Lifehacker had a great little piece of software today called Deskpins. It gives you the ability to take any window and make it “always on top.”

Great stuff and works pretty damn well. Go give it a try. It’s free, spyware and adware free, and useful.

Technorati Tags: deskpins, cool, software

Short video, sweet move.

Yes, I got into curling this Olympic season. So shoot me.

Technorati Tags: curling, shot, amazing, cool

The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The firm, Dubai Ports World, is seeking control over six major US ports, including those in New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore. It is entirely owned by the Government of Dubai via a holding company called the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCZC), which consists of the Dubai Port Authority, the Dubai Customs Department and the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area.

“Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced,” Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department’s Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview.

“If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem,” he said.

A-Din noted that while the head office for the anti-Israel boycott sits in Damascus, he and his fellow staff members are paid employees of the Dubai Customs Department, which is a division of the PCZC, the same Dubai government-owned entity that runs Dubai Ports World.

Moreover, the Post found that the website for Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone Area, which is also part of the PCZC, advises importers that they will need to comply with the terms of the boycott.

This is the company we want operating our ports? You people are out of your damned mind. No foreign country should operate our ports.

Period.

The fact that this company is anti-Israel is all the more reason to tell them to take their amazing port-control abilities and shove them right underneath their robes.

Technorati Tags: ports, arab, dubai ports world

Technorati Tags: ports, arab, dubai ports world

One of the most repulsively fascinating facts about contemporary black popular culture is how it continues to reach fresh lows. It finds new ways of leaping all fences that would bar it from falling into a bottomless pit of tastelessness. All of the insults and burdens of minstrelsy have been bested by black comedians and rappers who have made stupidity, hedonism, pimping, misogyny, pornography and violence their stock in trade.

One defense of this amoral sense of life and culture is that black people didn’t invent any of it, so why shouldn’t they, like the white people, be able to make big money from it? As one imbecilic black man in television said to me, “I ain’t hating on these brothers. All they are doing is dealing with a market the same way that the white people do. This is capitalism and they’re responding to a market. You know the old saying, ‘Whatever the market will bear.’ ”

Now we find that comedian Damon Wayans has spent the past 14 months trying to copyright the N-word with “iggas” instead of “iggers.” He wants to put it on apparel and whatnot. So far, he has not been successful but one can imagine young American kids wearing that word emblazoned on clothes and listening to rap “songs” in which the N-word frequently appears, in conjunction with “bitches” and “hos,” among other denigrations.

How quaint. For any white people who are curious, just walk up to a black person and say the word. Then just tell them you meant it with an “a” instead of an “er.”

See how it goes over.

Technorati Tags: nigga, wayans

It’s funny, really. I know this site offends people. In many cases, I say stuff specifically with the intention of putting people up over the edge screaming and hissing. I take pride in making people pull their hair out. In fact, at a recent family function, my cousin (Alan H. to the rest of you readers) told me that everytime he reads my site, he wants to punch his computer.

I see him as just one more person I’ve reached in my quest to piss off the entire world.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Lifegem, a company that takes the remains of your dead relative and pressurizes it into a gem that you can proudly display forever and ever. The post was entitled “The Ultimate in Ghoulishness,” and it read as follows:

Oh wow. I thought Angelina “My Lips Are Like Toilet Seats” Jolie’s wearing Billy Bob’s blood in a vial around her neck was weird. This is 10 steps beyond that:

What is a LifeGem®?

The LifeGem® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life.

The LifeGem diamond provides a way to embrace your loved one’s memory day by day. The LifeGem® is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life.
Your LifeGem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever.

via Pirillo

All in all, in the course of my day to day spewing, that really is innocuous, as most of you who have been here any length of time know. Now that I’m in my 4th year of doing this, I’ve gotten hatemail from arabs, christians, liberals, atheists, pro-abortion zealots, democrats, and on and on and on. Never have I gotten as nasty an e-mail as I got from this woman:

From: Annah H. Boyer [mailto:aboyer@cpradr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:02 PM
To: comments@insignificantthoughts.com
Subject:

Vinny, you are a giant asshole who clearly has nothing better to do than hurt other people’s feelings on your INSIGNIFICANT blog. I hope someone you love dies and you perform the “ghoulish” ritual of interring them in a locked coffin in the ground as their organs rot and seep into the earth.

