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First of all, before we change anything, is the light bulb really burned out? Maybe we just need to breathe some life into it; repackage it, maybe the light bulb could do a duet with somebody (Sheryl Crow? Tim McGraw?) in hopes of getting some crossover appeal, maybe it could be in a beer commercial, maybe we could get it out on the road with a brighter light bulb. The other thing to think about is that this summer, Honda is rolling out a 100 Million dollar campaign for a new car aimed at thirty-somethings who consider themselves adventurous/spontaneous but can’t really afford something like a luxury S.U.V. and it might be a perfect campaign to tie this light bulb into, at least it would be the perfect demographic, in terms of age.

Also, and this is just an idea: what if we found out what video games are being released in the third quarter and maybe pitched the idea of having our light bulb make an appearance in the video game at some certain level of completion; like, you get to a dark cave, let’s say, if it’s an adventure game, and if you have enough points you can get the light bulb – and it would be our light bulb, obviously – and then it’s easier to see in the cave.

The rest is funny as well…. (thanks, Roland!)

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These machines (which, I’m told, capture the shape of your fingertip instead of your fingerprint itself) are used to keep Disney World customers from sharing or re-selling their admission tickets, and are part of a general and growing police-state climate at the parks that includes routine bag-searches at each park entrance.

The readers aren’t very effective at stopping admission cheats. You can choose not to register your fingertip, and to use photo ID for admission instead (I’m thinking of having a random piece of photo identification made with the words “OFFICIAL BOGUS SECURITY IDENTIFICATION FOR HOTELS, THEME PARKS AND OTHER JUNIOR G-MEN” printed on it). So it would be very easy to share your pass: the person named on the pass enters with his ID, and the person with whom he’s sharing the card uses a fingertip — you could visit with your sister’s family and half of you could use the tickets in the morning while the other half hung around the pool and relaxed, then switch at lunch: the morning crew uses fingertip, the afternoon uses ID.

What these readers are effective at is conditioning kids to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks without particularized suspcion. One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again — they’re very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, “No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!”

“Oh, and Barack Obama made another woman faint today. The bad news, it was Hillary when she saw the poll numbers.” –Jay Leno

“In New York, Catholic groups have forced an art gallery to shut down an exhibition of a six-foot image of Jesus in chocolate. Or, as Democrats call it, Barack Obama.” –Bill Maher

“On the eve of Tuesday’s primary victories, a defiant Hillary Clinton said, ‘I’m just getting warmed up.’ Which begs the question, ‘Hey, Hillary, how are you gonna be ready on day one if it takes you 31 primaries to get warmed up.’” –Seth Meyers

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Friday may mark a significant milestone in the RIAA’s legal campaign against file-sharing, as it is the deadline for exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the record labels. Soon afterwards, discovery will begin, and all sorts of unsavory details about the RIAA’s legal campaign against suspected file-sharers are likely to emerge.

[..]

Lybeck tells Ars that he’ll be digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. “I’d love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA,” Lybeck says.

One of the allegations in the amended complaint will involve MediaSentry’s status as a private investigator. “MediaSentry claims it is able to gain access to people’s hard drives without their permission and collect information,” notes Lybeck. “It’s illegal because they’re not licensed to do that work.”

The amended complaint and subsequent discovery will also focus on what Lybeck calls the “flawed nature” of the RIAA’s investigations. “We know [the RIAA] cannot identify individuals,” he says in response to a question on false positives. “We want to know how many dolphins the RIAA is catching,” referring to a former RIAA spokesperson’s 2003 comment about accidentally catching a few dolphins when fishing with a net.

The RIAA is likely to fight the discovery process tooth and nail, however, as the information that is unearthed could prove to be extremely embarrassing, if not problematic. “They’ve operated in this zone of secrecy for five years now, and we hope to put a stop to that,” Lybeck stated emphatically, “because it will become obvious that their conduct is illegal an their whole scheme is flawed at its basic core.”

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John O’Reilly hoisted his beer and said, “Here’s to spending the rest of me llife, between the legs of me wife!”That won him the top prize at the pub for the best toast of the night!

He went home and told his wife, Mary, “I won the prize for the Best toast of the night”

She said, “Aye, did ye now. And what was your toast?”

John said, “Here’s to spending the rest of me life, sitting in church beside me wife.”

“Oh, that is very nice indeed, John!” Mary said.

The next day, Mary ran into one of John’s drinking buddies on the street corner.

The man chuckled leeringly and said, “John won the prize the other night at the pub with a toast about you, Mary”.

She said, “Aye, he told me, and I was a bit surprised myself.”

“You know, he’s only been there twice in the last four years. Once he fell asleep, and the other time I had to pull him by the ears to make him come.”

Here.

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What do these stories all have in common?

# A woman who says she lost more $1 million gambling in Atlantic City sues some casinos for $20 million, claiming they should’ve stopped her compulsive gambling.

# People who bought houses they couldn’t afford with loans they didn’t understand want their lenders to change the terms.

# Congress authorizes a war and then tries everything it can think of to get out of it.

# Our country gets addicted to oil and then blames OPEC when it doesn’t like the price.

These stories prove how personal responsibility has all but vanished in America, and our government is leading the way.

[..]

Florida and Michigan have a golden opportunity to stand up and say enough is enough, to send a message that it’s time to not only take responsibility for their actions but for those of our leaders as well.

After all, what would it say about personal responsibility in this country if we allow the two states that broke all the rules to end up having the biggest say of all?

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The House just now approved a new FISA bill that denies retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms and which refuses to grant most of the new powers for the President to spy on Americans without warrants. It passed comfortably, by a 213-197 margin.

[..]

As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can’t recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive — until today. One Democrat after the next — of all stripes — delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP’s fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.

The cynic in me thinks that’s because they want to be on the good side of President Obama…

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In November 2006, a camera crew from “Dateline NBC” and a police SWAT team descended on the Texas home of Louis William Conradt Jr., a 56-year-old assistant district attorney. The series’ “To Catch a Predator” team had allegedly caught Mr. Conradt making online advances to a decoy who pretended to be a 13-year-old boy. When the police and TV crew stormed Mr. Conradt’s home, he took out a handgun and shot himself to death.

“That’ll make good TV,” one of the police officers on the scene reportedly told an NBC producer.

[..]

Mr. Conradt’s sister sued NBC for more than $100 million. Last month, Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in New York ruled that her suit could go forward. Judge Chin’s thoughtful ruling sends an important message at a time when humiliation television is ubiquitous, and plumbing ever lower depths of depravity in search of ratings.