aubreyturner.org

It would be bad enough to fall for the ad and buy the product.  But it takes quite a brave soul to admit it and sue the bastards.

A California man on Thursday sued a slew of international companies, including a Greeley distributor, alleging the penis-enlargement products they market and distribute do not work.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, seeks class-action status to represent an estimated 1 million people who ordered the products in response to advertisements on television, radio and spam e-mail.

If this goes to trial, it could be a really embarassing discovery phase…

This is a pretty cool idea.

Nissan demonstrated its new device designed to protect its parking lot from a hailstorm for WLBT News on Tuesday.  It is a cannon that sends sonic waves up to 50,000 feet in the air to keep hailstones from forming.

I’d never known that there were devices that could prevent hail.  But according to the linked article, there are 400 of these devices around the world.  Nissan doesn’t yet know if it will be effective for them, but if it is it would save them millions in damages to their inventory.

Caveat emptor.

Silence may be golden, but now, thanks to iTunes, it can be downloaded for a mere 99 cents.

Among the hundreds of thousands of downloadable songs for sale at Apple Computer’s online music store are at least nine tracks of silence, a fact that has prompted quite a bit of discussion. The chatter over the inaudible music tracks began this week at Mac enthusiast site As The Apple Turns.

As the site notes, Apple treats the silent songs just like their more musical counterparts. The silent tracks sell for the same 99 cents as other songs, feature free 30-second “previews” and are all wrapped in Apple’s usual digital-rights management software to prevent unauthorized copying.

…

For those looking for the best value, Schaeffer offers nearly two minutes of silence, almost twice as much as any of the other tracks.

It was sad, but not unexpected, to hear that they found the body of that young girl who was abducted in Florida.

This part of the FoxNews article really caught my eye:

A state Department of Corrections official said Thursday that a probation officer had asked a judge on Dec. 30 to declare Smith in violation of his probation because he had not paid all his fines and court costs.

Probation official Joe Papy said Circuit Judge Harry Rapkin declined to find Smith in violation, which could have returned him to jail.

Why do we give these people so many damn chances?  He’d been arrested multiple times and was only given jail time once, the rest he kept getting probation.  If that judge had listened to the probation officer (who just happens to be the person who is closest to the offender), perhaps none of this would have happened.  Of course, with this type of offender, it may have just delayed the inevitable.  We’ll never know for sure.  What I do know, however, is that someone should have gotten tough on this guy a long time ago.

I haven’t been paying much attention to nanotech.  Given the rather perplexing and intemperate response of their media flak to Prof. Reynolds’ writings on the subject, though, I think I may have to start paying more attention.  When an industry tries so hard to marginalize an entire group of people as kooks because of their speculations concerning future possibilities it makes me wonder what they’re trying to hide.  It’s kind of reminiscent of some of the early attempts from the RFID industry to try to marginalize privacy advocates.

I guess I need to start by finding out more about molecular assemblers and why this Modzelewski fellow is so afraid of them.

Update:  To get started I ordered a couple of books from Amazon.com, although those are just basic primers.  Some of the more detailed books are a bit more expensive, including the ones by Eric Drexler.  It turns out that the Keller library is part of the Ft. Worth system and I was able to put a hold on a copy of one of his books.  They’ll notify me when it comes in at the local branch. 

This whole NanoBusiness Alliance business really has gotten me interested to see what’s really going on.

I saw one of those loud, obnoxious, tractor-pull-announcer car dealership commercials this morning.  I usually tune them out, but I couldn’t help but notice the message in this one.  It was a “buy one get one free offer”.  If you purchased a new Expedition or Explorer they’d give you a used 2002 Escort (or was it a Focus?).  Of course it was a used car, but I think it says a few things about the car market that they’d do this.

I always hear the enviro types whining about SUVs, but the evidence suggests that they’re being ignored (good!).  The high margins available in the SUV business show that these are what people want.  That a dealer is now giving away econoboxes with SUVs further shows that the market is outshouting the enviros.

The market has spoken and it has told the enviro weenies to STFU.

You can count on the clever folks at Despair, Inc. to understand the true nature of Valentine’s day.  This year they’re introducing their Bittersweets line of candies.  These are a line of those chalky little candies with a set of more realistic sayings on them than you’ll find on the ones in the stores.  Some examples:

• TABLE FOR 1
• DIGNITY FREE
• SETTLE 4LESS
• CALL A 900#
• U+ME=GRIEF
• UP YER MEDS

Interestingly, Despair, Inc. is a Texas company.  Dr. E.L. Kersten,  the founder and COO of Despair, Inc., is located in Dallas, with the main operation being in Austin.

If I wasn’t already avoiding them because they don’t have a low-carb option, this would probably be sufficient reason to shun Taco HellBell:

The frigid winds whipping across lower Michigan a couple of weekends ago did nothing to warm a Taco Bell manager’s cold heart.

He fired 17-year-old high-school junior Holly Cook—for daring to put on a coat.

“It was so cold that my hands were going numb,” Cook told the Lansing State Journal, describing her shift at the Charlotte, Mich., fast-food restaurant’s take-out window on Jan. 25.

The problem, explained her manager, Mike Swank, was that she wore her own coat, not one of the Taco Bell-logo coats the store kept on hand for cold days.

…

But Cook hadn’t counted on an undercover visit by what’s known in the trade as a “mystery shopper”—someone sent by the restaurant chain to check up on franchises.

The inspector cost the restaurant 28 points out of a perfect 100, Cook said Swank told her.

Still, Cook told the newspaper, “I couldn’t believe they fired me.”

It’s this silly corporate insistence that their logos be on everything in sight that leads to stupid things like this.  Marketing idiots get so fixated on their “corporate identity” that they forget that there are real people involved in these things.

But then, if memory serves, Taco Bell isn’t exactly known for doing the right thing (I’m referring to a case nearly ten years ago when a Taco Bell employee was fired for going into the parking lot to give aid to someone who had been assaulted—the aid being in violation of company policy never to go outside;  unfortunately, I could not find a good link to this).  Anyhow, it’s not like their food is anything special.  All they had going for them was being cheap.

My Avalanche barely fits into my garage so I decided to take the hitch off and store it in one of the topboxes and put in a hitch cover.  That way I’ll have a few more inches to work with and maybe not have to park with the nose almost touching the front wall.  I found that etrailer.com has a bunch of trailering accessories available, including hitch covers. 

While browsing through their catalog I think I may have discovered the ultimate redneck truck accessory (aside from the bull balls). 

On a more serious note, this one could be handy given the number of tailgating assholes I see around here (some of whom get so close that all I can see of their cars are their antennas above my tailgate).

I learned on Sunday night that Boots is afraid of thunderstorms.  I’ve known dogs before that were afraid of thunder, but her reaction was the worst that I’ve seen.  She was trembling and her heart was racing.  It also left her a little out of sorts the next day (she didn’t eat in the morning and she slept most of the day).  She recovered today and was more energetic than usual.

I sense a difficult night ahead as the local forecast is calling for thunderstorms late tonight and tomorrow.  She’s really going to hate April and May around here…