Annah
New York, NY 10022

Got that? She hopes someone I love dies and I bury them. Well, it just so happens that I just went through that very thing this weekend, but that’s beside the point. Ms. Boyer may have done a smart thing to read the disclaimer on every single page of this site, that all e-mails I receive are considered for the purposes of publication. I was’t about to take a shot like that laying down. However, instead of responding right away, I Googled the domain from the e-mail, cpradr.org. It’s the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution! Ironic that such a hateful screed should come from an organization that prides itself on conflict resolution. I also found a link to a site called Dragon Fire, which contained a story that explained who Ms. Boyer actually was:

After watching a segment of the “Today Show” featuring a company that makes diamonds out of the ashes of cremated human remains, Annah Boyer’s father turned to her and said:

“Why don’t you make me into a diamond when I die?”

Three months later, he died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. Boyer, 29, a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., who now lives in New York City, was unsure whether she should proceed with his wishes.

She turned to the Internet for help. “I googled ‘death’ and ‘diamonds,’ and LifeGem popped up,” she said.

Today, two years after her father’s death, Boyer wears a ring on her right hand with a setting of a blue diamond made, in part, from the carbon extracted from her father’s ashes. She is but one of many who have turned to the company in search of a unique way to memorialize loved ones.

Eeeeshh… Sorry, still ghoulish… Anyway… I went to her company website and Googled her name there. From the FAQ:

As a member, with whom would I interact at CPR?
Our membership chairman is Beth Corman, ably assisted by Annah Boyer. These people would be your primary contacts. However, the entire senior staff is available to serve member needs.

Holy sweet Jesus. Anyway, I wrote back, while at the same time holding back explosive laughter.

From: Comments [mailto:comments@insignificantthoughts.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:03 PM
To: Annah H. Boyer
Subject: RE:

It’s so nice to have a fan. Who the hell are you, anyway?

To which she replied:

From: Annah H. Boyer [mailto:aboyer@cpradr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:12 PM
To: Comments
Subject: RE:

No one you’d want to know, anyway, since you think I’m so ghoulish. My father died recently of a massive heart attack and we had watched the LifeGem segment of the Today show together after reading a book by Mary Roach (NY Times bestseller, very easy to find, I’d recommend you read it) about what actually happens to you when you die and how horrible and disgusting it is. LifeGem gives you a beautiful memorial that can become an heirloom, rather than a creepy graveyard to visit once a year. I didn’t mean that I want someone you love to die. I’m just very very sad. It hurts so much to miss someone so badly and then to google the company that produced the one bright memento I have (to help a friend who was looking for it) and find ignorant bashing of it instead was just very hurtful. I’m sorry I reacted so nastily.

Now I could have just let that be, but I’m not the kind of person to just ignore when someone comes on that strong, and I wasn’t about to let her just walk away from her nasty first e-mail. Of course, she did call me ignorant, which I wasn’t, so I laid into her pompous ass:

From: Comments [mailto:comments@insignificantthoughts.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:46 PM
To: Annah H. Boyer
Subject: RE:

Truthfully, I think your email was nasty, vindictive, and misdirected. There was no ignorance, just an opinion that someone who would want to wear their loved one as jewelry was ghoulish. I still think so. It isn’t meant to “hurt” anyone; frankly I think cremation is pretty damned ghoulish also.

I also believe that Lifegem is a company that capitalizes on people’s fear of what happens to their body when they die just as much as the coffin manufacturers who charge some poor schlub $25,000 for a box made out of a nanometer of copper sheeting. It’s the same thing.

