Super Doomed Planet

One complaint I hear from people who don’t like science fiction is that it’s about ideas and not people. Given the amount of SF I read I obviously don’t agree, but even I think they sometimes have a point–about Cory Doctorow’s Makers, for example. For me, Doctorow is a love-it-or-hate-it writer. His best book is [...]

Viral marketing and alternate reality games are the great new thing in marketing. Saatchi & Saatchi thought it had a doozy of an idea for Toytota. They’d stalk Toyota’s customers. Unsuspecting participants in “Your Other You” would receive a week’s worth of threatening phone calls and emails containing personal details about their lives before being [...]

The Des Moines Register has an article on a funeral home that’s putting its death notices on electronic billboards. Alternating with ads for vacation getaways and gas station soft drinks, the 8-second announcements feature the deceased’s name and the day, time and place of the funeral. A picture is optional. Yes, I’m sure that’s how [...]

I’m home today using some vacation time to clean the house. Just now I was interrupted by a knock on the door. It turned out to be a guy going door to door and dropping off “literature” like a Jehovah’s Witness. Only this guy was from Edward Jones. Yes, they’re that desperate.

>A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law. >”We are going to try to figure out how [...]

There’s a story going around that the economy imploded because the government wanted to encourage minority home ownership. This story is the purest of high-grade manure. Minorities are not somehow inherently unable to afford stable thirty-year mortgages. Google “redlining” and “sundown towns” if you want to know why they might have trouble getting them. There [...]

I’ve been thinking lately about the last Dickens book I read—Dombey and Son. The news brought it to mind. Dombey is the head honcho of Dombey and Son. He thinks this makes him a Great Man, and just to make damn sure he’s out to suppress all threats to his Greatness. This can get time [...]

This ad appeared in the Help Wanted section of the local college newspaper. I’m not sure I understand the logic here.

The _New York Times_ has an article on habit. Specifically on developing new habits. I have habits I’d like to get rid of myself. Or not so much *habits*, exactly, as a deep, deep rut. I spend hours every day with my brain on automatic pilot and I’m trying to take the controls a little [...]

I guess the guys sending out all those fake PayPal and eBay emails aren’t satisfied with the take they’re getting from the general public. According to the New York Times phishers are trolling for a bigger class of seafood. Some operation is specifically targeting the wealthy and powerful. What’s interesting is the tack they’re taking: [...]