdropping powers: not just national security letters

2007-03-23T04:54:00.000-07:00

So we've all heard about the FBI's misuse of national security letters.
The Justice Department's inspector general came out with a report on
March 9 describing "serious misuse" of the letters, which are secret
subpoena-like documents that can be sent to businesses including banks,
telephone companies, and ISPs:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0703b/final.pdf

I wrote about the inspector general's report here:
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6166015.html

And in fact the inspector general, Glenn Fine, is going to be testifying
about them in the Senate on Wednesday at 10am ET:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=2616

Fine showed up before a House committee on Tuesday and faced a hostile
audience -- not that the FBI's illegal acts are his fault, mind you, but
Bush administration officials seem oddly reluctant to testify in public
under oath nowadays:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032000921.html

The odd thing is that everyone, or nearly everyone, seems to think this
is entirely unexpected. In fact, it's a natural consequence of giving
the federal government more and more power over the years (national
security letters were made much more powerful by the Patriot Act).
Incentives matter, and the FBI has plenty of incentives to expand its
power and surveillance ability and precious few incentives to preserve
Americans' constitutional liberties.

To give credit to EPIC, they realized this and sent a letter to the
Senate in June 2006 asking for more oversight:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/sen_iob_letter.pdf

So have libertarian writers, who for years have called national security
letters "the ultimate constitutional farce," which is about right. The
letters represent FBI agents _authorizing themselves_ to seize
information without bothering to get a judge's approval, after all:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano2.html

Occasionally other evidence about illegal FBI eavesdropping comes to
light, which is what I described in an article published two days before
the DOJ's report:
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-6165067.html

That article outlines how FBI agent Scott Wenther submitted a 42-page
sworn affidavit that was intentionally designed to mislead the court
into approving what a judge called an "illegal" wiretap. I've put the
some of the court documents here:
http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.agent.scott.wenther.affidavit.030607.txt
http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.wenther.opinion.030607.pdf
http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.wenther.defendant.brief.030607.pdf

This is of course the same federal police agency that is using our tax
dollars to lobby Congress to mandate data retention, which should make
us think twice about how _that_ nice part of the surveillance apparatus
will be used and misused:
http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/24/not-just-isps/

Best. Review. Ever.

2007-03-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2026580,00.html

My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots

Charlie Brooker
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian

It is astounding how quickly you get used to technological change. For instance, within the space of 18 months, I have gone from regarding wireless broadband as an outlandish novelty to considering it my God-given right. Cables appal me - they belong to the stone age - alongside electric typewriters, fax machines, video recorders, pagers and the plough. But there is one device I just can't get comfortable with - my mobile phone. I'm not some medieval yeoman, infuriated by mobiles full stop. Just this particular model.

The trouble started the afternoon someone from Orange rang me up to say, "Hey, valued customer - do you want a free phone?" At first I wasn't interested, but he went on and on about how popular and great the Samsung E900 was, then promised me free texts at weekends for life if I said yes. So I gave in.
The phone arrived the next day and immediately began elbowing me in the ribs. It seems to have been designed specifically to irritate anyone with a mind. It starts gently - a pinch of annoyance here, an inconvenience there - but before long the steady drip, drip, drip of minor frustrations begins to affect your quality of life, like a mouth ulcer, or a stone in your boot, or the lingering memory of love gone sour.

The menu system is a confusing mangle of branching dead ends. It has touch-sensitive buttons that either refuse to work, or leap into action if you breathe on them. One such button also terminates calls, so it is easy to cut people off merely by holding the phone against your ear to hear them. It has no apparent "silent" mode, and when you set it to vibrate, it buzzes like a hornet in a matchbox.

It is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary "features" aimed at idiots, including a mode that scans each text message and turns some of the words into tiny ani- mations, so if someone texts to say they have just run over your child in their car, the word "car" is replaced by a wacky cartoon vehicle putt-putting onto the screen. There is also a crap built-in game in which you play a rabbit ("Step into the role of Bobby Carrot - the new star of cute, mind-cracking carrot action!").

When you dial a number, you have a choice of seeing said number in a gigantic, ghastly typeface, or watching it moronically scribbled on parchment by an animated quill. I can't find an option to see it in small, uniform numbers. The whole thing is the visual equivalent of a moronic clip-art jumble sale poster designed in the dark by a myopic divorcee experiencing a freak biorhythmic high. Worst of all, it seems to have an unmarked omnipresent shortcut to Orange's internet service, which means that whether you are confused by the menu, or the typeface, or the user- confounding buttons, you are never more than one click away from accidentally plunging into an overpriced galaxy of idiocy, which, rather than politely restricting itself to news headlines and train timetables, thunders "BUFF OR ROUGH? GET VOTING!" and starts hurling cameraphone snaps of "babes and hunks" in their underwear at you, presumably because some pin-brained coven of marketing gonks discovered the average Orange internet user was teenage and incredibly stupid, so they set about mercilessly tailoring all their "content" toward priapic halfwits, thereby assuring no one outside this slim demographic will ever use their gaudy, insulting service ever again. And then they probably reached across the table and high-fived each other for skilfully delivering "targeted content" or something, even though what they should really have done, if there was any justice in the world, is smash the desk to pieces, select the longest wooden splinters they could find, then drive them firmly into their imbecilic, atrophied, world-wrecking rodent brains.

Anyway, over the past week, I've bumped into other people scowling at the same poxy phone as me. And in each case, the story is the same: Orange rang up and offered them one for nothing. It's spreading like a sinister virus, putting me in mind of the meteor storm at the start of Day of the Triffids - a seemingly innocent event that rapidly cripples humankind. My theory: the government is offloading these twittering handheld crapstones on to as many people as possible in a bid to whip us all into a state of perpetual, simmering anger in readiness for some kind of bare-knuckle street war. Don't say I didn't warn you.

IgnopediA

Continuing our uniquely unreliable interactive knowledge resource

Bling (requested by reader B Stephenson)

The word "bling" refers to any unnecessary accumulation of metal or jewellery which impresses the simple-minded. Examples of bling-related activity include: driving a car with shiny platinum rims, arriving at a movie premiere in a hat made of glittering diamonds, or pointing at a big block of gold and cooing away for hours on end like an unforgivable moron whose mere existence ultimately cheapens us all. Bling is the single most shallow, boring and wilfully superficial cultural phenomenon ever to excite humankind, which is saying something for a species already hooked on internet poker.

In recent months, collective guilt over the planet's future and the disparity of global wealth have exerted a cooling effect on bling's popularity, although genuine justice will never be achieved until everyone responsible for promoting, propagating, passively approving of, or even being ironically amused by any and all aspects of bling culture has been hunted down and jailed for a minimum of 37 years in a maximum security prison with no carpets, hot water or bog roll.

Submit queries to ignopedia@guardian.co.uk

Steer your mice towards charlie.brooker@guardian.co.uk

And the comments are classic. To read it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2026580,00.html

Anti-evolution, anti-semitic memo under legislator's name

2007-02-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

Apparently, a memo went out with Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges's signature claiming that "Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion... This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia." The Anti-Defamation League is demanding that Bridges apologize. He says that he didn't write the memo and didn't personally issue it. Rather, it was penned by his former campaign manager's husband, Marshall Hall. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools because it is “a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen.”

It also directs readers to a Web site www.fixedearth.com, which includes model legislation that calls the Kabbala “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism.” The Web site also declares “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun...."

Bridges acknowledged that he talked to Hall about filing legislation this year that would end the teaching of evolution in Georgia’s public schools. Bridges said the views in the memo belong to Hall, though Bridges said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.

“I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory,” Bridges said. “I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie why teach anything?”

Link to Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Link to more at Talking Points Memo, Link to Scientific American's "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense"

Walmart. Promoting technical incompetence on main street.

2007-02-07T04:09:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's an abstract post-digital conceptual art project *disguised* as a video download service (this page on the site renders like this in Firefox). After a few deep bong hits, the rich layers of overlapping text probably make sense, as would the notion of paying $20 for a 240X320 movie in a DRM-laden Windows Media file that won't play on Zune, PSP, iPod, or computers running Mac or Linux.

Viacom and YouTube(Google) vs. You.

2007-02-05T02:33:00.000-08:00

Viacom did a general search on YouTube for any term related to any of its shows, and then spammed YouTube with 100,000 DMCA take-down notices alleging that all of these clips infringed its copyright and demanding that they be censored off the Internet. YouTube made thousands of clips vanish, and sent warning notices to the people who'd posted them, warning them that they were now on a list of potential copyright infringers and telling them that repeat offenses could lead to having their accounts terminated.

This is shockingly bad behaviour on the part of both Viacom and Google, YouTube's owner. Viacom's indiscriminate spamigation is incredibly negligent and evil. They certainly know that a search for a term like "Redbones" will catch videos like Jim Moore's Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass (a 30 second clip of Moore and several friends "having dinner in a ribs place in Somerville"). The idea that they have members of the bar -- officers of the court! -- signing affidavits swearing that they have a good-faith belief that these clips infringe their copyrights is disgraceful. Practicing law is a privilege, not a right. The law societies should be holding these attorneys to account for this kind of behaviour.

But Google's lawyers should have known better, too. The DMCA says that if a web-hoster ignores a takedown request, it's liable for copyright damages if the material in question is found to be infringing. YouTube can't afford to just let any lunatic -- including the savage pricks at Viacom -- indiscriminately censor the content it hosts. That's not fair to its customers.

It would cost a lot in lawyer-hours to investigate takedown requests and pick out the ones worth paying attention to, but that's part of the cost of doing business as YouTube. It costs a lot to provide the bandwidth for the files, but YouTube/Google wouldn't dream of skimping on connectivity. Lawyer-letters are just another load that GooTube needs to provision for.

And Google can take steps now to reduce that load: sue the living shit out of Viacom. We've got precedent -- the Diebold debacle -- for the idea that abusing the DMCA takedown process is illegal. Courts have been willing to punish this kind of excess by awarding fees and damages.

If Google sued every company that used indiscriminate takedown notices to remove material that it hosted -- on Blogger, YouTube, and elsewhere -- they'd put the fear of god into bullies like Viacom. They'd change the landscape so that DMCA notices were only used by people who were genuinely being ripped off, and not firehosed by idiots to every site that matches a search-term.

