Category: Society

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Toilet Training

If you’re one of those offensive people who talk on the cell phone in bathrooms—particularly public loos—your behavior stinks more than your poop. There may not be more appropriate place to assert that you’re on my shit list, bud. Bathroom phone calling is bad etiquette by just about any measure.

I cringe when walking by a public toilet stall and hearing someone talking into their cell phone. I’ve heard men taking what clearly are business calls. Oh, please! I’d fire your ass, for sitting it on the toilet seat and talking to me (your client or boss). Could toilet talking be the real reason for noise-cancelling cell phones or Bluetooth earpieces? Surely someone will hear you doing your toilet business—or that of the person in the next stall—while you’re taking the call.

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Was MSNBC right to Suspend Keith Olbermann?

On Friday, Keith Olbermann essentially got the boot from MSNBC for making three undisclosed political contributions—or that’s how I interpret suspended without pay. The donations violated MSNBC policies designed to prevent any apparent (or even actual) conflict of interest. For someone who does cover politics (Hey, wasn’t that Keith headlining election-night coverage?), it’s not unreasonable that there be no apparent bias.

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Should Barack Obama Bail Out Americans?

My answer is yes. Artificially created debt is cholesterol clogging the arteries of consumer spending. The economy that created the debt is gone. Only by surgically removing debt can Americans freely spend, thus pumping fresh blood to the heart of the U.S. economy. But, hey, I’m no economist, although in 2005 I rightly predicted the housing bubble’s collapse and much of the aftermath. Surely such insight is worth something.

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‘The Social Network’ ignores the Network

On Friday, I wrote a review of “The Social Network“. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig did one better for The New Republic: “Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg—‘The Social Network’ is wonderful entertainment, but its message is actually kind of evil“. Lawrence is insightful as always, although he expects too much of the film’s writer and director. Nevertheless, he makes spot-on observations about what Facebook represents for future entrepreneurs like co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The film is seemingly a morality tale about moral ambiguity. What’s lost is Zuckerberg’s ingenuity and the network that allowed it to flourish.

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Mama Knows Where to Get the Goods

What a simply smart idea—set up outside the grocery store and collect food donations for the needy. September 5, 2010, I spotted Mama’s Pantry in front of Ralph’s supermarket in San Diego, Calif.’s Hillcrest neighborhood. on. The concept of fundraising food shoppers is so mind-boggling sensible, it’s stunning more charities don’t go to the food source—the local market.