Ben Shoemate's Notebook

RSS

Your New Tires Could Be Six-Year-Old Death Traps [Caveat Emptor]

13 Sep

Those "new" tires of yours could be six-years old and ready to disintegrate on the highway. Tire rubber dries out after six years, but unlike in Europe and Asia, American companies are allowed to sell expired tires long after they turn into death donuts. A 20/20 investigation found that the "new" tires on sale at Sears and Walmart can be up to 12-years-old. Inside, how to tell when your tires were born...

All tires bear a Department of Transportation number hidden on the inner wheel wall. At the end of the number is a four-digit sequence that shows the week and year the tire was made. Tires with the notation 3502 were made in the 35th week of 2002. If you only see three digits, get new tires immediately; your tires are from the 90's and are way past their effective lifespan.

Listen as the mustachioed John Stossel explains:

Check Your Tires [The Kim Komando Show]
Aged Tires: A Driving Hazard? [YouTube]
(Photo: zorilla)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Damon is Exactly Right about Palin

13 Sep

MG Siegler via ParisLemon shared by 5 people

Normally I hate it when actors, musicians or any kind of celebrity attempt to talk about politics. It's not that I necessarily think they don't know what they're talking about (that's only true most of the time), but it's more that they have so much power in what they say because they are famous and millions of idiots are greatly influenced by what they say.

That said, I could not agree more with Matt Damon's assessment of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. (The video is below.) It is absurd. And I too don't understand why more people aren't at the very least dumbfounded, and more appropriately, pissed off about it.

While at first I was completely dumbfounded because it made no sense to me. Now, each day it's clearer and clearer that this was a purely political pick made to rally Christian conservatives to vote for a man who they likely wouldn't vote for otherwise. And without that vote, Obama beats McCain.

The term "winning at all costs" I'm afraid is hitting a new low. This is someone who has a very good chance of running our country. She might be competent, but who the hell knows? Certainly not us, the voting public in the next few weeks before the election. The future is being left to chance. It's sad.

It's like the movie King Ralph. But the President of the United States isn't a figurehead like a King. Oh yeah, and this is real. So it's not funny. At all.

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

What Would You Say to Bush, McCain, or Obama?

13 Sep

What Would You Say To The President is an eminently simple invention, whose purpose is mostly just to reserve a place for messages addressed to the political names that either currently reside in the White House or might reside there in several monthsâ€™ time.

Seeing as how we are less than two months away from the U.S. presidential election in November, you may well consider it worth a brief account registration (or OpenID login) to leave the sitting executive or his potential successor a note or a perhaps even a video memo denoting a personal though, civic-minded or otherwise.

There are some extras to browse in addition to the central post roll, from news deliveredÂ by way of the current administration and blogs covering odd bits of information with close or peripheral relevance to the CinC. Or, within the places established for Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain, news and blogs pertaining to their campaigns for office. Altogether, however, the website makes for a quick visit, and so far the content presented by users is readable insofar as political discourse is concerned. Rhetoric of all sorts is in evidence, but nothing profane.

The aspect most appreciable is its singular purpose, which is to offer a slate on which to write, in short or at length. Jason Brown of WWYSTTP tells Mashable that messages will be delivered according to their intended recipients; Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary, or the Republican or Democratic nominees. Make of this pledge what you will.

---
Related Articles at Mashable - All That's New on the Web:

Video Blogger to Visit White House
Foonz Adds Voice Mail Delivery Confirmation to its Service
Association for Downloadable Media Creates Ad Council
MySpace Hack?
TellThem Sends Mobile Message Blasts to Your MySpace Friends
Last.fm Signs Ex-Xbox Manager Orlena Yeung For Marketing VP Post
Terry Semel Resigns as Yahoo CEO, Finally

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

ÐŸÐ¾Ð±ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ‚ÐµÐ»Ð¸ ÐºÐ¾Ð½ÐºÑƒÑ€ÑÐ° Identity: Best of the Best 2008

12 Sep

via http://www.artgraphics.ru/best/winners.html

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Fourth grader suspended for using broken pencil sharpener

12 Sep

9/12/08 will be remembered as the day we finally caught one of the bad guys -- a 4th grader with a broken pencil sharpener.

A 10-year-old Hilton Head Island boy has been suspended from school for having something most students carry in their supply boxes: a pencil sharpener.
The problem was his sharpener had broken, but he decided to use it anyway.

...

The boy -- a fourth-grader described as a well-behaved and good student -- cried during the meeting with his mom, the deputy and the school's assistant principal.

He had no criminal intent in having the blade at school, the sheriff's report stated, but was suspended for at least two days and could face further disciplinary action.

Fourth grader suspended for using broken pencil sharpener

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Science Has Gone Mad Because It Lacks A Purpose, Say Fringe Creators [Fringe]

12 Sep

Why is the science in Fringe so out-of-control and scary? Turns out it's because science hasn't had a real goal since the 1960s, according to Fringe writer/producers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Jeff Pinker, who talked to reporters on a conference call today. (I think the designers of the LHC might disagree.) They also answered your most burning question: When will we see a Lost/Fringe crossover?

When asked if Fringe and Lost exist in the same world Roberto Orci responded:

I don't know how Lost ends and I don't know if you know, Alex. So I don't know what the ultimate answer is on Fringe so I'm not sure yet if they exist in the same world. That's actually something I'd be willing to think about going forward. But certainly that is not something that we started thinking about in the DNA of this show.

So there goes my whole fantasy of seeing Sawyer and Joshua Jackson have a smart ass-off and then fight over Keri Russel from Felicity.

On the new scary science Jeff Pinker explained that this even though he believes that Fringe is decidedly non-fiction, it's still pretty terrifying what the science of today can do.

The world has changed in such a way that science doesn't seem to have a goal anymore. When we were kids it was, "Let's get to the moon." And a lot of money and brain power was spent then onto the moon. Now there's a lot more money it seems and a lot more people and private companies have it. They are all sort of following their imagination and doing anything they can. Some of it seems to be morally good and some of it seems to be morally a little but careless. But anything that we can imagine be it good or bad, seems like the real world is already two steps ahead of our imagination. Our stories are being told through our characters but the things that they are doing has kind of made us as writers slightly more wary of our world and astounded by the possibilities exceeding our imagination.

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Did Amazon Delete Spore Reviews?

12 Sep

Michael Masnick via Techdirt shared by 5 people

Want to know how not to respond to criticism? By deleting it. Yet, it appears that's what Amazon has done. Earlier this week we wrote about the controversy of EA's decision to put cumbersome DRM on the highly anticipated video game, Spore. The response was that thousands of people started posting one star reviews of Spore, noting the problems with the DRM. Things then got worse when people realized that EA had misled customers about the fact that they could only have one user account on Spore.

Now, a bunch of people have noticed that Amazon appears to have deleted all of the reviews on the Spore page. This is only going to end badly. When you try to shut down a large group of people who feel wronged, you're not just whacking the bees' nest with a stick, you're setting it on fire with a flame thrower. The folks who were complaining are only going to complain louder, and louder. Remember what happened when Digg tried to takedown the AACS crack? Whoever was responsible for removing the comments -- whether it was Amazon or EA -- they may find that the reaction to trying to shut down the angry mob is only going to make folks that much angrier, and alert that many more people to the problems they have with EA's use of DRM.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story