Big companies can sometimes make the world a better place by using the courts to set clear precedents that work for all of us. Sony gave us the Betamax decision. Verizon gave us RIAA v Verizon. Google could save us from takedown spammers.

Next to the oil companies, banks and credit card companies killed as many babies and poisoned as many village wells.

2007-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

I just got off the phone with Citibank after noticing a bunch of "Foreign Transaction Fees" on my bank statement -- turns out that when you use your credit or debit card outside of the US, Visa and Mastercard charge three percent in transaction fees on the spend. It doesn't matter if you use an ATM, buy over the Internet/phone, or walk into a store -- the credit-card companies always dip their beaks. When you pay your hotel bill, when you buy a plane ticket, every time you use Amazon.uk to order a British release (Citibank told me that they even charge the fee when I withdraw from my Citibank US account while at a Citibank UK ATM, using Citibank's own network!).

What makes this such a rip-off is that the credit-card companies already charge a fee -- up to five percent! -- to the merchants for processing the transaction. So Mastercard and Visa are getting a slice from the store, and a slice from the customer. In a global marketplace, Mastercard and Visa are acting like letting you spend your own money is a special service deserving its own fee.

The Citibank rep I spoke to told me that the fee used to be one percent, and that it was hidden on the credit-card bills, but that in 2006, the fees tripled and Citi started to break them out on the bill so you could see how badly you're getting hosed.

I called up Citibank UK and asked them if I was charged any fees when I used my Citibank UK debit card outside of Britain that they told me that no, Citibank UK customers are spared this particular screw-job from the credit-card companies.

When you add it all up, the credit-card companies must be making billions off of American customers -- and all the while they're double-dipping, charging the merchants, too.

Most UK banks will tax you if you take money out of a foreign ATM or use the card abroad (Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, Barclays). Barclays does something truly bad: if you buy foreign currency or travellers cheques *in the UK* they hit you with the handling fee, even though they are not even converting the money. Take the money out of the ATM outside the post office and pay in cash, and you save. Not only is there no moral justification for this, its an odd trend. Imagine if banks started charging you more for alchol or eating out compared to supermarket purchases.

Nationwide and Citibank are the unusual banks in that they don't make up a bogus fee and stick it on your cards when you go abroad.

This shows that:
1. its a bank thing, not a Visa fee
2. its entirely optional
3. they do it, because they can get away with it.

Osama bin Laden Wins Nobel Peace Prize

2007-02-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Osama bin Laden Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Well, it makes as much sense as this prediction:

Former US vice president Al Gore is seen as a possible winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to save the planet from global warming, the head of the Oslo Peace Research Institute has said.

His efforts to save the planet include (from the same article)…

The former US vice president is currently criss-crossing the globe with his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, a hard-hitting rallying cry against global environmental catastrophe.

Is he doing it on a bike? Hand-powered scooter? Electric glider?

Of course not, he’s “criss-crossing the globe” in “one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable,” a private jet.

Gore is the same guy that warned us that global warming was more dangerous than terrorism, while simultaneously maintaining a toxic waste dump on his own property.

At Sierra Club meetings, he advises Americans to conserve, then promptly leaves in a gas-guzzling Cadillac Escalade.

And while he “lectures Americans on excessive consumption,” he lives “in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.)… none of which use “green energy” offered by the local utility companies.

This is like saying Osama bin Laden is “saving the planet” from terrorism.

In addition to news of Gore’s lead in the polls, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2002 to a man who supports Palestinian terrorists and Nazis, so bin Laden could apparently win it also, for paying lip service to the “religion of peace” while terrorizing the world.

Apparently lip service to a cause is the more important attribute.

College humour

2007-01-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

If you have ever been turned down for admission by a college or university, it might have been because your essay was sub-par. If you feel that was the case, you might want to read this particular college application essay (of course, your parents might have been responsible). Then again, English is a crazy language.

If you already are in college, and you're having a tough time of it studying for finals, this

letter might put things in perspective (in addition, you might want to compare the typical MIT student's views to your own). Also remember that professors are often trickier than you are (and don't forget the college academic structure). Then
again, you might be going to a college with students of questionable intelligence... try reading these accounts of the history of the world, according to various student bloopers. Various other works of "irrefutable" logic have been written, like the Darksucker theory, the shit list, one definition of tape trees, a study on twinkies, and another student's view of physics, sex, and religion. Some students spend their time creating 80's tests, while others wax inventive on their thermodynamics finals.

Of course, no college humor is complete without some sort of sexual jokes (this is just a fact of college life and maturity levels... :^P). Common contributions (or detriments) include lists of sorority jokes (and just to be fair, here are some stupid men jokes), information about condoms,
comparisons between the Internet and a penis (for the computer savvy)...

Occasionally some college student will have a bright idea and decide that a person's sex life is linked to their favorite color; not that this is particularly true, but their predictions are often amusing. Some enterprising students once measured the
caloric output of sexual acts; others were content with just listing how each profession did the sex act. This is how college students view their old age, as well...

If you actually read any of the above articles, then you obviously realize the maturity level of some college students. It's not much better than what children think of love.

Waiting. So tired of waiting.

2007-01-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

So I am in New York now. Still. To get all the documents to be able to enter UK, I would have to get Entry Clearance from UK embassy in New York. To get that from them, you have to have the original Work Permit (HSMP - highly skilled migrant professional. hehehehehe). Instead of getting it in my hands on the 16th of January, I got it on the 18th, because the company that JPMorgan was delegating the work to are more incompetent than the JPMorgan HR staff. They send it to my UK address. WTF! After I spoke to them a couple of times and everytime I would tell them that I am in New York and they have my parent's address on file.

So because I got that permit thing on thursday, I went to the courier service that does the same day turn around for Entry clearances. Except, because UK deported me (or if you want to call it denied entry ), there is a huge X in my passport. So now the 'same day turn around' is going to be unknown amount of time because they have to do inquiries about me. What the hell? I was hoping to get out of here on the weekend and now I am in the office waiting for that email or a phone call from the visa guy telling me that everything is ready.

So right now I am in the office on 47th and park. Working here day to day waiting for this Entry clearance bullshit. Then I am leaving the next day, hopefuly.

I feel like such an illegal immigrant, who worked on the strawberry picking farm in california, and then being sent back to mexico after INS agents raided the farm baraks.....

A funny thing happened to me on the way back home.....

2007-01-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

So this is what happened to me when I was returning from New York on Jan 2nd this year.

At Newark airport checkin I was informed by my friendly VirginAtlantic rep that the flight was oversold. But because I had already prearrange the seat online, I was already checked in into my Premium economy class seat.

I got to the gate and waiting for the flight, I noticed that there are lot of people who were very happy, for some reason. Turns out that because the flight is oversold, they are moving select passengers up a class.

So you guessed it - I was upgraded to first class (or as they call it 'Upper Class'). That was great!

But the story is not about that, although the service on Virgin Atlantic First class is a story by itself.

Upon arrival to Heathrow terminal 3, I got to the passport control and the guy asked me the purpose of my trip. I said that I 'live there'. He reponded with 'Can I see you EC visa'.

Thats where it all gone pete tong.

When I first moved to UK, the company I worked for arranged the visa and work permit and when I quit that company and got hired through a recruitment agency to a company where I work now, I was assured that everything will be take care of on the visa and work permit front.

The thing is, that the first company only did 1/2 of work. They provided me with the work permit in the UK, but what I was missing was called EC - Entry Clearance. You get it from Embassy in New York. Its like a page in your passport telling INS agents that you are ok with US Government.

Turns out that when I left the first company, the work permit got anulled and the company that I was getting hired by should've applied for the new work permit and then got the EC clearance for me before allowing me to start working. I got hired by the new company on Oct 16th and worked for them from then on. Turns out that I was working for them illegally because no work visa or EC clearance was ever provided.

So getting back to the guy that stopped me at the passport control. He took all my documents - passport, boarding card and my now worthless work visa - and went away to consult with the 'Senior passport' dude. When he came back he asked me if I could prove to him that I work in UK. I whipped out my work pass, my bank ATM card and my National Insurance Card - thats like Social Security card. I also dialed up my HR department only to find out that they are not in the office until Jan 8th!!! The friendly passport dude tells me that 'thats the way the world tuns'. What? What am I supposed to do when the Immigration officer stops you at a border and you cant prove to him that you live there? Call the main office of your company. So I did. A receptionist answered the phone. I explained to her that I am stuck in Heathrow terminal 3 and the control officer will not let me into thte country unless I speak to an HR person. She said - No problem I can verify to them weither you work here or not.

Excieted, I hand over the phone to the passport dude, he spells out my name, she tells him that I dont work there. What? Anyway, at this point, I dont even have my luggage with me, because I never made it to the carousel to pick it up. A burly woman comes over and takes me to gt the luggage. She goes through it, for some reason. They take me to a holding cell, where they strip you from everything you own - wallet, money, phone, luggage. Its basically a jail cell where you are waiting for an immigration official to come and interview you. Why is it that your phones are not allowed, but there is a public phone for you to make calls from?

After sitting there for about 1 hour, the same burly woman comes over and takes me to a room where she fingerprints me, takes a photo and basically creates a record of me trying to sneak into the country illegally. Fuck me! After that they return me to the holding cell where there are a couple of interesting characters: 4 asian dudes, 1 italian, 1 australian chick and 1 guy from UAE. The UAE guy has been in this situation before, but this time, he got stopped on the highway for traffic violation and they found out that his visa was overstayed by 5(!) days. He lived and paid taxed in UK for 5 years before this moment and they treated him, just like me, like a criminal. I would understand if he was a NRA dude on government help, defrauding UK citizens of money. He had a steady job and paid taxes. Now they are going to send him to UAE, where he doesnt live anymore. What is he suppose to do?

The australian chick was in even worse postion. She finished college in Australia earlier this year, took a 3 month break and was now on her way to her family in UK with her diploma. The UK immigration stopped her and told her that she will not be allowed into UK becuase she is coming there to get a job. They desided that because she had her diploma with her.

