A little bit ago I reminded you all about the commercial for Xenical, the prescription form of Alli, the weight-loss pill that apparently does its work by giving you really bad diarrhea.

I was thinking how funny it would be to make a shirt that read, simply, “…and an inability to control them.”

Then I thought maybe it should be “…an urgent need to have them and an inability to control them.”

And then thought that the second phrase really applies to some parents out there, and I ain’t talking about their digestive systems. :)

 Every now and then, one of the Google ads on this site catches my eye. I used to be afraid to click on it myself for fear of violating the terms of service, until I was told that because I use the same computer/IP address to log into the AdSense service, Google knows it’s me and won’t charge the advertiser.

This makes sense when you think about it. The ads are topical, so they’ll tend to match whatever I’m writing about, i.e., whatever I’m interested in. Site owners will often want to click the ads that appear.

Anyway.

One ad has been around a lot lately: “This is Scary Accurate,” it reads, “Avoid This Site if You’re Frightened Easily.”

Finally, I was intrigued enough to click.

A picture of a cliche Gypsy looking into a crystal ball appears, and you’re prompted to enter your wish into the box. So I do.

Then it asks for my sign. I selected “Leo.”

And then the kicker:

“Please tell me your cell number so I can text you your future.”

Uh-huh.

Pray tell, what happens if you click “Next”? Why, let’s read the fine print at the bottom, which is in 10-pixel type (equivalent to about 8 point type on a typical monitor).

Seems you’ll get a code sent to your cell phone. If you use it:

Sprint, Nextel, and Boost customers will be billed for $5.99 per week, Cellular One customers will be billed $9.99 per month, AT&T and Verizon Wirless customers will be billed $19.99 per month on code 44674 and will appear on your wireless bill.

Ouch. (To be fair, that 10-pixel type also includes unsubscribe instructions.)

Bottom line: Now I know why I should “Avoid This Site if You’re Frightened Easily.” $20+ per month horoscopes? [shiver]

My father has a bunch of old whiskies and such in his house that he doesn’t want. I grabbed a couple including this bottle by mistake.

Anyone know if this is any good? What kind of drink is it — more like a whiskey or sweeter? (He had a lot of brandy.)

It’s something like 25 years old, too. His 25-year-old Baileys had to be tossed (eew), but the other stuff seemed good.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

You can’t relish always being connected (Blogs! Facebook! Twitter! iPhone!) and then be surprised when too many people are always on their cell phones.

You can’t wallow in a society that celebrates and encourages violence in its entertainment (but where the barest flash of a breast on TV is cause for national angst), then be surprised that there’s a lot of real violence as well.

You can’t demand big, fast returns from your stocks and 401(k) plans, then complain about big companies screwing the little guy to raise their stock price.

If you dress your kids like this…

…you really can’t act surprised that child predators feel encouraged.

And so on.

I’m working on some changes to this blog — specifically, to try to give it a more solid focus. What I like to do most of all is un-spin things. Sometimes thinking about a statement or a conclusion reveals some incredible lack of logic.

Today it comes courtesy of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an organization I have a ton of respect for. This time, though, it’s spun some data to the point of meaninglessness.

(Ooh, the Windows Live Writer spell checker was OK with “meaninglessness.” Anyway.)

The latest Pew survey is about cyberbullying. As the AP story reports:

Nearly a third of online teens say they have been harassed on the Internet, with girls and participants of social-networking sites more likely to be targets, a study finds.

Yikes, you might think — this bullying thing is getting to be a problem. Maybe it isn’t the latest reporters-trying-to-make-up-news thing.

Alas, then you read further.

[T]he most common forms of cyberbullying are publicly disclosing someone else’s private e-mail or messages, sending threatening or aggressive messages and spreading rumors online.
Pew also counts as cyberbullying the posting of an embarrassing picture of someone else without permission.

Gods, with that broad a description it’s no wonder “Thirty-two percent of online teens said they have experienced at least one of those acts.”

Combine that broad description with a poorly defined word like “aggressive,” and you have a study that basically says “A third of kids have received a mean message from someone.”

That’s bullying? When you broaden a definition so far it becomes meaningless — witness the word “hero,” which now means “Someone who we want to show our appreciation to.”

So now, per Pew, any kid who sends another kid a message that’s anything other than friendly and polite is a “cyberbully.”

