Vacation Time Sucka.

Brace yourselves.  There will be no dose tomorrow.  But don't worry, here's a nice big pill to suck down.  I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure that's the same as taking two.  Hope you're not dead like my goldfish when I get back.

_________________________________________

Spaceballs the cartoon?  Could be great.  Could blow a fat one.  Wait, do I even get G4 tv?

• Spaceballs Animated series

Invisible UAVs sound creepy.  There's one outside the window right now!  This isn't talking about invisible like unattainable scifi invisible, its a little more plausable sounding.  It exploits persistence vision as it rotates to disappear at disances of 75 feet.  Kinda like the wagon wheel effect, only a hovering camera.  I think I'd like to see this in action.

• patend on invisible UAV

Trademarks are not patents are not copyright.  Some companies don't seem to get that trademarks are not for their protection; they're for the consumer.  Apple is one of them.  Misleading names aren't allowed not because you own the name, but because I don't want to get duped into buying an iPod lookalike.  So techdirt's article and summation of the "moron in a hurry" princile sounds about right. 

• Trademark Law Needs Revision

Those cattle farmers are really shooting themselves in the foot.  It was a good idea to scare people off spinnach, but milk and other foods?  This is why biological warfare sucks. (among other reasons.)

• Organic Milk Joins Ban
• Link Spinach and Cattle
  

Just laid out $10,000 for that huge ass plasma TV?  Hope you like irony because the radiation from plasmas often interferes with the IR signals of remotes (tivo series 3 in this case)  Oh well, now you get you visit your new tv up close as you walk over to change the channel.

• Tivo seies 3 and plasmas

Cage-free farm fresh.  These are sweatshop eggs!  What the hell does Ben & Jerry's use eggs for?

• B & J to switch to cage-free eggs

Google explains the internet to Belgian Newspapers/Courts.  They've been forced to remove Newsfeeds from searches and post the release on their main page without comment.  The papers feel that Google should pay them.  *Right*  This post doesn't mention the situation but read between the lines. (remember that middle finger joke?)

• Our Approach To Content

And of course TechDirt has an insightful write up of the stupidity.

• Newspapers are like microwaving hamburgers

This is awesome.  Biodegradable plastic gorcery bags.  I spose they're technically not plastic, they're corn starch and will biodegrade in 4-12 weeks.  Less energy to produce and less gas emitted.  Can I get these now?

• biodegradable shopping bags

Lorem Ipsum.

I joined greendimes yesterday and they sent me a link to their blog.  Fine, throw it in with all the other green rss feeds I get.  But wait, this page doesn't make any sense:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci

Yep, that's some kinda language I definitely don't know.  Why the hell would they send me a link in English to some gibberish blog that I'm obviously not going to be able to read?  Plus the three posts are all the same thing.  This stinks of secret meaning.  And it turns out that 'Lorem Ipsem' is classic dummy text for filling in a document specimen. (classic as in since the 1500's)  So this site is brand new and doesn't actually have any content of use.  Anyone else ran across this noise? 

• Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator

Lets Clean Some Green

Concrete houses are strong and solid and cost 32% less to cool and 44% less to heat.  The only down side is that they look like ass.  Well, not literally, literally they look like prisons.  Until now.

• Normal Looking Concrete House

This is a cool project.  Some nuts in california had some tape made up with little waves and futuresealevel.org on it.  The idea is to place it 23-30 feet above current sealevel to create awareness.  Social change starts with "my starbucks will be under water?"

• Future Sea Level -World changing

What do you get when hippies and geeks marry?  Geppies, of course.  Or maybe you get s lithium ion 1964 VW bus with solar chargine surfboards and biometric locks.

• VWERL Microbus

B-corps seem pretty cool. 'For benefit' companies that provide services and donate their profits to charity.  Like greendimes.  They're a company that is dedicated to keeping their clients off of mailing lists.  You know that 2-8 pieces of trash that the post office delivers every day and goes straight in the trash.  You can opt out, but how has the time to keep up with all the lists?  Greendimes does baby!  I need that like monkeys need bananas.  So for a dime a day they'll reduce your paper waste PLUS they plant a tree every month for each of its members. Win-win bitches.