So the interview dude comes over and we go to a video-taped room where he takes a statement from me about this whole incident. I tell him everything and he asks me a couple of questions. Everything is fine. I ask him what is going to happen to me? He says you are going to be deported and not allowed back into the country without a proper visa. I tell him that its not my fault and that my company is the one who fubared on this. He assures me that he will get to the bottom of this and let me know. He comes back in about 30 minutes and tells me that he was able to get intouch with someone at my company's HR department and they have taken full responcibility for what happened. That is not a good thing. That means that they will still deport me on the first available flight, but at least the HR has taken responcibility.

The flight I was put on was 1600 VS001 out of heathrow to EWR. Besides the fact that I had to pay for it, it was booked solid. I just spent 8 hours on the plane coming to Heathrow, then 7 hours in the holding cell and now I am going to be spending another 8 hours on the plane on my way back to New York. Nice! I come back to Newark on 3rd at 10pm. 24 hours after I left.

So lets examine this - thousands of people sneak into the country illegally everyday. They deside to make an example out of me and create a record for me because my company's HR people didnt bother to check if it was ok for me to start working. My companys HR is blaming the Recruiting agency for not 'transfering the visa from my previous employer'. What? Didnt you check?

The good thing is that my company is paying for all charges that I inccur in NY. Within reason of course. And they are starting the process of getting the visa again.

The bad thing is that I am here while my child and my fiance are in UK. I have not seen them since Dec 29. We bought a house and have someone coming to live there on the 8th. When I was c9oming back to UK on the 3rd, we were going to be preparing the house for that person. Now my fiance has to do everything herself. You better beleive it my company is paying for everything, but how do you put the price on not being able to see your family and being in a foreign country?

So I am in New York now. Working from my company's New York office on Park Avenue. I spoke to the person responcible for clearing this fiasco and they said that it should be mid-week when they should hear back anything about my work permit. After that I should go to the Embassy in New york and get that EC clearance. Fun, eh?

Interesting statistic, but nothing that you didnt know already.

2006-12-20T02:54:00.000-08:00

Americans Say Next Bill Gates is Currently Studying Math in Beijing

The next Bill Gates is not going to be American and 12-year-olds should start tutoring congressmen about the Internet according to a poll that 463 Communications and Zogby International will be releasing tomorrow.

The poll is the first Zogby/463 "Internet Attitudes" survey of more than 1,200 American adults. It tells us that only 21 percent of Americans think the next Bill Gates will be born in the U.S.; 83 percent say 12-year-olds know more about the Internet than their congressperson; and, that America has turned into a nation of voyeurs thanks to technology.

Internet vs. Printing Press: We asked people what was a greater invention, the Internet or the printing press? And, while the Web is roughly 550 years younger than that little thing Johannes Gutenberg changed the world with, the Internet still got nearly-one third of the nods. More interestingly, is what demographic groups more heavily favored the Internet.

While whites favored the printing press over the Internet by 69% to 27%, only 57% of African Americans favored the printing press and 41% chose the Internet. Moreover, Hispanics actually favored the Internet 51% to 47% and Asians surveyed also chose the Internet by 85% to 12%. (Note, that since the survey stayed true to national averages, the number of Asian Americans surveyed were not statistically significant. That said, 85 to 12 percent is pretty remarkable and probably deserves some further study).

Also, there is a geographic divide on this issue. Confirming eastern snobbery that Californians don't read books, those in the east favored the Internet the least (29.6 %) and those in the west favored it the most (38.1 percent).

The Birthplace of the Next Bill Gates: Here again, there was a regional divide with the east being more dour and the west being more optimistic. Only 18.1% thought that the next great tech leader would be born in the US. More than 27 percent in the West think we have a shot at the next golden child.

This questioned also created one of the bigger generational divides. Those 18-29 years-old think Japan will be the birthplace (35%) over China (27.3%), the US (14.2%) and India (7.6%).

Yet, those who lived through the great Japan threat of the 1980s felt differently. The saw it China (27.8%) closely followed by the US (26.4%), then Japan (18%), and India (16.4%).

Twelve-Year-Olds More Internet-Savvy than Congresspersons: With a top-line 83% to 10% spread, consistency of results across demographic groups on this question the rule of the day. Still, if a interesting nugget could be found, it's that those who said they attended church services more than once a week gave their congressman the nod 14.6% of the time, while those attend church once or twice a month chose their congressman 8% of the time, and only 2% of those who go to church only on religious holidays picked their local representative in Congress.

Loss of Car vs. Loss of Internet for a Day: Of those surveyed making more than $100,00 a year, 31% said that losing Internet access for a day would be more disruptive to their job than their car not starting. Only 6% of those making less than $35,000 felt the same.

Conservatives were the ideology that could go Internet-free the easiest (7.3%).

Global Internet Access in 2017: Here, 66.1% said the Internet will be accessible in any location on the planet in ten years. 27.3% disagreed. Those will college degrees were the least optimistic. Nearly 37% didn't think there would be global universal access. But, only 18.1% of those with high school degrees agreed. Likewise, self-described progressives were the most dour ideology (41.2% said no) and conservatives the most optimistic (71.3% said yes).

YouTube vs. Evening News: Seventy-percent said they would rather watch the evening news coverage instead of a citizen video report on an event. Though, only one year after YouTube burst onto the scene, fully 25% of those 18-49 years old would chose citizen video. Only 10.3% of those 65 or over agreed.

Advertisers will note that of those who have never shopped at Wal-Mart, only 58.7% chose TV news, while those who go to the super-sized store a few times a month pick Katie Couric over Rocketboom 72.3% of the time.

Self-described progressives picked citizen video 30.4% of the time, while only 18.5% of those calling themselves conservative did.

Voyeur Nation. More than two in three Americans believe what Paris Hilton and Britney Spears already know. Sixty-seven percent agreed that new camera and Internet technologies are turning us into a nation of voyeurs and paparazzis. Still, for some reason, only 59.2% of those living in suburbia agreed, while 75.5% of those living in rural areas were with Paris and Britney. Also, progressives seemed to be the least worried about all those camera phones. Only 51.9% think we're voyeurs. Conservatives disagree, again (by a margin of 71.9% to 17.4%).

Finally. A bonus question for sticking with us here. We didn't mention it on our press release, but we also asked: "Which political party do you think has a better grasp of the Internet and its importance - Democrats or Republicans?"

The results:
Democrats: 29.7%
Republicans: 20%
Neither: 12.4%

Those 18-29 years old chose the Democrats (45.6%) most. Fifteen percent of Republicans agreed.

Independents favored Democrats (21.3% to 13.5%).

Incredible

2006-12-05T04:44:00.000-08:00

Incredible how companies treat technologically savant employees.

These are organizations that have fired, threatened, disciplined, fined or not hired people because of their blogs:

1.) Delta Air Lines
2.) Wells Fargo
3.) Ragen MacKenzie
4.) Starbucks
5.) Microsoft
6.) Friendster
7.) the Houston Chronicle
8.) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
9.) Nunavut Tourism, (Canada)
10.) Harvard University
11.) Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona Self Help Center and Library
12.) Mike DeWine, US Senator (R-Ohio)
13.) the Durham Herald-Sun
14.) Kerr-McGee
15.) ESPN (fired someone for making anti-semitic comments in his non-anonymous blog)
Note: I don't agree with Mr. Easterbrook's comments, but technically he was fired for his blog, which is why he made this list.
16.) Apple (according to this blog entry AND this article AND this article)
17.) Statistical Assessment Service (DC nonprofit)
18.) Minnesota Public Radio
19.) The Hartford Courant
20.) the International Olympic Committee (barred athletes from blogging during the Olympics last summer)
21.) Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
22.) the National Basketball Association (NBA)
23.) Kres Chophouse & Lounge, Orlando, FL
24.) Student Advantage / CollegeClub.com
25.) Waterstone's (UK)
26.) USGS (?)--from an anonymous tip
27.) the US Armed Forces
28.) Gap, Inc.
29.) Google
30.) CI Host
31.) Alexander, Holburn, Beaudin & Lang, Vancouver, Canada
32.) Capgemini, Spain
33.) Cottingham & Butler/SISCO
34.) www.BlackStar.co.uk (now www.Sendit.com)
35.) Lancaster University, UK
36.) Gleim Publications (anonymous tip)
37.) US Army Corps of Engineers
38.) Blockbuster
39.) AutoTrader.com
40.) Mobil Travel Guides
41.) Chabad-Lubavitch (Jewish 'evangelical' organization... excommunicated "Shmarya" because of his blog)
42.) Long Island Press
43.) http://www.cartegraph.com/
44.) Kaiser Permanente
45.) STREAM International
46.) Barnes & Noble College Bookstores
47.) State Farm Insurance (anonymous tip)
48.) A*STAR, a Singapore government agency
49.) Delone Catholic High School

Are you an Unlawful Enemy Combatant?

2006-11-30T04:31:00.000-08:00

The House of Representatives passed a bill from G. Bush JR to redefine the treatment of detainees and US Senate did the same. Buried deep inside this legislation is a provision that will pardon president Bush and all the members of his administration of any possible crimes connected with torture and mistreatment of detainees dated all the way back to Sep 11, 2001. At least President Nixon had Gerald Ford do his dirty work for him. President Bush is trying to pardon himself.

Here is the deal - under the war crimes act, violations of the Geneva Convention are felonies in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to Al Quad and the Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble. They've been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort to avoid possible prosecution, they are trying to cram this bill through Congress before it goes on a break. The reason for this rush to do this is that if Democrats get control of the Congress and the House of Representatives, this kind of legislation will not pass. You want to know the real disgrace of what they are trying to do? Senator Bill Frist and Senator Dennis Hastert and their republican stooges apparently see nothing wrong with this.

The Act has also been denounced by critics who assert that its wording makes possible the permanent detention and torture as defined by the Geneva Conventions of anyone - including American citizens - based solely on the decision of the President. Indeed, the wording of section 948b of the act appears to explicitly contradict the Third Geneva Convention of which the United States is currently a signatory.

Here is the Paragraph that is most disturbing.

Sec. 948b. Military commissions generally

(a) Purpose- This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission.

(b) Authority for Military Commissions Under This Chapter- The President is authorized to establish military commissions under this chapter for offenses triable by military commission as provided in this chapter.

