I have been sick this week

Not that any of you really care about my physical well-being, but I have been sick and that is why I haven't posted all week.

Majoring in economics

A friend of mine is going back to school to major in economics. Good for him. The first thing he will learn about is the laws of supply and demand. The second thing he will learn about is that there is no demand for economics majors.

Spammers

I still get emails that try to sell me pharmaceutical drugs. Is there anyone out there who is willing to buy pills from a guy who spells "Viagra" with the numeral "1"?

As the Internet becomes more accessible, the average IQ among all users will decline. There was a time when only the best and brightest nerds roamed free among the bulletin boards. Then AOL hit the scene, but at least back then a user still had to know how to log in. Now you can get DSL and be online all the time. You don't even need to know how to read to use a computer anymore.

Still, there can't possibly be that many transactions that take place through spam enough to make it lucrative. The customer has to open an email that normally would have been ignored or deleted. They have to read a sales pitch with deliberately poor grammar. They have to somehow come to the conclusion that it is a good idea to turn your credit card over to someone who cannot structure a sentence. Of course, sometimes all it takes is one doofus to fall for the scam to make it profitable. But I have to wonder how someone that dumb gets a credit card in the first place.

I'm starting to wonder if most of the spam in my inbox isn't a sales pitch at all. It could be hackers who are simply trying to annoy people. Or it could be sleeper cells trying to contact their handlers. Ever see on TV where a spy places a fake classified ad, so that his contact knows if his mission was successful? How much revenue are newspapers losing because spies and terrorists no longer have to buy fake classified ads?

"Star Wars: Force Unleashed"

I saw some of the previews for "Star Wars: Force Unleashed". The developers tout the new physics engines used in the game. Nice, but how is the gameplay? Is it me or does the game just consist of your character throwing stuff around?

New Year's Day post

This is how behind I am. My new year's post is a week late. Many people are late taking their Christmas tree down. I'm 8 weeks late putting it up.

Anyway, Gloria and I went to her friend's house. We watched "The Biggest Loser". There was this one scene in which all the male contestants were wearing t-shirts, and all the female contestants were wearing sports bras. I thought to myself "Wow, that's a lot of chubby-chaser cheesecake."

Is real life going obselete?

I will not be able to attend this week's blogger convention, because I have to go to my EMT class. But I do wonder if meeting in real life for purely social reasons will become obselete soon. You can see and hear your friends if they have a webcam and a microphone. You probably don't care about touching or smelling them, unless they are really good friends. And state law prohibits finding out what your friends taste like.

Consider a traditional night on the town. You shower and use up water. You put on sweatshop produced clothing and deordorant tested on animals. You arrive in the meeting place in a vehicle that emits greenhouse gases and is powered by a dwendling supply of fossil fuels imported from countries that force women to wear veils in public. Once at the restaurant, you clog your arteries and pollute your liver.

Now imagine this: You take one good photo of you when you were 20, post it on mySpace or Facebook and just stay home. You don't have to shave or shower and you save gas. You can get as drunk as you want because you don't have to worry about driving home.

In the future, all you'll ever need is a computer and a bathrobe to put on whenever you have to answer the door.

Great.

I work third shift, and now they are telling me that it is linked to cancer. Except I don't think that third shift alone would cause an increased cancer. What would cause an increased risk is increased caffeine and tobacco consumption among third shift employees, and sleep deprivation. I'd take this study more seriously if it accounted for those factors.