Mayor Charles Meeker held a press conference today to urge everyone to limit their water use to 25 gallons per person. Almost on cue, the comments on WRAL’s website went through the roof, with 361 posted as of this writing. Its as if people are just waking up to the fact that, oh, FALLS LAKE IS JUST A MUDDY HOLE NOW!!!
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Rant
Any rant
There are 157 posts filed in Rant (this is page 9 of 16).
Wasteful packaging
I got a cool LED book light for Christmas. It’s small, lightweight, and very bright: pretty much the way a booklight is supposed to be. The only real problem is the packaging it came in: it’s a huge, empty plastic box.
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Let the calls start flying
As a frequent-flying geek I read with interest that JetBlue may soon roll out Internet access on its flights. When reporters raised the possibility of passengers making Internet phone calls, the airlines stubbornly dug in their heels:
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Cops should take a cue from kids
WRAL brings me the story that a new Interagency Radio System Helped Police in Cooper Capture.
The radios allowed law officers to do something this time that they had been unable to do in the past.
It also was something that police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel in New York City could not do on 9/11 – talk to one another by radio.
Cops with tasers out of control
This morning I finally got around to watching the RCMP kill Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who spoke no English, with three shots from a taser at the Vancouver airport in September. Sickening that no one seemed to have compassion for the man. No one even attempted to revive him once he collapsed. It bummed me out all day.
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CPSC has only one full-time staffmember testing toys
Remember all those toy recalls due to excessive amounts of lead? It turns out George W. Bush’s Consumer Products Safety Commission only has only one full-time staffmember who tests toys. That’s one staffer standing between us and $600 billion of toys imported from China, a place where corner-cutting is rampant.
Let’s pass a federal law banning lead in toys. Let’s also find CPSC chairwoman Nancy Nord another job.
Heck of a job, Nordie.
(Via Crooks and Liars)
Fuji’s idea of customer service
After hearing the doorbell ring yesterday I opened the door to find a long-awaited delivery: Kelly’s digital camera that had been sent in to Fuji to be repaired. It has been six weeks since she sent her Finepix F470 off to the factory and she had really been missing it. I put the box on her desk, letting her have the pleasure of opening it when she returned.
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Facebook’s worth fifteen billion? I think not.
Okay, that’s it. Money truly doesn’t mean anything anymore. Its all paper, worthless paper. I learned today that Microsoft just paid $240 million for a 1.6% share in Facebook.
Facebook, for crying out loud! And Microsoft’s quarter billion got them less than two percent of it!
I’m all for people being rewarded for their innovations, but Facebook is just another stupid social networking site. Where’s the lock-in? What’s to keep the next fad-du-jour from suddenly stealing their users? Remember Friendster? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Give it up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for hoodwinking Ballmer on this. He’s pulled off the con of the century.
Taser abuse, again
Last year an Alamance County man mouthed off to an Elon cop and the next day the cop tasered him for no apparent reason. John Wayne Paylor was essentially assaulted by the cops in what was clearly revenge.
I support the police but there’s no way anyone can excuse this behavior with a straight face. If Paylor caused an incident the day before, why was he not arrested right then and there? This cop should be looking for work now, if not looking at a judge as a defendant. I’d be embarrassed about this if I were a cop.
This makes you wonder how often this happens and no one finds out about it.
TSA going after toys now
I agree with Titivil on this ridiculous story: our ever-vigilant TSA is going after remote-controlled toys. Going after remote-controlled toys may be prudent on the streets of Baghdad where they might be used in a booby-trap, but on an airplane?
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