(c) Construction of Provisions- The procedures for military commissions set forth in this chapter are based upon the procedures for trial by general courts-martial under chapter 47 of this title (the Uniform Code of Military Justice). Chapter 47 of this title does not, by its terms, apply to trial by military commission except as specifically provided in this chapter. The judicial construction and application of that chapter are not binding on military commissions established under this chapter.

(d) Inapplicability of Certain Provisions- (1) The following provisions of this title shall not apply to trial by military commission under this chapter:

(A) Section 810 (article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to speedy trial, including any rule of courts-martial relating to speedy trial.

(B) Sections 831(a), (b), and (d) (articles 31(a), (b), and (d) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to compulsory self-incrimination.

(C) Section 832 (article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to pretrial investigation.

(2) Other provisions of chapter 47 of this title shall apply to trial by military commission under this chapter only to the extent provided by this chapter.

(e) Treatment of Rulings and Precedents- The findings, holdings, interpretations, and other precedents of military commissions under this chapter may not be introduced or considered in any hearing, trial, or other proceeding of a court-martial convened under chapter 47 of this title. The findings, holdings, interpretations, and other precedents of military commissions under this chapter may not form the basis of any holding, decision, or other determination of a court-martial convened under that chapter.

(f) Status of Commissions Under Common Article 3- A military commission established under this chapter is a regularly constituted court, affording all the necessary `judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples' for purposes of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

(g) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Source of Rights- No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.

Furthermore:

No court, justice or a judge shall have the jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever including any action pending on file after Sep 11, 2001.

Basically this states that no one shall have the authority to hear any cases relating to charges made against someone who is deemed an enemy of United States as defined in this bill. And the definition of who the enemy is really for interpretation by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. That means that anyone can be held as an Unlawful Enemy Combatant without due process or recourse.

With the signing of this bill, George Bush becomes the greatest threat to freedom of all Americans.

Its like Econ 101

2006-11-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

I want to talk about an issue. The US Government voted not to raise the minimum wage, which for the last 9 years has been $5.75 per hour. So if you are working 40 hours a week, you are making $200 large ones. They DID, however, vote themselves a pay increase, but they didn’t vote to increace the minimum wage. I believe they were going to raise it to $7.25, so if you were working 40 hours a week, you would be making $280 large ones. Or may be $300 large, I don’t know. I just want to say - GOOD! I'm glad they didn’t do it. Because, you know, the lower strata of American society have had a free ride for too long. And if you were to give them $7.25 per hour, you know it would just go 'in their nose and out their hose'. You know what I'm talking about, don’t you? You don’t want to give them walking around money. So kudos to American government for literally taking a giant shit on poorest people in the country. Cause they deserve it!

FOR THOSE WHO DONT UNDERSTAND ECONOMICS:

Increase in Minimum Wage = Increase Cost of Production = Increase in Price of Good = Zero Increase in Purchasing Power

Increasing the minimum wage affects long term contract producers. Those who are required by contract to produce a good at a pre-determined price. But this effect only happens if the long term contract producers can not predict the increase in minimum wage. Aside from that effect minimum wage is a change in numbers not a change in situation.

The fact that the gap between rich and poor in this country is widening and that the rich tend to hoard their wealth rather than invest it into communities is why we have things like social security, welfare, and federally mandated minimum wages. We could do a lot better by the majority if we eliminated payroll taxes and instituted a national sales tax. This is a fair tax and the wealthy can't dodge it.

Cost of living has increased. Ergo, wages need to increase to match that. No full-time job should pay a wage that sets a reasonably-sized household at the poverty level; anyone who is contributing an honest day's work to society should be getting a quality standard of living in return. The only other solution is to completely eliminate inflation. But thats communism.

http://jim.com/econ/chap19p1.html

America passed away. Aged 230.

2006-10-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is not a commentary. It is an obituary.

The United States, age 230, passed away yesterday following a short bout of internal complications.

Well, “passed away” isn't quite the term for it. It was murdered – cynically cut down in what should have been its prime; assassinated by fear, slayed by ignorance, silenced by contempt, butchered by congressional cowardice and whacked by a venomous president. Rasputin himself died at the hands of fewer conspirators.

The killing field was, of course, Washington, D.C., and the murder weapon was the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – Enabling Act of 1933, anyone? -- which authorized not a war on terror, but a war of terror – the rape of this erstwhile nation of laws, not men, and directed straight at the forehead of any who oppose the new American regime; directed at those who one man, and one man only, deems properly subject to indefinite incarceration, torture, and extermination.

The Act's wording of “unlawful enemy combatants” defies any definition other than: Whomever the president says is an unlawful enemy combatant. We'll just have to pray that over the next two years George doesn't go back on the bottle and start reading disagreeable newspapers and blogs.

Does writing this qualify me as a U.E.C.? Or any of its publishers? Does this open, expressed outrage at the gang of treasonous criminals at the helm of this mess of a reordered government complicate their lives enough or please our foes enough to land me under the prohibition against aiding foreign enemies and comforting them with material support?

Who knows? Could. Might. Maybe. That would be determined not by statute, not by rules of evidence, not by a jury, not by a judge, not even by the court of public opinion. That would, instead, be determined by one man, in secrecy -- an unsettling, intolerable peskiness to dictatorial tranquility to be whisked away under the cover of night.

And that is no hysterical exaggeration.

Not all in Congress sold out their country. In fact, there were 202 “no” votes cast in both Houses against liquidating the U.S. Constitution. Pat Leahy, for one, solemnly noted its extermination by saying "It is a sad day when the rubber-stamp Congress undercuts our freedoms, assaults our Constitution and lets the terrorists achieve something they could never win on the battlefield." And Russ Feingold, speaking on behalf of the 300 million who apparently don't care, rightly observed that the bill "allows the government to seize individuals on American soil and detain them indefinitely with no opportunity to challenge their detention in court." Oh well.

The political vilification employed by Bush's enablers and pulled out of their fascistic asses was as over the top as over the top gets. House Sprecher Dennis Hastert -- chief enabler of that marvelously unique strain of totalitarianism: pedophiliac fascism -- disgracefully sputtered that "The Democratic plan would gingerly pamper the terrorists who plan to destroy innocent Americans' lives," and that Democrats had supported "new rights for terrorists" and "put their liberal agenda ahead of the security of America."

House co-conspirator John Böhner helpfully added that "Capitol Hill Democrats have yet to offer any solutions or formulate any serious national security policy on how to keep America safe in a post-9/11 world." The targets of such dishonorable ridicule should have countered that Herr Böhner's deportation would be a start.

In the midst of all this constitutional demolition, der Präsident boiled down all the fussy complexities in his own homey way by asking, “With the distance of history,” the question will be: “Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously?”

Ironic, wasn't it?

Some happy things to consider!

2006-10-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

The World Health Organization's estimates agree: globally, there are one billion overweight adults, and 300 million of them are obese; in contrast, about 800 million do not have enough to eat. Today obesity is a problem mainly in rich countries, but the WHO estimates that by 2010 the developing world will have more than caught up.

---Oh happy days! We can all relax!---

While President Bush and other Republican politicians spent the day exploiting the memory of those we lost five years ago, the nation overlooked a grim milestone: More Americans have now died in Iraq than died on 9/11. Iraq didn't attack us on that day, and our misguided policy there has now taken more American lives than Al Qaeda.
Here are the numbers: 3,015 Americans have died in Iraq as of September 9.

---2,666 of these were military deaths and 349 were civilians. And I thought the war was getting to the point---

Tylenol addict unite! Sort of....

2006-09-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

These days the health and safety fascists have taken over. School trips are getting cancelled because the teachers dont want their faces plastered all over the tabloids if there should be an accident and one of their charged is hurt. You cant get insurance to get a village or a college bonfire going, so hundreds of years of traditions goes out of the window. Actually its being extinguished.

This past monday I had to get my tooth taken out. Before then, the tooth broke. I am not kidding you. It just broke. So on monday I went to the local dentist to take it out. Everything was fine and I was on my way to london from Scotland, as I do most of the weekends. On Tuesday a weird thing happened. In the morning I woke up with pain from removed tooth and thought that I would make my way to Oxford street Borders and stop in Superdrug or Boots on the way. I asked for 'Paracetamol', which is like Tylenol in America. Its over-the-counter pain reliever. The person behind the counter held up the box and shouted 'Paracetamol' at the top of their lings. The overworked 'pointy-haired' manager behind the serving hatch at the back of the pharmacy glanced up, looked up and down for a second nodded his head. I felt weird. Satisfied, of sort. I have been deemed suitable to be allowed to purchase some over-the-counter medication for my pain.

Try to think about this moment rationally. What is the pharmacist looking for? How exactly are you qualify as someone who is allowed to purchase pain relieve medication? What does 'paracetamol' addict look like? What does suicide by tylenol look like?

They can’t even seriously be looking to see if you’ve been in recently to buy paracetamol. First, this happened in a busy pharmacy at Oxford Circus. How could they expect to remember you? Second, if you are a serious 'paracetamol' hoarder, you would go from one chemist to the next like a strung-out junkie buying everything in the store.

I felt like I asked for cocaine at Sainsburry's or for a small coffee at Starbucks. Everyone looks at you to see if you are qualified.

My point is, it may be legitimate role of the State for ensure that all of us know what is good for us and what is bad for us, but then they should back off and allow us to make up our own adult minds. Its not hard to do. Its like this:
A little alcohol is ok. Too much is bad, so stop yourself when you start seeing double. If you drink and drive you go to prison. Dope is less harmful than alcohol and it doesnt lead to harder things, like the authorities would like you to believe. But the jury is still out on that. Smoking is harmful to you. If you want to do it, do it somewhere where its not annoying anyone else. Cocaine, crack, heroin? Bad news. Dont do it. Riding a bike without a helmet? Bad idea. Driving without wearing a seatbelt - fairy straight forward. The airbags will help, but you better buckle up as well. E? Can cause problems, so take it with a friend and drink a lot of water. Scuba-diving? Dangerous stuff. Water-skiing? Broken bones galore. Sky-diving? Should I even explain?

Why not make sure we know what the danger is and leave us the hell alone.

