The Art of Good Threadiquette

In today's technologically-advanced world, more and more communication takes place over email. And why not? Typing a few words on a keyboard and hitting send is easier, cheaper, and faster than composing a letter on paper, stuffing it into an envelope, putting a stamp on it, and dropping it in the mailbox. And I'm not just talking about business-related exchanges between two people sitting at their desks in their respective offices - with the advent of smartphones, more and more people have access to email at all times. And when sending an email has the same basic structure as sending a text message, you can bet there will be some residual decline in the class and reputation of the medium.

Seeing as how easy it is to compose a message, type in a recipient's email address, and hit "send," it's easy to overlook some of the more old-fashioned polite aspects of letter-writing. Remember when we spent hours learning in which situations to use "Dear Sir or Madam" or "To Whom It May Concern"? Or how to correctly format your return address in the letterhead? In emails, the only formality left is a pre-fabricated signature, if that. Yet emails are certainly less clear and direct than a conversation on the telephone or in person. They occupy an awkward middle ground.

So what is the proper way to comport ourselves in an email thread? Should we treat them like correspondence, with the proper salutations and formatting? Or should we approach them as we approach text messages, as an extension of a casual conversation? As always, it depends on the situation, but here are a few things I've learned about Proper Email Threadiquette.

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Consider The Onion: A Pulitzer Plea

Fake news isn’t new. Satirical jibes at journalism masquerading as journalism date back to at least 1835 when Richard A. Locke created the Great Moon Hoax in the New York Sun. Not only was Locke looking to increase sales of the upstart Sun, he was ridiculing contemporary theories in astronomy – including one Scottish reverend’s assertion that upwards of four billion people (or whatever they were) lived on the Moon.

The Onion isn’t that far removed from Locke and his hoax. Started in 1988 by two University of Wisconsin students, The Onion rose from its clever college rag roots to become an international brand of news-related comedy under the direction of founding Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers. Dikkers oversaw the launch of its website in 1996, which proliferated the publication’s classic style of deadpan satire.

Its imitation of actual print journalism – Associated Press formatting, a mix of editorial and on-the-street reporting – is The Onion’s greatest asset. They’ve so mastered the art of the headline that you rarely need read past “U.S. General Jealous That Syrian Army Allowed To Attack Citizens” to have a good ouch-too-true chuckle.

And now The Onion staff would like to be recognized for their efforts. Having just celebrated their 1000th issue yesterday, they’ve contracted serious Pulitzer hunger. They want the Prize, and they’re mobilizing the Internet on their behalf.

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LulzSec – The Lulz-Focused Hacktivist Successor to Anonymous

Shh. No, really. Quiet down. If anyone finds out I’m writing this, this website may cease to exist – for a few hours, anyway.

I want to talk to you about LulzSec. Yes, that LulzSec. Shhh! If they hear us, they’ll shut us down. They’ll use their network of botnets and whatever-the-hell-else-they-use to slam the site with traffic. They’ll find our phone numbers and unleash outdated auto-dialing machines to tie up our phones like that episode of The Simpsons.

Why? Why would they deliberately screw with strangers on the Internet, potentially damaging digital commerce and divulging private information?

For the lulz.

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What If I Was A Twitter Celebrity? #whatifIwasaTwittercelebrity

I travel a lot for work. In fact, I was in the midst of a ludicrous string of flights last Tuesday, which is why I didn't get a chance to post anything - but enough with the lame excuses. Anyway, when you go through airport security nowadays, they generally direct you through some pretty intimidating imaging technology called Backscatter X-Rays. Use of this technology is optional, they always say, and if you don't want to be exposed to the little extra burst of potentially harmful radiation, you can "opt out" and select a full-body pat-down instead. I always opt out, despite the supposedly low dose, because when you average 4-6 trips to the airport a week, those mrems start to add up, you know what I'm sayin'?

The concept of "opting out" of a commonplace, accepted practice that people have long since taken for granted came up to me recently regarding Facebook. Sure there was a time when I made the conscious decision (much later than most) to sign up for the service, yet as the years went by and I became gradually more and more dissatisfied with the product, I simply put up with it. I was on Facebook, and that was that. Until recently, when I decided I didn't want to put up with the hassle of maintaining a digital profile, and I successfully "opted out" of Facebook.

