Joining The Crowd

I saw this CBS video on "What is Crowdsourcing?" and I couldn't go another minute without posting my comment.

Crowdsourcing? It sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? If two heads are better than one, then a hundred heads or a thousand are even better, right? If every success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, then don't we want to give every idea as many father as possible? A crowd of fathers? Right? That was what Kennedy meant, right? Now, we know that too many cooks killed the broth, but what about kitchen help who stirs the pot? Can we have too many hands stirring the -- Shall I say, soup?

Open software -- is that crowdsourcing? Yeah. Crowdsourcing is working, right? The Tea Party Movement -- is that crowdsourcing? It's an open political movement, right? With crowd participation? Some might say that crowd is a mob. It has activists with a lot of ideas, right? Some not so bad? Some loony? Maybe this crowdsourcing dosn't work on every problem?

Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan is what? 23? And she is known as a world class drunk? A while back, she pled no contest to DWI. She was DWI on more than one occasion. She was sentenced to probation, and to taking classes and staying sober. She was promised the reward given to all citizens who follow the program, who stay sober and who go to the classes -- Her record would have been wiped cleaned.

Now, I understand  addiction. Staying sober is not as easy as it sounds, even if a person wants to, and tries hard. Failure is not a stranger when the call to give in to drink is strong. Alcoholism is a disease. DWI is a crime, and there must be consequences for crime. The court has placed Ms. Lohan on a strict routine. Weekly checks and the 24/7 wearing of an alcohol monitoring ankle bracelet.  And she has been warned, comply with the probation or risk going to jail. See Video.

All of this could have been avoided, if she had gone to the classes and stayed from behind the wheel, when she go into a car.

Fergie's Not Welcome At the Palace?

She's not welcome at the palace? I don't know if she is or not. I assume not. The she of course is Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, former wife of Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom.

The Associated Press reports, "Britons aren't offering much sympathy to Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, after a tabloid released video in which she appears to sell access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew." See the video.

Fergie or Duchess, or the Bag Lady is now complaining, loudly, that her "lapse of judgment" wasn't her fault. The stingy royals only pay her $22K a year. She wants the world's sympathy. $22K a year! And she's a duchess! How can any one expect a duchess to manage on $22k!

Weight watchers paid her millions and other sponsors, hustling products that she endorsed, weren't stingy. She's been cashing in on her royal connection for years, and she has spent more money than a whole lot of people will ever see in a lifetime. She should quit spending so much, or get a job. Does that sound too harsh? No.

BA Strike, Labor Party Rising?

British Airlines cabin crew have gone out on a five day strike. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that England has fewer strikes when there is a Labor Government in charge. Why that is, I only can guess. Maybe the unions don't want to cause trouble for their favorite party, and the Tories, the representative of management, deserves to have trouble. I know, sometimes I try to make serious things simple, and I know that simplicity often skips over the flaws in many arguments, as complexity often covers over flaws with dense and not so deep layers of words.

Anyway, I am here in America with no plans to fly to Britain or to fly on British Airlines. I do watch the BBC in America, the Prime Minister's questions in  House of Commons on C-Span. I check out the news on the ITN news channel via the Internet. I followed the recent British election. Yes, I rooted for Gordon Brown. When he went down, I said: There goes England.

Greedy Mrs. Piggy

A bit of royal entertainment this weekend, Brit-Chicago style. A royal scandal and a duchess who is a bag lady, a shake down artist, a dupe, a buffoon -- tricked like an overreaching Chicago ward heeler, by a hidden camera and by a reporter posing as a business man! LOL duchess!

Well, some people don't recognize the value of a good thing when they have it. And don't recognize their own value when they've lost it. Britain's Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson was caught on tape soliciting and accepting a bribe. Worse, if you believe her, she was promising to sell something that she couldn't deliver -- her ex-husband, (divorced in 1996),  the Duke of York,  Prince Andrew, a special trade envoy for his country. Of course she said that she was only peddling access to him. Any businessman only had to pay  500,000 British pounds, ($718,500) ! See the sting video of her bartering, then accepting a $40,000 down payment in cash. 

Since being exposed to the whole wide world, as a little crook, she has apologized for her so-called lapse of judgment. A "lapse?" That's cute. If she had a "lapse," that would mean, she only temporarily lost her head and did something stupid.  Her excuse for this "lapse," though she pretended not to be making excuses, was that her financial situation is "under stress."

Well, she has wasted / spent millions on high living, jet setting. Lucky for her and for the public's better amusement, the Tower of London is now, and has long been, just a museum, and not that prison were foolish aristocrats really lost their heads.

A joke? Who's laughing?

She started a joke on Facebook and who is laughing?

People who think it would be cool to mock other people's religion, because they can mock their own, or they can mock anything, and who believe it is important to do so, that it is one of the most important things to do, are people who have their priorities all screwed up.  A Seattle cartoonist satirically joked that, today Thursday, should be dubbed "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" on Facebook, suggesting that it might be a fun thing to do. The cartoonist has changed the joke, and now wants everybody to make today the "Everybody Draw Al Gore Day."  She must think that would be harmless.

 71,000 members as of 11 p.m. PDT, last night, Wednesday, were ready  to draw and post their pictures, and  more than 37,000 members of Facebook, including the cartoonist, who started the joke, have joined the Facebook group Against "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day - May 20."

The cartoonist on her web site is distancing herself from the joke, is " apologizing to Muslims and saying she meant her cartoon as a one-off statement on free speech and censorship and had no idea how far her attempt at satire would go. "The vitriol this 'day' has brought out, of people who only want to draw obscene images, is offensive to Muslims who did nothing to endanger our right to expression in the first place," she writes.

