September 04, 2007
What environmental crisis?
Have you ever noticed these giant trucks with revolving ads on each side driving around your city? Did you ever wonder if they served some other purpose or if they were dedicated to mobile advertising only? Well, I did. Surely, I thought, no one would pay to advertise on a moving carbon monoxide spewer while going green is the new trend. I was wrong. Plenty of businesses do and you should be outraged.
July 19, 2006
"This town is party central!"
Celebrity globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain found himself trapped in Beruit when the current unpleasantness got rolling. His characteristic eat-drink-and-be-merry attitude inspired an epic MeFi thread Now, with the conflict entering its second week, Bourdain has sobered up.
March 17, 2006
Honk If You Love Zygotes
WTF ?!!!
Honk If You Love Zygotes
WTF ?!!!
February 23, 2006
Spam
Damn Spam! We have been inundated with countless comment spam here at Memphilter and so have most other blogs. Fake links to "mature older women" is not my bag. It seems relatively harmless but it is actually helping lots of real shithead scumbags make a pretty penny at blog users expense and time. This is another reason why I hate Google: once a search engine is now an advertising, page-ranking, Adsense, money-making giant that almost begs spammers to do what they do so they can get page rankings (Googlejuice). Google's business approach seems like a conflict of interest to me due to the fact that the search results you get can be manipulated, not only by spammers, but by Google itself if you're willing to pay them for it. Google is no different than when Sam Walton began Wal-Mart and everybody thought it was great but now the same people think Wal-Mart is evil. Here's another reason why I hate Google. You can get a lot of stuff from Google, but you can get a lot of stuff from a lot of search engines. Especially Dogpile which gleans Google results but avoids alot of the bullshit quantified marketing algorithms that Google has placed in it blogosphere. Search engines exist because of ads but due to the popularity of Google it is operating at a level that is effecting the foundation of information gathering and I don't like it at all. I hope Bill Gates kicks Google's ass. Beyond this diatribe I have read a lot about comment spam and think maybe these can help Memphilter combat it: Bad Behavior install or LinkSleeve which seems to be down at the moment but has some blogger PHP page which I don't understand.
August 29, 2005
"New Orleans is Sinking"
Jon Donley blogs from the "hurricane bunker" inside the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Somehow, he is still updating at the time of this posting. As reports of breached levys start coming in, all of us in the Bluff City hope this National Weather Service bulletin from Sunday afternoon doesn't come to pass.
Sammy, are you out there? What's your status?
August 08, 2005
From the battlefield...
A graphic timeline of U.S. casualties in Iraq (via salon).
January 28, 2005
Did you hear the one about the pro-wrestler and the special prosecutor who started a real estate company?
Oh yeah? Next you're gonna tell me they added Jamie Farr and FDR's grandson to the board of directors. [Hint: scroll down for the complete board listing]
September 16, 2004
What time is it?
It's still seven 'til, but one warhead out of 20,000 could change that.
January 15, 2004
Bid to Stop the F-Word on U.S. Airways
So, here's the latest on strides in the campaign against indecency, recently sparked by Bono's utterance of the f-word while accepting an award during the 2003 live broadcast of the "Golden Globe Awards". Michael Powell, U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman, leads the pack.
I never knew NBC was owned by General Electric.
(sorry, too lazy right now to put in all the relevant links... Googling them should be easy enough for Memphilter regulars!)
December 10, 2003
Get the facts on local pollution
Environmental Defense's Scorecard tracks air quality, surface water quality, toxic chemical releases, and more.
November 27, 2003
The attack on Dutch "coffee shops" has begun
I've always been a big proponent for the EU and it is doing good things over there in the Old World. But, as an avid fan of Amsterdam, and a member of NORML this new action by the EU is upsetting. But you can always buy Duftkisse in Zurich which are little scented pillows with a special surprise inside! I love special surprises.
October 30, 2003
Oops. I forgot Memphilter's anniversary!
You may have noticed that over the last two days the venerable Memphilter took a break from providing the general just-better-than-banal insightfulness and took to hawking drugs for diet and erectile dysfunction. Let me tell you that this was not intentional by any means. It turns out that I had registered the domain name on 10/27/02, and that I had only registered it for a year. As I can at times hardly recall my middle name, I surely didn't recall that I needed to re-register memphilter.com. Well, now you know what happens when you fail to re-register in a timely manner. Luckily, the domain was not hijacked by Lithuanian mobsters, as I had originally thought, and now everything seems to be back to normal. No harm no foul, I s'pose. And if a young woman got skinnier on the ephedra offered here, or if an old man got his first boner in years because of my memory lapse, well isn't the world just a little bit better place?
October 16, 2003
HAPPY MPW !!!
For those of you keeping count, here's another little gem to add to your list of reasons to be grateful we have George W running the show.
"...and gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships."
DAMN! Where did they get these numbers? I don't think I've been laid eight times in the last TEN years. But seriously folks, the HRC (and I) encourage you to get involved.
October 08, 2003
The Golden Gate to the netherworld
Many jumpers wrap suicide notes in plastic and tuck them into their pockets. “Survival of the fittest. Adios—unfit,” one seventy-year-old man said in his valedictory; another wrote, “Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.”
These from an excellent New Yorker piece about Golden Gate Bridge suicides.
October 05, 2003
You think he'd ease up a bit after five years
Rev. Fred Phelps has plans to erect a Matthew Shepard monument in a Casper, WY park.