Just to set the records straight, I don't have a problem with Social Media as such, or with anyone who uses Facebook. I just think it should be separate and distinct from our regular lives, in the way that mobile uploads and status updates can never allow Facebook to be again. I think Social Media should be something for which you have to consciously and actively "opt in", rather than the unspoken norm that acts as an alternative reality/massive time-suck. I think Social Media should have a purpose and be directly to the point. Which is why I've recently gotten involved with Twitter. And why I'm currently fantasizing about what it would be like to be a Twitter Celebrity. I even created a hashtag, which asks the musical question: #whatifIwasaTwittercelebrity?

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Mortal Kombat: Legacy - A Fan's Take

Since my last post about the new Mortal Kombat video game, very little else has occupied my thoughts. I've cruised through more than 2/3 of the Story Mode, beat the Arcade Ladder twice, and am slowly but surely climbing my way up the Challenge Tower. I know, it doesn't seem like much, but I'm currently in the midst of a stretch where I'll be on the road 12 out of 16 days.

Seeing as I'm away from my PS3 so much (oh yes, and my girlfriend, friends, and family), I've had to find other ways to get my Mortal Kombat fix. I bought the strategy guide so I could commit all the special moves, combos, and Fatalities to memory. I made the Mortal Kombat Wiki my homepage. And I started watching the new Warner Bros. funded webseries Mortal Kombat: Legacy, presented by machinima.com.

I remember nearly a year ago when the "trailer" for this project first appeared on the Internet. I even posted my thoughts on the subject right here on this blog. Turns out I was pretty much right in my assumption of its purpose: the 8-minute short, directed by Kevin Tancharoen, was in fact a proof of concept for a film his fresh new take on the Mortal Kombat universe.

When Warners execs saw the project, they denied funding for his movie (as if they were gonna give the 27-year-old another shot at a feature directly following Fame), but they did give him some money for a webseries. After getting personal approval from Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat: Legacy was born. It's hard to tell how it will measure up to the original games after just four episodes, but I can always give it a shot...

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The Rarity of Rarities: My Journey Through The Internet

A few weeks ago, after reading a book about one of my favorite bands, Kraftwerk, I became aware of the existence of a bootleg recording. Kraftwerk had done an American tour in 1975, and it turns out that there was a recording of their concert in Denver floating out there somewhere. The fact that this concert was supposedly not very good only intrigued me more; Kraftwerk is known for their pristine studio productions, so I wanted to hear what the group sounded like in its early stages, when they had to haul bulky, primitive analog synthesizers across the United States. 

So I did what anyone my age would do - I immediately jumped on the Internet and began to search. But I soon faced something that I have rarely had to deal with in the past decade or so - the bootleg was not immediately available. Searching the standard torrent sites revealed nothing, and even the Kraftwerk fansites only offered old cassette tapes of the event for hundreds of dollars. No one, it seemed, had put this 1975 concert on Internet for general consumption. This was not exactly a surprise - most of Kraftwerk's hits came later, and this concert was considered of pretty poor quality in any case. But it still came as something of a shock - some kind of media that exists, but is not available online? There weren't even any burned CDs for sale on Amazon. If I wanted this, I would have to cough up hundreds of dollars to sketchy record collectors for what may or may not be a legit recording of the concert in question. 

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The Huffington Post Lawsuits: No Heroes Here, Only Villains

Earlier this year, AOL purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million dollars, virtually guaranteeing the site's place among the corporate news pantheon of the Internet, as well as unleashing a lot of hurt feelings and people looking to cash in on this deal. The latest exhibit in the latter category is Jonathan Tasini, an unpaid freelance blogger for the Huffington Post who filed a class action lawsuit against the publication on Tuesday, asking for a third of the money from the AOL deal to go to these bloggers who post to the site. 

Let's get this straight - no one aspires to become a writer, let alone a blogger, for the money. Tasini himself had been blogging for the Huffington Post since its infancy in 2001, and many others have voluntarily elected to do what he does. Unpaid blogging can be done for any number of reasons - padding for the resume, experience in the field, a way to increase one's readership, a forum to voice one's opinions, or (in my case) a hobby and creative outlet. Tasini knew from the start that he would not be getting paid for his work and, as his decade-long connection to the Huffington Post demonstrates, he must have been okay with this. 

It is unlikely that Tasini is going to walk away with any money, let alone a third of the profit from the Post's sale. And Tasini himself understands that; he acknowledges that he is not suing because of a breach of contract. In fact, it's sort of unclear what Tasini's actual argument is, besides the fact that its unfair that Arianna Huffington walks away with so much money on the backs of her unpaid writers. What is his game plan here? Does he have a strategy?

