Category Archives: Interesting

Mother’s Day Gift?

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Shotgunshell_chairSee that chair to the left?  It’s made with shotgun shells and besides looking quite interesting the brass of the shells is supposed to provide a very pleasant massage effect (more info here).

I’m considering this as a mother’s day gift, the irony of which will be appreciated by all in our family.  You see when it comes to guns my Mom makes Cindy Sheehan look conservative  by comparison.  My brother and I weren’t allowed to have toy guns, although exceptions were made for water guns.

I’ve taken the opposite approach with my boys: they have a gazillion toy guns and my oldest has an air rifle.  He also tromps around the house in combat boots and cammies, and has decided that he’ll make his fortune designing tanks, helicopters and armed Hummers. Actually his drawings are quite good and he’s pricing them below a million since he’s done pricing research online and has figured out that at $750,000 he’d be severely undercutting the competition. I don’t have the heart to rain on his parade with things like production costs, but my heart is all a-twitter at my budding little entrepreneur.  I’m a little concerned that I might have bred a mercenary, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. You’ve heard of grandchildren being a grandparent’s revenge?  Well I’ve turned this one on its ear haven’t I?

Anyway, back to the chair.  I might get it even if I don’t give it to Mom (she’d break into hives if she ever actually sat in it).  You see I have this pathological fear of guns, what with the childhood brainwashing, and I’m trying to break myself of it with my own weird immersion therapy.  A couple of years ago I shot skeet while on vacation (got two with one shot I’ll have you know) and I figure if I use this chair at my desk I’ll continue my de-programming.  This might also help increase my masculinity score on the PersonalDNA test I took yesterday.  I’ll keep you posted.

Benevolent Inventor?

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There’s a neat little personality test out there called PersonalDNA.  It’s a little like the Myers/Briggs but it utilizes new web technologies that allow you to use ranking sliders and charts instead of answering multiple choice questions.  What’s really different about this one is that you can invite your friends and family to evaluate you using the same test.  In other words instead of answering the questions about themselves they answer the questions as they see you.  Could be creepy, but I think it could also be really informative.

I took the test and it says that I’m a "Benevolent Inventor."  Here’s a link to my full report. I have to say that the one thing that bothers me in looking at my 13 personality traits was when I saw the "femininity" and "masculinity" scores.   According to this 60% of the 3200 people who have taken the test have scored a lower "femininity" score than me and only 52% have scored a lower "masculinity" ranking.  Does this mean I’m some kind of girly-man?  Is this why I really don’t want to see Brokeback Mountain?

I’m going to invite some people I respect to evaluate me as well, and hopefully I’ll have my fears put at ease.

Go here if you want to take the test yourself.

Billy Looks at the Port Thing

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I highly recommend you go over to Billy the Blogging Poet’s site and take a look at some of the info he’s dug up re. the now infamous deal to let a UAE controlled company buy a company that will manage some of the most important ports in the US.  Ends up there’s a lot more than six ports involved, and terrorism is probably not the greatest worry here.

I’ve said this on other peoples’ blogs, but I wanted to go on the record here: I’m really surprised that we allow any of our critical infrastructure (ports, airports, depots, pipelines, etc.) to be owned or managed by foreign entities.  The biggest shock to me isn’t that a UAE-owned country is being allowed to do this, but that ANY foreign-owned company is being allowed to do this.

You might think this is isolationist.  Not at all, as I see no need to cut trade with other countries but for goodness sakes lets keep the keys to the henhouse in our own pockets.  And to put the shoe on the other foot if I were living in the UAE I wouldn’t want an American company managing my ports.

Further Proof That Cars Are Not an Investment

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1milferrariA dude named Stefan Eriksson crashed a $1 million Ferrari Enzo on the Pacific Coast Highway and literally split it in half (see picture).  He claimed he was only a passenger and that the driver was a guy he only knew by the name of "Dietrich" but the cops were suspicious.  And rightly so since according to this LA Times article the guy was alleged to have been convicted of counterfeiting in Sweden.  Oh, and he was top exec at failed game-maker Gizmondo.

Who Needs the Military Industrial Complex?

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Tank
Joe over at Joe Write points to a tank for sale on Amazon.com and he rightly recommends reading the comments at the bottom.  Very entertaining.

Me, I’d love to get one of these, grab some buddies, stock the beer, attach a coop filled with quail to the top and then park it in front of the Veep’s ranch, "Fuddville" during his next hunting trip.  When he comes out one of us will shout "Pull!" over the tank’s insane sound system and then let the quail go.  As pellets bounce harmlessly off our tank we’ll laugh hysterically as all the birds fly away unharmed to freedom.

BTW, I’m amazed no one picked up on the idea that based on his hunting prowess we’re very lucky that the Veep didn’t serve in Vietnam.

Apparently Diamonds Weren’t Always a Girls Best Friend

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Boing Boing is linking to an old (1982) Atlantic Monthly article that details "how the De Beers cartel pumped
up the value of a relatively common gemstone, the diamond, by
conducting a global psychological manipulation campaign."

Those bastards have cost me a mint over the years.

Side note: getting a mention from sites like Boing Boing and Fark can be a mixed blessing; great traffic, crashed server.  When I checked Atlantic’s site was down, and I’m guessing they can thank the Boingers.

Job Security?

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Surveillance company CityWatcher.com is requiring that employees that access it’s data center do so with RFID security chips that are implanted in their biceps.  Having the implants is not a condition of employment but is required for access to the data center. 

Ironically a security expert recently discovered that the chips, provided by the company VeriChip can be skimmed and cloned, duplicating an implant’s aunthentification.  According to this article the folks at CityWatcher.com weren’t aware of the security flaw.

All I can say is that you’d have to pay me a bunch of money to implant anything in my already-decrepit body and it darn well better be upgradeable without taking it out and putting it back in.  It also better be a lot more reliable than my PC or my cell phone because if it behaved like those sorry devices it would probably start repeatedly ordering my implanted arm to pick my nose or something slightly worse.

Realtors Running Scared, Part Deux

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Last month I wrote a post called "Realtors Running Scared" and in it I basically said that I saw the need for realtors diminishing, at least from the seller’s standpoint.  Today the New York Times has an interesting article that features two new services that should cause more than a few realtors to change their underwear. From the article:

One site, Zillow.com,
which will be introduced today, will help consumers obtain more
accurate real estate sales information — to the consternation of some
real estate agents.

A smaller site, Redfin.com,
introduced an unusual new service last week that might be even more
disruptive to the real estate industry: the feature automates the
process of bidding on a house online.

Of the two I find Zillow more interesting and much more of an imminent threat to realtors.  As I said in my first post I think that realtors’ real value is in the matchmaking process (i.e. helping buyers find the right house).  I honestly think the only real value they have traditionally offered sellers is a place on the MLS, and with sites like Zillow the MLS is quickly going to lose market dominance if it hasn’t already.

On the other hand buying a house is a highly stressful and intimate affair.  I don’t see bidding for houses online as a today or tomorrow proposition so I’m not real big on Redfin’s prospects, at least as I understand what they’re trying to do.  I’ll say it again: realtors that want to thrive should focus on offering a high-touch service to buyers and move away from worrying about listings.  They should also be open to accepting lower commissions from sellers because in the very near future that will probably be their only option.  Heck they might even want to move away from the commission model to a service fee model, although I have no idea if that’s allowed under existing regulations.  It would be worth looking into though.