As I’ve maintained since before the millennium, downloaded music isn’t what’s killing the music industry.
“Why Vote?”
On the Dilbert Blog today, Scott Adams mentioned a fascinating New York Times article about why people vote. It’s worth reading in it’s entirety, but the executive summary is that many people seem to vote in order to be seen voting, not because they think their vote will make any difference whatsoever.
The more observant among you will notice that I’ve filed this entry under “Religions” as well as “Amusing, Interesting, or Appalling.” That was deliberate, because I’ve noticed the exact same behavior from some of the people that I know who regularly attend churches. They do it to be seen there by their children and the people in their community, not because (as I originally thought) they think that it helps them be better people, or because they believe that their Deity is keeping track of it. These are also people who spend a lot of time and money in “keeping up with the Joneses.”
I knew that this kind of thing went on in the past. In the intolerant groups that came to the New World in search of the freedom to practice their particular brands of religion, it was often the only way to protect yourselves from accusations of heresy or immorality by your neighbors, which could result in being executed, or at least thrown out of the colony to starve in the wilderness. But until I met these people, I didn’t realize that anyone still indulged in this sort of behavior.
It might explain a lot about humanity.
“Ice Cream Ramen”?!?
I like ramen. There’s an authentic Japanese ramen place near where a couple of our friends live, and any time we go visit them, we always try to stop in there. But this… well, it’s just a little over the top. 🙂
“Japanese women could be “safer” at night by wearing vending-machine disguises”
From the WTF? department: be sure to check out the picture on this page. Very carefully.
Backups, backups, backups!
A friend of mine just had hard drive troubles and lost all his data. He had a backup of the important stuff on a DVD-RW — but he’d just re-used the backup disk for something else because he was low on them, and had been planning to buy more to back it up again this week.
The moral of the story: Murphy’s Law is alive and well. “Whatever can go wrong will, and at the worst possible moment.”
“Beam me up, Lang and Appleyard”
Photonic tweezers for electronics and microbiology… Star Trek: Voyager’s holographic doctor will have all of his tools available once someone invents him. 🙂
“Hello Kitty AK-47 Assault Rifle”
It’s billed as “a perfect gift for the young lady of the house” too.
(Sorry to disappoint, CSquared, but your wife is not getting this for Christmas. At least, not from us. 😉 )
Amusing (and NSFW) Ad
This skin-care company says that they have “nothing to hide,” and goes to great lengths to prove it. (Warning: if seeing nude human bodies, in a completely non-sexual situation, is offensive to you, don’t click — go get some mental help for your hangups instead.)
“Free Malware Phone Tech Support Today Only”
Apparently computer virus, worm, and Trojan horse programs are scary. That seems to be the flimsy (but amusing) premise behind this offer, anyway.
Oh, and Happy Hallowe’en! 🙂
[UPDATE] Warning! When I tried to go to that site (not the LifeHacker one, but the eWeek one listed in the LifeHacker article above), I got a Firekeeper alert about a “[script] tags GET request cross site scripting attempt” from ad.doubleclick.net. I don’t know enough about it to say whether it’s a false alarm or not — visit at your own risk.
“Bad Morning”
My mother sent me an e-mail recently. Yes, it’s a joke, but it’s humorous enough that I decided to post it here:
I rear-ended a car this morning. The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF! He looked up at me and said “I am NOT HAPPY!” So I said, “Well then, which one ARE you?” That’s how the fight started…
🙂