Happy Hollowmeme!
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 27, 2009 by admin in Holidays
This year, take an easy out and go as an Internet meme. We all know Halloween is really here to remind us that there are only 55 shopping days left ’til Christmas, and that Dachsunds taste great with mustard.
The other day, a friend asked me: “What are you gonna be for Halloween?” to which I replied: “Happy I survived another Michigan October!“. Let’s face it, the real purpose of Halloween is to remind you that there are 55 shopping days ’til Christmas, and that it’s time to pull out your Turgooduccochiqua recipe. My only Halloween plan this year is to call all my weight-conscious friends November 2nd and ask them if they want me to take all the mini chocolate bars off their hands, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some costume ideas! A few of our ideas from last year are still pertinent; I have yet to see the amazingly simple-to-execute Surreal Homer Simpson getup at a party. But for this year, why not go as an Internet Meme? The folks over at Rocketboom have assembled a list for you, complete with product links to all the things you’ll need. To dress up as the Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance, all you need is rope
It Takes A Pillage
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 26, 2009 by admin in Politics
The public has been slow to react to investment banks’ plundering of the economy, but some protests are finally taking shape in Chicago.
If you’re amongst the nation’s 14 million unemployed, maybe you should see if you can get a job delivering the plasma screen TV’s and cases of champagne that bailed out bankers will be buying to celebrate another year of million-dollar bonuses. Finally, even people like billionaire investor George Soros say you should be angry about the obscene bonuses received by Wall Street. In spite of the fact that the White House “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg is imposing restrictions on certain companies’ compensation, it’s largely agreed that this is pointless, because what bank executives don’t get in salary and cash bonuses, they get through stock options and other benefits. So while New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo releases a study (see No Rhyme or Reason: The ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Bank Bonus Culture) that looks in detail at how bailout recipients Merrill and Citigroup both lost more than $27 billion in 2008 but still somehow justified paying nearly $9 billion in bonuses, and while Treasury Department watchdog Neil Barofsky continually points out the appalling misuse of bailout funds, 2009 bonuses at companies like Goldman Sachs will be double what they were in 2008. Call me naiive, but I remain astounded at the idea that one can run global economy into the ground and get a bonus for it. I was originally going to use the analogy of a man with gambling problem for today’s little rant, and thought it a little corny. But Nomi Prins – author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street
The Measured Musical Madness Of Moondog
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 25, 2009 by admin in Music
Moondog is probably the most famous street musician you never heard of.
DJ Mr Scruff’s “Get A Move On” Is Little More Than Moondog With A Beat |
Somehow I managed to listen to an exhaustive variety of music my entire life and not hear about the astounding genius of Moondog until yesterday. Chances are that like me, you’ve heard Moondog and not realized it. His song Stamping Ground
Social Search: Who Gives A Twinglebook?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 24, 2009 by admin in Technology
Will Social Search be an awesome new way to search the web, or a sewage-filled spam hose?
I was wondering why no-one seemed to give a twinglebook about the fact that Microsoft struck search deals with Twitter and Facebook, and that Google not only has their own deal with Twitter, but plans to launch their own “Social Search” in the near future. Then I remembered that the average person doesn’t know their Firefox from a hole in the ground (YouTube link, video is also below). Well, I have to admit that I care; depending on how both Microsoft and Google choose to integrate real-time search results from social networking sites, this could either be really interesting, or really annoying and/or paranoia-inducing. More so the annoying part; ever since SEO became a parasitic, opportunistic business instead of an integrated part of web site development, search results have become less and less useful on a steady downward curve. The beauty of Twitter Search is its real-time results; the ugly downside is that all those results are spam-infested Tweets! Who cares how fast you can search multi-level marketer’s tweets (see Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose) ? In my opinion, the only real value of these relationships the two search giants are building with Twitter would be real-time search of everything but Twitter noise. Hopefully they’ll pursue that, but Bing’s beta version of Twitter search appears to be just, well, Twitter search. How mixing this stuff in with regular results is going to benefit anyone is beyond me. These moves also come at an odd time, when both Facebook and Twitter’s growth are flattening out. And the paranoia mentioned earlier? Google’s Social Search will require you to be logged in with a Google Profile, and will connect additional search results via your existing “friends” on various social networking services, thereby tracking all your searches and connecting them with people you know. But perhaps I fret about this sort of thing too much. After all, Googoo has a excewent pwivacy powicy. Read the rest of this entry »
Cyberchondria: Is It A Cold, A Flu, Or Airborne Ebola?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 23, 2009 by admin in Health & Wellness
Using the Internet to diagnose yourself, it’s hard to tell if you have Adrenal Cancer, or just drank too much coffee.
 A virus is even creepier when viewed thru this Discovery Channel interactive |
As someone with a deranged work ethic who rarely gets sick, I tend to be pretty ignorant when it comes to commonplace things like how to have a cold or flu. Being this ignorant myself, I had NO IDEA that so many of my friends were health experts. Mention you have a few cold or flu symptoms and they all pull a clipboard out of thin air and start with the questions: “Are you getting plenty of fluids? Are you nauseous? Are you congested in your sinuses? It might be BACTERIAL, you know” and so on. Pretty soon I get convinced I have some airborne version of Ebola or something. And then I just get curious. So first of all, the cold vs flu debate: According to both the CDC and WebMD, there’s no way to tell which is which without a test in the early stages. They’re similar viruses, but colds tend to start slowly, last longer, and symptoms are usually confined to headaches and runny noses. A flu comes comes on much faster (the phrase “hits you like a truck” was used on several of the health sites I looked at) has deeper, broader symptoms that include body aches, nausea, etc. and can leave you fatigued for weeks after it’s run its course. Another big difference is that a flu is more likely to set you up for a bacterial infection like pneumonia, and not in the manner we’ve traditionally assumed. If you find this whole topic of viruses interesting, this Discovery Channel interactive wins the creepy award hands down, with its black backgrounds, hacker greens, crimson blood reds, and morbid ambient soundtrack. So just be careful researching health issues on the web. The fact that I’m still ill and a little slow in the brain as I type this, combined with about a half hour of light research, and suddenly I had a mild case of Cyberchondria developing. I mean, did you know that frequent urination and headache can be a sign of adrenal cancer? So be safe. Be sensible. Just get yourself to the doctor, and get a flu shot. Never mind that your shot is made from the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys.