Category Archives: Interesting

Foxx’s Comfortable Shoes

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I swear you couldn't pay me enough to be either famous or a CongressCritter.  Who in their right mind would subject themselves to the kind of daily snark and general meanness that modern society inflicts on anyone more famous than your average coat hanger?  Case in point: Rep. Virginia Foxx's footwear was the subject of a little online snark during ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews' recent testimony on the Hill.  Check out the pic. 

Seriously? Foxx having her feet and footwear compared to those of a woman who's paid, in part, to be fashionable and good looking would be like me being compared to George Clooney. Heck, it'd be like me being compared to a hairy mole behind Clooney's knee (he'd still win). In all fairness to Rep. Foxx the lighting and hosiery didn't do her any favors either.

Paid Free Speech

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A while back it became standard practice for most newspapers to allow comments on the web versions of their stories.  Personally I thought it was a necessary step, and I thought it would make for a kind of interactive version of "Letters to the Editor."  Now my opinion is that if you judge a population by the comments left on the websites of news organizations then we're a bunch of flaming idiots.

At least one newspaper has decided to try and make some lemonade with their commenting lemons.  It's going to charge people who want to comment on stories:

From tomorrow, the Sun Chronicle, a Massachusetts paper, will charge would-be commenters a nominal one-off fee of 99 cents. But it has to be paid by credit card, which means providing a real name and address.
And the name on the credit card will be the name that will appear on comments. So it's goodbye to anonymity.
At the same time, the poster must acknowledge that he/she will abide by US state and federal law and agree to be legally responsible for any content he/she posts.

They won't make a dime, but I have to give them an A for effort.

Men Who Iron Are More Attractive? I’m Gonna Call BS on That

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A survey commissioned by an appliance manufacturer says that men who iron are more attractive to women than men who send them chocolates.  Ignoring for a moment the inherent bias of the survey's sponsor I'm going to call BS based on the following anecdotal evidence: I couldn't repair a cardboard box, much less a car, but I can rock some laundry and I've never once in my life had a woman, particularly my wife, say, "Baby, seeing you do that ironing is soooo sexy."

Oh wait.  I think Hollywood disagrees with me:

Redefining Standing Room Only

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European discount airline RyanAir is proposing a special kind of budget "seating" for some of their planes:  

Instead of being allocated a seat, Ryanair travellers would perch on a narrow shelf and lean against a flat padded backboard.


They would be restrained with a strap stretching over their shoulder, the budget airline said.

Click through to the story to see an artist's rendering of the proposed seats.  Basically it looks like the seating on modern roller coasters.  To be honest I wouldn't have a problem with this for short flights.

Too Many Folks Don’t Get the Money Thing

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James Surowiecki writes that our financial illiteracy is a huge problem.  As someone who didn't care to learn about money until much too late in life and who, by the by, still has much to learn, I couldn't agree more. I also think his call for a financial equivalent to driver's ed is spot on. From the article:

The depth of our financial ignorance is startling. In recent years, Annamaria Lusardi, an economist at Dartmouth and the head of the Financial Literacy Center, has conducted extensive studies of what Americans know about finance. It’s depressing work. Almost half of those surveyed couldn’t answer two questions about inflation and interest rates correctly, and slightly more sophisticated topics baffle a majority of people. Many people don’t know the terms of their mortgage or the interest rate they’re paying. And, at a time when we’re borrowing more than ever, most Americans can’t explain what compound interest is.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/07/05/100705ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz0sGvkAfml

Libraries Building Out Digital Loan System

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An interesting article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal about libraries' efforts to lend more books electronically.

Starting Tuesday, a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, are joining forces to create a one-stop website for checking out e-books, including access to more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries…

With its latest project, the organization is making inroads into the idea of loaning in-copyright books to the masses. Only one person at a time will be allowed to check out a digital copy of an in-copyright book for two weeks. While on loan, the physical copy of the book won't be loaned, due to copyright restrictions.

The effort could face legal challenges from authors or publishers. Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild—which challenged Google's scanning efforts—said "it is not clear what the legal basis of distributing these authors' work would be." He added: "I am not clear why it should be any different because a book is out of print. The authors' copyright doesn't diminish when a work is out of print."

Mr. Kahle said, "We're just trying to do what libraries have always done."