Brave New Films has put up an interactive website where you can log on and spend the 3 Trillion dollars that the war in Iraq is estimated to cost….. Want to buy free health care for all?? Do it. Build schools or buy a million pounds of caviar.

Shop Now.

Interesting article from the Consumerist:

7. iPods have two fixes. Resetting and Restoring.
If both of those features do not work, your iPod is trash. Unless it’s under warranty or you purchased AppleCare, then they will give you two options. First is to trade in your iPod for 10% off any model (except shuffle), or they will give you out of warranty replacement, Which usually means that you will pay around $100-$250 depending on the model you purchased.

6. We have 4 things that we will try to sell you when you purchase a computer.
AppleCare, of course, is your extended 3 year warranty, we are told to sell it as a service plan, but it does not do ANYTHING extra, but extend your warranty, and does not cover anything extra. .Mac is a ripoff unless you use the web site hosting. ProCare has to be the biggest ripoff. All this does is upgrade your AppleCare for one year. It has a little perk for business uses, but otherwise useless. Lastly, One-to-One training, which is the best deal in the store.

More confessions after the jump.

Full article here.

So yesterday and today I’ve been awoken by a small bird pecking non-stop at the side of my house above my bedroom window. The casing is rotted away and I think he’s wanting to make a nest (and annoy me to the point of madness). It looks like a finch rather than a woodpecker, but I googled how to get rid of woodpeckers and didn’t really find any quick fixes. So I had this idea…. I don’t like a lot of paprika, so I dumped a ton of paprika into the hole in the hopes that the woodpecker doesn’t like it either. It works it cartoons, right?? Worst case scenario is that he loves paprika and believes that the constant pecking somehow produced this delicious spicy treat and he invites his friends back. That would suck, but I was out of ideas at 7a.m. this morning.

Timothy Briner is an artist and fellow blogger whose project I’ve stumbled upon recently. He’s living and photographing six different towns around the country which are all named Boonville. The locations are:

Boonville, Missouri
Boonville, North Carolina
Boonville, New York
Boonville, Indiana
Boonville, California

I’ve been slowly picking through the posts and are particularly interested in Boonville, NY which is only about 40 miles from Utica. You can view the photoblog here.

With the on and off nature that I’ve been blogging I’ve never been able to devote enough time to trying to get local area issues out on the web. But I’ve been surprised at how many local bloggers there are out there who are doing their best to shine some light on local government and have an open and honest discussion about the politics and development (or lack thereof) of our area. The links will be in the sidebar from here on out and I’ll try to take the best stuff and aggregate it here.

the New Hartford NY Online blog is a tremendous resource for things happening throughout the town and they’ve even been putting up mp3s of the town’s board meetings. Kudos to whomever is in charge for helping to shine some light on the decision making process there.

Other CNY Blogs:
CNY Snakepit
CNY EcoBlog
Utica From the Cheap Seats

I’m going to start tearing through more and hope to be able to contribute to this local online community.

I’ve been a major fan of TED.com for many months now and typically tear through a couple of talks each day. For those of who are asking what the hell TED is, let me break it down for you.

TED is a conference that happens every year where 1000 of the brightest minds in Technology, Entertainment, and Design gather to share ideas, inspiration, dreams for the future. Speakers at the conference get 18 minutes each to give their ‘big idea’ to the group and most of these talks have been nothing short of incredible. It makes me wonder why these ideas which are so revolutionary and in most cases attainable, have not been put into action on a global scale. We’re talking about innovations in environmental technology, education, medical research, and science that fundamentally change the world we live in.

At any rate, here is the first of what hopefully will be a series of talks I’ll embed. I found this one quite by accident but was inspired by the way the speaker and his group were able to create a successful business, that also has helped hundred of inner city students get the tutoring help that they need.

I’ve been reading / viewing a lot of the reactions to the GOP YouTube debate over the past couple days and I think there is one overriding concensus that both sides can agree on….it sucked.

The biggest complaints are centered around both the questions asked and the actual format,and quite frankly in many instances I agree with many of GOP conterparts. In a 90 minute debate, why the hell would you waste our time by asking questions like “Yankess or Red Sox” or “How many guns do you own?”.

Now CNN, I understand you’re trying to be hip and with it, while providing us with a bit of entertainment during these debates, but STOP. We are
smarter than you give us credit for and believe it or not we genuinely want to hear about ISSUES and SPECIFIC POSITIONS from these candidates. We don’t give a damn what the candidates’ favorite TV shows are. While I’m talking about the selection of questions, where were the questions about Health Care? There wasn’t a single one. Zero. The largest issue in this country (save the Iraq War) wasn’t even mentioned. I feel like this is the one issue that affects everyone and quite honestly, I want to hear what the plans of the GOP candidates are. Does anyone have a plan to cover everyone?? If not, you better give me a damn good reason why you think the market should dictate my health coverage.

Finally though, I have to take issue with somethings that has been setting the right wing blogs ablaze and that is the fact that some of the Youtube users whose questions were used were supporters of Democrats. I say it doesn’t matter and while I hate to defend CNN, its also not their job to vet the political leanings of the questioners, but simply to pick the quetsions (which they still botched). These people (both Reps and Dems) are running for the presidency of the whole country and I think both parties SHOULD have to take questions from anyone who submits them, particularly in this format of debate.

Wingnut Michelle Malkin (who I won’t even do the service of linking to) is now on a mission to dig up any dirt or backgrounds of the questioners to see if they are working for any campaign. This is disgraceful. If you don’t like the way the questions were chosen, attack CNN. Don’t blame the people who are asking questions on legitimate issues because of their political preferences. If these candidates can’t take questions from Americans of ALL beliefs, then they are not fit to lead this country. Period.

Mike Huckabee is the only Chuck Norris approved Candidate in ‘08. I don’t agree w/ Mike on most things, but give him props for going out on a limb with this ad.

Came across this slideshow via Boston.com detailing some of the projects that could be developed if we had the same $611 Billion commitment to building up our own country instead of spending it on destruction and war. What would $611 Billion buy?

- 40 Big Digs
- 18 months of free gas for everyone in the US
- the conversion of ALL US cars to run on ethanol….9 times over.

More suggestions after the jump.

Finally. If only symbolic, at least Dennis has the guts to force a vote.