• about greendimes on 'Joel Makower'

Towing jets?  Novel idea.  Virgin airways is going to start towing their planes into position on the runway instead of taxiing with the engines.  2% isn't a huge reduction, but its something.

• Virgin wants to tow airplanes

I'll Give You Scraps And You'll Like It.

I wrote up a whole post on this but I can't release it for reasons of national security.  It was really good too.  Such a shame.  Ok, ok I'll declassify a small portion of it.

How the hell is pissing off fundamentalists keeping anyone safe? 

• BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush aides back Iraq report move

I Caught A Red One!

Don't you just love these nice end of summer days? Sitting on the lake pier sipping a cool beer, the mild breeze flitting through your hair. You dangle your toes in the water as you cast and drag your fishing rod. SNAP! A freaking pirhanna bites off two of your toes and swims off to start digesting roastbeef and home .

Apparently I'm all about writing in the second person today.

No, no one's toes got bit off but a couple guys snagged a 16 inch pirhana from a pond in Dundalk. Normally pirhannas will eat anything, but this guy was probably eating the over 1,000 trout the DNR releases there each year. "state-subsidized meal" sounds like carniverous fish heaven.

• Swimming hole yields rare catch - baltimoresun.com

You Know You Love It.

So I bought some Easy Cheese yesterday. There's something fun about just how ridiculous it is. Cheese in a can? How gauche! How lowbrow! How wonderful! But Easy Cheese is full of contradictions. (and some cheese, I think) The medium spaced pain font running across the can top says "No need to refrigerate", its very reassuring. "Oh thanks Easy Cheese, you've got my back." But its also a little worrisome. "but, why?" Why doesn't cheese need to be refrigerated? Is it the can? The pressure? Is it really just plastic and pork fat? Some things we'll never know.

Also on the top of the can is written "Excellent source of calcium". hmmm, really? A quick check shows that a serving has 20% of your daily calcium dose. Alright, but it also has 20% of your daily sodium dose. I'm not saying its a bad source of calcium, but excellent? I can think of better ways to get it. None of them come from a pressurized can. But those guys know what they're doing. The can, the heft, the rate, the color. Its all just right. And little serration in the dispensing tube that makes the cheese look all fancy-like? Genius! I swear I'm still eating it half because I like shooting it out of the can.

Use Your Intuition.

Lets say you're out at a bar. Maybe a pirate themed bar. The service is pretty rough cause they've just opened and you have to get your own drinks from the bar despite the fact that the pattio is sposed to have servers. And said bar itself is pretty sad cause there's only like 8 half full bottles behind it and the bartender is feeling a little overwhelmed by his 3 patrons. You're waiting around for the tab and notice a big jar of what looks like oyster crackers soaking in water. Or maybe chicklets in spittle. After a bit of convincing the bartender explains that they're beans, and yes, they are for eating. He finds the long spoon and dips you out a saucerful. The offwhite surface gleams as whatever the hell these beans were in drips off. They're surprisingly firm considering it looks like they've been soaking for years. Then again, this place just opened. How old can they be? You may be thinking to yourself "I don't think I wanna eat this." And you're right. They taste like balls. Salty, unwashed balls. And you're not sposed to eat the outter casing so the flavor spreads and lingers over every last tastebud as your tounge wincingly steps up to peel the rank little bastard. Sometimes you can just assume the worst and don't have to try it for yourself. Learned the hard way? Definately.

I Made An Aquatic Habitat With My Beer Can.

Doesn't it just keep like a cop-out to dump something in the water and say that its an underwater habitat? I mean, how ever did fish survive without mothballed aircraft carriers and craploads of old tires? They probably did alright, so lets not kid ourselves. We're dumping this crap in the water cause we don't want to look at it. And the newest addition is the old Wilson Bridge. You might have read about when they blew it up, well now they're sending it down the river. Literally. Its being barged down to the county (St. Mary's county for those who aren't sure which county is the county) to house those poor homeless striped bass, blue fish and oysters. Hang on guys, help's a comin!

