Monthly Archives: March 2003

Tired war arguments

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Based on the round-the-clock war coverage and discussion we’re all privy to in the US, there are a few arguments I’d like everyone to stop making, because they’re old and by making them we don’t get anywhere:

“War is bad” – Hey listen buddy, everyone agrees with you. No need to continue describing all the different ways war is bad and how many people die. We get it. We all agree. This is not a sufficient anti-war argument (unless you are a complete pacifist).

“Saddam is bad” – We all agree on this one too. Both sides. Stop making this argument. We all know he’s a brutal dictator. This is not a sufficient pro-war argument (unless you feel we should invade every country with a dictator and overthrow them).

If we can move past those discussions – all agree on them – and move on, I think the discussion would be much more fruitful.

Personally I think it’s misleading that we named this “Operation Iraqi Freedom” because it only causes more and more people to use the above arguments, and miss the real reason we should be going to war (and the real topic that we should be debating) – Saddam’s weapons and their potential threat to us.

"Time Traveller" rakes it in

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A pretty amazing story which looks totally bogus, but you can’t help but wonder if there’s some possibility it’s true.

“But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks’ time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can’t be pure luck.”

Carlssin declared that he had traveled back in time from over 200 years in the future, when it is common knowledge that our era experienced one of the worst stock plunges in history. Yet anyone armed with knowledge of the handful of stocks destined to go through the roof could make a fortune.

SonicBlue goes belly up

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Since Slashdot rejected this article when I submitted it to them, I guess I’ll put it here. Sonicblue, makers of Replay TV and the Rio portable MP3 player filed for bankrupcy.

This bums me out, because I really liked how they were antagonizing the media industry with commercial-skip and file sharing features. Coincidentally, part of the reason they went under (as mentioned in the article) is because of all the money they were spending on legal fees fighting battles with these companies. It also seems consumers didn’t demand these features in sufficient numbers, and chose to buy TiVos instead.

I think it will be interesting to see if the build-your-own PVRs take off… like MythTV and Freevo.

The good times

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At the office today someone put out candy bars in the kitchen. The box had a sign telling people they can buy them and support some organization, and there was an envelope in which to put your money.

That reminded me of a classic prank Deion invented (and used against me) back in high school, and I recommend you all give it a try sometime.

So I’m selling candy bars for some dumb fundraiser thing, I don’t remember. They were two bucks a pop. I set up a box with an envelope and a sign on it. I put the box in the room where we used to work on the newspaper, so that as people went in and out of that room they could buy some candy bars. Sounds like a fine plan right? Just come back later and collect the loot.

Sure enough, after I left Deion comes along and crosses out the $2 price and writes “Sale $.50!” on the sign. I come back a while later to find significantly fewer candy bars, and an envelope full of quarters. As I reached into my wallet, pulling out the money I’d need to subsidize the cost of Deion’s “sale”, I remembered how great it is to have such good friends.

Too cool to bash the French

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So although everyone agrees Iraq is in violation of resolution 1414, the French said they’d veto any resolution that supports the use of force against Iraq. With this move, it became cool for US citizens to really bash the French.

Now that’s not cool, but it’s become cool to be the guy who observes how uncool it is to bash the French – how childish that is. It’s cool to call those who bash the French a bunch of childish neanderthals.

Well I’m starting a new trend, it’s called bashing the people who bash the people who bash the French. Aside from the phony air of “I’m to good for this” they give off, really most of them are guilty of the same childish activity except they direct it at other things. The same people who say it’s immature to make fun of French people seem to think it’s perfectly okay to use equally childish insults against President Bush. Oh, it’s just fine to make fun of President Bush, but this other country… the sophisticated land of France… lay off them! That’s just too much. The US was so immature when they said “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”, but the French remain a sophisticated culture when they threaten to veto any resolution authorizing the use of force against a country that is clearly in posession of dangerous illegal weapons.

Well it’s time to get your noses out of the air, you hypocritical closet self-loathers. It’s now cool for us to make fun of you guys.

I encourage everyone to join this new movement.

Sweet Furniture

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At the Natick Mall two weeks ago, we stumbled across what must be the coolest furniture store ever. It’s called LoveSac. They don’t make anything except these enormous bean-bag looking things (they’re not actually bean bags, they’re filled with shredded foam). You can get them as large as 6 feet and fit 3-4 people on them. They are comfortable as hell. You can re-shape them so you get back support for sitting upright, or flatten them out for lying down. How cool is that?

Classic Onion article makes a comeback

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This week The Onion re-ran the “Hammurderer” article – one of the most hilarious articles they’ve written. It reminds me I meant to come up with a list of my favorite Onion articles of all time. Here’s a first shot at such a list (in random order):

There are some other classics but I can’t find them all… I guess they don’t keep them all archived online. Damn.