Various news agencies are reporting that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, aged 62, is in hospital with a serious concussion after falling out of a cocoanut tree in Fiji.

I am at a loss for words. I’ve owned cats that had less lives than that man.

Anyhow, one report tells us that “The 62-year-old guitarist, who had been holidaying on the paradise isle after completing the Australian leg of the band’s A Bigger Bang world tour, reportedly slipped and banged his head while attempting to climb a coconut tree with fellow bandmate Ronnie Wood.”

Brando… James Dean… the black leather jacket defined their persona, and defined a special type of Rebel. Like Levi’s blue jeans, black leather jackets represent a uniquely American dress that transcends their working class roots.

Arguably there are only two kinds of people: those who can wear a black leather jacket, and those who can’t. Sadly a lot of people in the second group don’t know it.

To wear a black leather jacket you need an attitude, an early young Brando attitude, a James Dean attitude. Anyone who has seen “The Wild One” has to remember the exchange between leather clad Brando and a local straight person:

One of the young women in the little town says “Black Rebel Motor Club? What are you rebelling against.” And Brando says, “What have you got?”

That kind of rebellion tends to dissipate as one grows older, and certainly as one reaches middle age and accumulates a mortgage and kids it is nearly impossible to pull off. Hey, if you have to try to be a rebel you’ve already lost it.

Which is why I propose that black leather jackets should almost never been worn by a) men over 40 years of age, and b) men whose waist is larger than 40 inches.

Sure, there are a handful of men who can pull off a black leather jacket – CKCU Radio’s John Westhaver being one of them – but sadly they are very rare.

So guys, if that paunch is big enough to require suspenders, it’s time to trade the black leather for a Tilley hat.

Seth Godin sums things up nicely with a short take on a company that figures that losing $4 is enough reason to alienate a loyal customer. What Seth doesn’t note is that many companies these days simply don’t give a damn about customers or retaining them.

Primus: Still harrassing me for the cel phone cancellation of $200 bucks for a phone that mostly never worked. Dream on idiots.

Horizon Utilities (formerly Hamilton Hydro until Mike Harris “fixed” our utilities by privatizing half of them) – wants me to pay the electric bill for an apartment that I moved out of in mid December. I of course called them to let them know that I was moving, they say they have no record of that call. They insisted that the only way that I was off the hook was to have my former landlord call them to tell them that yes I had moved. He did that, and told them the name of the new tenant, but still they refuse to move.

My word against theirs. Will I give them another penny? Not on your life!

Tonight, for the first time in what feels like years, I heard someone use the term “netiquette“.

It had a quaint, almost buggy whip feel to it. Does anyone except crusty old usenet vets even refer to netiquette anymore?

From what I remember, the primary goal of netiquette was to encourage enforce the efficient use of bandwith on the ‘net. In the days when a 56k modem was considered fast, it was reasonable to expect people to keep messages, and especially file attachments, as small as possible.

That’s why standards developed for quoting messages, using links instead of complete passages of text, and generally keeping things short and to the point.

These days some 60% of ‘net users have some form of high speed access. Although it’s always good to ask before sending, most file attachments pose no great problem, and even a 56k connection can usually handle things up to a meg in size.

So who still refers to netiquette? Lots of the more obnoxious people on Slashdot. Internet old timers who feel that their longevity gives them leave to enforce long outdated custom. People who are losing an argument and need one more thin thread from which to craft a rebuttal. And people new to the ‘net that they think it’s a neat idea.

All in all though the people who use the ‘net have managed to create a new set of rules in the last few years. Less restrictive, more accepting, and generally sensible, they work just fine. Well, except for spam.

To the best of my memory netiquette certainly never had much to do with politeness or even basic etiquette. The hard core geeks who troll the ‘net have never really been known for either.

Me? I figure it’s easier to just let things slide and be nice to people. After all it’s only electrons, and we’re not likely to run out of those very soon.

In response to a discussion hosted by the Association for Independents in Radio.

Since the Integrated Media Association conference in February I’ve been giving this whole question far too much thought and have spent far more time than I could afford reading further on the subject.

If I came away from IMA with one global impression it was that Public broadcasters still don’t get it.

I kept seeing people who are still thinking of “new” media as being something extra that you do outside of or in addition to running a terrestrial FM or TV platform.

Several years ago I visited Minnesota Public Radio as part of an Integrated Media Fellowship. What was presented as an opportunity to learn from the leaders in the integration of the Internet and Public Radio instead showed me that the people making decisions were still thinking in terms of the ‘net as something that was tended to with whatever leftover scraps of resources and money were available.

