Category: Uncategorized

And they felt Borat was insulting?

George Will’s mother died at 98, after a long period of dementia. He wrote a very touching tribute to her, while exploring the ravages of the long process (alliteration notwithstanding):

Dementia, that stealthy thief of identity, had bleached her vibrant self almost to indistinctness, like a photograph long exposed to sunlight.

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. Dementia is an ever-deepening advance of wintry whiteness, a protracted paring away of personality. It inflicts on victims the terror of attenuated personhood, challenging philosophic and theological attempts to make death a clean, intelligible and bearable demarcation.

(I know, I know: two Will links in two days? Sue me.)

When the 9/11 attacks happened, two of my coworkers were at a conference in Chicago. They wanted to get back to their families here in NJ, but the airlines were shut down. So they rented a car and started driving.

Rather than go the whole length in one trip (everyone was pretty burned out over the course of the day), they elected to stop at a motel when they reached Akron, OH. The next morning, they read the local paper (the ABJ) while having their breakfast and checking out. One of the guys told me that the newspaper included emergency evacuation plans in the event that Akron was struck by a terrorist attack.

“Not to sound mean,” he said, “but I really don’t think the terrorists were planning to hit New York, Washington, and then–the coup de grace–Akron!”

It’s in that spirit that I offer you an NYTimes article about the national database of potential terrorist targets. Which state, according to the DHS, has the most targets? Indiana!

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky.

I noticed the movie poster Saturday when we drove into NYC. Click through it for the trailer.

One of my favorite posts ever is actually a From the Editor column from my magazine about my enjoyment of failure.

This week, BW has a neat article called How Failure Breeds Success, on how corporations can learn from their mistakes, particularly with product launches gone awry.

Intuit Inc. [. . .] recently celebrated an adventurous marketing campaign that failed. The company had never targeted young tax filers before, and in early 2005 it tried to reach them through an ill-fated attempt to combine tax-filing drudgery with hip-hop style. Through a Web site called RockYourRefund.com, Intuit offered young people discounts to travel site Expedia Inc. and retailer Best Buy Co. and the ability to deposit tax refunds directly into prepaid Visa cards issued by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

The slideshow‘s not as good as the one I posted on Friday.

This BizWeek article on how fast food joints don’t give a crap about healthy eating is accompanied by a slideshow of Bad Things We Love, which features some great headlines.

I’ve been afraid to try Coca Cola BlaKKK, but my drink of choice in grad school gets its own page in the slideshow:

With its cheap price, large bottles, and high levels of alcohol, no good can come from Colt 45. Its high alcohol content categorizes the drink as malt liquor rather than beer, and a bottle of Colt 45, now owned by Pabst, is sure to give your liver an unnecessary workout.

What movie have you seen the most?

The weather’s pretty grotesque here in NJ/NY today, so we’re going to pass on the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. Someday I’ll get to see it. . .

Till then, enjoy a parade of cats that look like Hitler.

The Official VM Wife thinks Gatorade missed a major chance in its Big Head TV campaign

when they didn’t use Giada De Laurentiis

Think of how much money they could have saved on special effects!