Well there is no telling what thoughts pass through the minds of "artists," and no telling where those thoughts might lead.

I am for self-censorship, not government censorship. Governments will do what government do. Pakistan has blocked Facebook, for a month, as fallout from a cartoonist's joke. The government has ordered Internet service providers in that country to bar access completely to the site.

Is Bristol Palin Really Worth $15-20,000 an Hour?

While most of America is still left wondering about the new Miss America’s response about birth control being a “controlled substance”, one unwed young mom is raking in the big bucks in speaking fees primarily because she is probably the most famous teen mom in the US. Bristol Palin won’t be making quite as much cash as her mom, but will be taking in somewhere between 15-20,000 for each speaking engagement.

What is up with that? Bristol got into the national spotlight for being a pregnant teenager who was pretending to be engaged to a guy she and her family are now suing for custodial rights for their son. Are she and her abstinence-only education message what teenagers really need to hear about?

Bristol Palin’s message says nothing about birth control. I believe that her basic spiel is: I had sex, got pregnant, but it’s ok because my mom is rich and famous. Don’t have sex. That makes her about as good of a role model as everyone’s favorite heiress: Paris Hilton.

I don’t think so. Do you know what is not fail-safe but works about a gazillion times better than abstinence-only education? Birth Control. Not just sex education which includes information about birth control, but easy access to birth control for teenagers, even in small towns like Wasilla.

I know of two pregnant teenagers at the moment. Both were in relationships and both are nice girls. One is from a small town where everybody knows everybody’s business. At the age of 15, which is when this particular girl got pregnant, it’s sometimes embarrassing for teenaged girls to buy tampons, so it’s probably not all that easy for them to brave their local doctor’s office and pharmacy to get birth control.

I don’t know the specifics of the other girl’s story, but I am guessing that her boyfriend pressured her into having sex without birth control.

Having idiots like Bristol Palin advise them to do as I say but not as I do is ridiculous. Just the fact that Bristol is now able to get rich off her pregnancy gives the impression that teenage pregnancy is somehow glamorous, if not lucrative, when the opposite is the case. Personally, I would rather hear from a real-life teen-aged mom about the difficulties of going to school while trying to support a child than Bristol Palin, her mother, or anyone associated with the entire clan.



Dead Apple Touring?

A dead apple tour? Oh my, what is a dead apple tour?  Sounds like sight-seeing  something rotten in the Big Apple? Well, doesn't it?  Yeah, well.  Shouldn't write that. Dead Apple Tours,  according to the  New York Post,  is a tour company that "offers tourists a unique ride around town in a hearse to sites where famous people have died."

Why the hearse? Marketing. Some people will find a way to sell anything. Others will be entertained by anything? What about a tour of dropping flies? House flies? Yes,  how about going on a tour of where house flies have fallen? Does that sound interesting,. tourists? What did would P. T. Barnum say about that idea? What would he say about touring, in a hearse, sites where people died ?

Watch the video. It features dudes dressed like undertakers or Mafia hitmen -- maybe no difference. These dudes look like they are ready to take a hit on the tourist's wallet. In the video, the man says the charge is $45. Is that to get into the hearse? How much do they charge to get out of the hearse?

Robot Presides Over Wedding

Item -- AssociatedPress  —  May 16, 2010  — "A humanoid robot conducted a wedding ceremony in Tokyo on Sunday - a world first, according to the manufacturer of the "I-Fairy," a four-foot (1.2 metre) tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails." See the video.

Well, people can get married anyway they want. They can trained a parrot to lead them through their vows. They can train a dog to wag his tail in a sort of sign language. They can stand together and tap dance out their vows. Freedom is what it is. Everybody is free to be themselves or whatever. A person is free to be peculiar.  

So, a couple in Japan chose a robot  to conduct their wedding? No joke? It must have been a civil wedding? Maybe  this is the future, who knows? The clergy of tomorrow and / or the civics officals could all be robots, followers of the school of the robotics, that could be founded on the example of the robot from the 1951 version of "The Day The Earth Stood Still." -- and tomorrow there could be a world order with robots in charge. And we will have to do what robots say or ZOOM, BOOM, the loomy-loon. Loomy-loon?  Sounds like "loony room?"  A robot presiding over a wedding, seriously,  sounds like something from a loony room, in my opinion.

That Rascal Polanski

A British actress, Charlotte Lewis, is claiming that rascal Roman Polanski sexually abused her. In her words  “in the worst possible way,” when she was 16-years-old. She says she is coming forward with this claim because Polanski has to be held accountable  See the video.

We are living in an era of outrage, when one outrageous thing happens after another. The child sex scandal and the cover-up by officials of the Catholic church is just one example. This and other things, including the world financial meltdown and the crisis that followed, and the bail-out of the ones who caused the crisis, and the very real notion that the rich are forever walking on the backs of the middle class -- these things have cooked Mr. Polanski's goose.  Folks are just sick and tired of rich and protected people getting away with stuff. But  Ms. Lewis's claims may cause some people to show some sympathy  for Polanski.

Ms. Lewis at sixteen, in Paris, living in the apartment of a man, who is a fugitive from American justice, who has pled guilty to the crime of carnal knowledge with a 13 year old, whom he got drunk and drugged --Four years later, Ms. Lewis in his apartment, in Paris, where sixteen is a legal age for sexual consent -- Ms. Lewis who went on to appear in his film -- Ms. Lewis? Where were her parents or guardians? Mr. Polanski case was world news. And then,  so many years later, Ms. Lewis pops on the scene with Gloria Allred? What's the motivation? Justice or money?

Polanski  is a jerk. That 13 year old probably wasn't the only child he raped, and he needs to be brought to justice. Ms. Lewis  is a distraction.

Pages