Y’know, sometimes kids are mean. It sucks, but it’s life. And sometimes kids send messages that aren’t all sweetness and light. that’s the real world.

If you prevent kids from ever seeing anything but rose petals, when they get out of school they’re going to be in for a rude awakening.

Alas, the ride is over. But it was a lot of fun. Changes in the USA Today newsroom mean freelancers like me say their tearful farewells.

My final column is kind of a quick overview of what’s changed — or, rather, not changed — since I started writing. One snippet, regarding the kooky creationist museum in Kentucky:

And no matter how many times those dimwits say “teach the controversy,” the fact remains: There is no controversy. On the one side are a few hundred creationists in science fields; on the other are tens of thousands of scientists in every field imaginable backed by an ever-growing mountain of evidence.

There’s an ever-growing mountain of something at Answers in Genesis, but it’s not evidence.

Enjoy.

Check it out at Roanoke.com.

The iPhone has a beautiful, easy to use interface, but the phone’s capabilities lag those of many other devices on the market. Consumers willing to live with those limitations (not to mention the high price tag) should love using the iPhone, but those who have come to expect more from a pocket device — including a fast connection to the Internet — are likely to be disappointed.

I think this image captured from BigChampagne’s BCDash Web site says a lot. It’s a list of the top movies being shared via Bittorrent.

You’ll notice that at the top of the list is the new Fantastic Four movie, still in theaters. Ditto for numbers 2 and 3. And 4. And 5. But people are already trading them online. Tells you something, doesn’t it?

BigChampagne is effectively the Nielsen of digital music — the big gun that tracks what’s being listened to (or watched). What’s particularly cool about it is that it doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal sharing; it’s all about what people are doing.

As Kwatinetz from the band The Firm put it in a Rolling Stone article, “How is it that the people that make the product of music are going bankrupt, while the use of the product is skyrocketing? The model is wrong.”

It’s a “zorse.” And no, it’s apparently not Photoshopped. Via the Sun.

Seriously. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

An air-traffic controller in Oberlin [near Cleveland] was reprimanded because his aquamarine pants were “not gender appropriate.”

[snip]

A few male controllers at another facility protested the dress code crackdown by coming to work in dresses. Another wore an all-purple outfit - save for white pants - with purple snakeskin shoes.

[snip]

Another Oberlin controller was disciplined because he wore an orange shirt that a supervisor said “looked like a highway traffic cone.”

Let’s consider this, folks. These people are in charge of keeping the skies safe. They work in hidden, dark rooms where no one from the public can see them. They have incredibly stressful jobs.

And the FAA gives a bleep about what color pants they wear? These guys could come to work naked but for a pair of Speedos on their heads and I wouldn’t care, as long as they’re comfortable. Talk about worrying about the wrong things. Sheesh.

Thanks to my wife the aviation reporter journalist for pointing this out to me. Off to submit to Fark…

1. There is a vast, worldwide conspiracy to destroy Apple. It includes journalists, Microsoft, and the business community in general.

2. Any attack on Apple is, in addition, a personal attack on you.  Retaliation for these attacks must be swift, personal, and based on the concept that ‘the best defense is a good offense.’ 

3. Anything not entirely favorable said about the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, or any Apple product is an attack on Apple and a personal attack on all Macintosh users. (See #2.)

4. Anything positive said about a competitor to the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, or any Apple product is an attack on Apple and a personal attack on all Macintosh users; it must be met with an immediate counterattack that stresses the quality of the Mac compared to the PC regardless of what the original products were. (See #2 and #11.)

5. Leaving Apple or an Apple product out of any discussion to which it can be related (e.g., the graphical user interface, MP3 players) is an attack on Apple and a personal attack on all Macintosh users, no matter what the topic of the discussion. (See #2.)

6. Aside from the staff at Mac-related publications, e.g., MacWorld, the only journalists who know anything about computers are Walt Mossberg and David Pogue. (Note: “Knowing something about computers” is synonymous with loving and praising the Mac.)

7. Whenever in a discussion with the other kind of journalist, it is important to remind him/her that he/she can’t hold a candle to them.

8. The superiority of the iPod is clearly demonstrated by its popularity. The inferiority of Windows is clearly demonstrated by its popularity.

9. No one could possibly use Windows by choice; they must do so because they don’t know any better. It’s important to educate them about the Mac as frequently and as loudly as possible.

