A Greater Evil Than.....Evil

There are only a few things I really hate in the world and few of those rank up there with valet parking. I know many people just love it. You don't have to worry about finding a parking spot in a crowded area, etc. That's a nice thing, I agree. But the part I hate is what you have to do to get that convenience.

Primarily, you have to give your keys to a complete stranger, who very easily could have a lengthy (violent?) criminal record. Not only that, but if anything happens to your car, they're not responsible (they tell you that on the ticket). So you pay a psychopath $20 to park your car, which may be scratched, wrecked, stolen, have its spare tire stolen (yeah...make sure you check that, especially if you have a nice rim on the spare...trust me...it happens) etc...and it's your fault. Or even worse, you could have the valet make a copy of your keys, then break into your house, set up hidden video cameras then hide under your bed for two days. Sound crazy? Well, That's exactly what happened to this poor woman.

Why on earth would you give a complete stranger your keys!??? OH YEAH! They're a "valet". Dumb....but everybody's doing it.

Here's an idea for all those stolen laptops with 'sensitive info'

Go to this site, read and understand. It's freaking free people!!! It would stop all of this concern with stolen laptops/data. You can even carry it along with you on a flash drive.

Nelson Mandella says the blood diamond has been washed

Apparently, according to Nelson Mandela, you are free to buy African diamonds again. It's best not to ask about the fat check he's getting from De Beers via the PR firm Sitrick and Company.

Another day, Another reason not to use debit cards

As I mentioned earlier, there are lots of reasons not to use debit cards. Today, Visa mentioned that thousands of customers might be at risk due to a "data breach", whatever that is.

I think it's going to take some hacker buying $30,000 worth of pencils with every senator and congressman's credit card before anyone in Washington pays attention.

Awww yeah. I called it (Chinese Urban Legend)

It turns out the "pregnant" Chinese woman was in fact a prank.  Quoting the China Daily:

"As people are widely concerned about the health of Qiao Yubo and her five babies in her phenomenally big belly, the super pregnant woman confessed Wednesday to the local reporters and doctors that the whole thing was made up. Qiao Yubo, an ordinary woman in Ningjiang District of Songyuan city, northeast China's Jilin Province, has been put into the spotlight since Jilin News' report on her quintuplets and 175-centimeter waistline earlier this week. However, when a hospital in the capital city of Changchun offered a free medical check-up, the woman and her husband taken flee from a window, thus unfolding the true story behind, reported Jinlin News. When the doctors finally found her in a washing room in her sister's house, Qiao knelt down, cried out, and told them she was not carrying quintuplets, Mr Li, chief of the hospital, told the newspaper." 

Here's my favorite part:

"Surprisingly enough, even Qiao's husband had no idea Qiao was having a fake belly until the arrival of the hospital staff, and he was the first to inform of media of the quintuplets. I was thinking I could not afford five babies, so I hoped the media exposure would arouse the society's attention and some people might give a helping hand." the paper quoted her husband as saying."

Bah....wait until he finds out "she" is a man.

Chinese urban legend?

Maybe it's just me, but this looks totally fake.

"Doctors" discover new Disease; Shareholders Applaud.

All of the sudden the news is filled with stories about Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED - and no, that's apparently not an incredibly ironic pun). And how, OMG, 7.3% of all adults have it. Basically IED means you lose your temper. And guess what? They have a solution all ready for you. The shareholders are applauding. This has to be the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time (Oh man, I'm about to go "IED" on you). The 'not a magic bullet' quick-fix is SSRIs which have been shown to cause suicidal behavior and thinking in teens. The answer to your problems is that you're not taking enough pills.

06/06/06 - The Number of the Stupid News Story

It's annoying enough to see all these people talking about today being "the number of the beast" day. But it's so much more annoying when you realize that people are going way out of their way to create this number so they can talk about it.

Today is not 6/6/6. That date passed us 2,000 years ago and under our current calendar system , IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! Sorry to disappoint you. But you've missed 6/6/6. It was a long time ago. And it wasn't the end of the world. Hmmmm...or was it? [queue Twilight Zone music].

Today is 6/6/2006. By truncating the 2006-->06, we will conveniently have 6/6/06 every 100 years. 2006 is not 6. And if you think it is, let me give you $6 and you give me $2,006 and we'll all be happy. Next time around it will be 6/6/2106....which will be shorted to 6/6/06 and again, we'll deal with all this inane news coverage.

While we're truncating/converting numbers, lets just express the date in binary form...that way we'll never run into this scary number again. Today's date is: 110/110 /11111010110 Whew! Don't you feel better now?? Don't you??