Tattoovertising

TatAd will pay consumers to wear a tattoo and become walking billboard for products. The company matches people based on where they live and their lifestyle with marketers who have expressed an interest in the medium. Those selected will then be tattooed with the logo of the advertiser. The company reports 800 sign ups.

One more example of why this is such a great time to be alive. If you are even a little interested in advertising, you should check out AdRants.com

William Gibson quoting Martin Luther King

“I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today …to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. Don’t let anyone make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force, to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America ‘You are too arrogant! If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power! And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I am God.'”

— Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967 (one year before his assassination)

William Gibson on Creationism

“Re Creationism, I must point out an unfortunate subtext that’s no longer quite so obvious. Having grown up in the previous iteration of the rural American south, I know that what *really* smarted about Darwin, down there, was the logical implication that blacks and whites are descended from a common ancestor. Butt-ugly, but there it is. That was the first objection to evolutionary theory that I ever heard, and it was a very common one, in fact the most common. That it was counter to Genesis seemed merely convenient, in the face of an anthropoid grand-uncle in the woodpile.”

Your money or your life

My friend Sunny insists this is a true story: A man committed a series of armed robberies in Liberty (Missouri) this weekend. However one of his attempts was aborted. He went into a CiCi’s Pizza and crowded in front of a bunch of kids to tell the guy behind the counter that it was a robbery and to turn over all the money or he would be killed. The counter guy said that surely the robber wouldn’t do that in front of a bunch of kids. The would-be-robber restated that he was serious, it was a robbery and that he would kill the counter guy unless he turned over all the money. The counter guy then said, “Dude, I’m thiry-one years old and working in a pizza joint. My life can’t get any worse, so do what you have to do.” The robber left emty handed.

The franchise is the content

“…the Internet has become our entire business environment, not just another medium for distribution … the franchise is not the newspaper, the broadcast station, or even the website. The franchise is the content itself. … Get ready for everything to be Googled, deep-linked, or Tivo-ized.”

— Tom Curley, President and CEO, The Associated Press, in keynote address (full text) to Online News Association Conference, Nov. 12, 2004

Pump me up

From USAToday story: Starting at age 50, people begin to lose 12% of their muscle strength and 6% of their muscle mass every decade. But weight training can reverse these effects in a big way. Two to three months of weight training three times a week can increase muscle strength and mass by one-third, making up for three decades of loss of muscle strength and muscle mass.

Microsoft’s new search engine

I took Microsoft’s new search engine for a spin tonight and can’t say I was impressed. Looked a lot like Google but it’s hard to knock them for that. And it probably does some things that Google doesn’t but I didn’t take the time to try find out what they might be. I did an image search for “Steve Mays” and came up with two photos that truly capture the real me. But I’m a Google Boy to the very end.

Everything.

I don’t know Halley Suitt but I’ve been reading her blog for a few years and, well, I feel like I know her. Last week she wrote about a cancer scare. Today she reported that it was just that, a scare. And added: “Gives you a whole new appreciation for…everything.”

This small, common incident seems so…out of balance. On the front end is this awful, hellish possibility. At the other end is a nice, normal mammogram. Everything’s okay. Normal life resumes. Does the good news really balance the bad? I hope so, for Halley.

The wisdom of Hermann Goring

Regular readers know I’m a big fan of George Carlin (and letting other people doing my thinking) so I would have bought his new book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, even if Wal-Mart hadn’t banned it. And I couldn’t get past the acknowledgments without finding something worth writing down:

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” –Hermann Goring at the Nuremberg Trials

I think I’m gonna need a fresh highlighter.