I’m sorry for your loss, but frankly you were way out of line. On Sunday, I stood at a gravesite and watched someone I knew get buried after suffering a heart attack on dialysis. I really don’t need any lectures on how to grieve, or what burying them in the ground does. Piece of advice for the future: Get a better picture of someone before you fire off an angry e-mail at them.

To which she responded:

Fuck You

And being the gentleman that I am, I responded:

You’re welcome.

Look, the truth of the matter is, I don’t give two shits what you decide to do with your dead daddy’s ashes. I’ve seen some crazy shit done with remains, and really the idea of turning them into jewelry is just another kook idea for people who can’t figure out how to let go.

Annah Boyer wrote me a nasty e-mail, to an address with a site that has a clear disclaimer on it that all e-mail sent is considered for publication (go down to the bottom of the page, folks) from her office address, and told me, basically, that she wished someone in my family would die.

Am I meant to feel any kind of empathy for her? Any of that was gone with the first contact she made with me. Despite the childish nastiness of her e-mail, I don’t relish the fact that she lost her dad. It’s tragic to lose family members. However, her assertion that my opinion that Lifegem was ghoulish was ignorant put her instantly in the category of people who think they’re right and everyone else is a moron.

Frankly, Ms. Boyer, exposing yourself for public ridicule proves you’re not exactly a genius either. Hopefully one day you’ll do a vanity search and find yourself here.

If it weren’t for kooks, I’d have nothing to write about.

Technorati Tags: lifegem, annah boyer, ghoulish

CBS has filed suit against Howard Stern…

The 43-page complaint charges:

* Howard Stern repeatedly and willfully breached his written contract
with CBS Radio over the last 22 months of that contract,
misappropriated millions of dollars worth of CBS Radio airtime for his
own financial benefit, and fraudulently concealed his interest in
hundreds of millions of dollars of Sirius stock while promoting it on
the air.

* That on or about January 9, 2006, Sirius paid over 34 million shares of
stock, valued at approximately $220 million, to Stern and his agent
because Sirius exceeded by the end of 2005 certain subscriber targets
that were set in the Sirius-Stern contract. The complaint alleges that
the Sirius-Stern contract provided that Stern was to receive this stock
payment in 2010, but it had an acceleration provision that allowed
Stern to receive the compensation as early as January 2006 if these
subscriber targets were met. All of Stern’s actions for which he
received this expedited compensation occurred during the time that
Stern was under exclusive contract with CBS Radio, when the Sirius
payment terms to Stern were kept secret.

* This contract thus provided a compelling incentive for Stern to do all
that he could to help Sirius reach the subscriber targets by the end of
2005 so that he could receive his Sirius stock payment as soon as
possible while Sirius’s stock was extremely valuable. Without the
accelerated payment, Stern would risk the decline of the Sirius stock
value. By taking action on CBS Radio’s airtime in 2004 and 2005, Stern
assured himself of immediate access to $200 million in assets that
could be readily converted to cash.

* By engaging in continuous promotion of Sirius on CBS Radio airtime
without any payment by Sirius to CBS for these advertisements and by
pocketing over $200 million dollars for his personal benefit, Stern
misappropriated millions of dollars worth of CBS Radio airtime for his
own financial benefit and the financial benefit of Don Buchwald, his
agent, and Sirius in contravention of repeated directives by CBS Radio.

* That Stern also breached his contractual obligation to inform CBS Radio
of plans that might have a bearing on his future. Under the Agreement,
Stern had the obligation to give CBS Radio the first opportunity to
discuss participation in radio projects that are conceived during the
term of the Agreement, even if the concept or project was launched or
implemented after the term. Stern ignored that responsibility, and
negotiated and concluded his agreement with Sirius in secret.

* To this day, Stern continues to breach his contract by refusing to
return property that belongs to CBS Radio — the recordings of his CBS
radio program that, under his Agreement with CBS Radio, belong to the
company.