The pleasures of dining alone

2006-09-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

Because I live in London alone and have no friends that I can go to dinner with every time I go out to dinner, I am faced with the reality of dining alone in a restaurant or order takeout, which is really starting to get on my nerves. When you dine alone in a restaurant, you are providing a service to the other patrons. Everyone will enjoy staring at you and whispering about what a looser you are. They will feel good about themselves, and that will release endorphins in their brains so the food tastes better.

Kidding.

In reality the other diners are thinking what a confident and self-assured person you are to be eating all alone. They're discussing what a brilliant thinker and a generous lover you must be.

Kidding.

They really think you are a looser. The best you can do is to try to confuse their accurate perceptions by pretending to prefer eating alone. The most popular method, especially for women, is to bring reading materials and never look up. If you have hair that falls in your face, that's even better. The scenario works best when you have work-related boring-looking documents, a soncerned scowl and grimacing face. That makes you look like a powerful businessperson who is a force to be reckoned with. Not a looser.

The gutsiest lone-diner move has to be making contact with normal people at the next table and to try to hijack their conversation. If they are far away, this might involve some shouting. Listen for the mention of any geographic location, product or event that sounds familiar and then interject your own anecdote as though there is nothing unusual about you joining in. When someone gets up from that table to go to the restroom, take the empty chair and start ordering expensive wine for the table. The trick is to leave before the check arrives.

How to succeed in business without any talent

2006-09-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

I found out that to be respected in a business world, or to seem that you are respected, you must learn to speak incomprehensibly on a wide range of topics. A good way to start being incomprehensible is by memorizing some phrases and liberily sprinkling them into your conversations. They can be used to talk about any subject where you want to show that you have a command of the situation when in fact you have no clue about what is going on.

Good things to be doing:

See the big picture,
Line up all the ducks
Have sidebar
Get on the same page
Move goal posts
Put it on the back burner
Touch base
Dip your toes in the water
Table it for later
Get a handle on it
Get more bang for your buck
Take it and run with it
Make a no brainer decision
Set aggressive but achievable goals
Keep ahead of the game
Shorten launch curves
Manage from top down
Think outside the box
Embrace change
Manage expectations
Swing for the fence
Do a sanity check
View it from thirty thousand feet
Press the flesh
Get back to basics
Put it to bed
Reach out
See what’s coming down the pike
Take a rain check
Throw the dead cat in someone else’s backyard
Make sure the left hand knows what the right one is doing
Stretch the envelope
Sing from the same hymn sheet
Hit the ground running
Drill down the into the data

Things you don’t want to be caught doing:

Reinvent the wheel
Find yourself on a slippery slope
Miss the window of opportunity
Raise a red flag
Shuffle the deck chairs
Have a scope creep
Jump on the grenade
Make a career limiting move
Fall on the sword
Get lost in the woods

Feel free to use it in your next meeting….

Whats with the whinning?

2006-09-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

I can take no more! Enough already, James Blunt! Its time to get a grip! Come on, man. Stop being so indescribably wet. If she is so beautiful, stop standing there in your t-shirt and floppy fringe and hush your hopeless falsetto crooning. Go out and get her already.

And if James Blunt seems drippy next to the rock stars of the good old days, he is positively macho by comparison with Keiser Chiefs. These are weeds from Leeds whose hit single was ‘I predict a riot’, a tale about the bourgeois apprehension of a guy who tries to get a taxi on a Saturday night in the centre of town.
‘Watching the people get lairy/Its not very pretty I tell thee/Walking through the town is quite scary/And not very sensible either’ sing these epic softies. Then the guy meets another person in a tracksuit, who looks though he might offer violence, but doesn’t, and that’s about it. It’s pathetic!

When I was young it was standard practice for a rock star to start the evening by biting the head off a pigeon and throwing the television out of the hotel window before electrocuting his girlfriend in the bath and almost drowning in a cocktail of whisky, heroin and his own vomit. The self respecting rockers didn’t get up on stage and start whimpering how they predict a riot. They incited them.

Let’s face it – the rock star role models of yesteryear were far more thuggish, brutal and in-your-face than the rock stars of today, most of whom are almost embarrassing in their niceness. Grow some balls already.

Things to do when you are living in a George Orwell novel 1984.

2006-09-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

London's Stansted airport has released a list of "dangerous" and "safe" foods -- dangerous foods are prohibited on planes. As you might expect, the list is a cross between funny and infuriating

http://www.stanstedairport.com/assets/B2CPortal/Static%20Files/Permitted_and_not_permitted_items.txt

The following items are NOT PERMITTED in your cabin baggage:

Drinks
• Any drinks in cans, bottles, plastic containers, cardboard cartons, etc

Cosmetics and toiletries
• All consumable cosmetics and toiletries (solids and liquids), eg:
- Soaps
- Creams
- Lipsticks or lip balms
- Mascara
- Toothpaste
- Talcum powder
- Hairspray and other aerosol items
- Deodorants
- Sun tanning products
- Bottles of contact lens solution

Food
• Any liquid-based food products in packets, tubes, plastic or tin containers
• Pasta or any other foodstuffs in sauces, gravies or other liquids
• Jams and syrups
• Sauces
• Pastes
• Yoghurts
• Soups (carton or otherwise)
• Stews
• Curry

Writing implements
• Spare cartridges for fountain pens

Smoking materials
• Cigarette lighters
• Non safety matches

The following items ARE PERMITTED in your cabin baggage:

Drinks
• Empty containers such as flasks and mugs

Cosmetics and toiletries
• Sanitary towels and tampons
• Non-consumable cosmetics and toiletries, eg:
- Combs
- Cotton Wool
- Fully disposable razors/razor cartridges
- Toothbrushes
- Disposable contact lenses in sealed packaging, sufficient for flight (ie one or two pairs)
- Non-disposable contact lenses in carrier with small amount of solution (but not bottles of solution)

Food
• Sandwiches
• Crisps
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Other solid foods

Writing implements
• Biros, rollerball pens, gel pens
• Fountain pens with single, open cartridge in use (but no refills)
• Pencils

Baby milk/baby food
• Empty containers such as empty bottles beakers or flasks
• Baby milk (if tasted by the passenger)
• Sterilised baby water (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby juice (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby food in liquid, gel or paste form (if tasted by the passenger)
• Baby food powder (need not be tasted)

Smoking materials
• Cigarettes
• Cigars
• Rolling tobacco
• Cigarette papers
• A single book or box of safety matches

We are sorry for the inconvenience this will cause you

Are you?

2006-08-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Unless you live in a country so remote that you think Michael Jackson is still black and known mainly for his music, mobile phones (also known as cell phones in the US just to confuse Europeans in movies) are probably part of your everyday life.

We all use mobile phones in the civilized world. We use them to warn loved ones when we are going to be late home from work, we use them to text message friends when we're unable to meet them as arranged, and we use them to contact the skank we're seeing on the side that is making us late for both the reasons above. Then we use them to dump said skank when something better comes along or we catch something nasty.

Mobile phones, in a word, are indispensable. We need mobile phones in the modern world just the same as we need oxygen, water and football. The phone companies have us by the balls and they know it. Except for the girls, who they have by the nipples.

So why, I ask you, are they always offering us better and better deals?

Seriously, we've all seen the ads…

• Free calls after 7pm
• Unlimited local calls
• 100 free talk minutes
• Free Asian girl with loose morals with every third brain tumour.

The list is endless. The mobile phone companies are always offering us a better deals and what I want to know is why? Why are they offering us all these extra minutes and cheaper call deals when they know we need the phones so badly we'd pay whatever the hell they ask, whenever the hell they ask?

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is only one logical explanation…

They want us to talk more on our mobile phones because they are playing subliminal messages in the background static to control our minds!

Think about it, it's obvious! How else can we explain the amount of shoes women buy in an average week?

We all know that women talk more on the phone than men do, and we all know women buy a whole lot more shoes. Coincidence? I think not! The phone companies are commanding people, specifically women, to buy shoes! Poor women. What chance do their fragile female psyches stand against the power of subliminal messages? They can't even piss standing up, much less fight off strong mental manipulation.

Mobile = Shoes?

You can imagine how it works…

Steve: "Hey, hon, its Steve calling. What's up?"

Steve's Girl: "Oh, hey, Steve. Well I…"

BUY SHOEEEESSS!

Steve's Girl: "I… um… What was I talking about?"

BUY SHOEEEESSS!

Steve: "You were telling me what's up."

Steve's ho: "Oh yes, well I think I'm going to town to buy shoes."

Steve: "Sounds good. So we're still meeting for the movie at eight, yeah?"

DON’T UNDERSTAND SPORT AND BITCH A LOT FOR NO REASOOON!

Steve's Girl: "God, you're so insensitive! If you don't understand what you've done wrong I'm not going to tell you… bitch… whine… etc. etc."

And so on.

It isn't hard to figure out the kind of messages these evil phone companies are subjecting us to.

Now this is the part of the article where I would usually investigate the motives behind these subliminal messages and then deduce a cunning and heroic plan to thwart their evil doing. You know, a bit like Columbo only less retarded.

But not today, dear reader, because I can actually see a value in these subliminal messages. If we can convince the phone companies to use their power for good rather than evil, perhaps by showing them videos of the cartoon series "Arthur" until they realise that people should all share, get along, and that loose teeth are a normal part of growing up, we might just be able to make this world a little better for all of us!

I mean, why can't subliminal messages be used for good? How about we use the technology to entice boy bands to either slash their wrists or quit, for example? Or perhaps play the alphabet repeatedly in George Bush's calls until he gains the ability to construct a legible sentence?

The possibilities are endless!

Saying the right thing at the right time.

2006-08-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

Saying the right thing at the right time.

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending one of his companys office parties. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.

Jack had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house.

He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick! "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go get groceries to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling!"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table eating. Jack asks, "Son. what happened last night?" "Well," his son said, "you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and you got that black eye when you ran into the door."

Confused Jack asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?"His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, lady, I'm married!"

