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- Automakers Cry to the WebDecember 8 2008
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Who knew when socialism came to America it would be wearing a Brooks Brothers suit?
Before I complain, I guess I have to say a bailout of the Big 3 seems necessary and suddenly fair. After all, the gov’t (Bush, Bernanke, Paulson) was more than willing to throw money, lots of it, even if we have to print it, no questions asked, no oversight required to their buddies in the banking industry–the same buddies whose greed caused the problem to begin with. The executives at the Big 3 placed their companies at the top of a giant Plinko board and let them fall to zero. In a real free market, they’d fail and be bought by some (likely Japanese) company that had some actual foresight regarding things like, I don’t know, how customers like quality, how you shouldn’t need more than a decade to prove you make quality products again, how in an increasingly costly energy environment it might be a good idea to focus on more fuel-efficient autos. Yet these executives act like they were blindsided and not at fault. And just as they go begging for money from Congress, they launch expensive ad campaigns on TV asking people to contact their legislators.
They’ve also taken their cause to the Web: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, asking people to support them.
Truth is we don’t have a lot of choice but to support these idiots. Not supporting them means lots and lots of American workers and communities suffer, which is why it’s so surprising the gov’t has
- Gmail Adds Drunk Sitter FeatureOctober 7 2008
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It’s not April 1, so they must be serious. Google has introduced a new feature to Gmail called Mail Goggles, designed to prevent people from drinking and emailing.
Are you one of those gushing, drunk-dialing, type-how-you-really-feel boozers? After a few rounds, do you have a habit of sending embarrassing emails on Saturday night you wish you hadn’t? Did the boss get a piece of your cloudy mind? That new girl get a confession of eternal love, devotion and “booty magic”
Mail Goggles will act as a kind of digital sobriety test, should email be your medium of choice. The service is active by default only late at night on weekends, but once enabled it can be adjusted to be active when you’re “most likely to need” Mail Goggles to double check if you really want to send that email.
But it doesn’t just ask if you’re sure–of course, you’re sure, dagnabbit, sure you’re sure, you’re sure (burp)–it gives you a series of simple math problems to solve. Not just 2+2, but stuff you’re drunken monkey of a mind has to kind of think about, like 69-38.
Um, negative 20, right?
And it doesn
- Really, Beshear? Is that your final answer?September 23 2008
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Just read Mike’s piece on KY Gov. Beshear’s demand that international gambling sites block access to Kentucky users or forfeit their domain names. I’ve liked Beshear mostly, he took down a real crook of a predecessor in the last election and backed casinos amid a firestorm of opposition to raising much needed revenue—objections have been either speciously moralistic (lotto and horse racing are okay but slots are sinful) or based on illogical scare tactics. But this move is not just weird, it’s disturbing.
Granted, online poker sites are illegal in the US; here in the Land of the Free we’re only allowed to gamble via state-approved venues. And granted, these gambling sites are suspect—just read last week one got in trouble for spying on players’ poker hands and rigging the games.
In short, I ain’t risking my money in these joints.
But Beshear is demanding jurisdiction over sites already policed by ICANN and operated in foreign countries? Really? That’s the first thing that doesn’t make any sense at all.
The other thing is his defense of it. Without giving any support or data whatsoever, he says these “illegal sites” deprive KY of “millions of dollars in revenue.” Um, what? The only gambling revenue the state gets is via state lotto taxes and taxes on earnings from horse races. Is the state thinking of imposing
- Bigfoot Hoaxers On The LambAugust 19 2008
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In the end it was pride that kept me from posting about the search, online and off, for Bigfoot last week; pride in my own skepticism won out over the hope to see a myth proved. And sure enough, all that jazz about a couple of Georgia boys stumbling onto a Bigfoot corpse last week turned out to be a great big pile of mythical Bigfoot doodie.
It was really tempting to buy into the hype and perpetuate what in my gut had to be a hoax. From the one photo provided, the creature in the freezer looked like a gorilla suit with link-sausage entrails spread across its abdomen. But how, in 500 years or so of exploration had these great primates gone undetected, alive or dead? No Bigfoot bones near dinosaur ones? No clear pictures of anything? Could it really be that 7 ½ foot tall apemen were this adept at hiding? Are they eating their own to keep themselves hidden?
The truth is no less ugly than the grizzly fantasy. Online last week, Bigfoot was all the rage. Last Friday, looking back on Google Trends, searches for Bigfoot were at fever pitch in anticipation of the big press conference planned for that afternoon in Palo Alto. The result of the press conference? Still no body because of an exclusive agreement with Fox News, which would be revealed on Monday? What a gyp!
All that time searching could have focused on the actual video of what observers are calling the elusive “
- Different Guitar Hero Strokes for Different FolksAugust 18 2008
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Your first reaction to the idea some North Carolina parents agreed to let their 16 year-old drop out of school to pursue a career in Guitar Hero is likely similar to mine: um, what? I can imagine asking my parents a similar question in 1992. “Mom, Dad, school’s a drag and I think my time could be better spent playing Sonic the Hedgehog.”
That would have been extra stupid in 1992, when competitive video gaming was featured in an obscure movie only kids of video store owners like me actually ever saw. My dad would have laughed me out of the room while telling me to get on the August-heated roof and clean the gutters before I started my homework. Skateboarding would have been a more sensible suggestion among the “bad reasons to drop out of school” choices.
But in 2008, in the advent of Major League Gaming, your first question probably she be something like this instead: How much money’s in it?
For Blake Peebles, it could be a lot, up to $80,000 per year if he’s good enough—if he’s the best, but his parents, as quoted in this article, haven’t mentioned anything about money. Instead, they only say Blake hated school and wouldn’t shut up about it. I wasn’t aware it was that easy. Maybe if I’d ridden my parents enough, I could have talked them into professional TV-watching.
My grandfather was yanked out of school in the third grade to help “man” the potato f