I got an email from eBay today. The subject line was "don't disappoint them - get the hottest toys".

I understand that marketers want to tap into emotions to motivate people to buy. And that's okay.

Up to a point.

Let's make eBay's message a little more explicit: "If you don't buy everything your kids...
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I got another of those emails from SpamArrest today asking me to verify that one of the emails to my mailing list wasn't spam. This time, something on SpamArrest's website struck me as ironic, if not downright hypocritical.

SpamArrest is a whitelisting service -- they block email from anyone who the recipient hasn't opted i...
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I live in Nebraska, so what I'm about to say is heresy. But we need more heretics.

I read somewhere the other day that gas that contains corn ethanol produces more greenhouse gasses than straight gasoline, and even more than other, easier to produce sources of ethanol. And we know that the growth of the...
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Last week, the GAP unveiled a new logo to a fairly negative reception. Personally, I think they deserved the backlash -- the new logo was generic and unmemorable. Yesterday, they abandoned the new logo and reverted to the old one.

This morning, Econsultancy reported the news:

But did Gap make the right decision by ditching...
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I saw something interesting on Amazon.com today:

That's what the price was the first time I viewed this item. The second time, it looked like this:

The third time, it was back to $6.03 + $2.95 shipping, and the original seller. At first, I didn't notice that the seller was changing, so I figured th...
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A year ago, at the end of one of my periodic political rants, I wrote:

But I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, enough people in this nation will get sick of the two major parties to vote ‘em out.

In fact, that’s a sabotage strategy I might be willing to...
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Via Slashdot:

Parents who dismiss video games as mindless entertainment with no intrinsic value for their children may not have a leg to stand on anymore thanks to science. Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester have proven action based video games train people to make quick, accurate decisions...

I've experience this myself. A while...
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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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Okay, this is funny. When I configured my GMail account to send mail as my email address at my domain, it sent a confirmation email to the address I'd specified. That email address forwards everything to my GMail account.

After several minutes, the confirmation email hadn't arrived. So I checked my server logs. Sure enough,...
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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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