I remember a while back someone posted (I think it was Brendon) a video about one man’s struggles to explain the difference between .02 CENTS and .02 DOLLARS. He thought he was being charged the former (why? Because they told him that’s what they were going to charge him…) when in fact he was charged the latter.

This caused a giant hoopla on the internet.

Well, someone did an informal survey of the state of things today. The results?

Not so good…

(Neatest thing about the video, I think, is how they present the results, I think it’s really effectively shown)

The cost of the war in Iraq for the US was estimated at 1.6 Trillion dollars.

This figure included some controversial numbers - mainly things like “lost productivity”. A more conservative reading of the numbers, though, pegs the cost of the war so far at $800 million dollars; and it seems likely that, by the time the war ends, they’ll hit $1 Trillion in costs.

CBC had some suggestions about what else could be done with that money.

My favourite? Send all of New York City to university.

Im (fucking firefox… no apostrophes… ugh…) always happy when I make one of those “neat finds” - you know, that pair of headphones you thought you lost, a paper from grade school you got a good grade on, things like that.

The Royal Ontario Museum had a similar find in its own basement… except what IT found was a massive Barosaurus skeleton. Its been sitting in the basement since 1962; its paperwork wasnt officially filed, so no one really even knew it was there, inside of all sorts of boxes and racks.

The article’s pretty neat, and probably about a page long. You can find it here

Hey, so, it’s been in the news a lot - basically, guy got TASERd 4 times, then died.

The video someone took was finally released (it was confiscated by police for a month, but it’s finally back)

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071113/airport_taser_071114/20071114?hub=TopStories (The link to the video is on the right-hand side, near the top)

Transcript: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=e4aec97c-8619-42f3-b20e-f910bc6dd335

A warning - you DO see a man die; so if that’s something that’ll bother you, I suggest you go watch something else…

Yeah, apparently drug companies hire cheerleaders to be salespeople.

In an interview, Mr. Reidy remembered a sales call with the “all-time most attractive, coolest woman in the history of drug repdom.” At first, he said, the doctor “gave ten reasons not to use one of our drugs.” But, Mr. Reidy added: “She gave a little hair toss and a tug on his sleeve and said, ‘Come on, doctor, I need the scrips.’ He said, ‘O.K., how do I dose that thing?’ I could never reach out and touch a female physician that way.”

It goes on, near the article, about some doctors who couldn’t tell the difference between flirting and the sales pitch.

I completely agree that it’s grossly inappropriate to say, “She had it coming” as an excuse for sexual assault… but when flirting IS the pitch, you’ve got to feel at least a little sorry for the doctors.

No job, and I think if I asked really nice, I could get a credit card with a $2000 limit. There seems like there’s something wrong with that…

NOTE: I don’t think I’ve been preapproved for a credit card ever… I just thought that’d be a good name for this video.