Lee.org

What a spectacle!

(thanks Marah!)

I hadn’t looked into who the body actor behind that groovy Golf GTI ad was. It is David Bernal, AKA David Elsewhere. Normal physics does not apply to this person!

Watch some of his Youtubiness.

Amazing Burning Man 2007 Photography

I don’t think I mentioned this here before but the Serpent Mother made the centerfold (yes, literally the centerfold) of the November 2006 edition of IEEE Spectrum magazine. Spectrum is the Time Magazine of the professional geek world.

As Grebnedlog the Pakled said to Riker in “Samaritan Snare”,

“We are smart.”

Want to inform people that a myth is false? You can’t do it! Merely by talking about the myth, you are reaffirming it in their minds.

Want to “make” something true? Just tell it to your audience repeatedly. Eventually, they’ll mistake being told many times by the same source as being told by many sources the same thing.

This is how advertising works. This is how political attack ads work. This is how selling works.

From On the Media’s “The Truth of False“, aired September 7th, 2007

Listen to the article here

BOB GARFIELD: Americans may or may not be as sleep-deprived as drug makers claim, but if it were a myth you could try to quash it with the truth. That’s what the Centers for Disease Control Prevention recently did. They sent out a flyer listing various facts and myths about the flu vaccine and labeled them “true or false.” But a study at the University of Michigan found that the CDC flyer actually did nothing to change people’s minds and may have even spread vaccine myths to more people.

Shankar Vedantam, a reporter for The Washington Post, explains that right after reading the flyer, people mostly remembered the false statements as false.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: But about 30 minutes later, older people started to remember some of the false statements as true, and three days later, very large numbers of older people and significant numbers of younger people also started remembering increasing numbers of myths as true. Continue reading ‘The Truth of False’ »

Images from Ben Thompson’s merciless peep army

Here’s a couple SWARM Glamour Shots that Mark Alexander shot of Erik and myself. It’s mid-August and we’re working at the Box Shop on getting the batteries for the 6 orbs up to snuff for the playa.

I had accidentally marked several blog posts as “Private”. That made it so I could read them but noone else could. Here are most of those posts, de-privatized:

1. 3,000 Gallons of Propane View
2. More Doings View
3. My Style of Humor View
4. Photo Credit View
5. SpamAssassin, CRM114, Brightmail View
6. Each City Has It’s Own Type of Driver View
7. Multitasking View
8. YAGW: Yet Another Great Weekend (with a rough start) View
9. Happy New Year! View
10. Condoms Don’t Work Nearly As Well As You Might Have Thought View
11. Reinstalled XP View
12. Matrix Revolutions trailer View
13. The Best Deadly Sin: Gluttony View
14. A little bit about Computer Guy View
15. Finding Ferranti View

I’ve posted about the telemarketing Do-Not-Call list before, here

I just came across this site selling telemarketing phone number scrubber software. The most interesting bit is their Recent Do-Not-Call Fines page. A local version is at the bottom of this post.

It’s been about 4 years   since I first registered myself on donotcall.gov so I figured it was time to re-register myself and my family (it is supposed to expire after 5 years to give the telemarketers a chance). I found out that they won’t be dropping phone numbers from the Do Not Call registry. The list has 145 million phone numbers in it. Wow, that can’t leave much room for telemarketers…

Recent Do-Not-Call Fines

Date Company Name Fine Amount             11-07-07 Craftmatic (FTC) $4,400,000.00 11-07-07 ADT (FTC) 2,000,000.00 11-07-07 Alarm King (FTC) $20,000.00 11-07-07 Direct Security Services (FTC) $25,000.00 11-07-07 Ameriquest (FTC) $1,000,000.00 11-07-07 Guardian Communications (FTC) $150,000.00 11-06-06 USA Home Loans, Inc. (FTC) $426,782.00 06-02-06 Executive Financial Home Loan Corp (FTC) $1,138,551.00 04-12-06 Sports Authority Florida (FL) $112,500.00 03-06-06 TE Mortgage Corp. (MO) $15,000.00 02-24-06 Book Of The Month Club (FTC) $680,000.00 01-12-06 Total Remodeling Inc. (New Jersey) $151,500.00 12-14-05 DirecTV (FTC) $5,340,000.00 07-31-05 Chesapeake Window and Building (Maryland) $25,000.00 07-15-05 Columbia House (FTC) $300,000.00 06-07-05 Real Time International (Virginia) $196,000.00 05-05-05 EchoStar Communications (Missouri) $50,000.00 03-18-05 ABI Marketing (Pennsylvania) $90,000.00 03-15-05 AT&T (Pennsylvania) $35,000.00 03-03-05 Dynasty Mortgage (FCC) $770,000.00 02-17-05 Braglia Marketing Group, L.L.C. (FTC) $3,500.00 02-17-05 Flagship Resort Dev. & Atlantic Palace (FTC) $500,000.00 02-10-05 SBC Communications (Missouri) $150,000.00 02-01-05 Florida 2004 Settlements & Fines $319,750.00 11-28-04 Solartherm Remodelers, Inc. (Pennsylvania) $1,900.00 09-08-04 Primus Telecommunications (FCC) $400,000.00 08-06-04 Comcast Cable (Pennsylvania) $7,500.00 07-09-04 Shelterguard, Inc. (Ohio) $65,000.00 06-24-04 American Home Craft, Inc. (California) $45,000.00 05-09-04 Sunset Mortgage Co., L.P. (Pennsylvania) $19,000.00 04-12-04 AT&T (North Carolina) $30,000.00 04-12-04 American Communications (North Carolina) $15,000.00 03-30-04 67 Settlements in New York $1,050,960.00 05-01-01 Tennesse Regulatory Authority Settlements $7,000.00               DNC Fine Total: $19,539,943.00