My wife was watching a program in the next room about individuals and businesses walking away from "underwater mortgages" (mortgages where more is owed than the current market value of the property). I wasn't listening carefully, but I did hear someone talking about it as a "business decision". I disagree.

In a real estate transaction...
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I watched a presentation by Lawrence Lessig today about why we need campaign finance reform now, and it got me thinking -- the ideal of democracy is 1 person, 1 vote. But how much of a vote does each of us have?

First, here's the presentation:

Each citizen starts off with one vote. But thos...
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Wow, what a stormy issue this has become! The following was going to be a follow-up comment over on Andy Beard's blog, but it got a little too long. Here's my take on the issue:

I guess I see it a little differently. Let me see if I can explain in a way that at...
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If this list were worthy to be on itself, it'd just a be a list. But it takes laziness to be that bad, and I'm just not that lazy. Let me explain.

You've seen 'em: "54 great call to action buttons", "32 cool jQuery accordion menu scripts", "79 great header graphics for inspirtion", "15,327 free...
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What is luck? Does it even exist? It depends on your definition.

Here's mine: "luck" is a mysterious force that brings good things to people who have it. It doesn't exist.

What does exist is chance. Chance is random coincidences.

"Lucky" people are really just people who put themselves in a position to benefit from...
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I just posted a comment on Rich Schefren's blog. That triggered an automated email thanking me for the comment and linking to a few useful resources. The email had backslashes before all the quote marks and apostophes. I sent an email in response pointing out the problem and briefly suggesting possible causes. I got an...
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The long awaited night has come. My daughter is watching the new Dora the Explorer movie, "Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom". Here's my outline for a better Dora movie.

Dora and Boots go to withdraw money from the ATM, only to find that their bank has failed. During the transition to FDIC control, the ATM...
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For the most part, I love AWeber. But as I wrote last year, they've got a few really irritating problems. Here's my latest gripe.

About a month ago, I deleted 11 follow-up messages from one of my autoresponder sequences -- they weren't converting, so I axed 'em.

AWeber keeps track of the last follow-up message...
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Back in March, the Washington Post referred to Rush Limbaugh as the new Minority Leader. After Limbaugh repeatedly expressed the hope that Obama would fail and Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele criticized him for it, Steele had to apologize to Limbaugh.

Are you kidding me?

Let me see if I've got this right. We're supposed...
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Last month, I called Kodak out for trying to grab the moral high ground in printer ink pricing.

An HP employee helped sink the dagger deeper by commenting on that post. Well, now it's HP's turn to get called out.

HP's ad shows 2 peacock's -- the "cheap replacement ink" peacock with a small tail,...
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