Shouzer

Joystiq linked to and gave a bit of commentary on this piece by George Will.  The whole editorial is a weak, elitist tirade against denim, of all things.  Honestly, I feel a bit bad about potentially wasting anybody’s time by contributing to his readership.  Perhaps that’s all he’s going for; I hear newspapers around the country are failing, but based on drivel like this, I’m starting to think it has more to do with “Pulitzer Prize-winning” authorship like this than anything else.

The crux of his argument seems to be that denim was created for poor, dirty laborers, and our uncivilized society has idiotically adopted it as our primary fabric.  He attributes it to a “thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly” mentality, simultaneously revealing that he believes denim-wearers are unclean and–of course–that he’s superior (who didn’t see that coming?).

He goes on to bemoan this “misuse of freedom” (oh yeah, denim is far more damaging to society than the KKK), all the while revealing his jealousy of people more successful (“Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products”), who have more fun (“Seventy-five percent of American ‘gamers’ . . . are allowed to vote”), and of apparent inferior intelligence (“children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies”).  Boohoo.

Personally, I wear jeans because they’re comfortable, not as some fashion statement.  It seems that Will puts more thought into what I wear than I do, which he might argue is the root of his discontent.  In reality, I do like wearing suits, but there’s at least two problems with wearing one all the time:  1) I don’t feel like sweating in my office all day, and 2) frankly it devalues the few times in my life that I do dress up.

It reminds me of an early episode of House (yeah, George, I watch TV.  Fuck you.) in which House doesn’t hire a female doctor, because it’s apparent she’s more concerned with her looks than with being comfortable.  Assumedly, Will would prefer the opposite:  that we all dress uncomfortably to create false facades of importance and self worth.   He calls wearing denim “the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances”.  I call his editorial a carefully calculated attack on lower castes.

After all, his argument isn’t that, as a society, we’ve outgrown denim.  No, it’s that denim is meant for laborers and bums, and everybody else should have better taste–everybody else should dress their stature.  I suspect he would have loved to live in the middle ages.  Back then, everybody knew their place.  You had royalty, and you had peasants.  And they most certainly didn’t dress alike.

BBC News had an interesting article about a month ago that basically said the more religious a person is, the less likely they are to “pull the plug” when they’re terminally ill.  I think that statistic becomes a little more interesting when you try to reason why that is.

Honestly, I would have expected it to be the other way around–my first thought would have been that people with strong religious beliefs would be more willing to accept death, with the knowledge that an afterlife is awaiting them.  Apparently that’s not the case, though, and I’m curious if anybody has thoughts on why that might be.  I have a couple guesses myself, but I won’t get into them unless somebody’s interested in the comments.

I happened to catch this clip the other day, and it seemed worth posting.  Over the years of watching SportsCenter, I’ve sort of come to the decision that I like Hockey highlights the best.  There’s just something about them that keeps ‘em unique–most baseball highlights look the same to me (you can only dive in so many directions to catch a ball), for instance.  Anyway, enjoy.

I know. It’s shocking. The Final Four has given people a reason to go to Detroit though. They had a big music festival down by the river front this weekend. I caught Gavin Degraw live there (for free) followed by a pep rally with each of the four bands performing. The weather was gorgeous, and spirits were high.

It’s pretty cool having a local team in the Final Four and now in the championship game. Probably at least 75% of the people downtown today were wearing the green and white. I’ve only been here for 10 months, and even I’m feeling it. MSU has been an underdog in their last two days, and they have systematically defeated their Golliathian opponents. It’s been a lot of fun to watch, and it’s been a lot of fun to be here in the atmosphere of it all.

This area has had a pretty bad year. Detroit has been slowing dying for at least a decade, but it’s on the mat now. The next few months will determine its fate, but at least for one weekend, people here can have some excitement and joy in their lives.

This week, the Obama administration gave GM 60 days to establish a plan for viability and Chrysler 30 days to accomplish a merger with Fiat, otherwise, both would be forced into bankruptcy. In addition, Rick Wagoner was forced to resign from his position as CEO of GM, and he was replaced by Fritz Henderson.

Firstly, I think Rick Wagoner was a bit of a scapegoat here. He really didn’t do anything wrong to merit the forced resignation. Most of the damage done to GM happened before his tenure, and he has done some good things to turn it around. However, CEO of a company the size of GM is a rather unique position. Decent really isn’t good enough. Rick accomplished some good things, and had the economy not turned sour, he might have righted the ship over the long-haul. During the last few months of this crisis, he has not really shown a great sense of expedience in fixing the mistakes.

The new CEO, Fritz Henderson, did an employee broadcast a few days ago, and I was greatly impressed by him. He seemed to have a great sense of urgency about him, and he is clearly intelligent and tough. He is certainly more charismatic than Wagoner, though I don’t know how important that is for a CEO. It is obviously too early to judge him, but I would hire him for the job if I had the power to do so. So while Wagoner got a pretty bum deal, I think they did the right move by giving the job to Henderson.

GM was given 60 days to submit a new plan for viability. Really, though, this is a bit of a misnomer. GM has a lot of constituencies who negatively affect their balance sheet. These are the bondholders who fear they will have to take pennies on the dollar for the debt they hold; the union who fears their contract will be broken; and the dealers who fear the national network will be greatly reduced. The 60 days is not to create a plan; it is to get concessions from all of these groups. The threat of bankruptcy in 60 days is a means of holding the proverbial feet to the fire. Or else it is a means of forcing those concessions as GM obviously cannot survive without them.

