Category: Stupid

Still no cure for cancer.

Meanwhile, scientists have yet to figure out a cure for cancer.

From Obscure Store:

In an attempt to win a $500 prize, several Nordstrom employees sold shoes to themselves and rang up sales for co-workers, family members, friends and customers knowing the shoes would be returned in a few days. Eight workers have been canned.

Full Story.

And other bad excuses…

I just heard this on the local radio station, and I can’t believe our tax dollars are being spent on this. From the story: “The fictional language of the popular TV and movie science fiction series is one of about 55 languages needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County. … If a patient speaks only Klingon, the county is obligated to respond with a Klingon interpreter. So officials have decided to include it with about 55 languages, some of which, such as Russian and Vietnamese, are widely spoken, and some, such as Dari and Tongan, are seldom spoken.”

If a patient only speaks Klingon, are they worth saving? At least you can use Google in Klingon.

Those damn protesters will protest anything.

OK, generally, I support most anything that the Emerald publishes, but any time they slam my favorite search engine without doing their homework, then I have to gripe.

I just posted a yet-to-be-moderated feedback to their site, that basically says this:

This is NOT a Google problem. This data is 1) Publicly available, and 2) Has been available online for years. Google just makes it far easier and intuitive. Do your homework, folks, and don’t slam a search engine as something that “violates online privacy” unless you realize that they weren’t the first ones to do it.

The Dallas Morning News Reported: “The service was fast, the judgments even hastier. Never did Jacqueline Mercado imagine that four rolls of film dropped off at an Eckerd Drugs one-hour photo lab near her home would turn her life inside out, threaten to send her to jail and prompt the state to take away her kids.”

The story details how one family’s snapshots at bathtime and while breastfeeding led to a felony porn charge.

“To Richardson police, who arrived at the store that afternoon and apparently made up their minds from the content of the pictures alone, this was nothing short of a felony case of child pornography. ‘We thought they contained sexuality,’ says Sergeant Danny Martin, a Richardson police spokesman, explaining why two Richardson police detectives began pursuing a criminal case. ‘If you saw the photos, you’d know what I mean.’

“The couple’s lawyer says, ‘These aren’t pictures that were peddled on the open market. This wasn’t on someone’s website. This is just a mother who took a roll of film and left it off at Eckerd’s. The state used them to arrest her, indict her for a felony and take away her kids.'”

The charges were dropped, but the couple’s kids are still under state control.

This is, honestly, one of the most idiotic things I’ve heard. Everybody takes pictures of their baby and kids, and many times, they’re naked. Makes me want to go set fire to all the pictures I have of my daughter as a baby, in case they could be used against me for a felony court case. Not only that, but the mom still can’t see her kids.

Link from Al’s Morning Meeting.

And if the CD’s that were produced by the new company were anything like Apple’s past standards, new albums would cost twice as much, be incompatible with existing CD players, and lag behind the competition by months in coming to marketn (tagline stolen from Fark). Full Story.

The University of Bradford and Bradford College are merging, and £20,000 (about $31,000) was spent paying consultants to name the new college. The three names they came up with: Bradford University, University of Bradford and The University of Bradford. And I agree with someone quoted in the BBC article: A six-year old could’ve come up with these names. I’d much rather see that money go to the school’s general scholarship fund than to lining the pocketbooks of over-paid “researchers.” Students of the University/college/whatever aren’t too happy with it either (thanks Neil).