• Fish Find Home

And while we're talking about fish, more proof that fish and bears don't get along:

• Teddy bear slaughters 2,500 trout | The Register

You Make Me Want To Be A Better Man.

Or environmentalist. Whatever. Taking a page from those oh so successful car babe calendar guys, or maybe the teacher calendar peoples, or the plain naked women calendar faction... Eco babes is a calendar produced for the environment. I mean how can you go wrong with 100% post consumer content? But they don't have any kind of preordering set up. Come On!

• Treehugger: Ecobabes. Now They'll Take Notice!

Search Bar Plug-ins

For the 0% of you rocking FireFox 2, check out your little search bar options to find the new Daily Placebo search. That's right, search DP straight from your browser, I know I've wanted this for a while.

That Was Quick.

At $400m Littoral Combat Ships are pretty cheap in military budgets. As an added bonus this new class of LCS can be fitted with mission specific modules that will keep the original investment' equipment up to date. And apparently they can be build on time, the "Freedom" was just launched on the 24th after being concieved of only three years ago. This lightweight addition is designed for coastal operation, hitting 45 knots (51 mph) and requiring under 20 feet of water. Yes folks its the start of a new era in military shipbuilding, the LCS-1 is out and more are on the way. Also, that's still the best way to launch a ship? Don't tell me there isn't one guy in the crowd who's really worried that something is gonna go terribly wrong.

• Lockheed Martin Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Team

"Hot garbage, stinky summer commuters."

Ok, so this is probably more amusing than useful but what the hell. Gawker has a Google Maps mashup that uses the NY city subway combined with peoples' reports of smells in each station. So if you're underground and catch a wiff of something, fire off a description to subwaystink@gmail.com You know, something like:

"Rotting fish juice."

"Mold, wet wool, old plaster ... Dead rats en masse ... Like a mushroom farm ... Dirt and soil ... Weed ... Honeyed rot marinated in hummus ... Stinky feet ... Gangrene ...

"Urine and homelessness ... like something pissed itself to death in the wall."

• Gawker: New York City Subway Smell Map

Its Not As Bad As It Seems.

I feel like this headline is sensationalist and misleading:

• ESPN.com - NFL - Steelers LB Porter faces fines after his dogs kill horse

I mean, holy crap, what kind of dogs do you have that kill horses?  Well it wasn't a horse, it was a miniature horse.  Might as well have been a riding-goat.  Just another case of reporters blowing stories out of proportion.

Bush Meets Gruden, Both Write About It In Diaries.

Seriously? You went to give the Bucs a pep talk cause they lost two games? Or maybe it was more like one of those 'make a wish' arrangements, only for presidents. Bush apparently told told the team to "never give up" but no one would talk about what else he said. I'll give it a go:

'Even if it seems like... the whole world is against you, everybody... all the whiners... you know, in the stands. And you can't even see the first down marker. Cause its really far off... And maybe you're not sure there is a first down marker. You just have to trust your gut and go for it on 5th down. Cause when the field is out there... its for being run on. And if you don't do that then... We're Americans. And that's what we do. We run on 5th down. And we'll keep running. Because we love freedom... ... ... TERRORISTS! ... God I hate this job.'

So basically I think the team can't talk about what he told them cause they have no idea what he was talking about.

"The president has a lot to do. For him to show up here with the SWAT team on the roof and the Secret Service guys, that's awesome,"

Yeah, I'd think the president has a lot to do, but maybe he's tired of hanging around with people who call him the devil and accuse us of equating ourselves with international consensus. You know, the UN. He did have to cut his vacation short this year, I guess he deserves a little NFL fantasy camp.

• ESPN.com - NFL - President drops in on Bucs, tells 0-2 team not to give up

Good Old-Fashioned Competition.