10. It’s important to bring up viruses, Trojans, and spyware whenever discussing Windows or the Mac. Ignoring the existence of anti-virus and anti-spyware software for the PC (and the fact that it updates itself automatically), is permissible.

11. Anything good about Windows was done by Apple first. If someone likes a particular Windows program or feature, it’s a good idea remind them of Apple’s precedence — and to point out how foolish they are for liking the Windows version. This does not apply to the two-button mouse.

12. Every discussion of any Apple product must always be brought back to how much better the Mac is than a Windows PC, regardless of the original subject.

From 6/27, via the Comics Curmudgeon and the Houston Chronicle.

I was surprised to find that the iPhone is a lot more limited than I expected. And I’m not talking about lack of wireless broadband support, either.

It turns out that, despite Apple’s claim that “This is not a watered down version of the Internet” on the iPhone, it is a watered-down version. I don’t even need to get overly technical.

The iPhone doesn’t support Flash. Its support for JavaScript is limited to five seconds. It doesn’t handle frames well.

Bottom line: A lot of Web sites won’t display properly, or even well, on the iPhone.

Apple gave its developers a list of the iPhone’s Web limitations. Some make perfect sense — a 10 MB limit on Web pages. But others seem to indicate a watered down Web.

Per Pocket Picks:

A few iPhone size limitations / restrictions are noted in developing for the iPhone:
- 10MB max html size for web page
- Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time
- Javascript allocations limited to 10MB
- 8 documents maximum loaded on the iPhone due to page view limitations
- Quicktime used for audio and video

The notes confirm that there is no Flash and no Java support, and Apple recommends the following design considerations:
- separate html and css
- use well structured and valid html
- size images appropriately dont rely on browser scaling
- tile small images in backgrounds, dont use large backgroung images
- iPhone supports both EDGE and WiFi. EDGE pipe is smaller than WIFI pipe so think about bandwidth when developing.
- XHTML mobile documents supported
- stylesheet device width:480px
- apply different css for the iPhone. For example displaying a one column page for iphone vs a 3 column page on a desktop.
- there are no scroll bars or resize knobs. the iphone will automatically expand the content
- Avoid framesets, scrollable frames are automatically expanded to fit the content
- iPhone User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3
- Video: H.264 baseline profile level 3.0 up to 640 x 480

This isn’t to take away from the iPhone’s glorious interface. But it’s still a first-rate interface on a second-rate smartphone.

Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 86.

Story

Iwo Jima Story

Obit

Guestbook

Seriously. If nonsense like the never-could-work liquid-bomb plot got you nervous, you probably don’t want to read “Butterflies and Beverages,” the winner of Bruce Schneier’s “movie-plot threat contest.”

Your goal: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component. The component should be so critical to the plot that the TSA will have no choice but to ban the item once the plot is uncovered. I want to see a plot horrific and ridiculous, but just plausible enough to take seriously.

Make the TSA ban wristwatches. Or laptop computers. Or polyester. Or zippers over three inches long. You get the idea.

The winner, by Ron Phillips, is pretty darned impressive… especially after you do a quick Froogle search to see how cheap and easy it would be to do.

Happy flying.

“So,” sez my wife, “there are going to be a lot of people oozing around here.”

“Huh?”

Seems she saw an ad from CVS or Walgreens advertising Alii, a weight-loss drug recently approved by the FDA for over the counter sales.

The full strength Alli is known as Xenical. The most memorably thing about Xenical were its commercials — not the commercials per se, but the disclaimer they contained.

It included this unforgettable warning:

“Patients may experience gas with oily discharge, increased bowel movements, an urgent need to have them and an inability to control them.”

GlaxoSmithKline even has a book for Alli users, “Are You Losing It?” One piece of advice the book gives — seriously — is that you wear dark-colored clothing when you first start taking the stuff.

Wow.

The Junkfood Science blog gives some more details.

According to Dr. Susan Norris, M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite unimpressive weight losses, “gastrointestinal adverse effects (explosive diarrhea, fecal incontinence, abdominal cramping, anal leakage and oily discharge) were common.”

And Alli doesn’t even do that much for you:

In clinical trials, those taking Alli-strength Orlistat along with dieting and exercise for a full year, lost an average of under 3 pounds more than those who were dieting and exercise alone.

Not surprising, since Alli users are required (by common sense if nothing else) to have a low-fat diet.