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Revisiting the Simplicity of Baseball Cards

This Saturday, a very important announcement about the baseball season was made: The Chicago Cubs announced that youngster Andrew Cashner would be their 5th starter for the 2011 season, pushing veteran Carlos Silva off the 25-man roster. This is just one of the tidbits of information that flashes across the bottom of your screen while you watch Spring Training games on MLB Network. Why was I fixated on this one, then? It was because I recognized the name "Carlos Silva" from a 2011 Topps baseball card I had just opened.

That's right, at Spring Training this past weekend, I picked up a couple of packs of baseball cards, and I've been hooked ever since. Organizing them by collector's number, constructing fantasy depth charts on my table top, you name it, the whole nine yards. In fact, right before I heard the news, I had shifted Silva's card from my "good starters" pile to my "garbage starters" pile. And it looks like Cubs GM Jim Hendry's decision justified my classification.

Opening these few spring packs made me realize how much I missed baseball cards. I have binders full of the stuff at home, compiled between the years of 1989 and 2003, but once they're in the sleeves, you very rarely take them out and play with them like you do when you open a new pack. Part of the reason that baseball cards are so much fun is their permanence: they actually exist, cardboard and ink. Sure you can get stats and pictures of baseball players online, but it's very different from opening up a new pack of baseball cards. It's kind of like the difference between settling down with a cup of coffee and the print version of the New York Times, and paying a reasonable price for the New York Times' digital subscription.

So, has the death of print journalism coincided with the decline in popularity of baseball cards? I don't see how there possibly couldn't be a connection.

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New York Times To Roll Out Digital Subscriptions

Get out your credit cards, New York Times fans, it’s time to pay up.

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. announced in a letter on the paper’s homepage that a digital subscription model would be introduced on March 28 for United States readers. Canada received what amounts to a paid beta today, which will “enable us to fine-tune the customer experience before our global launch,” says Sulzberger.

After the plan launches, you will be allowed to read 20 articles a month for free. If you’d like to read more than one article every day and a half, you will need to sign up for a digital subscription. The subscription tiers are broken down by device: $3.75 per week for Web and smartphones, $5 per week for Web and tablets, or $8.75 per week for access to everything.

Those already paying for the Times to arrive on your doorstep on the pressed flesh of trees will pay no extra cost to reread their favorite articles on any device of their choosing. For comparison’s sake, the current cost of a daily home delivery subscription is $14.80 a week (in my area, anyway), though they are currently running a 50% 12-week deal.

The very notion of a paywall sends chills up the spines of Internet users accustomed to getting content for free. But as PC World’s Jared Newman points out, the Times is charging for the delivery method more than the content. Any story you come to through social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter will not count against your 20-stories-per-month limit. Certain search engines will have daily limits on traffic, but the Times content will not be edited. The company rightly recognizes that word of mouth is an amazing advertising tool and isn’t willing to squash it.

Will you be subscribing? Or will you be relying on Twitter feeds and Facebook friends? Sound off in the comments below.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Media Responses to the Japan Earthquake

It’s been difficult to sift through all of the news coming out of Japan, especially as more news arrives every minute. Conflict reports on nuclear facilities are nonetheless troubling. Videos of the wreckage and photos of struggling survivors take your breath away.

Now scientists are saying the 8.9 magnitude quake moved Eastern Japan moved Japan 13 feet closer to the United States and shortened Earth’s day by about 1.6 microseconds. That doesn’t even sound like it should be possible, let alone something that massive quakes have done before.

Even tougher to follow has been the rush of news in the tech and entertainment world as companies react to crisis. A lot of trivial, some of it heartwarming, the Internet’s been abuzz with news of everything from cancellations to missing persons reports.

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Sunday Reading: Poking the Trolls

Have you heard of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory? It’s a real thing. Jerks, halfwits, and annoying adolescents prove it everyday. And thanks to the erosion of Internet anonymity, sites finally have the means to combat the trolls.

On this week’s podcast, we briefly discuss the ramifications of TechCrunch’s decision to switch to a Facebook-based comment system. Readers must now log into Facebook to post comments. TechCrunch claims that, despite early negative reactions, the switch has been well-received. The overall number of posts is down, but they’re generally more thoughtful than the trash that used to litter the boards.

