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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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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in Rant | 209 Words

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.