hackers target epileptics

That just sounds like an odd list of enemies: eBaum, Scientology, and epileptics. How do they decide who to attack, create random word generators and pick the top 3 coherent results?

turn back the clock

on women's rights! lol

do not pass 'go'

In fact, don't even pass near your local elementary school. That's a great tactic with some gaping holes - I sure hope accidental clicks don't send FBI agents on false alarms (I'm sure there has to be some kind of pattern to the activity). Also, that'd be a really nasty way to mess with someone - send them a virus that clicks on such links repeatedly and have the FBI raid the target's home.

Interesting stuff you find buried in the news sometimes ...

4000 and counting

Nice milestone. I especially like how nearly one-fifth of the fatalities aren't even the result of enemy action. "Bring it on," indeed, Mr. Bush. I guess Clinton was Eisenhower's exception, because this is exactly the type of unfounded, false machismo that most true military men avoid. Paid off nicely for Bush's business associates though, that's for sure.

So if a veteran see others giving George W. Fucknuts the finger, will he feel better? Doubtful ...

it's the environmentalism, stupid

Finally, programs are starting to target consumers' wallets. These are the types of programs that will really make a difference.

apparently it's tradition

I was somewhat taken aback by the popularity of Bjorn Borg apparel abroad, but I didn't know that the premiere brand (which, incidentally, I vehemently dislike) Lacoste was also founded by a tennis champ.

2008 Bullshit Awards

Multivariate analysis of exit-polls indicate this is a shoe-in to win:

“Collectors actually care about consumers,” said Rozanne Andersen, general counsel of ACA International, the main industry trade group. “They want to teach consumers how to get out of debt. They’re trying to put themselves out of business.”

So the industry is trying to put itself out of business? lol Are the people running the debt collection agencies aware of this? Apparently not, as the next paragraph illustrates:

If so, they are doing a poor job. So many people are in so much debt that the government says bill collecting is one of the fastest-growing businesses. By 2016, employment in it is projected to exceed half a million workers, up 23 percent in a decade.

Instead of making the big loan sharks pay, the US has once again decided to squeeze the middle class yet again. Brilliant strategy.

“Why not set an example of Bear Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, we’re brass knuckles, we’re tough?” asked William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with Fred Sheehan of “Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve.” “This is the perfect time to set an example, but they are not interested in setting an example. We are Bailout Nation.”

We are? We bail who out? Not the hardworking people that need it most (unless you work at the Big 3, but that's technically a buyout). You know who's not affected by any of this? The super-rich. I love the false precision here:

“When a yacht is over 328 feet, it’s so big that you lose the intimacy,” says Tork Buckley, editor of The Yacht Report. “On the other hand, you’ve got bragging rights. No question, that’s a very strong part of the motivation.”

Yes, if the yacht is 327 feet, it's extremely intimate (like a twin bed). However, at 329 feet, you lose sight of the bow over the horizon, and so it becomes far less intimate (like a king bed). I am so glad I have 'experts' around to tell me how to judge mega-yachts - I'd feel so lost in my overwhelming debt without such guidance.

So the lesson is: if you are rich or powerful enough, you can make any excuse you want and people will buy it. If you're one of those unfortunate "little people" who have to pay taxes and fend off debt collectors, your excuses fall on deaf ears. Whether its financial markets or the environment, everyone knows there is no reward in leading by example. So people shy away from doing so at every opportunity.

political spin crash lands

If it were anywhere but America, this would be unbelievable. A couple choice juxtapositions.

First, when you read this:

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, who heads the committee and who has called the situation "one of the worst safety violations" he has ever seen, is scheduled to hold a hearing April 3 to ask why the airline may have allegedly put its passengers in danger.

that's the editor talking, not your brain. Whither journalistic ethics? Whose interest is CNN trying to protect with that phrasing? Its own. The lawyers probably said you have to avoid making a claim, even though saying "put its passengers in danger" is an accurate description, seeing as how the laws are there to minimize the risk, and in this instance Southwest's negligence increased that risk. That's called "the truth" and what the journalists are doing is increasing the distance between you and it.

For those of you for whom English is a first and only language, another word for "risk" is "danger." The business-savvy right-wing media doesn't want to scare you about your potential death due to corporate negligence (it's too busy pushing ethnic stereotypes. 2 black guys, 1 white girl, and no cups in sight. I mean, you don't even have to say 'rape' and the idea of them going necro appears in more than half of white Amerikaz minds).

Anyway, back to the business of manufacturing consent (in this case, apathy toward your mortality, as opposed to that of the self-serving, self-perpetuating military-industrial-congressional complex (which also happens to be heavily invested in journalism). See, the word "risk" sounds like a financial term, it's been depleted of its more visceral connotations by the false fortunes of the stock market, which people already don't understand, so the ambiguity of that word is compounded by the syntactical obfuscation of the preceding sentence fragment.

