Recently in Dumb Things Category

Aaarrgh ... you'd think it'd make a lot of sense. Take the coolest guy ... put him in a cool place, surrounded by sexy stuff and excited challenges -- add a little life-threatening danger ... and before you know it, you've got a ratings hit.

But when the Fonz stood in California surrounded by beach, preparing to jump the shark ... it was the beginning of the end... an end so great that we all know it now as the term for turning the cool up so loud that everyone suddenly realizes you're just Henry Winkler on water skis.

I'm looking at Apple these days and frankly I'm tripping out a little.

We have the cool guy in the black turtleneck ... surrounded by iPhones, iPods, genius bars and petulantly computer literate kids selling his stuff -- and he goes and decides to go for broke.

He slaps the Macbook line on one foot, the Macbook Pro line on the other, grabs a rope behind Richie driving the Macbook Air speedboat and goes for broke to jump the dangerous economic disaster -- because he's the Fonz ... he can do it.

But you know what? Even if these new machines sell -- they're ugly as hell and basically just suck.

Apple's taken a beautiful set of monochromatically tuned computers and turned them all into a single set of black on silver garbage blocks of solid aluminum -- with the only seeming saving grace being that the MBP has dual video engines in it.

That's it.

As a constant buyer of Apple hardware -- I'm annoyed to the point of walkaway that they'd opt to radically veer from their successful lines and try this arrogant garbage.

The new lines are ugly. They are mandatorily glossy screen (goodbye, working under flourescent lights, the sun, near windows), and taken AWAY their signature statement -- so easy we only have one button.

Instead, they have "no button" ... oh wait ... yes there IS a button -- it's just been swept under the rug of a flat trackpad ... it's not even tap -- it's an actual clicking button without edges or physical features of any kind. Ooooh, that's impressive ... almost like making ALL the doors on a line of cars without handles. Sure is sexy, until you try to use it.

Pathetic.

Dear Apple -- please don't jump the shark -- we're all sorry ... we'll go back to buying more stuff -- please stop listening to whatever new division or division head has drawn you down this almost Microsoft-ian tone-deaf line of design.

The Supreme Court ruled today in this article: Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development - New York Times that the government can just ring your doorbell, take your property and tell you to leave because a corporation larger than you wants to use your land. Have a nice day.

So, you not only went out and bought an SUV to suck up the resources of the world -- now, because you're too lazy to actually drive it off-road, you can fake it with Sprayonmud Products.

Take a look at this article in Slashdot.

It basically points out that Texas is trying to put RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags on your car. Why is this not good? Because then the government can monitor you at any time for any reason. Why is that bad? Because the government can share that data with other people like insurance companies. So basically, if you make a mistake on the road, for example, and turn left against a red light when nobody else is in the intersection, the Texas government would know it immediately ... and share it with your insurer, who would then add it to their criteria for how much they charge you.

Many people ask things like, "well, if I'm good, what do I care if the government watches me?". Well, that presumes the infinite accuracy of the government, and their perfect capacity to get nothing wrong ever. However, that's not the case. We all know that they make mistakes, they're just people like the rest of us, dealing with monumental mountains of information, and sometimes a paperclip gets dropped and a page goes missing.

Based on that, there are safe-guards for things. Governments must have reasons to watch their citizens, working from the point that, in essence, the citizens are the real kings of the country. But if watching you gets to be a privilege at any time, there's the occasional error, or downright flaw that you do that could be abused or mistakenly turned against you.

In addition to this, the answer to the question of why should you care is because, even if this government is filled with 100% pure, God-fearing All-American, diverse, open-minded liberal-conservatives without bias or personal intent -- the next government might not be. If you give the good guys the big toys, the bad guys will have them in the future too, if they ever get there.

Just ask McCarthy.

In an unprecendented display of having way too much fear of organized religion, the folks in Florida are now Whacking the Easter Bunny. I think I remember someone somewhere saying something out loud like, "What's next? Down with the Easter Bunny?" Well, folks ... that time has arrived. I am very glad that God left me a little cynicism to protect myself from this sort of junk.

As much as I love Boing Boing (I disable their graphics), I'm less than happy with this: Boing Boing: Terri Schiavo status Firefox extension.