So a day after I announce that I’m a brand ambassador some guy with diplomatic credentials causes a scene by violating a smoking ban:
A Mideast diplomat who grabbed a surreptitious smoke in a jetliner’s bathroom sparked a bomb scare and widespread alert that sent jet fighters scrambling to intercept the Denver-bound flight, officials said.
But no explosives were found and authorities speaking on condition of anonymity said they don’t think he was trying to hurt anyone and he will not be criminally charged. [...]
Two law enforcement officials said investigators were told the man was asked about the smell of smoke in the bathroom and he made a joke that he had been trying to light his shoes - an apparent reference to the 2001 so-called “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.
Why is everyone looking at me? Brand ambassadors don’t even have diplomatic immunity. At least I don’t think they do, but that would be a hell of a perk.
[Via Reason.]
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If one measure of Facebook’s popularity is the number of totally inept computer users who have joined, then the site is astronomically popular indeed. Witness here, and seriously do click over to ReadWriteWeb and read the comments.
A similar thing happened on this blog a few years ago that new readers probably haven’t seen yet. Back in 2004 when GMail was new and exclusive I wrote a post about a new GMail application, “application” meaning computer program. This ended up being a high-ranking post for people searching for a GMail application form and for the next five years it pulled in more than 300 comments from people seeking GMail, most of them with limited English. The fun starts after the first 15 or so legitimate comments.
(In hindsight I should have updated the post with instructions for getting GMail rather than having them in the comment thread, but I was always amused by the slow trickle of random requests. Having just realized that it still gets occasional comments I’ve added a link.)
[Via the Twitter feed of Peter Suderman.]
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It goes without saying that this guy is from Portland:
An Oregon man is accusing Idaho police officers of destroying the mystical qualities of his Native American medicine bag when they opened it during a drunk driving arrest last summer. [...]
The Bonner County Daily Bee reports that police arrested Show, charging him with driving under the influence of alcohol. He had a blood alcohol level of .16, police said.
In the tort claim, Show says the medicine bag had been blessed by a medicine woman and has been sealed since 1995. But he says the bag’s mystical qualities were damaged when opened by officers.
So many questions. Was this a legal search? Was the bag ever meant to be opened? Was it supposed to cure him in his most desperate hour? Could he have inhaled the mystic contents to sober himself up? Is there an Idaho police officer whose gout has suddenly gone away? Alas, we’ll probably never know.
[Via @IcedBorscht.]
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A few weeks ago the hashtag #slatepitches flourished on Twitter, with users mocking the site’s tendency to publish contrarian, counter-intuitive pieces on just about everything. Joke pitches included ideas like “Soccer: It’s time to let players use their hands,” “Lead pipes and your genius baby,” and “How the ridiculed Aztek Pontiac could end up saving General Motors.” Oh wait, that last one’s real:
It’s easy to berate GM for always failing to see where the market is going. But in this instance it was the first to recognize the need for a new kind of vehicle to fill the crossover segment, which would grow rapidly in subsequent years. A crossover is basically a 21st-century station wagon. SUVs are usually built on the same platform used for trucks—and they often feel that way when you drive them. They also inhale gas. Crossovers, by contrast, are built on platforms used for cars, so they have better road manners, and they’re more fuel-efficient. There were some crossover-ish vehicles before the Aztek, such as the Subaru Forester, but these were seen as neo-wagons, or small/compact SUVs. With the Aztek, GM created something that had SUV size, minus the SUV stigma. [...]
In terms of innovation, the Aztek shares DNA with some surprising relatives, like Apple’s early, failed PDA, Newton, or its first stab at a portable, proto-laptop Mac. Apple (AAPL) didn’t succeed with these products, but the company began to define new markets with them. Obviously, laptops and notebooks would eventually become huge part of Apple’s business, and while Palm came to dominate the PDA market, Apple’s experience with Newton set the stage for its move into smaller personal devices, such as the iPod and iPhone. GM could banish all recollection of the Aztek, but the vehicle’s controversial design could be just the ticket as GM seeks to define how hybrid gas-electric-crossover technology derived from the Chevy Volt will appear.
Six years in and I still like my Aztek. I just wish it came with a convertible option.
[Thanks to Quasim for the link!]
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Kid buys lemonade. Kid notices that the label says there are trace amounts of alcohol in the lemonade. Kid tells his school. All hell breaks loose:
Call it a culture clash, trans-Atlantic style. The Brits think the Americans are puritanical and somewhat batty. The Americans find the Brits morally lax and too willing to bend the rules. It all started at a high school in Maine when a student consumed half a bottle of Fentimans Victorian Lemonade, then looked at the label and discovered it contained small amounts of alcohol, listed as less than 0.5 percent. By contrast, a typical American beer usually contains about 5 percent alcohol.