Broken Coffee Table $239.99
Hot Breakfast $4.20
Two Aspirins 38 cents
Saying the right thing at the right time . . . Priceless

You would have to pay $300,000 to view this

2006-08-30T03:45:00.000-07:00

The head of the GalacticConfederation (76 planets aroundlarger stars visible from here)(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)solved overpopulation (250 billionor so per planet) -- 178 billionaverage) by mass implanting.He caused people to be brought toTeegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bombon the principal volcanoes (Incident 2)and then the Pacific area oneswere taken in boxes to Hawaiiand the Atlantic Area ones toLas Palmas and there "packaged."His name was Xenu. He usedrenegades. Various misleadingdata by means of circuits etc.were placed in the implants.When through with his crime Loyal Officers(to the people) captured himafter 6 years of battleand put him in an electronicmountain trap where he stillis. "They" are gone. The place (Confed.)has since been a desert.

What is above is the first page of what is supposedly the most important document in the world. At least according to Scientologists. The going rate for reaching the level of idiocy in the church to be able to view this document (and the 20 other pages that follow it) is close to $300,000. It is said in their doctrine that simply by viewing this page, you might not be able to handle it and could possibly die. If anyone does happen to have their head explode because the knowledge contained within these chicken scratchings was just too much for their feeble mind, I take full responsibility.

Anyone with a half a braincell knows that Scientologists are a bunch f cooks.

Here is why I am starting this rant. I work in Woking. There is a mall near by. I went in to the mall to get something for my soon to be father-in-law. In the middle of the walkway to the mail shop area there were 2 tables with, what appeared to be, heart monitors. There were also cleanly shaved white people there in short sleeved shirts trying to peddle Scientology to morons who happened to stray into their paths. They were like hunters looking for the prey.

I made a point in staying on the side of one of the stores and watching their tactics for reeling in the morons. They approach women, older people and weak. They do not approach bisinessmen, young people or people who look reasonable. So approached them. I passed near their layer and, of course, they made no move towards me. The second time I made a move towards them. I asked them what it is all about.

And here began the funniest thing that I have ever experiences in a long time.

After listening to their rant about Tethens (or Hivens or any other spelling it is this week). Then I asked a simple question - how do you explain L. Ron Hubbard's conviction of conning the 'church' out of $200,000? I have never seen anyone try to get out of answering a question like that person did. Then he sent me on his way because I was 'too distraut to be helped'. I guess Scientology only cares for mildly helpless.

Here is the thing - as its core tenet, Scientology teaches that all the bad things in the world come from negative life experiences. For example, if you were bitten by a dog as a child, without realizing it you might develop an irrational fear of dogs (preventing negative life experiences is why they insist their babies be born in complete silence). Using special auditing techniques and e-meter technology, both of which Scientology claims L. Ron Hubbard created, they believe they are able to remove these bad thoughts from your body.

In actuality though, both auditing and the e-meter existed before L. Ron Hubbard created them. Auditing was an early type of psychoanalysis experimented with in the early part of the last century. It was soon discarded when the experts of the time came to the conclusion it had no real lasting therapeutic value. The e-meter is based on the same technology as a primitive lie detector.

At first they introduce you to courseware and studies using bland subjects such as tapes on how to have a happy marriage, and how to control your eating habits. Where things get really weird is when they teach you to hate psychology and require you to pay money, lots of it, for the courses and auditing sessions. These materials and sessions are required to progress up the Scientology ladder.

As you progress up the ladder, the church begins to reveal more information about itself to you. They contend it can’t be revealed to you all up front, because the information is so powerful, that if you were to hear about it with an unprepared mind it would kill you (it's that powerful). What they begin to reveal is that all the negative energy trapped inside you are actually those pesky aliens.

If at some point you cannot continue to pay for the courseware and the auditing sessions, you will be offered a Billion year contract to serve the church for free in lieu of the fees. You see, the church begins to teach their followers that by following the courseware they will eventually become immortal, and a billion years is pittance in comparison to forever.

Eventually the courses teach you that once you reach the state of "clear" all thetans will have been purged from your body. After "clear" you progress to an OT (operating thetan). As an OT you will begin to develop supernatural powers (John Travolta is a high level OT).

To protect all of this information, the church uses its vast sums of money to litigate into oblivion those that speak out against the church. They have an entire dictionary of terms and plays to use against people. For example, if you were in the church and knew someone critical of it they would label you a PTS, or potential trouble source. The outside person would be called a suppressive person. As a PTS you are required to get rid of the suppressive person. This leads to the Scientology policy of disconnection.

Another trick Scientology uses is spying, threatening, and record keeping. See, the contents of your auditing sessions are kept by the church. They have all your deep dark secrets, and if you ever leave and are perceived as a danger in any way, they won't hesitate to threaten you with this information. Watch the scary video of scientology doing its spying.

Scientology is dangerous cult. They have ruined lives and killed people. If your are interested in learning more the many true life stories of people hurt by the cult, search the Internet. Just don't join their cult.

Oh and By the way -

http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/

English as a first language?

2006-08-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

The European commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English" (or preferably, "SI English").

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

More on Airport security

2006-08-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Taxiing down the runway on a London-bound BA flight from Dublin, the steward made the following announcement:
"The Transportation Security Administration has asked us to advise passengers that congregating in groups during the flight is prohibited. Please note that this includes standing in line to use the airplane lavatories."
Airline security is rapidly becoming a theater of the absurd. It's hard to imagine how the bureaucrats at home can top this effort, but at this point I have every confidence in their abilities. Nevertheless, I can't resist the temptation to try and apply rational thought.
What threat, specifically, is this measure addressing? Are hijackers supposed to be deterred from getting up and storming the cabin because of an in-flight announcement? ("Alas, Mahmoud - foiled again! We must remain seated"). How is this measure in any way enforceable? Is the pilot expected to divert the flight? Perform a barrel roll at the first sign of a pee queue? And how, exactly, is the sight of multiple passengers simultaneously lunging from their seats towards a suddenly available lavatory an attractive alternative to having a little group milling about by one of the galleys?
I was filled with curiousity to see if the pilot would perform an emergency landing at Leeds after the meal service, but of course (inevitably) everyone just ignored the directive, and let the passengers empty their bladders in peace. On an 1 1/2 -hour flight with free alcohol and predominantly Scottish passengers, there was just no other solution. Even the few people who understand the announcement were in no condition to comply with it after a few glasses of cognac and orange juice.
On arrival at London, I got to see many of the same passengers who had failed to commit violent acts in the pee queue waiting in line to be photographed and fingerprinted in the non-EU citizen line. The immigration agents, who had already had their fill of fingerprinting confused, tired foreign people, were perhaps understandably gruff. But the impression they created was awful - grabbing hands, barking instructions at people who did not speak English, physically pushing little old ladies into camera range. The line was long and moved slowly, another hurdle for people who had already endured a non-refundable hundred dollar visa application fee, long questionnaires at the embassy, two immigration and customs forms to be filled out in flight, a stern video about customs procedures before landing.
The only hint of sense in this depressing carnival came at the baggage carousel, where a friendly customs inspector was walking the Sausage Dog around, looking for contraband. The Sausage Dog is a very cute beagle who is designed to detect meat products, fruit, and other contraband that one is not supposed to bring into the country, for fears of spreading pestilence and little six-footed fauna.
The procedure with the Sausage Dog is simple - if he takes a liking to your suitcase, you get a green A written on your entry card, and the customs inspectors at the exit gate take a closer look at what you've brought. If he gives you a free pass, you're less likely to be checked before leaving. And the handler walks the dog around while people are collecting their baggage, so there's no extra hassle for the passenger. While I was waiting for my bags, I saw the animal detect a bag of oranges, a suspicious bundle in a carry-on bag, and a live cat (legal, in a carrier, but one got the sense that the dog had strong opinions about the cat's immigration status).
It would be nice if more of our security measures could be this smart, rather just ostentatiously useless. Unfortunately, our Homeland Security Bureau has become obsessed with collecting as much information as it can, with little thought to how to use it. It is ossifying into a bureaucracy that would make the Austro-Hungarian Empire proud. And it's making many visitors' first impression of America one of fear, incompetence, and a general disrespect for human dignity. If irony hadn't been declared dead after September 11, this might be one promising place to look for it.

Just a few thoughts

2006-08-23T10:54:00.001-07:00

Monday, August 14, 2006

What seems remarkable about this situation is how much harm even a foiled plot can cause. Between delays, rescheduled flights, lost productivity among businesspeople flying, lost duty free revenues, and the rest it seems likely to be tens of millions of dollars or more. This as the product of the unsuccessful efforts of a couple dozen people. It highlights the asymmetry between those who can attack anywhere and those who must defend everywhere. I do quite a lot of flying each year (business & leisure withing US, EU, & Pacific rim) and while I agree with temporary security restrictions, it has reached the point where I just don't want to fly any more because of all the hassles.
One could argue that the real terrorists in terms of making people fear flying is the airport security regime. When it comes to flying, I fear inconvenience, lost time, and challenges to my pride more than I fear for my safety from attacks or hijacking. Try explaining to a six-year old why Mommy and Daddy have to take their shoes off but kids don't have to. (Yet.) For me, flying has turned from a luxury into a sometimes necessary evil. Making is a big hassle won't make it more secure. Most of the security is invisible. The best security can't be observed. It's there, you can't anticipate it or plan for it. Having the National Guard seaching bags is theatrics. It makes for good television though.
It's more probable that a jet will crash from mechanical failure than terrorism. Most people don't think about it or worry about it. The world is strange. The airlines layoff thousands of mechanics to save money and are forced to spend more money on security due to terrorism. The wing is falling off, the landing gear is shakey due to fewer mechanics, less repair work done by less people and the airlines are pushing "cheap" flights. Marketing trumps security. The layed off mechanics are applying to work security jobs because that's where the jobs are. In the end everybody is working security as the jets lose millions of dollars (higher fuel prices, etc.) and fall into disrepair. Job security is what most people care about. Our energy security is also threatened due to poor policy. We can blame that on terrorism too. Toss your bottle of hairspray and do your duty. I get the feeling the terrorists have won a few battles because we do as we are told, no matter how little sense it makes.
Your chance of dying in a car wreck is vastly greater than your chance of dying in a terrorist incident. Yet most of us ordinary people leading middle class lives overcome the terror of dying in a car wreck. In fact, most of us don't give it a second thought. I buckle my seatbelt and keep my car in good shape and pay attention to what I'm doing and relax in the knowledge that I've hedged my bets enough to survive another commute. I have no problem being "un-terrorized" while flying. I'm much, much safer once I've actually made it to the airport than I was getting there.
If you look at statistics, your chances of being involved in a terrorists attack are very low. Your chances of hitting a lottery for millions of dollars is greater, much greater. The chances of being killed by terrorists is so low you might as well forget about it. Your chances of something good happening are always much greater than something bad happening, even if you don't waste cash on lottery tickets. That's your business though.
Aren't we lucky that the shoe bomber wasn't an underwear bomber?

