Category: Living

Living by Joe Wilcox
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What's This Thing with Llamas?

Saturday Night Live Season 39 Episode 13 includes a llama in the opening monologue. Once again, like four years ago with post “Tweet If You See a Tooting Llama“, I wonder about the apparent fascination New Yorkers have with the creatures. So I did a new web search. July 3, 2013, New York Times story “The Llama is In” explains much.

Reporter Jennifer Kingson says the beasts have an “irresistible quality” and that 115,000 are registered globally. According to the International Llama Registry, there are 634 owners in New York—and that’s not many. California, Oregon, and Texas have the most, with 2,496, 2,084, and 2,036, respectively.

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Living by Joe Wilcox
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Better (RED) Than Dead

Super Bowl XLVIII is a real snoozer, with Seattle’s huge lead, and the adverts aren’t much more interesting. Among the few catching my attention: U2 song “Invisible” free on iTunes, with Bank of America donating a buck to (Product) RED. The promotion/donation ends 11:59 p.m. EST February 3.

On Sept. 29, 2006, I posted a quick analysis about (RED), which was then freshly started, to my JupiterResearch blog. The site is long gone, but I have the posts archived. What follows is the original text, complete with the original links, including to MySpace. Facebook was just a wisp seven-and-a-half-years ago. What that brief introduction…

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Critters by Joe Wilcox
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All This Googlism disturbs Me

Today, Ian Betteridge posts: “One thing that is impossible not to notice on Google+: There’s a very distinct skew towards big Google fans in commenting. It doesn’t matter which tech site’s page you look at, the (in my view, tedious) ‘fanboy’ mentality is hotter here than on any other social network”.

I commented on his post but want to draw more attention to Ian’s observation, to which I concur. I am rethinking my social service presence because of pervasive Googlism. While now immersed in the Google lifestyle, I am not a Google fanboy. But the leanings here are quite strong now, and tipping more all the time. Also, there is increasingly less tolerance for non-Google tech posts and more criticism of those regarding competitors like Apple.

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Responsibility by Joe Wilcox
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It's Time to Fire Congress

Constitutionally, the American people have few options to immediately penalize their representatives in Congress who forced Federal shutdown and threaten the debt ceiling. Someone would want to. According to Gallup, Congress’ disapproval rating is 85 percent. An AP-GfK poll shows even greater dissatisfaction.

Public Policy Polling says that “Hemorrhoids, toenail fungus, dog poop, and cockroaches all might be a little bit gross, but they’re all more popular than Congress”. Sadly, however, Brett Logiurato, writing for Business Insider, is right. The low approval rating doesn’t matter. States elect individuals, whose ratings often are much higher, not the body electorate.

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