One of the things I’ve come to dislike about the blogosphere – not that we don’t do this outside of blogs all the time as well – is that there’s an assumption that any content that sounds like it might go against one’s political opinions isn’t just wrong in and of itself, the act of saying it at all is wrong. In one of the latest examples, a writer for Google’s Health Advertising Blog wrote that the healthcare industry could counter Michael Moore’s Sicko, an indictment of healthcare practices in the U.S., by buying search-related ads to get their side of the argument out. ...

[Link defunct] Huh, how do you like that? I like to think of it like Wallace and Gromit, or Tim Conway and Don Knotts movies from the 1970s. And yes, I just ran across the online dating site and its quizzes in my blog travels. I’m married, and would have been too introverted for online dating anyway. :)

We saw part of the Concert for Diana yesterday, and it looked like it went pretty well, given the difficult nature of huge live events. I had a few thoughts run though my head while watching, though, and figured I’d share them with an interested audience: Realizing they weren’t promising music Princess Di liked, I still found it interesting that several of the acts weren’t known ten years ago. The list might have reflected the princes’ musical tastes as well, but I kept thinking it partially looked like the artist list you would get automatically from the BBC and VH1 for any concert. Speaking of which: Fergie? Really? And she didn’t do London Bridge? When is a better time? I didn’t catch this part, but why would English audiences care if Ryan Seacrest and Randy Jackson were there with Simon Cowell? Josh Groban did a remarkable job fighting off Sarah Brightman during their duet. Oh, Rod Stewart. That’s why they didn’t fill the entire concert with acts Diana liked. In case you were wondering about Donny Osmond and dozens of kids wearing Chickenshed shirts, here you go. Drop It Like It’s Hot. Pharrel Williams, everyone! A big round of applause! He’s really captured the spirit of the event! Oh, good, Kanye West is here. He’ll straighten it all out. “Now I ain’t saying she a Gold Digger, but she ain’t messing with no broke…” Oh, that’s not good. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for Ricky Gervais. And Elton John was finally able to take the stage to finish off the concert – he opened as well. This time he’ll do Candle in the Wind for the first time since Diana’s funeral, right? Nope. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting. Wait, when did Diana die? Oh yeah, Saturday night. Anyway, I’m kind of picking on it, but like I said, it worked well. Much more smoothly than Live 8. I just wonder if everyone was told what the concert was for? ...

Prepare for a dip in the global economy: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution. On a side note, I’m going to be really busy next spring doing…ah…stuff…so don’t bother me. Link courtesy of Too Many Topics, Too Little Time.

If I wanted to start a series of these, I doubt I could keep track of the numbers past the first hundred. Anyway, here’s the gist of a story happening in Raleigh. One restaurant in an expensive location closes down. Its ownership group is embroiled in lawsuits. The restaurant had also sold a bunch of gift certificates that have apparently not been refunded. Second restaurant opens in the same location. Agrees to honor the previous restaurant’s gift certificates at the urging of mall owners, but stops when they realize they’ve already given away $4,500 in free food. (They were absorbing the cost of the certificates.) They had no legal obligation at any time to honor the gift certificates, since they weren’t involved with the previous restaurant. They did it for the sake of creating and keeping good will with customers. ...

Just in case you don’t know what I look like, I offer here an accurate representation of myself: Handsome devil, that. All yellow and…ahem…a few pounds less heavy than I would have thought. It’s from the Simpsons Avatar Creator, on The Simpsons movie site. Their application works even better than the one for South Park, but South Park’s does let you become a pirate, which is cool. Link courtesy of Best Week Ever, which tries for Paris Hilton, but I think this might work better as Paris in the Simpsons universe: ...

Scientists have found that all domestic house cats owe their genetic heritage to the Near Eastern wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica. A quote from the story: Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wild cat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats, and the rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey for her…Seeing she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight. ...

Good times each year to see how useless media consensus really is in the sports world include the two drafts that count (NFL and NBA) and the playoffs of various sports. We’ve got the NBA Draft up tonight, and there appears to be two great players. Which one should go first to the Portland Trailblazers? Greg Oden. Even though Kevin Durant looked better his freshman season than Oden, and has an NBA-ready game, you don’t get a chance for the combination of size and athleticism Oden supplies very often, particularly when it’s already proven on the highest level of college basketball. (This ain’t Kwame Brown or Andrew Bynum. Who both play for the Lakers. That makes me smile.) Durant’s likely to be a great player, but there might be someone like him available next year. That isn’t likely for Oden. ...

Yeah, it’s great how the free market and competition has a good chance of sorting out any problems we have with net neutrality and Internet access. Or, at least, that’s what the Federal Trade Commission says. This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more – not less – competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area. ...

Google’s new interface is nice, and it seems like it even works a bit faster. However, I’ve seen a few blogs mentioning they replaced tags with folders – the blog I linked to isn’t one of them – and it appears they just renamed the tags as folders and put a little folder icon next to them. As I said, the new interface works great, but is there really a large part of the Internet populace that can’t be comfortable with tags unless they have a folder icon next to them? :) ...