The suit further charges that Sirius intentionally interfered with and procured Stern’s breach of the Agreement. Sirius knew that Stern had a contractual obligation to maximize the prospects for the success of the CBS Radio program and to comply with his duty of good faith. Sirius intentionally induced and caused Stern to breach these contractual provisions by offering to accelerate Stern’s payment of millions of dollars in stock options to promote Sirius on CBS airwaves and by concealing Stern’s stock interest from CBS Radio.

Tsk tsk… Hoo hoo’s in big trouble. Some of it can be seen as corporate posturing. Other parts, like the constant and incessant advertising of his move to Sirius, are obviously true. Should be interesting to see how this ends up being settled. Chances are it won’t be in a court of law.

Technorati Tags: howard stern, hoo hoo, lawsuit, cbs, infinity, viacom

In an effort to innovate beyond the iPod, Samsung has hired one of the software designers behind the iPod for its initiative mentioned here (January 10th) the first player he’ll work on being the YP-Z5, a Nano knockoff.

Looking at the pictures that have been floating around, it’s not really surprising that they would hire an iPod guy for UI design, although the interesting rub here is that originally, samsung was going to throw excessive amounts of money into advertising and producing devices that had multiple functions (ie: a TV and an MP3 player in one device). Instead, what they seem to be intent on doing is playing catchup with Apple by mimicking their devices. Not exactly part of the announced plan.

I find this interesting for numerous reasons, but the most obvious one is that when you’re trying to be innovative, original, and dominate the market, hiring away a software designer from your number one competitor would seem to be a step backward. Unless, of course, you’re only interested in producing a clone and not a competitor, in which case everything should be just fine.

At least they didn’t call it an iPod “killer.” God knows you can’t just be a competitor anymore, you have to be a sociopathic murderer.

I said it last time, C-Net quoted me on it, and I’ll say it again. Don’t expect to see thousands of Samsung YP’s on people’s hips come this spring. When choosing from a knockoff or the original, I’ll choose the original 9 times out of ten. I have a feeling many people are going to agree with me.

Technorati Tags: ipod, samsung, yp-z5, nano

Hey Bode… Now that you sucked like a high-end vacuum for two weeks, can you shut up?

SESTRIERE, Italy - Bode Miller’s five-ring washout reached the end of its cycle yesterday, 13 days after it began. He left the Olympic hill for good at 3:52 p.m., about a half-hour after he ran over a gate and skied off the first run of the slalom, 15 seconds into an effort that looked as if he were skiing in quicksand.

He signed an autograph for a course worker, and then he was off, cutting diagonally across the slope, skiing toward his RV, apparently unfazed by going oh-for-Turin.

And so the XX Winter Games ended for the backwoodsman from Franconia, N..H., the cover boy and contrarian who kept on saying he doesn’t care about results - and skied like it.

“I just did it my way,” Miller told an Associated Press reporter. “I’m not a martyr. I’m not a do-gooder. I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here.

“The expectations were other people’s. I’m comfortable with what I’ve accomplished, including at the Olympics.”

He didn’t care about results?

He rocked?

What exactly does getting shut out of the medal hunt make you a rocker of?

Honestly, I think Miller actually started to believe his own hype, and thought his cool Nike ads and spiffy website would earn him some kind of medal. The so-called best skiier in the US didn’t even place for a Bronze, and missed a gate in the final event, the Giant Slalom.

Well done, Bode. You totally rocked.

Technorati Tags: bode, bode miller, loser

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The next time some Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackon clone comes forward and says the police aren’t doing enough to protect young black men, you are hereby required to spit right in their racebaiting faces:

Busta Rhymes has no time for the cops investigating his bodyguard’s murder - but he managed to squeeze in a West Coast trip to finish his much-hyped, self-promoting video.

The superstar rapper has stonewalled police since Israel Ramirez was gunned down outside a Brooklyn recording studio three weeks ago.

Instead of helping catch the killer, he flew to Los Angeles to complete the star-studded video for his song “Touch It (Remix).”

[...]

“The filming is now finished and it is being edited. No air date has yet been set.”