You know about the bagged spinach fiasco going on right now.  E. Coli hitchhiking its way into your stomach courtesy of heath food.  There's a little irony in that.  But come on, how did this happen?  I'm thinking industrial sabotage by the steak farmers.  This strain of E. Coli only exists because ranchers feed their cattle corn.  Some might say its specially developed.  And people getting sick from raw leaves makes eating a barely cooked steak look damn good.  Good thinking guys.  And of course you know what the rest of the world thinks about this event: "They get their salad pre-washed in plastic bags?"

• FOXNews.com - Bagged Spinach E. Coli Outbreak Spreads to 19 States - Health News | Current Health News | Medical News

The Future Is Here, It Brought Paper Ballots.

Yes... I get my Chinese food delivered. And I get my DVDs delivered. And my groceries. Why not my democracy? The voting system is so messed up with hackable Diebold machines , long lines, errors and fraud that we need to think of a better way to do it. You're telling me that in 2006 I have to go to a special place at a special time to tell someone what I think? Pfff... weak. But its OK folks, there's already a solution in place. Everyone use absentee ballots. Mail them in at your leisure and help create the paper trail. I'm not going back to a poll till they start using marbles and dying your thumb purple.

• Ehrlich offers poll fix for Nov. - baltimoresun.com

Update
Now usually I'm all for bleeding edge, but its not meant for widespread adoption if it doesn't work. (and not working is a very real possibility) Listen to the guys who aren't selling anything "Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin puts it, 'Computer scientists are pretty unanimous in our opposition' to electronic voting." This Post article has a funny and angering bit about how the elections office won't admit that computers, in general, sometimes don't work. I mean this is a classic case of 'I don't wanna be wrong.' As the article puts it "admitting error and angering a giant corporation". But I don't even think its the election officials' fault if machines don't work (its Diebold's) but it will be the officials fault if they don't dump the faulty equipment. And as for angering Diebold; we paid you bitches $106 million dollars, make 'em work or take 'em back. And if its neither, then fuck you and good luck pawning these turds off on other states. We'll be calling ahead with our review.

• If Paper Ballots Restore Trust In Elections, Let's Switch -Washington Post

That's it, Diebold, you're on the list!

You Suckas Don't Own The Air.

Here's an unexpected result of having free wifi on planes: airports complaining cause they can't sell wifi access when a plane is at the terminal. Specifically its Boston-Logan International Airport making waves, telling airlines to shut off the service while at the gate. They claimed that it was a security reason and the competing networks might, possibly, one-day interfere. Here's a good tip: don't run your security system over wifi. I swear, airport security is becoming the biggest scapegoat ever. "I want snackpacks to come in bigger cups. Its for security..." Whatever, it doesn't matter because the FCC is charging in to lay the smack down on Logan. Again. Airports have no power to regulate this medium, so you guys need to shut the hell up. Now go get me one of them giant snackpacks.

• Techdirt: FCC To Boston Airport: You Know We Meant It When We Said You Can't Control WiFi

Nail Those Bastards To The Wall.

The Daily Show had a segment about predicting hurricanes this week. They made a nice crack about how there's no accountability at all in the meteorological community. Well this site may just change how you get your local weather forecast if it doesn't change the whole system. Its called ForecastAdvisor and it tracks weather sources and provides accuracy information for the sources. Its fun to see who has the best record at least.

• Weather Forecast and Weather Forecast Accuracy for Your City

I've got Colloquialisms By The Truckload.

Isn't "counting the rings on Saturn" an expression of tedium? Maybe not, but I think I'm going to start using it: "Hey you wanna come help me scotch guard my couch?" "Ohhh... I would but I've got to count the rings on Saturn." Well apparently they do count the rings on Saturn. And name them. And they found a pretty one.

Astronomers ID Saturn's newest ring | The Register

Yeah, They've Got Current.

Why aren't we all up on tidal power like a drunk sorority girl on a mechanical bull? San Francisco has heard the call and plans to drop turbines under the Golden Gate bridge. The pilot test project will generate 1-3 megawatts (about 3000) homes as they determine the costs of the undertaking. Optimists peg the final output at 12 times that much power.