TechCrunch did note an odd side effect: “whereas trollish garbage used to infest the comment section, now we’re seeing almost the opposite. Many people are now leaving comments that gush about the subject of the article in an overly sycophantic way.” It’s almost as if, now that their posts are public, people don’t want to look like dicks.

In response to TechCrunch’s switch, Slate’s Farhad Manjoo argued in favor of Facebook comments, invoking the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory by name. While Manjoo recognizes that not every Internet act should be made public – you should be able to keep the more embarrassing items in your Netflix queue private – he believes that comments aren’t public enough:

“But posting a comment is a public act. You're responding to an author who made his identity known, and your purpose, in posting the comment, is to inform the world of your point of view. If you want to do something so public, you are naturally ceding some measure of your privacy. If you're not happy with that trade, don't take part—keep your views to yourself.”

Manjoo’s writing as, well, a writer on the Internet. People from other corners of the Internet are less willing to intertwine their physical and digital lives. Leading up to last year’s release of Starcraft II, Blizzard Entertainment added a Facebook-enabled Real ID system to its Battle.net forums. A portion of the community went ballistic. Three days later, Blizzard canceled their Real ID plans.

Some gamers simply wanted their privacy. Others – members of gaming minorities (defined by race, gender, and/or sexual orientation) – preferred the anonymity because misogyny, racism, and homophobia remain disgusting trademarks of the online gaming community. These problems will not go away easily (as unfortunate as that is), and many felt that the Real ID authentication would make it worse in the short run.

Whether we like it or not, we’re moving out of the Era of Anonymity. Thanks to social media services like Facebook and LinkedIn, people are taking more responsibility for their digital actions. Hopefully the fuckwads will, too.

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Sunday Reading: Five Emotions Invented by the Internet

We do our best to eschew numbered lists here at Charge Shot!!!, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading them elsewhere – especially when they’re insightful examinations of digital culture.

Leigh Alexander’s “Five Emotions Invented by the Internet” has been circulating around the, well, Internet for a week or two now. I’ve actually stumbled across it by accident a few times, which speaks to its resonance with a substantial chunk of the online population.

I’ve listed them below. Be sure to head on over to Thought Catalog to read her explanations of each.

“A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled.

A sudden and irrational rage in response to reading an ‘@-reply’ on Twitter.

The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation.

The car collision of appetite and discomfort one feels simultaneously when using the internet to seek and consume images or information that may be considered unseemly or inappropriate.

The sense of fatigue and disconnect one experiences after emitting a massive stream of content only to hit some kind of ‘wall’ and forget and/or abandon the entire thing.”

Without a doubt, I have experienced each and every one of these. What about you? Are there any she missed?

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A Heap of Digital Images: Identity in the Age of the Internet

This week, online tabloid Jezebel posted a lengthy email chain between three old college buddies, concerning their competition to sleep with as many women as possible. If you're feeling extra slimy today and want to read the exchange, you can find it here, but there's not necessarily any reason to look at it. It's not particularly humorous, and the misogyny and maturity are about what you would expect from the sort of person who would engage in this contest in the first place. Jezebel tries to add fuel to the fire by framing the men as "Princeton alums" [sic] and pointing out that one apparently works for the State department. 

Let's get this straight right away - this is a very scummy activity, and it's depressing to read three men boasting about wooing and bedding girls they're not attracted to just to up their statistics. It's a sick idea, through and through. 

That being said, why is this being published at all? Is it any surprise that their are some seedy men out there that engage in this sort of activity? The article ends with Jezebel also directing the reader to these upstanding citizens' blogs and Twitter accounts, apparently trying as hard as possible to get the violent cybermobs riled up to action. The website is doing it's best to fire up some sort of controversy. 

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News Roundup...Untold Tales from the Tech World

As far as news roundups go, this one may leave something to be desired (I know, insulting my own post is probably not a great idea in the very first line...or any line for that matter). Most of the time, news roundups focus on current stories (hence the term news) that describe pertinent items. The following stories are not normal news feed fodder, nonetheless they are amongst the most interesting and captivating stories I've read in a long time, particularly when considering their general silliness and unfortunate insignificance.

A Series of Tubes
Basically, researchers in Britain are looking for funding for a project to mimic food distribution systems after the internet. 

Although this is an interesting idea indeed, it wasn't the good intentioned and fascinating topic of the story that originally caught my eye.  It was actually the wording of the headline, "The Food Infastructure Is A Series of Tubes."  Long before I started writing for Charge Shot!!!, our venerable authors and editors of  were referring to the internet, somewhat jokingly, as "a series of tubes."