So if you're a media-savvy CEO being lightly grilled by an incompetent, unethical journalist, take notes:

"We were surprised yesterday to get that notification by the FAA as well. The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported as late as last month the FAA said that it had no safety issues with Southwest Airlines."

You get that? Yesterday, a newspaper, in no way connected to the aviation industry (and now owned by safety guru Rupert Murdoch) reported that "a month ago" (also known as: before these safety violations were made public), the FAA said something noncommittal about Southwest Airlines ... (he said, she said, but the WSJ said it was safe!). So if the planes crash, are families going to seek damages from the WSJ for libel, for creating a false impression of safety? Idiots.

This is the equivalent of George Bush standing at Ground Zero and saying "this site is safe because I read last week in my briefing that the CIA did not consider the WTC at serious risk from terrorists."

Yes, I realize that some people without glazed-over sheep-eyes (unfortunately not enough) might pick up on such bullshit, but if they say anything they'll be labeled liberal commies and they'll give up b/c it's just some paperwork regarding some perfunctory air safety check, and those checks are so burdensome in these hard times, with airlines struggling to find extra losses from which to pay executives' their undeserved bonuses. Really, I know 113 people who'd disagree with such sentiments, if they were alive to share them. All it takes is a small bit of passion, combined with awareness.

It is in no way outrageous to be outraged by Southwest's negligence.

that's progress

So, let me get this straight. Almost since he got into office, Bush has done everything in his power to underfund the EPA, undercut their existing legislation, and enacted powder-puff, feel-good, political capitalistic bullshit (everyone remember "Clean Skies"? yeah? Remember how the critics said that it wasn't even going as far as the Clean Air Act would go if it were enforced?). Then, they actually nudge standards up a bit, not as far as they should go, give counties an extraordinarily lenient timeline to comply (when many still haven't complied with 80's-era regulations), and label it progress.

That's life!

Oh, and when it's not "progress" per se, then it's called the business cycle (as if it were as natural as geese migration). Companies consolidate to broaden horizons, expand opportunities, diversify their portfolio. Then they consolidate to focus on core values, spinning off businesses. Then new businesses start up, either growing fast in the vacuum left by consolidation or being eaten by the bigger corporations. It's all cyclical, and it's all artificial, and it has about the same intrinsic value as the fashion cycle (bell-bottoms today, corporate mega-banks in the future). Think of all the capital (human, time, actual money, infrastructure, etc.) wasted because big companies can't keep their operations tidy and small companies have to clamber up the corporate food chain to compete. The advancement of civilization is not accomplished through turnover, and "new ideas" shouldn't only come about through waste.

There are better ways if only people would think more often.

movin' on up!

in the star scale. I'm all for playing Frogger with the Earth's orbit and dodging potentially extinction-level-event-inducing comets and asteroids!

Welcome to the new world order

... of institutionalized incompetence.

Will the card contain on it my musical preferences, linked to my credit/debit cards, for easy and convenient purchases from online music retailers (the content accessed through my registered mobile communications device, of course!)?

Incompetence, redux
I'm so glad that our military-industrial-congressional complex monkeys have evolved to the point, in 2007, that things like building something to specifications, while being courteous, is viewed as a "bold move," lol. Fucking idiots. The people whining about Boeing are just as stupid as the idiots around Detroit and other car manufacturing hubs that cry about keeping American jobs by buying American cars. If you FUCKING MORONS would just look under the hood of the vehicles in question, you would see that your precious "American-made" automobiles have roughly the same percentage of components made outside the United States (Canada, Mexico, Brazil) as the "foreign" competition. In fact, some foreign car companies (e.g., Toyota) manufacture entire vehicles in the United States just to appease America's stone-age nationalistic proclivities.

Institutionalized bigotry
I also enjoy how this article conveniently excludes the 2000 race, where Bush was able to undermine McCain by suggesting he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

Institutionalized apathy
I don't know ... ever since the government increased the dosage of Prozac in the local drinking water supply, I find myself fretting far less over the current global destruction of the oceans.

no absolutes

Everyone always talks about emissions per person. Sure that's one way to make it more relevant to people, but at the same time, the Earth doesn't really care because objectively there is a certain amount of CO2 released regardless of the number of passengers on a trans-atlantic flight!

preach on, brother!

So true!

I hope they didn't goof and cite the soldiers' BMIs, which should be higher than the average citizens'.

I was SO right!

CentACS reports that "studies show that the length of sleep is not what causes us to be refreshed upon waking. The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes:

* 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep
* 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream)
* Final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep.

FAIL

What the fuck, I know fashion comes in cycles, but how can people be so dumb again, almost within the same generation? Certainly most of the higher-up corporate lapdogs were around in the 1970s to witness this exact same event.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

PS - doesn't anyone know cute, fluffy puppies are just Jihadist-terrorists-in-waiting? How can you be so naive?