• abc7news.com:

This via Hugg. Which is Digg for green. Awesome.

Welcome! Here's Your Clothespin.

These three articles came up sequentially in my feed. Space tourist headed for space station. Mystery bad smell on space station. Toxic spill on space station. Nice. After all this time you guys finally get a visitor and you stink the place up. For a $20 million dollar vacation you'd think it wouldn't smell like ass in the tin can you rented. Lets hope the view is worth the stench or the review could put a kink in Bigelow's scheme.

• Wired News: Space Tourist Bound for ISS
• NASA reports mystery 'bad smell' on space station | The Register
• Toxic spill on the International Space Station - New Scientist Space

And of course now that there are space tourists, the space tourist traps will be soon on their heels.

As a noted futurist, I'm going to predict that all of this is going to happen within two years. Noted futurists always hustle up their predictions, because nobody wants to hear about stuff that's going to happen in 2078. We're all either going to be dead by then, or more worried about what flavor pudding we're getting than whether we've colonized Neptune.

• wired: laying traps

Speaking Of Fierce Love For Internal Combustion.

A story about racing electric cars at internal combustion tracks.  I read it while thinking about the movie "Cars" which I think made it more amusing.

"It takes some guts to show up here in an electric car, but on this night, a handful are ready to push the limits of their battery-powered engines. They're surrounded by a small group of fans."

The story is about guys tinkering with electric cars to make them faster and fix what they don't like about them.  It likens them to teenagers in the 1950's adding engines and tuning cars.

"If you don't break things, you're not trying hard enough,"

That's a really good way to look at electric cars I think.  When the first automobiles came out they didn't even resemble the cars today.  But with a lot of research and some stupid ideas, we've developed a usable if not essential device.

• Gentleman, unplug your engines

People Don't Always Agree With Me?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  I just don't get yours.  Case in point:  I really don't appreciate SUVs.  They are the icon of American over-consumption and selfishness.  (having stolen the crown from the big mac)  There's an editorial on Jalopnik lamenting the demise of socially accepted SUVism.  I obviously don't sympathize.

The green movement is winning... Because if we tolerate this, then our children will be next.

What?  That's pretty much just George telling me terrorists want to kill my family.  Maybe it means that our children will become green next.  Oh.  Good.

The SUV rampage has nothing whatsoever to do with fuel economy, the clean diesels on the far side of the Atlantic will do no more damage than ... their beaten old Renault LeCar. It is automotive bigotry based on shape...

Yeah, its not completely to do with fuel economy.  I hate the size, unmanageability and excess involved.  I like to be able to see around traffic.  Sure, I could get a taller car to solve my problem, but why have a 3 ton highchair to chauffeur a bag of groceries around?  Plus if we'd put those clean diesels into lighter cars they'd do even less damage, right?

Now soccer moms ... have abandoned their battle wagons, in case their neighbor spits at them. And they've probably shifted their order to the Prius - a rolling lie when it comes to economy figures.

Yeah hybrids suck, if manufacturers weren't busy trying to sell off all those SUVs the technology would probably be better.  And I'm sposed to feel bad for soccer moms?  If you realize one day that you're a soccer mom you need to find some other way to define your life.

And governments across the globe have bowed to this perverse form of eco-terrorism. The Mayor of London recently unveiled his plan to tax them out of the city

Better than polito-terrorism.  But seriously, space is a premium in some areas.  Most people in cities should realize that.  Bigger apartments cost more, bigger cars should too.  I don't doubt that some people need bigger cars, but if you can get along with a wagon why wouldn't you?

they'll spot that a Ferrari uses more fuel than an Escalade, even a BMW M5 at flat chat will drink a light truck under the table and a Bentley Continental could suck the desert dry on a long haul.

Yeah, we probably shouldn't all be driving Ferrari's.  Imagine everyone commuting to work at 7 mpg in a bright red f430.  You'd never be able to throw the hammer down on anyone (why else do you get a Ferrari?) and everyone would assume everyone else has a small johnson.