Here’s a screenshot from a GlaxoSmithKline video on Alli:

So, any questions?

Researching a story about mosquito-control technology, I talked with an ex-Navy entomologist who is now technical advisor for the American Mosquito Control Association.

Among many fun facts came one worth sharing: Mosquitoes, like vampires, won’t cross running water.

That is all.

Taken by my friend Julie at a local bookstore the Barnes and Noble in State College, Pa.:

So here goes the hand wringing over Bill Dedman’s MSNBC story on “Journalists who wrote political checks.” Right-wing extremists are practically wetting their collective pants because the vast majority of those contributions went to Democrats and left-leaning organizations.

“See! We told you! The mainstream media is biased! You must trust blogs for your news because they’re biased too!” Not great logic, but it makes for good screaming.

But wait. Let’s deconstruct Dedman’s list to see what it really means.

It lists 144 “journalists” who “made campaign contributions from 2004 through the first quarter of 2007.” It turns out, however that such a statement is a bit misleading. Not everyone on the list is a journalist, although they work for journalism companies. And some of those who are journalists weren’t at the time they made their contributions.

Further, some of their beats have nothing to do with politics; there’s no conflict of interest.

Let’s get more specific.

Of the 144, more than 40 drop off the list immediately; they aren’t journalists except in a very broad sense. They’re copy editors, graphic designers, anchors and hosts, critics, etc. (For example, does it mean anything that the Boston Globe’s sports statistician gave to a Democrat?)

Then you can eliminate a bunch who cover beats that wouldn’t be affected by their politics — Tad Friend, Hollywood reporter for the New Yorker, for example, or Charles Perry, food writer for the Los Angeles Times.

That brings the list down to about 82 people. A handful of them might be expected to donate to certain campaigns. Is anyone surprised that someone from Fox News gave money to a Republican, or someone from Air America or Rolling Stone gave to a Democrat?

Speaking of Rolling Stone, of the remaining journalists on the list work for organizations that, honestly, no one is turning to for hard news. You’ll find interesting and insightful features in the New Yorker, certainly, but let’s be real — it’s not ABC or CNN.

We’ve knocked more than 100 people off the list already. The remaining 40 or so include reporters, writers, and editors, but the list doesn’t give their beats. So there’s no way to know whether Terry Judd, reporter for the Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle or Stephen Marks, reporter for New Delhi Television have anything to say about political coverage.

The Society of Professional Journalists has, according to its Web site, almost 10,000 members. So what Dedman and MSNBC discovered is that, of the thousands of journalists in the country whose work might be influenced by their political views, at least 40 of them have donated to a politician or political group.

This is big news?

But there’s a bigger issue. The complaint is, for some reason, about the fact that these people expressed what could reasonably be considered a political bias — a bias that, it’s argued, might well be affecting their reporting.

The answer, of course, is to only trust journalists who have no bias whatsoever. Good luck with that.

What the people doing the hand-wringing over Dedman’s story are saying is that it’s all right to have a bias, but you’re compromised if people know about it.

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t people be more concerned about hidden bias? Is asking journalists to hide their political leanings a good thing? Do you trust someone more if you don’t know his leanings?

The foolishness of the idea is clear in what Dedham wrote: “Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage marching for causes.”

Read that again: Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair…

Huh? Appearing to be something is part of being it? If I dress like a pilot often enough, I’ll be able to fly? Fake it till you make it?

Instead of carefully considered investigative journalism, it smacks more of using a magnifying glass to see a molehill as a mountain.

This is one of those lawsuits that has the potential to change the Web as we know it, yet I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. (Big claims, I know, but read on.)

A Web site called InfomercialScams.com lets people rate the products they see on informercials — something not all that odd; ratings sites are everywhere.

But InformercialScams.com is being sued by one of the companies that people have rated — rated rather poorly, in fact. The crux of the lawsuit is that because the results of a Google search on the manufacturer — GlobalTec — includes links to InfomercialScams.com, the Web site is infringing on the GlobalTec trademark.

This is scary stuff. It suggests that no one can write about any company or product with a trademarked name. Complain about a Best Buy experience too loud, and the company could sue you for trademark infringement.

You might think, as I did, that this will go nowhere fast. But I’ve learned that saying “never” is a bad idea. After all, it made it to court. Luckily, Public Citizen is defending the site, but still — worth keeping an eye on.