Archive for 2009
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Easter Traditions: Chocolate And Spanking
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 21, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, March 21st, 2009There’s more to the holiday than chocolate & Jesus, you know.
 Even warmongering puppet presidents love Easter! |
Like many of us, I find Easter a little confusing. God’s son and the saviour of mankind ascends to heaven, and we celebrate by worshipping bunnies, eating chocolate, and hiding candy from the kids? As usual with American holidays, the Germans appear to be the culprit, having smuggled the Easter Bunny into the country via the Dutch in Pennsylvania in the 1700′s. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with the idea of eating chocolate as form of celebration, and it was clever of Jesus to ascend to heaven around Passover so no-one would forget the date, but really – a big bunny that lays eggs? The egg part is easy: early Catholics didn’t eat meat, dairy products or eggs during lent, so there were plenty of eggs to go around. The Protestants probably went the extra mile taunting their nemeses by not only eating eggs, but painting them bright colors in case the Catholics didn’t notice. The bunny part however, is on the one hand obvious, but on the other hand a little light on corroborating evidence. Yes, it’s Springtime, a time of fertility, yadda yadda yadda. However, the first bunny references seem to be the German ones in the 17th century, and how that got so strongly connected with eggs is beyond me. Personally, I might celebrate Easter this year by going to Bermuda and flying a kite. Or Eastern Europe has another fun angle: spanking and wet t-shirt contests. If you’re a little lost yourself regarding how to celebrate, you might try Cracked.com’s Find the God for You quiz. And I just realized I forgot to insert any insidious product links, so why don’t you go buy me a Lindt Easter Bunny
A Better Life Through Info Graphics
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 20, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, March 20th, 2009Even global economic collapse is fun as an info-graphic
In these troubled times, nothing soothes one’s anxiety like a cute info graphic. The video clip at left, for example, is a re-imagining of “Little Red Riding Hood”, told in helpful info-graphic form, with useful tooltips, and handy facts. Like grandma’s nutritional value, for instance. Even the corporate world is onto the fact that somehow life is just easier to digest in graphic form, which explains these examples of game-based training brought to us by BusinessWeek.com. This Japanese animation – Ensuring the Future of Food – makes consumer waste downright cute. And if you have a web site with lame traffic stats, just use VisitorVille to view the figures. Your web site is MUCH cooler when Google is represented by a cute little bus instead of a cold, heartless, data-harvesting bot that doesn’t visit your site as often or as deeply as you’d like. And then there’s The Sims. Do people still play The Sims? I’m a little out of the loop on stuff like that, but if they do, now they can buy their little imaginary info-graphic people imaginary little info-graphic furniture from Ikea
Printer Jam
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 19, 2009 by admin in Technology
Thursday, March 19th, 2009Printers have feelings too you know
The other day, I heard a friend in an adjacent office talking to their printer. They were saying “C’mon, that’s it, that’s it” and occasionally tapping on something while they jiggled the paper tray. I said “Wow. Who’d have thought twenty years ago that one day we’d have voice-activated printers?” They stared at me blankly for a second and then busted up laughing. I added “and it only requires occasional percussive maintenance”. Why is it that even though the printing press was invented around 1450, they still can’t seem to produce a printer that simply does the single task appointed to it? If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ve probably experienced the rage induced by cryptic messages like “PC Load Letter”, which is so commonplace that the movie Office Space included the well-known Going Away Present Scene, in which printer justice is finally served. The clip featured at left would go a long way toward explaining some of this phenomena; you might want to be careful how you treat your printer next time you’re frustrated. And also be careful how you word the notes you leave in a faulty printer at the office, especially if the problem is that an inkpen jammed the machine.
Detroit’s Real Renaissance Center
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 18, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009The Powerhouse Project Draws International Attention To Detroit
Usually when one mentions the words “Detroit” and “Renaissance” together, one is referring to Detroit’s Renaissance Center, four 39-story towers which were originally a Ford Motor Company development project in the early 1970′s and are now owned by General Motors. As someone who grew up in nearby Ann Arbor, with its tree-lined streets, PhD-educated cab drivers, and insanely overpriced real estate, I’ve always sadly thought of Detroit in the same way I might think of Beirut: a slightly scary, bombed-out city that I might have to pass through to go elsewhere. At the same time, I’ve always held some hope for the place, in spite of its history of corrupt mayors and urban blight. I’ve always though that if Cleveland can do it, so can Detroit. Which is why the Powerhouse Project excites me. Although a small project initiated by a handful of people, it’s gaining international attention thanks to groups like Amsterdam’s Detroit UnReal Estate Agency. The basic story is that Detroit couple Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope bought a run-down house in northern Hamtramck (let’s start calling it “NoHam”!) for $1900.00 with the intention of building a mini green power grid in the neighborhood. The project has snowballed a little, so they’ve gotten considerable positive press. To learn more, check out this piece at ModeldMedia.com, this NYT Op-Ed piece, or the WFUM Radio segment The Upside Of Foreclosures, which has both a transcript and an audio stream. You can also visit the Powerhouse Project web site. Let’s go, Detroit! With inspired thinking like this, maybe we can avoid the Bushvilles of Sacramento!
Your Dog Did His Duty, Are You Doing Yours?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 17, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009The Straight Scoop On Plastic Bags And Poop
It struck me yesterday as I was walking the dog and picked up his “business” with a plastic bag that the same Liberal Elitists who who got the whole poop-scooping movement rolling probably never considered the unintended consequences. I was curious. How many dogs are there in America, and how much plastic goes un-recycled because of this practice? Doing some rough math, based on the idea that I can squish a plastic bag down to about a one-inch cube, I determined that we waste enough plastic this way to fill the first 26 floors of the Sears Tower. Which, as you can see, forced me to create one of the worst info-graphics ever. The fact remains that in spite of tremendous improvements in America’s recycling behaviour, we still only recycle an estimated 2 percent of the plastic bags we use daily. San Francisco was one of the first communities to tackle this problem head-on, but real action remains feeble nationwide. Interested in keeping your consumer behaviour green in general? Another big offender is cell phones; consider selling your discarded phones to GreenPhone.com. They claim that for every phone they buy, they plant a tree. You can also make smarter choices in the first place; EnergyStar.gov has been around for ages, and has plenty of great resources for consumers. And for businesses looking for greener computer hardware, there are resources like EPEAT.