She was unable to confirm if the other big name hip hop stars featured in the video, including DMX, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige, were at the L.A. session.

Many of the stars are believed to have been only feet away when Ramirez, 29, a father of three, was fatally shot outside the Greenpoint studio. Cops believe Rhymes was with his bodyguard at the time.

But police have been blanked by witnesses, who have kept a low profile since the murder.

The Daily News revealed Friday that a secret audio recording of an argument that sparked the fatal shooting suggests the rapper saw it all.

Memo to the black, african-american rap, hip-hop, and whatever other bullshit “communities” we may identify with up above 110th Street:

If you want the police to help you, it would be nice if you ditched the whole “stop snitchin’” bullshit and started turning in criminals.

Either that or shut up about not getting results from the police. Whichever you decide, you can’t have it both ways.

Got it, brutha?

Yeah boy.

Technorati Tags: rap, hip hop, r&b, crime, stop snitchin’

I’ve had a PSP for a few weeks at a time, and it’s a fun little system. The load times, however, suck. Apparently THQ has taken that sucktitude to a whole new level of suckiness.

The video below is long, but you’ll feel this guy’s pain:

Now, I have never had loadtimes that even come close to this, however, as Joystiq notes, someone at THQ and Sony thought these unbelievably bad load times were acceptable in a final product.

Yet another “benefit” of a cd-based system.

Technorati Tags: psp, video games

Ryan Brenizer, a friend of mine, is someone I look up to in photography. Along with Travis Ruse, I’ve learned so much watching their work it really has helped my own ability to take pictures.

On Ryan’s LiveJournal today, I saw a paragraph that I thought really sums up my feelings about many of the wannabes in the photography community:

My entire class is pulling for projects to be “deep.” I’m pulling for “quirky.” My second option, which I may do on the side or instead depending, is the weird mix of ambition and fringe culture that swirls around Jen Dziura, a tale that can touch everything from making it big in the New New New York City to why on Earth a group of people have decided to bring back things like vaudeville and spelling bees. The class’s reaction to this idea was so strongly negative (partially because I was delirious and couldn’t explain it well, and partially because it’s not soul-rending), that it would be hard not to do it as a direct challenge.

Unintentionally, Ryan has hit on the problem most of the photography community (not counting the folks I’ve met in person on flickr) has. Arrogance. I was thinking about what he said, and I realized that most of the people in this city who regularly shoot the city are looking for the next “cry” shot, or the next great statement about society. It seems, though, that many have forgotten what makes photography in New York City the greatest in the world; the ability to shoot little slices of life that make the city unique.

Ryan’s idea of documenting Jen Dziura is utterly genius. A New Yorker, in the year 2006 (5 at the time), doing the equivalent of vaudeville.

Is there anything more unique and interesting? I don’t really think so.

Oh sure there are hundreds upon thousands of “this city can be so cruel” shots that can be taken. Undoubtedly, in his class, there will be 20 projects of people shooting the homeless, and shooting the poor kid playing on a broken-glass-riddled playground, or the 7 year old who has to walk to school in the South Bronx by himself. I have a feeling though, in a class full of those, Ryan’s project will be the one to stand out.

The class’ negative reaction to Ryan’s project pretty much validates what I’ve always thought about alot of people who pick up a camera. Pretentious arrogant fools who think the only way to truly impress people is to show them how utterly miserable and heartbreaking the world is.

Screw ‘em. Give me a cute brunette in a Wonder Woman costume emceeing a spelling bee.

Technorati Tags: ryan brenizer, jennifer dziura, photography

So I finally got around to fixing some stuff around here. It was quite fun doing the cleanup, and you can definitely see the difference in site load times. Speed, in the end, is of utomost importance
Here’s what’s changed:

1. Blogs for Terri: Gone. Why? Because they’re nuts, that’s why. It’s one thing to fight for Terri’s right to live. It’s another to rally against a woman’s right to die when she made the wish to do so explicitly clear. I don’t need any more rabid militant kooks in my blogroll; I just finished exterminating a bunch of them. BFT did good work for Terri, but its deterioration has walked it right off my blogroll.