After the London security scare..........

2006-08-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 10, 2006

So the airports are in chaos right now. Whoopty doo. You know whats frightening? How non shalant everyone is at the airports these days. 3 hours before departure for a 1 hour flight? No problems. Cavity search for a flight? No bother. When I am flying from Luton or Gatwick or Stanstead, there is a row of booths that everyone is stopped at to get their passport inspected by a Customs officer. This is the last flight I took last week from London to Edinburgh. Before the scare:The flight was departing at 18:00 from Loton to Edinburgh. I arrived 3 hours in advance. I already had a boarding pass so there was no need for me to stand in the check in line that seemed like the line at a free ice cream sampling. I went to the security point thinking that I would sit down in the departure area and eat my sandwich. I was greeted by a hoard of people waiting to pass through the security check where only 2 xray machines were working. Out of available 7. So before you get to the area where you receive some healthy dose of radiation, you have to show your boarding pass and your ID (1 if you are counting the check in counter thats 2). Then I stood inline for about 1 hour 45 minutes while the people snaked around the makeshift slalom velvet ropes making it look like there is a free Picasso napkin doodle at the end of it free for everyone attending. But no. What was at the end, was the more unwilling to listen faces telling people who are late for the flights that everyone is late for the flight. Huh? If you had enough staff you wouldnt have the line because all of the screening machines could be working. But I soon saw what the hold up was and why only 2 places were working. You see, they did have enough staff. The reason that there were only 2 machines woking, is because there were 2 people viewing the xray images, 2 men and 2 womes standing to do a pat down if the person beeps throught the metal detector, and the rest of about 14 people were hand searching every peice of hand luggage going through this section. Every one little peice.So after waiting for 15 minutes for my turn to be evaluated for the neatness of my packed luggage, I was let loose in the collection point between the security barrier and the passport control point, where it looked like the slaughter house and were the sheep. The screener did empty the contents of my bag onto the table and looked at everything, by the way. Police were checking the boarding cards and passports (thats 3) of everyone who was funneling through to board their flight after standing in line to get screened for almost 2 hours. They asked me the questions like am I a legal resident here. Am I working. Where is my residence, and of course the obligatory questions like has anyone without your knowledge had access to my bags. Well, if anyone had, would I know about it?? Fine. It was already 17.30 and I desided to make my way to the gate. Obligatory POlice in full riot gear with semi-automatic weapons dont fase me anymore. Do I feel safer with them around? No. Would you feel safer on the plane if somewhere in the hugeness of the terminal you knew that there were police with guns? No.After walking for about half the way to the gate, I came to what appeared to be another security point where I had to present my ID and a boarding pass (thats 4). So let me guet this straight - all the people flying from the gate past the security point get their little 'you are safe to fly star' and all the people whos gate is before the security point are just good enough? fine. The plane boarding was uneventful, although I was asked to show my boarding card and ID once again at the gate (thats 5) and prior to enetering the plane, although this time, it was only for a boarding card (soI am going to awad it a 1.2). Apparantly the boarding card before coming on the plane is in case someone sneaks in between the gate and the plane door.Thats 5.5 times that my identity has been checked, scanned, probed and, im my opinion, stored somewhere for later use. I lef london 4 hours before departing on a 1 hour flight bringing the total number of hours of travel to 7 (I am counting the bus from Edinburgh airport to Heymarket station).This weekend I am taking a train. From london to Edinburgh. 4.5 hours. Non stop. With scenery. £45 cheaper than flying. Who knew. Plus my cast wrapped broken leg would like some comfort as well.Look. All I am sayin is that the security has to be beefed up. The intelligence has to be beefed up. The research has to be beefed up. But who is paying the price? The consumer. In every way.

Bush's first veto...

2006-08-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 20, 2006

President Bush appears poised for the first veto of his presidency. The cause that has finally pushed him to reject Congressional legislation? An attempt to expand funding for stem cell research that Bush hobbled back in 2001.
For millions of Americans, the potential fruits of stem cell research -- in the form of cures to dangerous diseases -- are a serious matter with grave personal import. For President Bush, the issue has always served as a political football.
On the one hand, Bush argues that the destruction of human embryos (microscopic organisms made up of a few cells) is a kind of killing. His press spokesman, Tony Snow, adopting the supercharged cant of anti-abortion activists, referred to it recently as "murder." In order to stop such "murder," Bush agreed in 2001 to limit all federal funding of stem cell research to a handful of pre-existing "lines" of cells -- cells that had been created specifically for research. His argument was, let's not use tax dollars to pay for the destruction of more embryos for the sake of research.
Here is why Bush's position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded.
If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn.
But of course they'll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his "base." This has been true since the first airing of Bush's position in 2001, as I said back then. So he finds a purely symbolic way of taking a stand, but won't follow the logic of his position to the place where it might cause him any political harm -- as opposing the family-building dreams of millions of middle-class Americans would doubtless do.
(And please don't test our credulity with the laughable "Go ahead and do the research, but let's not spend taxpayers' money on things they don't believe in" argument: If that had any bearing, my tax dollars would not be funding a war that 2/3 of the country opposes now that the specious arguments used to launch it have collapsed.)
If Bush believes destroying embryos is murder, let him take a real stand against it. If he doesn't, he shouldn't make it harder for the thousands of embryos that are being discarded anyway to be used for a valuable purpose that could improve real lives.
That's why Bush's stem cell position isn't Solomonic -- it's craven. His upcoming veto is an act not of moral leadership but of hypocrisy. And the cost of this hypocrisy, assuming Congress can't muster the votes for an override, will be borne by everyone who dreams of new cures for awful illnesses.
An administration that is not in touch with theoutside world. What else is new....

Who would win in a fight? Lemi or God?

2006-08-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 10, 2006

Brave new world

http://www.youtube.com/v/uw8MrgQrM1I

So this a new beginning, as the new century dawns

The world's a better place for you and me

Shouldn't smoke or drink or watch that evil filthy porn.

Be Christian and God will set you free.

But being poor is worse than having AIDS,

The homeless live in boxes at our feet

Living in a constant state of dull frustrated rage,

The innocent shot daily in the street

The government has always been you pal as you well know

Absolute corrupted power play,

If we all wipe each other out, it only goes to show

While the bureaucrats get richer by the day,

Smoking dope will get you more than murder one,

And even worse than statutory rape,

Don't understand your children, so you send them all to jail,

Beleive me, you will never make a worse mistake.

The government is coming and it wants to be your friend,

It wants to show you how to be a snitch

Inform upon your children, the inevitable end,

Is everyone's a victim but the filthy fucking rich,

And religion, like the monster that it is

Keeps telling you to turn the other cheek

God is on your side, but I don't think that you're on his,

If Jesus showed up now he'd be in jail by next week

On Nathan Barley

2006-08-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Reprinted. I totally agree though.

One of the finest pieces of contemporary London-centric satire is, or was, Charlie Brooker's 'Cunt' (http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/): the fictional adventures of Nathan Barley, a "worthless, moneyed little shit who deserves to die". Barley, a typical preening Hoxditch fool, as now undergone the almost-inevitable transformation to the small screen - though with heavy input from both Brooker himself and the massivly-influential Chris Morris.
Its not like Decline and Fall to pass up such a golden critical opportunity, so I positioned myself in front of the television, cracked open a can of Turkish pilsener, and got watching. Telelvision adaptations are often extremely disappointing, but would this one live up to its remarkable pedigree?

Well, from whats been seen so far, the signs are not good; the need for Nathan Barley to conform to the mechanics of television comedy seems to have caused some unfortunate changes to be made. Perhaps the most damaging is that Barley is obviously signposted as a twat - a buffoon who unknowingly humiliates himself with every word he speaks, a man whose mulleted dandyism is so obviously at odds with the surrounding world that the casual viewer can easily pick him out. The true horror of the original Cunt, however, is Barleys absolute comfort within the London milieu. Hes not an obvious caricature; hes an Everycunt - the kind of man youd meet anywhere in the gastropubs of West London, the bars of East London, and a million places in between. He is vile but plausible, and indeed represents that little seed of pretension that lurks in all of us: London welcomes such people, rather than throwing them into sharp relief. His very existence obviates the need for any further comment, or for him to condemn himself via his own stupidity: yet this is obviously too subtle for the new medium. In a further change, a new character, a depressive thirtysomething Dan Ashcroft, is introduced as a voice of reason - since the TV format usually demands a character with whom the audience can identify. In this case, having written an article on the rise of the idiots (we must assume at this point that idiot is the rather limp replacement chosen for cunt) our hero is distressed to find that his articles are read, for the most part, by idiots. While this may have been an effective way for Brooker to salve his conscience over the usual readership of his articles - which, lets face it, are popular with the very elements he constantly attacks - as a satiric device it falls a little flat. In addition, the creation of a new central figure has relegated Barley himself to the status of occasional comic relief, which seems clearly wrong.

So, in part its the execution which is the problem here. But a more fundamental issue is that satires implicit dialogue between outside and in, between engagement and detachment, has become corrupted. The centrality of the London-centric broadcast or print media to our culture means that any attempt to satirise that culture - at least in a manner as simultaneously vicious and specifically targeted as Nathan Barley - from within those same media circles will be doomed to failure. Once the script falls into the hands of the gilded fools behind the cameras, all of its vitality is lost: its translated into a language already simplified by the very things it attacks. For complex economic, educational and social reasons (many of which boil down to the fact that the media is a fundamentally middle-class profession, itself boiling down to the fact that to get ahead you need to be able to afford to work for free), contemporary television comedy is already heavily inflected by Barleyism, however distasteful a judgement this might seem to genuine talents working in the field.

