Entries from June 2007The Posts You Asked For

A little bit ago I reminded you all about the commercial for Xenical, the prescription form of Alli, the weight-loss pill that apparently does its work by giving you really bad diarrhea.
I was thinking how funny it would be to make a shirt that read, simply, “…and an inability to control them.”
Then I thought [...]

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 Every now and then, one of the Google ads on this site catches my eye. I used to be afraid to click on it myself for fear of violating the terms of service, until I was told that because I use the same computer/IP address to log into the AdSense service, Google knows it’s me [...]

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My father has a bunch of old whiskies and such in his house that he doesn’t want. I grabbed a couple including this bottle by mistake.
Anyone know if this is any good? What kind of drink is it — more like a whiskey or sweeter? (He had a lot of brandy.)
It’s something like 25 years [...]

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You can’t relish always being connected (Blogs! Facebook! Twitter! iPhone!) and then be surprised when too many people are always on their cell phones.
You can’t wallow in a society that celebrates and encourages violence in its entertainment (but where the barest flash of a breast on TV is cause for national angst), then be surprised that there’s a lot [...]

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I’m working on some changes to this blog — specifically, to try to give it a more solid focus. What I like to do most of all is un-spin things. Sometimes thinking about a statement or a conclusion reveals some incredible lack of logic.
Today it comes courtesy of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, [...]

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Alas, the ride is over. But it was a lot of fun. Changes in the USA Today newsroom mean freelancers like me say their tearful farewells.
My final column is kind of a quick overview of what’s changed — or, rather, not changed — since I started writing. One snippet, regarding the kooky creationist museum [...]

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Check it out at Roanoke.com.
The iPhone has a beautiful, easy to use interface, but the phone’s capabilities lag those of many other devices on the market. Consumers willing to live with those limitations (not to mention the high price tag) should love using the iPhone, but those who have come to expect more from a [...]

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I think this image captured from BigChampagne’s BCDash Web site says a lot. It’s a list of the top movies being shared via Bittorrent.
 
You’ll notice that at the top of the list is the new Fantastic Four movie, still in theaters. Ditto for numbers 2 and 3. And 4. And 5. But people are already [...]

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It’s a “zorse.” And no, it’s apparently not Photoshopped. Via the Sun.

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Seriously. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
An air-traffic controller in Oberlin [near Cleveland] was reprimanded because his aquamarine pants were “not gender appropriate.”

[snip]
A few male controllers at another facility protested the dress code crackdown by coming to work in dresses. Another wore an all-purple outfit – save for white pants – with purple snakeskin shoes.
[snip]
Another Oberlin [...]

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1. There is a vast, worldwide conspiracy to destroy Apple. It includes journalists, Microsoft, and the business community in general.
2. Any attack on Apple is, in addition, a personal attack on you.  Retaliation for these attacks must be swift, personal, and based on the concept that ‘the best defense is a good offense.’ 
3. Anything [...]

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From 6/27, via the Comics Curmudgeon and the Houston Chronicle.

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I was surprised to find that the iPhone is a lot more limited than I expected. And I’m not talking about lack of wireless broadband support, either.
It turns out that, despite Apple’s claim that “This is not a watered down version of the Internet” on the iPhone, it is a watered-down version. I don’t even [...]

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Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 86.

Story
Iwo Jima Story
Obit
Guestbook

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Seriously. If nonsense like the never-could-work liquid-bomb plot got you nervous, you probably don’t want to read “Butterflies and Beverages,” the winner of Bruce Schneier’s “movie-plot threat contest.”
Your goal: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component. The component should be so critical [...]

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“So,” sez my wife, “there are going to be a lot of people oozing around here.”
“Huh?”
Seems she saw an ad from CVS or Walgreens advertising Alii, a weight-loss drug recently approved by the FDA for over the counter sales.
The full strength Alli is known as Xenical. The most memorably thing about Xenical were its commercials [...]

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Researching a story about mosquito-control technology, I talked with an ex-Navy entomologist who is now technical advisor for the American Mosquito Control Association.
Among many fun facts came one worth sharing: Mosquitoes, like vampires, won’t cross running water.
That is all.

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Taken by my friend Julie at a local bookstore the Barnes and Noble in State College, Pa.:

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So here goes the hand wringing over Bill Dedman’s MSNBC story on “Journalists who wrote political checks.” Right-wing extremists are practically wetting their collective pants because the vast majority of those contributions went to Democrats and left-leaning organizations.
“See! We told you! The mainstream media is biased! You must trust blogs for your news because [...]

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This is one of those lawsuits that has the potential to change the Web as we know it, yet I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. (Big claims, I know, but read on.)
A Web site called InfomercialScams.com lets people rate the products they see on informercials — something not all that odd; ratings sites are everywhere. [...]

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