2. Blogs for Bloomberg: Gone, for obvious reasons. The man got re-elected. If these guys start it up again in a few years, the links will be back.

3. The Sources: Gone. Frankly, I hadn’t updated that list in so long it wasn’t accurate anyway. I realized it as I looked down at the list and saw Sean Hannity, whose show I haven’t listened to in about a year, on it. I have too many sources to effectively link here, and since I source everything I write about, it’s not important to have a list of stuff I read.

And now the biggie.

The blogroll: 80 links removed.

I really have been bad about keeping that list updated, but now it’s right up to the minute. I exported all my blog feeds from Bloglines into Excel, twiddled around with them, and then reimported them (using MySQL) into Wordpress. If you were removed from the list it could mean one of a few things:

1. I don’t read your blog anymore (sorry folks, but it’s just a reality).
2. Your blog didn’t have an RSS feed, or the feed never worked properly and therefore wasn’t in Bloglines (most common reason, honestly, if you were on the list and your blog is still active, PLEASE let me know so I can fix it).
3. For some odd reason it just didn’t import.
4. You delinked me and I never liked you much anyway and was just reciprocating (a very big reason).

So there you have it. The new, tidier, insignificantthoughts.com.

The NYPD, as usual, is overstepping its bounds with regards to what’s legal and illegal.

Police, MTA Officials Crack Down On Subway Photography
February 24, 2006

The vice president of the New York Press Photographers Association says police are routinely cracking down on amateur and professional photographers alike on city subways, even though it’s perfectly legal to take picture anywhere on the subway and commuter rail systems.

“Most people will not do something that a police officer does not want them to do, because they don’t want to be arrested,” said Todd Maisel of the New York Press Photographers Association. “They don’t want to go through the system. They don’t want to deal with the courts.”

“We’re very concerned that police officers, without any legal authority, are telling people they cannot videotape, they cannot photograph,” said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “And people, because they respect the police, or they fear the police, are complying with that, even though that’s a completely unlawful order.”

MTA spokesman Tom Kelly says it’s a longstanding policy for the media to let the agency know before taking pictures or video, both to maintain orderly operations and as courtesy to passengers who may not want their pictures taken.

But critics point out that policy’s not written anywhere, leaving it up to individual police officers or transit workers to make their own rules.

I can tell you first hand, this is indeed an issue. The NYPD seems to have an issue where they enforce laws that don’t exist. For years they’ve enforced an anti-Critical Mass law that doesn’t exist, and now they’re enforcing a photography ban that doesn’t exist. If only they’d spend as much time on laws that do exist.

Technorati Tags: ny1, photography, mta

PARIS (Reuters) - After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.

Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.

Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.

“If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.

“We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: catholicism, islam

Bill O’Reilly, instead of responding to the relentless ankle-biting by low-rated failure Keith Olbermann (who incidentally has less than half the ratings of O’Reilly), has decided to hit the incompetent ratings-bomb where it counts… In his non-existent ratings, by offering a petititon to people to bring back the higher-rated Phil Donohue:

February 22, 2006

Chairman Robert Wright
National Broadcasting Company
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10112

Dear Chairman Wright:

We, the undersigned, are becoming increasingly concerned about the well-being of MSNBC and, in particular, note the continuing ratings failure of the program currently airing weeknights on that network at 8:00 PM EST.

It is now apparent to everyone that a grave injustice has been done to the previous host for that time slot, Phil Donahue, whose ratings, at the time of his show’s cancellation three years ago, were demonstrably stronger than those of the current host.

Therefore, in an effort to rescue MSNBC from the ratings basement and to restore the honor and dignity of Mr. Donahue, who was ignobly removed as host three years ago, we ask that you immediately bring Phil Donahue’s show back at 8:00 PM EST before any more damage is done.

