Omphaloskepsis, Year-End Style 110 posts this year (average 1 per 3.3 days).

Breakdown below:

  ¶ 3:27 PM 0 comments

  Go pick up some power converters One-Man Star Wars is hilarious. Even though the five guys that I saw it with and I are probably equally capable of reciting all three movies verbatim, and probably do better impressions of James Earl Jones and Frank Oz (but not Mark Hamil or Admiral Akbar -- give the man props), the whole thing was thoroughly impressive and entertaining. Geeks should definitely put it on their lists.  ¶ 12:48 PM 1 comments

  Pretty funny I'm sure you've already seen The Chronic of Narnia from SNL, but it's pretty good.

Best line: "You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons"

That's good stuff.  ¶ 4:48 PM 0 comments

  The problem with organized labor... So we're having a transit strike here in NYC. New Yorkers who don't work for the city are overwhelmingly freelancers and service employees, so they're less than sympathetic with the union's demand for 8% annual raises and full retirement benefits at 55 instead of 62.

The problem with organized labor is that it fights for its own piece of the pie rather than for everyone. By attempting to continue to hold employers responsible for health and retirement benefits (as well as seniority-based raises), unions are burdening old-line, uncompetitive industries. Worse, though, they are fracturing the working class and letting the government off the hook in the area of social justice.

Why should transit workers have pensions, but not retail clerks or waiters? And also, why should corporate enterprises enter into life-long paternalistic relationships with individuals just because they want to buy some services?

Organized labor should focus what's left of its clout on government (local, state, and federal) to enforce minimum wage laws and build a taxpayer-sponsored social safety net for all, not just for their members. And corporations should be lobbying government just as hard to get social insurance off their books and onto the government's.  ¶ 9:55 PM 0 comments

  The Googlenaught Rolls On? The always interesting Bill Burnham on how Google is about to eat the lunch of "walled garden" listing sites like eBay, etc...  ¶ 10:21 AM 0 comments

  More realizations from the Home Office... I just realized that working from home while my kid and her babysitter chatter away about stuffed animals, art projects, and imaginary scenarios, I'm still exposed to less inane office chatter than most people I know...  ¶ 1:34 PM 0 comments

  It's a Guitar Solo, Charlie Brown Lore does something funny, and I blog it  ¶ 11:50 AM 0 comments

  Capitalism means sometimes having to say you're sorry China Detains Commander in Protest Deaths.  ¶ 1:18 PM 0 comments

  The soul(lessness) of a conservative Rick Perlstein is lone liberal addressing a conservative conference at Princeton. As usual, the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus nails it.  ¶ 11:11 AM 0 comments

  Violence is bad for business. "China, Inc." fails to learn from the Corleones, and massacres protesting villagers in a fishing village near HK.

Oy.  ¶ 4:05 PM 0 comments

  Our Strategy is Sad Psychotic Delusional Futility A friend of mine recently did some work at a largish software company whose internal mascot of continuous quality improvement is...Don Quixote?

Seriously.

I guess they never actually read the book. Although you'd think that anyone would know that tilting at windmills is not a great business strategy...

  ¶ 4:22 PM 0 comments

  Maybe they should try sending lots and lots of email to people at random... NYT: Sales of Impotence Drugs Fall, Defying Expectations

Seven years after Pfizer made Viagra a cultural touchstone and commercial blockbuster, the market for impotence medicines appears to have fallen well short of what was once predicted.

  ¶ 5:31 PM 0 comments

  We report, etc, etc Sitting in an airport lounge with Fox "News" blasting, it's pretty amazing. I've never actually watched it before, and it's just as much a commercial for the Republican party as all those liberal bloggers say it is. Amazing.   ¶ 6:39 PM 0 comments