Someone from Qatar flew a lamborghini to England for an oil change. I believe that qualifies as conspicuous consumption. Is it more conspicuous than, say, building a vast indoor ski slope? Probably not, but it sure makes for an interesting story. I for one wouldn’t have flown my lamborghini there, I would have driven it. That would have made a much more interesting story, in the chinese sense.
Image by Christopher Chan
Pharyngula once again delivers the fun.
Rather than take you to the Pharyngula post directly (link), I’ll take you to the NY Times article that is linked from that post. It’s about how Natural Selection has been observed in recent times and a listing of some of the interesting studies.
Why am I linking to it? Because of this quote:
…in a forest in southern England, great tits have been shrinking (great tits are songbirds).
Yes, I am easily entertained.
Of course, while I’m saying that Iran does not equal Sophisticated, I’m tacitly assuming that no western government would be caught doctoring their images…
…like Iran did with their recent missile test. Tsk tsk.
I’m sure plenty of tech-savvy people here in the states are thinking, “those silly buggers! Don’t they know how to use photshop to mask that sort of obvious image tampering?” However, I have confidence that this sort of put-up job would be about the same if conducted by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security or Defense.
Update! Here’s a LOLMISSILE
CARPE DIEM covers where some of the estimated 600 Starbucks will be closing. With a map! You can never go wrong if you’ve got a map.
It’s a sign of the apocalypse, I tell you. I don’t like their coffee, anyway.
Have you heard about the University of Central Florida student who’s receiving death threats for kidnapping the Christ? No? Go to Pharyngula for a good summary.
On that note as well, I’m very disappointed to be missing the Pharyngula meetup in Atlanta this weekend. Alas, I’ll be at Meb’s wedding. Meb, next time you get married, you need to make it a more convenient time.
The Department of Homeland Security is purportedly open to the idea that aircraft passengers should wear monitoring bracelets (that can also shock the piss out of you). Gadling reports that DHS requested the manufacturer of the stun bracelet submit a letter of proposal.
Nice! You see, I’ve been looking for a way to save some money. If something like this happened, I would refuse to ever travel by commercial airline again. Long distance trips would be a thing of the past. No more having to worry about costly airline tickets, or frequent flyer miles, or lines at security.
What do you think a general airline boycott would do to the national economy?
An incident 30 yards outside my office window has caused me to do a google search on “exploding transformers”.
There’s also a bunch of YouTube videos which I can’t access right now. I encourage you to go check it out.
Apparently it wasn’t an exploding transformer (there’s no transformer on that pole). It was a fuse cut-out blowing. These things are about the size of my leg, so I’m glad it wasn’t a transformer, which is considerably larger. The explosion was loud enough and bright enough to get a “Holy shit!” out of me.
It brings back memories of standing on Mt. Sandia, looking down at Albuquerque while a thunderstorm was sweeping across the city. You could see the bright purple flashes as transformers (or maybe cut-outs) were blowing.
The lesson for today is: When you have a large electrical thingamajob go kablooie right outside your window, don’t then immediately rush out and stare up at the power pole (which I did) and have a ring-side seat for the second cut-out blowing and giving you some nice flash blindness, plus a beautiful ringing in the ears. It was loud.
I can see that it’s still dripping burning dielectric on the ground. The electrical company guys don’t seem too worried about it, so I guess I won’t be.
I heard on the news this morning that Starbucks was planning a closure of existing stores. Approximately 600 outlets will be shuttered and their employees will be relocated to other, surviving, stores, if possible.
From a personal standpoint, I’ve never understood why Starbucks has been as successful (to date) as it is. Its stores don’t have the same welcoming ambiance as most other coffee shops that I have been in; they’re more like a fast food joint for coffee. Of course, again from a personal standpoint, it’s always bugged me that they refuse to use “small medium large” and instead use “vente vedi vici” or whatever. If I were more fundamentalist, I might call that un-American! But what can you expect from a joint out of Seattle?
However, I also never understood how their business model could sustain the number of stores that are opened within shouting distance of each other. Apparently, it can’t. I feel bad for the number of younger folk who are going to be laid off because of this, but maybe other, local stores, will emerge to take up the slack and compete agains the Evil Empire.
I read this story today about how security consultants hired by financial institutions are demonstrating holes in the security of their physical files. The hired guns were able to walk into banks and credit unions with threadbare disguises and walk out with documents containing people’s vital info. The same information that identity thieves are stealing from the online world.
My response? Meh.
We’re already living in a world where if your unlucky number comes up and someone steals your identity, you’re going to be out a significant amount of time cleaning up the mess. The only thing you, personally, can do about it is keep an eye on your credit report (perhaps put a credit freeze on, if you’re really concerned), watch your bank and credit card accounts and be generally mindful of your finances. The fact that these institutions are being physically violated is less exciting to me than the millions of personal files that an incident like ChoicePoint releases into the wild.
Does this mean I’m blasé about identity theft? No. But I don’t think we’ll ever win the race of keeping our vital information under lock and key and away from would-be thieves. The solution needs to come from somewhere else. Credit card companies already absorb the costs of fraudulent transactions. Making other lending institutions who open accounts without properly verifying a person’s identity responsible for the headaches and financial burdens might be a good start. We live in a money-driven economy, so solutions won’t present themselves until it becomes cheaper for institutions to fix the problem than to pay the damages.