Month: May 2008

Google caught Astroturfing

The Australian competition watchdog has accidentally revealed Google as the anonymous source of a submission that is highly critical of eBay’s proposal to force its users onto the PayPal payments system.

this is why you don’t hire MBAs. they come up with stupid ideas like this. and then screw it up further.

The Thrillist Deal

Each weekday, we’ll shoot you an article delivering the best of what your city’s hiding. It might be a restaurant that serves poisonous (yet edible) fish, a rock bar that lists a “Double Shot of Jack” on its cocktail menu, or even a pocketknife

Matter, by Iain M. Banks

In his more recent Culture novels, Banks seems to be exploring different aspects of his fictional universe, and Matter is no exception. This time we are seeing something of the galaxy beyond the Culture, both the other advanced civilizations which the Culture interacts with (a sub-sub plot is that relations between the Culture and the Morthenveld are at a rather delicate juncture) and some lower tech cultures that have a very different relationship with galactic civilization than anything Banks has described before.

Oil to $150

It turns out that for the past 30 years, we’ve had a George Costanza Energy policy — every decision we have made as a country has worked to drive energy prices higher. Had we made the opposite decisions, Crude Oil prices would be much lower than they are today ($130.17 as I type this). What follows is a list of energy-related policies of the United States. On many of these, I have no opinion — but I wanted to list as many as I could to demonstrate why Oil is where it is

for the delusional who think prices will soon go back down, a list of why not.