milking the consumer

1 Competition is supposed to drive down prices, unless, of course, firms are competing against each other as to who can screw the consumer the hardest through collusion! Hooray for free markets!

2 BBC's anatomy of what appears to be a disasterously American idiocy.

3 Who says that Americans are largely desensitized to violence? Certainly not the VT victims!

4 Save the environment, eat a kangaroo!

Why do people complain that solutions to being environmentally responsible are costly and all that jazz when they come up with even more convoluted, potentially disastrous solutions? Bacteria in livestock? Yeah, like that's a system we can fully control. Not, you know, the highly mechanized, extremely precise industrial and transportation machinery that is responsible for nearly half of the remaining GHG emissions globally. Also, the solution should not necessarily be just make the livestock flatulate less, but to grow them in an environment that's more conducive to health - also known as eliminating industrialized, "factory" farms. That would help a lot, not that anyone appears to be proposing such a solution with any real vigor.

5 This could've been a straight Onion article, lol. Had they published it in 2006, many people would've laughed at its blatant absurdity.

6 110% dude, WTF? Not a single person needed to use the lavatory OR thought to clean said lavatory in FOUR DAYS? Yeah, mark that on my list as the 1001^th place I need to see before I croak.

7 I'm surprised he didn't just say "E.T. phone home" and cackle at his wit.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a RIM technician!

Does anyone really wonder why a lot of the world hates the U.S. and its brand of laissez-faire capitalism more generally? A lot of people claim to, but they seem to miss the more subtle, often cultural cues.

They do get part of it right, in that a large part of it has to do with envy — envy that something as frivolous as "Blackberry Thumb" can be a person's sole reason for visiting a doctor.

If there are any doctors to be had, that is. Because, you know, doctors live just around the street corner everywhere in the world, just like milk and apples come from your local supermarket conglomorate.

Behold, the ridiculously small-minded American excecutive. Your thumb hurts? Boo-hoo. Either work out or stop typing so many useless e-mails! You aren't providing leadership or clarity, you're cluttering the already-saturated information channels of your colleagues.

Also, for those of you that aren't aware, Research In Motion (RIM) are the makers of the Blackberry, which has become ubiquitous in the modern business environment. The title has nothing to do with rimming, though that would make for an extremely amusing title.

"What do you do?"

"Not much, just working as a RIM technician right now, looking to get into something a bit more advanced later on. You know, something that stretches my skills a bit."

" ... I'll bet you are!"

Though it is said that developing world countries are contracting our maladies, so I guess they are going to need a lot of RIM technicians after all.

All this text is making my fingers cramp ... medic!