And they'll keep coming until we're all going to work on solar-powered trains or worse, one-liter hatchbacks with some batteries strapped on them...

Goddamn right.  Actually, lets get rid of that one-liter engine too.  If we don't need to drive, then lets not.

So I say fight for the right of soccer moms to take one child to school in an oil tanker.

Wow.  Cars are not a right.  Clean air, that might be a right.

Because if we tolerate this, the sports car will be next...And that is a fate that should chill any Pistonhead to the bone.

That could very well be true.  I mean, how long have cars been around?  200 years?  That was a good run, lots of fun.  But you really think that internal combustion engine cars are the future of human transportation?  Don't get me wrong;  I can appreciate a nice car, and wanting to tinker around with an engine and speeding around a track. Its not like we went out and smashed all the phonograph machines.  They just fell by the wayside cause iPods are way better.  Change is going to happen whether or not you contend that a multi-billion dollar, world shaping industry should stagnate because you like the vroom-vroom.

• Hackers Notebook: The SUV Rampage Makes No Sense - Jalopnik

Do They Sell RSS Fiber?

I know, I know, I'm lazy and you're unaware of all the goingsons because of it.  But you should see all the stuff I've marked to save for later.

Here we go:

ewww... And I though store bought jerky made me want to spew.

• MAKE: Blog: DIY Jerky machine

Smart machines make smart armies.  I don't have time to go into apocolyptic rantings though, just imagine cockroach sized robots that solve problems together using AI.  Like sending one to get caught to distract the guard while the rest sneak by.  I know, its a tactic from like any 2nd rate kids spy movie, but they thought of it themselves.

• Experimental AI Robot Army

Computers can't wait to kill people.  What a sad state of affairs, the judges are so corrupt that the Chinese have developed a sentencing program that decides the punishment of criminals.  Punch in the numbers... survey says... death penalty!  Also the Chinese have 68 offenses that may warrant the death penalty, how many do we have?

• Computers to decide death sentences

This is only of note cause I'd mentioned in a knight rider post (look it up yourself, speed posting preempts internal links) about how unstable the Koenigsegg CCX is without that rear spoiler.  Well you can crash them with the spoiler too, turns out.

• crashed-up koenigsegg

Google's started a for-profit charity with a spare billion dollars.  I didn't know you could make money from charity, but mostly its who you're allowed to do business with.  Their first item to develop is a 100mpg hybrid.  Expect a beta version in two days and the full rollout in 2013.

• for profit google.org

News sites suck.  But Belgian news sites are just stupid.  They've gotten court orders to stop Google from linking to their news stories.  Uh, I can't start to tell you what's wrong with that.  Get off the Internet!

• Court Order Stops Google Traffic

I like the difference between a traveler and a tourist.  I think people should consider that more often.

• Bello Mundo

Squigly designed environmental chairs.  Cool, but definately don't fit my decor.

• Sculptural, functional furniture

PicksPal is an online game betting community.  They don't bet real money, but work on a point system to rank betters.  The site owners discovered that they get freaky high probabilies if they take advice from the 30 best pickers over the last five weeks.  They're going to start selling picks.

• PicksPal to screw bookies

More expensive cars for rent.  (insert link to leasing 1.4 Million dollar car here)  Prolly not quite as pricey as the Veyron but still quick.  Got a Highschool reuinion coming up?

• Elise Rentals

Oh baby, vintage remastered does it get any better?  Why do old things need to be redone?  Cause we can't think of anything else to do?

• Star trek is back

You can rent phones from the phone company?  A woman has paid $2,000 since 1985 for two rotary phones.  Her daughters are pissed.

• Easy to hate the phone company

Shut Em Down, Friendster!

Friendster was awarded a US patent for social networking on June 27th.  They haven't decided yet if they're going to go after the other social based friend sites like The Myspace.  I say screw 'em all.  The patent office awarded you a sufficiently broad patent, your service sucks and is getting pounded.  The Myspace is to blame.