After delving beyond the quirky and coincidental headline, I found the actual article interesting (it's definetely worth a read).  I started to ask myself, what else can we take from the internet and apply to our phisical lives? Any thoughts, readers?

Clock-ed on the Head
It turns out that, according to some very smart physicists, super accurate clocks have proven that our heads age faster than our feet (to be clear, the difference in aging is very minute).   Although I could never claim to understand the science behind this story, it made me chuckle - and then it kind of made my head spin. 

LEGO My Computer
There is little to say about this other than, "watch this video, it's awesome!"  It's awesome if you're a tech/computer nerd, and it's awesome if you just like lego toys. It's awesome if you don't care about technology or legos at all. 


The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego from Small Mammal on Vimeo.

Seeing that I don't really understand the science behind the Greek computer in the above video, I couldn't even begin to offer any kind of guidance or commentary on how the technician re-created it, or how it will be applied to new products. Even after watching the video several times and trying to read some articles about it, the only thing I really know for sure is that it's one of the most captivating and coolest things I've ever seen.

It turns out that the guy who made the computer in the video works for apple.  Gee, I wonder if they can rebuild my old Macintosh IIsi out of legos... Continue...

Location BS - A Safer Internet is Up To You

As I've said many times (on this blog, and other places too...often to bored faces at parties - oh how I drone on...), I think it's strange (strange in the least, possibly just plain crazy) that people feel the need to systematically document their entire lives on the internet. I don't want to venture into the minutia of the sociological causes/impact of this, not to mention the fact that people are posting things that, in hindsight, they might not want open to the entire world. Nevertheless, my calls for sanity and reason are being treated with the same disregard as all of my other rantings and ravings. That being said, I don't want to scare you, but at least one aspect of our compulsive documentation may be putting us at real danger.

I am discussing, of course, location based services (LBS). LBS's like Foursquare or even features on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp are awesome. They help us find out what our friends are doing, and in turn let us know of some cool ideas for stuff to do.

A site like Foursquare, for example, allows people to "check in" at their favorite restaurants, bars and clubs, parks, museums etc...you get the idea. Foursquare, in an innovative move, added two important aspects to their LBS. Firstly, users get ranked based on how often they use the service, in particular, striving to "check in" from specific locations more than anybody else to become "mayor" of that place. They add to this inclusion of a game like nature to the site by also offering users "badges" for consistent and extraordinary use. By the way,  Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley recently discussed the infancy of the "mayor" idea and how it almost didn't make it into the site - it is, in fact, one of their most popular and innovative features. 

The second incredibly smart thing they do is allow businesses to offer freebies and other coupons to repeat users or "mayors." Already with the support of the core group of social internet users who want to say where they are, along with the wholhearted support businesses, Foursquare is the leader in the field.

In response to the popularity of Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and Yelp (and probably every other social network out there) have developed their own location services.

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Apple Got Game...!?!

Apple should merge with Nintendo.

I'm serious...they should really do it. According to a recent article on Ars Technica, Apple has always wanted to get into the gaming market. They never were never the favorite of PC gamers in the 90s and 2000s (most of whom preferred Windows machines to play Minecraft), and seemed to always miss the boat when looking at gaming acquisitions.

Although the above article does a great job describing Apple's gaming missteps, I am not sure if, in the past, Apple ever had the core gaming users and ability to cheaply mass produce the way Microsoft did in the early days of the XBox. I think if Apple had released a system in the early 'ots, it probably would have flopped like the Apple Bandai Pippen, released in 1995 (pictured above).

My proposed merger would result in Apple getting Nintendo's massive backlog of gaming software, which never hurts in mobile competition (as I see it, there's little reason that Nintendo shouldn't offer iOS versions of their obsolete yet still wildly popular gaming titles...if only either company would read the thousands of hand-written letters I've sent them...), but the real coup for Nintendo is the opportunity to force the Apple TV into an already widely used product. I'm sure they can spare some of the $50 billion in cash they have up in their safe room in Cupertino, Calif to buy the Japanese based gaming company.  Having a robust general entertainment device might be the lynch pin for Apple's continual push towards full cloud-computing. 

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Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is a special holiday to me.  I find it to be an excellent opportunity to, in addition to giving thanks, focus on self reflection and contemplation (The post-dinner sluggishness lends itself particularly well to deep thought...one cannot think on an empty stomach).  It is a time, unlike the winter holidays, where the only "present" we receive is spending time with family and friends.