This may seem a terribly sweeping judgement, but to a certain degree its borne out by other humour currently on our screens: increasingly, theres a sense that British television comedy seems to be existing within its own, claustrophobically self-referential world. Id cite the pretentious, self-indulgent Green Wing, the sub-Morris dark comedy of Nighty Night, and even the increasingly cosy, twentysomething tweeness of Spaced - a series that at its best had considerable charm. A lot of this, admittedly, is related to the huge influence of Morris - a talent so utterly unique that any attempt to re-use his techniques comes out as hamfisted parody. It cant help, either, that the creation of BBC digital channels has oriented the programming towards an increasingly specific audience; one that in demographic terms coincides very closely with the materials creators. It should be added at this point that Im not harking back to any golden age of television comedy - it was always crap. Yet failure in these times is possibly less excusable; theres more being commissioned with more airtime to fill, and with most major televisual boundaries and taboos having been broken down, writers are at last free to pursue whatever takes their fancy, which makes it even more depressing when what they seem to fancy is Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. The series of the past few years most likely to bring a wan flicker of mirth to Decline and Falls face have been those which have broken out of the sitcom format by whatever means - the internal monologues of Peep Show, the focused parody of Look Around Yous first series or of People Like Us - rather than attempting to update it with limply surreal touches or flashy camerawork (Nathan Barley was blighted by both of the these, leading to an irritating confusion over whether these innately Barleyesque techniques were part of the satire or were used without irony).

At this point, someone might try and cite the runaway success of current audience favourite Little Britain as an example of Britcomedys rude health and of the success of the BBC3 concept. Well, Id argue that Little Britain is actually deeply old-fashioned; a blend of stale catchphrase comedy (a genre already fucked raw by The Fast Show) with some more traditional elements of British humour. You may remember the episode of Family Guy where the local bar is turned into a English theme pub. I say, says a stereotypical English customer, you know whats really funny? A man dressed in womens clothing. Depressingly, this really gets to the bottom of much of Little Britains appeal - its a traditional-style point-and-laugh freakshow (unless, of course, thats the entire point, and Lucas and Walliams are actually satirising their audiences desperately MOR tastes; but could they really be that clever?)

What this all leads to, ultimately, is the sense that Nathan Barley is part of the same airless, self-contained world. How else would it be possible to explain its startling sense of irrelevance? Webcasts and MP3 decks are all very well as a target for satire, but to some extent its the ludicrously optimistic, pre-tech-crash culture of the late 1990s thats being satirised, and one suspects that most people in the non-media world wouldnt really be bothered. It seems remarkable that a television company would waste valuable time on this or on lampooning of a set of stereotypes only recognisable to those who live in London, until one remembers that for the media, London is everything.

How can all this this be stated more simply? The television version of Cunt is made, most probably, by cunts. For cunts. If it turns out rather cuntish, we shouldnt be surprised.

I love my Irish peeps, but ....

2006-08-23T10:47:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Now, I love my Irish peeps. You're all really close to my cold Jewish heart. But I gotta ask you about this...

WHY IS EVERYTHING JUST GOOD ENOUGH?

I am in Dublin right now and going to be here for the 3 weeks on assignment from my company based in london. The first thing I noticed when I landed in Dublin 'international' airport was the debris on the field next to the runway and the gates. Isnt that like a hazard of some kind?

The airport is a shack. THERE ARE NO COMPUTERS ON THE CHECK IN DESK! They do everything on paper. Whats up with that? Plus you pay 7 euro's to check in your bags on RyanAir and Aerlingus? why? should that come with the price of the ticket?

The main artery into the city from the airport is always jammed because its a local road! I guess they are not expecting anyone to come to dublin.

thank god I am staying near Trinity college, which is a progressive area of dublin.

I asked for a wake up call at 4.15am, received it at 4.30.

The city bus does not give you change if you dont have exact change. It gives you a receipt to redeem it at the bus depot office. You have to spend another 1.35 to get there to get your change.

The soft drink machine in the hotel lobby I am staying at has not been filled or fixed or something in the whole 2 weeks that I have been here. It couldnt be because there is a shortage of vending machine repairmen, because ireland has one of the highest unemployment rates in europe. but thats good enough.

I left my suits at the hotel for the weekend. When I came in on sunday night at about 6pm, I asked the reception for my suits. They said that they will bring them to my room as soon as they located them in housekeeping. They didnt. I asked them at 10pm again and was told that the person at the front desk left home. Nice. I only got them on monday night. Why? Because the housekeeping department opens at 9 which is later than I need to be at the office.

Vat is 21%.

I firmly beleive that Irish had a great civilization going once. With flying cars and doors that open with the whoosh sound like on star trek and food dispensers that would eliminate hunger and poverty. Then they discovered whiskey......

PS: Guinness tastes much better. I guess that because they are going through so many barrels a week. What else is new....

Whats with all the gadgets, eh?

2006-08-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

When I used to go on long trips, I would rent a car rather than drive the car I already have. I don't have a really good reason for this, except that rental cars are shiny and smell new, and my car is dingy and smells like the nightmares of a thousand cheeseburgers. Now that I am in the new country, that feeling was reinforced by my experience on driving from Scotland to London.Rental cars also have better tech. For instance, my car has one bar to move the seat back and forth, and one to move the seat up and down. But they don't really move the seat, they just loosen it so that I can jerk around like three go-go dancers roped together, trying to get it into place. By comparison, my rental has an ingenious little knob that gently tucks my body into perfect ergonomic balance. It's like a womb with new-car smell. Actually, for all I know, wombs do have new-car smell. Maybe that's why we like new-car smell so much. But I digress.My car has a radio that picks up normal free stations, which is fine for the city but if you travel for an hour or so you're going to be stuck with three flavors of station: country, mariachi and preacher.My car also has a CD player that works with any CD that has not been marred by scratches, fingerprints, dust, sunlight or sexy thoughts -- in other words, none that I own. The rental, on the other hand, has satellite radio, which has infinity channels. NASA has a probe sitting in a rental car even as we speak, exploring the far, uncharted reaches of satellite radio stations. All they've been able to determine so far is that every station eventually plays at least one cover of "Time After Time."Satellite radio is very dangerous, because I'm really not qualified to make aesthetic decisions at 70 mph. It generally takes me three near misses to give up and go with the station that most resembles my own record collection. It's nice to know that at least one other person, or perhaps algorithm, out there likes "One Night in Bangkok."Rental cars these days also have buttons all over the steering wheel, which makes me very happy. This is because like all rational, mature adults, I want to be Speed Racer. All I need is a child and his chimp in the trunk and I'm ready to rock. It's not precisely totally 100 percent the same, though, because Speed's buttons transformed the car into a boat and launched a robot homing pigeon, while my buttons engage cruise control. In all honesty, I'm about 400 times more likely to use cruise control as I am to need a robot pigeon, but it would be nice to have both.I think the point of having the buttons on the steering wheel is that it's supposed to be safer, but it's actually more dangerous for the first 15 minutes, because that's when I'm experimenting. I'm pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I'd make a terrible James Bond. Two minutes after I pulled into traffic the streets would be covered in oil slicks and smoke screens, and I'd be trailing a grappling hook.My most recent rental had "parking assistance," which is not as nice as it sounds. I was hoping for that thing where you press a button and the car slides into a parking space for you, but instead parking assistance just mimics the presence of a high-strung passenger. When you start to get too close to another car, or the curb or an invisible elf, it beeps at you. A startled, accusatory beep. If you ignore it, it beeps again. The first time I tried to use parking assistance, I may as well have taken the handicapped space because anyone seeing the angle I ended up at would have assumed I was half-blind, suffered from vertigo and had an intense fear of curbs. So I just ignored it for the rest of the trip and I'm proud to say I didn't run over anything that has a lawyer.I guess I am getting too old for even stuff as basic as a car. What else is new...

Retarded white girl

2006-08-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 20, 2006

From the 'Can't Wait To See This Kid Get His Ass Kicked In High School Department' - According to press release by Brad's PR firm, Angelina had a 6lb. baby boy they named Benin Obadele. What a retarded name.Is it real? Lets examine the evidence...1) retardo, "hollywood" name- check2) born in 3rd world country for the sake of press attention- check3) small for a full term child, suggesting that mom "watched her figure" during pregnancy- checkYep, seems real to me. Benin Obadele? WHAT THE FUCK!?!? Angelina, YOU ARE WHITE. Quit with this african shit already. Repeat after me: I am NOT from africa. I am white. I am not a member of the watusi tribe. My name is Angelina, not Ngungo Bunifa Kitenge. All these phony hollywood types are trying too damn hard! What else is new....

H2O

2006-08-23T10:45:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Soft drink proprietors have seized the media spotlight with a recent announcement that they will phase out the sale of sugary soft drinks in public school cafeterias and vending machines over the next three years. Health and education officials were quick to praise the move, but others are asking the pertinent question why the sudden change of heart? Call me a jaded consumer, but I have a difficult time swallowing the fact that the purveyors of sugary, health destroying cocktails are more concerned with the recent obesity epidemic and the health of our youth than they are with their own market shares and profitability. There must be some measure of benefit, aside from the recent P.R. gains, for these gigantic corporations to even consider pulling their flagship products from such a lucrative market. What could possibly replace all of those cans of Coke and Pepsi?
H-20. Wet gold. Profit in a bottle. Water. The bottled water industry is ridiculously lucrative. Each of the three companies that agreed to drop the sugary beverages has their own version of bottled water that will undoubtedly fill the gaps in the school vending machines. The world consumes roughly 155 billion liters of bottled water per year in a market that last year surpassed 9 billion dollars, and it would seem that they still have markets to (excuse the pun) tap. The corporations literally pay fractions of cents for each liter of spring water that they bottle, which they then sell marked up at roughly 2000f that cost. In some cases the water isnt even from a fresh water spring. Instead it is common tap water that has gone through one or more stages of purification. Without a doubt, selling the water in its base form for the same price as water mixed with sugar, flavor, and carbonation is vastly more profitable.
That being said, the end result is a school environment in which children are not able to over indulge on soft drinks. This is good. Bear in mind, however, that Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola. and PepsiCo were likely not putting the health and well being of the children first when making this decision, because when we think about healthy food and drink, PepsiCO and Coca-Cola are the first things that pop into everyones head. Big corporations making even more money at the expense of eveyone else.... What else is new.....