• RED HERRING | Friendster Wins Patent

Don't Read This.

Damn Interesting has an article about a disease that affects very few people called PDD.  Its main attribute is loss of the proprioception sense, or the knowledge of where your body parts are in relation to each other.  Because its so rare researchers know little about it.  The first signs of onset are intensely vivid dreams about loss of body control.  It is neither genetic nor contagious, but the more you know about it the more likely you are to develop it.  You shouldn't have read this.

• Damn Interesting » The Seventh Sense

That's What I'm On About!

PC World listed the 25 worst websites of all time.  I'd heard of a few of them (hampsterdance, bonzibuddy, hotmail) but there were a bunch from the .com bubble that really passed me by.  That's OK cause they were either terribly managed or scams.  Most of the sites are terrible in hindsight and are no longer operational.  Take a look at the full list when you have time, but can you guess who took top honors?

Graphically, many MySpace pages look like a teenager's bedroom after a tornado--a swirl of clashing backgrounds, boxes stacked inside other boxes, massive photos, and sonic disturbance. Try loading a few of those pages at once and watch what happens to your CPU.  Watch out for spyware, too, since it turns out that MySpace has become a popular distribution vector for drive-by downloads and other exploits. And in a place where "U are soooooooo hot!!!" passes for wit, MySpace isn't doing much to elevate the level of social discourse.

Its really nice to feel validated. - search DP for "the myspace"

• PC World - The 25 Worst Web Sites

Can I Lease A Lug Nut?

Ok, I'll admit flat out that I don't understand how car leases work. Basically I think its for people who like new things, but don't really want to build any assets. I know this isn't a very good example to try to learn from, but lets look at the Bugatti Veyron lease from Putnam. $400,000 down and $23,595 per month for 60 months comes to $1.8 million. Yes, expensive; but I'm trying to figure out who this is targeted at.

If you've got 400 large to throw down and have 24 extra per month for what amounts to a toy, how do you not have the $1.4 million it takes to buy the thing outright? (Oh you only get to drive it 2,500 miles a year, so no, its not your real car. By the way, that's under 10 hours of driving at top speed.) Maybe they throw in free oil changes to make it worthwhile.

Who is thinking about this, cause I can't come up with a demographic. Ideas?

• Lease a Bugatti Veyron for $24K a month - Autoblog

Please Keep Your Arms Inside The Ride.

I remember learning about the defenestration of Prague in school and finding it very humorous. Not just the throwing people out of windows into poop aspect (how is that not entertaining?) ; but the fact that there is such a grand word for such a simple and, I assumed, self-articulate act.

Its quite the interesting phenomenon to me, especially as its described as a means of political dissent. Which makes me wonder, where have all the defenestrations gone? Have we progressed past such a simple, though wonderfully named, concept? Maybe people don't believe as strongly as they used to. Maybe security is better.

Or is democracy perhaps to blame? We perceive the leaders' power as our own damn fault, and so do not rain this punishment upon them? Maybe the its fact that they will be metaphorically defenestrated at the end of their term, relegated to commencement speeches and charity drives. Better to wait them out than do any heavy lifting.

In any case, I think someone should pitch a new "Defenestration of Prague" ride to theme parks. You know, excitement can be educational. And smelly. Probably more smelly.

• Defenestration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Ego Is Fine, Thanks.

I know, its stupid that everyone making a new webapp or service or game just adds 'er' to the end of whatever they do and then go back and erase the "e". Honestly folks, flickr isn't that cool; think of your own hook.

Nevertheless, check out blufr. Its a game where facts are presented and you try to decipher what is real and what is not. Its great for me cause I'm lying to people all the time. The key is to have enough random knowledge that people think you actually know what you're talking about. Of course being terribly smart and pulling plausible, if not correct, explanations out of your ass doesn't hurt either.

Youngest mother ever: 5 years old. No Way, right?

You've been bluf'd: On May 14th, 1939