September 05, 2003
The Dead Letter Office
While we are on the subject of morbidity, wander over to the The Dead Letter Office, a place where folks leave virtual letters as if they are going to die. There are over 5,000 letters, and many of them offer fascinating reads. While some of them are downright funny, many are touching. Unfortunately, I suspect some of these folks may not be 'pretending' here.
August 16, 2003
Blackout Mania!
The Northeast blackout was big, but so was Hurricane Elvis.
July 29, 2003
Storm Knocks Memphis' Lights Out
For those of you who do not live in Memphis or were too busy taking care of your prostate to notice, we had a storm on June 22 that pretty much wiped the city out for a week. You may remember the ice storm of '94-- this weather catastrophe was much worse. In fact, I suppose many of the memphilter regulars have not made any posts lately because they still do not have power. The Commercial Appeal has a slideshow of much of the damage around town. I don't have an interesting storm story of my own, but the best one I saw on the local news was about one of Andy Lawson's kinfolk with no power who got tired of the heat and decided to make a pool by laying of a piece of blue plastic sheeting into the bed of the El Camino parked in his driveway, then filling the bed with water. Half the neighborhood came by for a dip.
Tell us your own harrowing tale of mother nature's fury.
June 06, 2003
Optomistic?
It's Friday afternoon, work is about to let out for the weekend, and we're all feeling pretty good about life and the future. Suckers!
May 25, 2003
Westinghouse Electricity, so dangerous it can kill an elephant!
When Topsy the Coney Island elephant killed the third of her handlers in 1903, Thomas Edison saw a great opportunity to prove that Westinghouse's alternating current electricity was more dangerous than Edison's own direct current. The rest, including Topsy, is history.
May 01, 2003
The Fairy Godfather
Sexual discrimination, mafia style. The death of John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato.
April 14, 2003
The end of coupon clipping?
Re-code asks bargain hunters with less-than-pristine integrity to "RE-Code Your Own Price™" by printing homegrown barcodes that reflect cheaper prices. According to Salon, Wal-Mart doesn't think it's funny. This kind of begs the question: Just because you have the technology, does it make it right? The answer is no, correct?
April 09, 2003
Is he gonna feel stupid if they go bust?
I'm all for tattoos. And I'm all for advertising. But there is just one word to describe this genius who combined the two: dumbass.
April 04, 2003
The Ethical Philosphy Test
You know which Founding Father you would be, which wife of Henry the VIII you most resemble, and which historical figure that goofy band-aid reminds you of; why not find out which philosopher your personal ethics most align with? Take the test. I am John Stuart Mill all the way, and proud of it.
March 25, 2003
PSA: New National "Do Not Call" List to Surface in June
Finally, the govt has approved a national "Do Not Call" list that telemarketers must consult or face up to $11,000 per call. Of course many people will weasel their way around it, but I for one am in full support. Currently most consumers are forced to deal with widely varied state laws, sometimes requiring a fee to add their name to the list.
Here is the legislation Bush actually signed. As usual, this govt site is good for a few laffs.
Here is a quick summary article by David Coursey, Anchordesk editor.
The Direct Marketing Association is filing a lawsuit.
March 12, 2003
Opinion part 2
Before I discuss the facts of my case and at the risk of revealing the tragic and possibly prejudicial consequences, let me ask another question. Would a reasonable single parent allow her thirteen-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son to operate a common clothing iron without any supervision? Keep in mind that the mother had previously instructed the children on the iron's proper use and that the children used the iron practically every single day. Her older children act in accordance with the reasonable standard of care expected of normal, well-adjusted thirteen and sixteen-year-olds. According to sources, it is common for Memphis City School children to iron almost every single article of clothing they wear because it is important to look "smooth."
Please give me your opinion
A single mother of three leaves her ten-year-old son alone sleeping in his bedroom while she takes her older children to school. Her youngest chld is smart, well mannered, and has never given his mother any reason to believe that he is not capable of caring for himself at home for a short duration. Her two older children, who are thirteen and fifteen, go to different schools that start earlier than her youngest's school. She leaves her house around 7:15 am with her older children and is gone for about twenty to twenty-five minutes. After she drops them off, the mother plans to be at home by 7:40 at the latest to get her youngest out of bed and have him ready to be at school by 8:30 am. Would you consider the mother leaving her child for this amount of time under these circumstances to be reasonable? I would greatly appreciate everyone's input on this one.
March 04, 2003
f(z) = z^4/(z^3 + 1) + c, c = 0.1876388 + 0.9526279 i
Rational Julia set with "stalk" orbit trap.
February 27, 2003
Fred Rogers dies at age 74
I imagine most of you have already seen the news on your daily morning news site, but in case not here 'tis:
Mister Rogers is no longer with us.
Do you like Googling? I don't know. I've never Googled.
And you better not, unless you want to receive this ridiculous letter. Google's trademark counsel hath spoken.[via boingboing via kottke]
February 23, 2003
The club fire you probably never heard about.
Before I moved to the Ohio Valley, I had never heard of the Beverly Hills Supper Club tragedy. For many years entertainers such as Ozzie Nelson toured the club doing dinner-and-a-show numbers. In May of 1977 a fire broke out at the establishment. 165 of the more than 2,000 waiting to see Jon Davidson perform were killed. More than 1,000 people owe their lives to Walter Bailey. Two weeks after graduating high school, Bailey, a busboy at the club, commandeered the stage during the opening act to alert the audience of the blaze.
The Cincinnati Post maintains an excellent website with the details of the tragedy and its aftermath. This well-executed graphic (526kb) is chilling. Although there were some references to the tragedy in the popular media of the day, it seems largely to have been forgotten outside of Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first or the last.
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