In the spirit of the holiday, I would like to continue to preach an idea I have been discussing recently on this blog: technological moderation.  Thanksgiving is indeed a perfect time for us to try and take a little vacation from our technological tethers.

To be clear, I am not talking about rejecting all modern convenience.  As far as I can tell, it is the internet, and in particular the social internet, which fetters and restrains us.  Some may get nervous without their cell phones for too long (I have been keeping mine on-my-person but switched off more and more lately), but too many people seem to compulsively check and re-recheck email, Facebook and other social networking sites  - on phones, lap-tops, video game consoles, tablets...etc.

A friend of mine recently attended an event wherein Arianna Huffington (editor in chief of the Huffington Post) spoke about how we can use technology and the social internet to address important issues of social rights.  On a side-note, she asked if people in the audience sleep next to their phones and computers (guilty).  She recommended that people strongly consider allowing themselves the nightly break from the seemingly endless stimuli that flows freely through smart-phones and lap-tops.

Although I would find it incredibly difficult to follow her advice, I appreciate the noble sentiment.  Huffington's recommendation may be a bit extreme, nevertheless we can give ourselves holidays from technology.  We can turn our phones and computers off on Thursday (or longer throughout the weekend if you want!?!), allowing us to actually give thanks for everything in the real world.

As it happens, I think we (collectively as passionate internet users) need this "vacation," and many more like it.  We have to remind ourselves of the feeling of real social interaction, the wonder of the real world, and most importantly, the appreciation that the social internet is a tool that does not rule our lives.

And, as the old adage goes, "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Indeed our vacations from the social internet will only make us love and want it more.

So please, have a happy and fulfilling Thanksgiving...eat, drink, talk, and celebrate too much, and give yourself a much needed break from your iPhone. Continue...

Iraq TV: Watching the YouTube War

I remember watching an iridescent string of pearls lace across a deep, velvety night sky. This is war? I thought. War is pretty.

It was 1990, I was 5 years old, and American bombers were pounding Baghdad with smart bombs in the concussive opening of Operation: Desert Storm. The American public watched it all unfold on CNN.

During the Gulf War, nearly all photos and videos came from the national media. When Americans returned to Iraq in 2003, more than a decade of breakneck technological development had passed. Soldiers now rode into battle with digital cameras the size of cigarette packs, each capable of taking high-resolution stills and full-motion videos. Boots-on-the-ground access to the Iraq War can be achieved with a few keystrokes: youtube.com.

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A Wallet is a Wallet is a Wallet...

Last week, while traveling for work, I lost my wallet. It must have happened while getting out of a taxi cab - something I've done many dozens of time for work and/or pleasure - because the next morning I noticed that my wallet was nowhere to be found. If there's a silver lining, it's that I literally took the last remaining bills out of my wallet to pay the taximan, so I didn't lose any cash in the affair. But, as you can imagine, the hassle and anxiety are ongoing.

How could I have failed so epically at such a simple every day task as keeping track of perhaps my most important possession? Some might argue there are cosmic reasons. Last week, on this website, I talked bad about a good thing. That Wikipedia Guy is a total genius and a national treasure, so what business do I have voicing my opinion on the way he chooses to fund his enterprise? Sure he looks like a goof in those banners, but everybody needs bandwidth, do you know what I am saying?

So let this post act as an humble supplication to the Great Awesome Power of the Internet and an apology for publishing harsh words against one of its favorite sons. As will be evident, my contrition is genuine, although the punishment was just and fair in thine eyes. And who knows: if some of my fortune was somehow mystically reversed, I might find it in my heart to make a donation.

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I'm Getting Awful Sick of These "Personal Appeals"

Have you visited Wikipedia lately? Chances are, if you're a college student searching for infallible information to cite on your term paper, a concerned citizen looking to beef up on world news, or just a curious American interested in reading up on Frank Zappa's favorite rock guitarist, your answer to my first question is a resounding "Yes!"

And if you answered "Yes!" to the above question, you're sure to have noticed a rather unsightly and intrusive banner link across the top of ANY Wikipedia page you might have visited. It's a link to an impassioned plea from some anonymous dude to donate money to his crackpot enterprise.

When we encounter a similar request from someone on a street corner, we refer to that person as a "bum" or a "pandhandler" or someone recently disenfranchised by San Francisco's Proposition L. When we encounter this request from someone on the internet, we refer to that person as an entrepreneur. Discuss...

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