Not wanting to get in trouble, he showed it to school administrators, who called police. Police referred the matter to state officials to determine whether the zesty beverage could be sold to minors. Anti-alcohol groups got involved, sending out warnings about the potential perils of the highbrow brew.
On Thursday, the Maine attorney general’s office said it has determined that, in Maine, at least, people have to be 21 to buy the product.
The trace amounts of alcohol are left over from the brewing process. At that level they’re essentially harmless; according to Fentiman’s, one would have to drink 28 bottles of lemonade to get the same amount of alcohol found in a typical pint of beer. Yet for a prohibitionist, the dose of a drug doesn’t matter. Alcohol is an evil substance that must be kept out of the hands of children and they’ll go to absurd lengths to justify the ban on sales:
“It wasn’t so much that we were trying to give Fentimans a black eye,” he said. “We just want to make parents aware it contains alcohol. I’ve never had it; it’s probably very good, but their Web site says it can be used for mixed drinks.”
He pointed out that nonalcoholic beers with similar residual alcohol content cannot be dispensed to minors under Maine law.
The police chief is also concerned because a Google search of Victorian lemonade turned up recipes calling for it to be made with gin. He fears young people will read those recipes and add gin to their Fentimans.
You know what else you can make mixed drinks with? Milk. Orange juice. Coca-Cola. Anything that’s liquid and tastes good, really. But we mustn’t alert minors to these possibilities until they turn 21.
Anyway, Fentiman’s makes an excellent line of products that’s worth checking out. I’m a huge fan of their sodas — with or without alcohol added — and I’m glad they’re treating this panic with the derision it deserves. Hopefully they’ll get some good publicity out of it and end up boosting their sales.
Previously:
Don’t even think about clicking if you’re under 21, but here’s a tasty cocktail using Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola.
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An article about how the recession is causing more men to apply to sperm banks includes this reference to an unfortunately named program:
Donors at Biogenetics can earn as much as $500 per sample if they enroll in a new program called Open ID that allows sperm recipients to meet the donors face to face.
Just to clarify, when this blog’s comment form says the website is “OpenID enabled” that’s not what it’s referring to.
[Via Hit & Run.]
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… my disappointment that this is a work of fiction, not a cookbook. This is exactly what we’re doing at Carlyle right now though. Stay tuned.
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Patrick and Patrick of the Stogie Guys are reporting live this weekend from the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association Trade Show in New Orleans. (Man, I’m missing all the fun events in New Orleans this summer!) My favorite bit so far is this clever subterfuge to get around the new SCHIP tax:
In our preview on Thursday we mentioned Arganese was creating a two-in-one cigar designed to minimize the SCHIP tax. Below is a photo of the cigar, called “S-This.” What might not be clear from the photo is the cigar is really two smokes, connected at their heads with an extra bit of wrapper that can easily be removed by the smoker. So while for tax purposes the consumer is buying five cigars, in reality they get ten smokes. Sneaky.
Joining two stogies and letting the consumer cut them apart is a great idea. I don’t know how these smoke, but I’d buy some just to stick it to the man.
Previously:
Will SCHIP sink the states?
SCHIP and “the” tobacco tax
Children, say “thank you” for smoking
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As some of you know, I don’t actually write the morning links posts in the morning. I usually write them late at night and post them before going to bed so that they’re available for the East Coast readers waking up 3 hours ahead of me. This isn’t usually a problem, but on Wednesday night I found myself unexpectedly skipping dinner and having a few too many drinks. This didn’t stop me from blogging, so when I got up on Thursday I figured I should check the post to make sure I’d correctly placed it on the sidebar. To my credit, I did. The rest of the post, however, was complete nonsense.
I immediately took it down and corrected it, but then neglected the step necessary to republish it (while sober!). So today you’ve got a double dose of links, the ones currently on the sidebar and the ones that should have been posted yesterday. More importantly, I’m also republishing the original drunken post. This could be my best writing ever and I’d hate to see it lost to posterity. Consider the opening sentence, “What if ccalhochol really does produse outocoems similar to War;”. Really makes you think. Or the final link with its totally off-topic description: “Inside hobos”. Now that’s a compelling headline.
I’m surprised no one called me out on this. You all are quick to argue with the controversial posts, but I ask about ccalhochol produsing outocoems similar to War and not a single one of you comments or emails to tell me I might have been completely wasted when I wrote that? Come on, people, I need you to let me know these things!
Yesterday’s fantastic morning links below the break…
[click to continue…]
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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