It is funny, how much longer they’ve put faith in Olbermann whose ratings just flat out suck. No amount of Olbermann spin can remove one simple fact. No one, except for Brian Stelter, who hangs with baited breath on every word that comes out of a MSNBC talking head.

Of course, he’s a liberal darling because he mindlessly bashes the right, which means he can hang around unencumbered.

At least Donohue had a point. Olbermann is just bitter at being a loser.

Technorati Tags: donohue, o’reilly, olbermann

The Supreme Court overturned a dismissal of a woman’s case. Here’s a brief outline of the case:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman who tripped and fell over letters, packages and periodicals left on her front porch can sue the U.S. Postal Service for damages, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The 7-1 ruling was a victory for Barbara Dolan, who said she suffered wrist and back injuries when she fell in 2001 in front of her Glenside, Pennsylvania, home.

She said postal employees acted negligently by leaving the mail on her porch. No further details were available on the circumstances of her fall.

The good news is, you no longer have to look where you’re going. Paperboys beware!

Technorati Tags: lawsuits, stupid, overlwayered

From Worldnet Daily:

A community college student in Massachusetts faces possible disciplinary action for shouting “Remember Chappaquiddick!” during an on-campus speech by Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy yesterday.

Paul Trost, 20, a student at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass., says he was upset by an introduction of Kennedy given by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., in which the congressman noted how the long-time senator overcame hardship in life on his way to success.

“Lynch said Kennedy had overcome such adversity to get to the place he was, and that’s a bunch of bull,” Trost said of the introduction, which occurred in the school’s student center yesterday morning.

Just as Kennedy began speaking, Trost was walking out of the room when he shouted, “Remember Chappaquiddick!”

“Most of the crowd gasped,” Trost said. “Then I walked out of the student center.”

The student says a campus police officer went outside and stopped him. He also saw some state troopers go outside, the type who accompany Kennedy around the state to provide security.

Trost says the cop took down his information and told him he would be hearing from school officials about disciplinary action. A spokesman with the campus police verified the incident but stressed that Trost was not arrested.

The student said one of his teachers confronted him after a class about the Chappaquiddick issue.

“One of my teachers called me ignorant and told me this was an embarrassment to the school,” Trost told WND. “She said to me, ‘Can’t you forgive him after all these years?’ And I said, ‘No, he killed somebody.’

“If it had been me or any other person, we’d be in jail,” Trost says he told his instructor.

Had she lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would’ve been proud of Kennedy for standing up to this student.

Technorati Tags: kennedy, chappaquiddick, swimming, kopechne

Mike Wise from the Washington Post:

[I]t came as a surprise to see Gumbel eviscerating the Winter Olympics in the closing monologue of HBO’s “Real Sports” earlier this month. “So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention,” Gumbel said, as part of a screed that called figure skaters “pseudo athletes,” the Winter Olympics “a marketing plan” and chastised announcers and writers who try to sound knowledgeable every four years over things they have absolutely no clue about.

Gumbel has a right not to like the Winter Olympics. He can trash curlers, lugers and snowboard-crossers all he wants. But who made him arbiter of all things culturally diverse? Superimposing your own idea of diversity upon athletes from 80 different nations, essentially equating diversity with only race, is just inane.

Holy crap, someone in the media actually caught on. For Bryant Gumble, and other people who actually are black, diversity isn’t about a diversity of races, or a large sampling of cultures. It’s about how many black people are in any given group. Black people, to Gumble and his ilk, mean diversity.

This is the same group of people who love to tell you how minorities are failing in opening their own small businesses and underperforming in schools, while ignoring the minorities from China, Japan, Pakistan, and India who are doing very well in school and in business. Despite the fact that they’re minorities, they’re ignored because they aren’t black.

Go ahead and tell me it isn’t the same thing.

I’m glad someone has finally caught on to the crux of the problem. Diversity, for some, is a simple number and a simple formula for some. Number of people in a given group - everyone but black people = % diversity.

Technorati Tags: diversity, gumble, wise, olympics