GM has no negotiating power with these constituencies, and I think the 60 day deadline will provide that power. If some group is unwilling to give concessions, they will be forced to risk bankruptcy which seems to be an enigma. Without the deadline, they would have no incentive to give in, and this mess would drag on endlessly on the taxpayer’s dollar. The deadline hurts, but it has to be done.

I also think the deal they are giving Chrysler is appropriate too. Chrysler was gutted of its ability to make cars when it merged with Daimler, and now that they stand alone again, they are doomed. Sadly, the merger is their only real hope.

I’ve seen this commercial on CBS multiple times throughout the tournament. I honestly don’t know if it is a real promotion though.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Honestly, I understand Sci Fi’s desire to become more mainstream–they want to make more money.  They feel they’ve pigeonholed themselves by marketing only towards a niche audience.  But seriously, come on…  Syfy just sounds ridiculous.  And really, who’re they trying to fool?

Realistically, I suppose it doesn’t really make much difference for me.  If there’s a show I want to watch, I’ll watch it regardless of the network.  Then again, I assume I’m not the audience this new branding is suppose to attract.  Considering who it is supposed to attract, it’s probably only a matter of time before they start playing reruns of The Hills.

xkcd has a good point about all the hooplah that’s been made over the AIG bonuses.  I understand the public’s anger, and honestly I do think it’s a pretty stupid thing to do.  But the fact of the matter is the bonuses are inconsequential when put in the proper context.

Apple came out and announced iPhone OS 3.0 a few days ago.  It’s got some great new stuff in it, including (finally) push notifications, copy+paste, MMS (picture/video messages), turn-by-turn navigation, and more.  Reading the news, I thought to myself, “Great, I’ve been wanting MMS since this thing came out.”

Honestly, how is it that a $600 phone was ever released doesn’t have one of the most common features in existence?  I’ve heard arguments that it wasn’t required, because the phone handled email.  After all, email is better than picture messaging, right?  Apple was one of the first companies to stop putting floppy drives in their computers, because they were ahead of the curve.  Such is the case with MMS, right?

Wrong.  Dead fucking wrong.  As long as you have friends out there who have and use MMS, email is worthless in filling the void.  It certainly has its place–after all, I use email on my phone all the time.  But almost none of my friends or family have a phone that does email.  Nope, they all have regular phones that “only” to MMS.  It’s bothered me since the day I bought my phone.

Great, right?  They’re finally fixing a fundamental flaw with the phone by adding in a missing feature.  Oh wait, there’s some small print.  “Only available on iPhone 3G.”  Huh? So because I was there in line on the first day, giving Apple my money without ever seeing the phone in person, I got fucked.  Well, fuck you too, Apple.  I’m buying a Pre as soon as the damn thing is released.  Ironically, that likely means Palm will screw me somehow, too.  But, at least they haven’t done it yet, and Apple has.

I found this site to be very, very useful:

Farecast

They forecast airfare so you know the best time to buy. Will the fare go up? Will it go down? Now you know…sort of. They also send you email updates when the fare changes on your tracked flights.

What I really like though, is the flexible search option. You put in a destination city, and then you can adjust parameters for departure date, duration, destination, and trip length. As far as I know, they are the only site doing this. Most travel places let you search by flexible dates, but flexible destination is far more useful. For example:

I want to go on vacation over memorial day weekend, but I’m not too particular about the destination. So I got this sweet map to telling me what it would cost to go where. Pretty cool, huh?

As I do every year, I’ve made a document with game times for the first round of the NCAA tourney. Since I’m not rooming with, living in the same city as, or seeing any of you on a daily basis, I’ll upload the thing here for all to share.

For some reason, no one else publishes one of these, but I always find it helpful to have a sheet in my pocket telling me who is playing when.

File is here.

I have no clue whatsoever how Twitter stays afloat.  They’re basically like, “Hey, everybody!  Why don’t you come use our bandwidth?!  w00t!”

Now sure, as a user, I love the business model–I just don’t understand how it’s going to last, especially as it gains more and more attention from the media. Quake Live just went into public beta, and as they’ve been adjusting to the demand, they’ve frequently gone offline with only a link to their Twitter page available. Basically, they get crushed for bandwidth, can’t handle it, and send it all to Twitter. And Twitter doesn’t have ads, so what do they get from it besides a bill? Oh well, that’s not my problem.

I happened to catch this “editorial” about Warner’s new contract with the Cardinals, and I have to agree with it.  Frankly, I’ve always hated the notion that God takes sides in sporting events (and wars, for that matter, but that’s another story).  If that’s true, that means the other side never stood a chance, and then what’s the point?

Given that, I’ve never really cared for it when athletes are strongly outspoken about their faith, and you never hear a single interview with them when God isn’t mentioned like twelve times.  Sure, I understand that your faith is important to you–that’s a good thing.  But I don’t want to hear about it when it’s almost a certainty that you’re not taking it serious anyway.  Jesus said, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  Oh yeah, but here Warner is being a bitch because he’s being offered $10 mil/year instead of $12 or something.  Whatever.

You know you want yourself some Tiberius.  You gotsta get you some of that Star Trek lovin’.

Seriously, though…  This type of stuff is crazy to me.  I’m sure it’s got it’s market, and it’ll sell, but come on now.  Is it really necessary?  Couldn’t you get by with regular cologne?  Any who wants the Red Shirt?  “Oh great, now I smell like somebody who’s going to die within the hour.  Sweet.”