In more than few cases the approach to creating on-line content was to ask/force the radio reporter to also write web content and take photographs while at the scene of the Interview. In response to a direct question we found that these radio journalists received no training in writing for the web, and even less in photography. In some cases they actually posted radio scripts to the station website. The Internet was something for a small but geeky subset of their audience, and didn’t merit staffing or expertise. (more…)

Via Wonkette, the Washington Post reports that the Stephen Harper government is spending some $18,000 on a subway poster campaign in Washington DC to make people believe that Canada is playing a central role in the American military conquest of the world. I could go on and on I guess, but why bother. My only thought is: eighteen thousand bucks? That’s it? Even in Hamilton that wouldn’t buy squat.

From the Post:

The Canadian government’s three-week subway poster campaign to remind Americans of our northern cousins’ military efforts in Afghanistan has been a success, Canadian officials said last week.

Lots of “positive feedback” to the $18,000 campaign, says embassy spokesman Bernard Etzinger , from U.S. military personnel, Hill folks and others. Posters showing a Canadian soldier with Afghans were put in seven area subway stops — especially at the Pentagon — and places where riders change trains.

Why did the Canadians think the effort, which ended last week, was needed?

“We often get overlooked in the media,” Etzinger said, but “we’re shouldering a serious load” in Afghanistan, with about 2,300 troops and lots of aid and reconstruction projects. So far, 11 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed there and 46 soldiers have been wounded, Etzinger said.

But posters and banners hanging at subway stations? A bit old-fashioned, eh? “This is a tough media market,” Etzinger observed, and the scheme has worked out so well that they’re thinking of doing it in other cities.

Who knows? Might make folks forget the Canadians aren’t members of the Coalition of the Willing.

Then again, here’s the Canadian Press version:

WASHINGTON (CP) – Canada is advertising its military role in Afghanistan with seven massive posters and banners in the U.S. capital area’s subway stations.

The promotion was designed to blitz Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and other busy areas for government workers and power brokers.

“It can only benefit us if Americans are aware of the critical role we’re playing,” Lt.-Col. Jamie Robertson, a counsellor at the Canadian Embassy, said Wednesday.

“Just yesterday, we each lost a soldier. We’re on the ground spilling Canadian blood. Americans need to know that.”

Pte. Robert Costall died in a fierce battle north of Kandahar that also killed an American soldier. Twelve Canadians have now lost their lives in the Afghanistan conflict, 11 of them soldiers and one a diplomat.

The embassy’s campaign coincides with the recent deployment of almost 2,300 soldiers to Afghanistan, most of them in Kandahar. Canada has taken over command of the country’s southern region.

The poster shows a Canadian soldier holding a gun, surrounded by Afghans, and reads: “Canadian troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Boots on the ground. U.S.-Canada relations. Security is our business.”

It also advertises the federal government’s military website at CanadianAlly.com, a two-year-old project providing news and background for Americans on military issues.

Most of the posters will be coming down in the next few days, said Robertson, but there are plans to leave one up at the Pentagon subway stop.

ps – don’t know where the picture came from, but I loved it when I saw it on Wonkette and swiped it assume that it’s Public Domain.

I think that all of us have at some point inadvertently sent an e-mail message to the wrong person or group. If we were lucky we looked stupid. If not we managed to direct a flaming insult not to a close confidante, but to a group of several hundred complete strangers.

Today I received a lovely and unexpected invitation to MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit:

I get a lot of spam, and am skeptical, but yes, it did say that I was invited to an all expenses paid weekend in Arizona. I even checked out the website looking for signs of a scam.

Then two hours later this appears in my inbox:

Whoops. Someone obviously pressed “send” too soon. God knows how many thousands of people were invited as VIPs!

Oh yes, the conference in question promised that I should attend:

“… so you can surround yourself with the most-thought provoking minds in the industry as they school you on the new modes of enhancing your email marketing campaigns.

The purpose of the Email Insider Summit is to bring the best minds in the industry together to share leading edge information and experience on email marketing in a think-tank environment, while exploring new technology, strategies and tactics for effective campaigns.”

I’d guess that there are quite a few of us non-VIP types who now feel that this conference might not be worth the $2,495 registration fee.

Instead of just laughable, the American President is beginning to worry me more and more.

Yes. I know that he’s not really in charge, but still.

Witness this video clip, during which a college student asks him exactly who is in charge of ensuring that private military contractors operate in a proper fashion. Seems that US Military law doesn’t control them, and the Iraqis themselves really don’t have the resources to control them either.

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I don’t know what’s more frightening – that he doesn’t know, or that he thinks that it’s a big goddamned joke.

Thanks to Wonkette for the tip.

A very quick link to a good post and subsequent discussion on Seth Godin’s blog. If you have ever had to write a brochure, you need to read this.

Q: What do you think of my brochure?

A: The thing you must remember about just about every corporate or organizational brochure is this: People won’t read it.

I didn’t say it wasn’t important. I just said it wasn’t going to get read.

Some valuable suggestions follow. Take time now to click through and read.

Hoo-eee – I love it when ad companies slip in something that I suspect the client wouldn’t like. Or when I suspect that perhaps they do?

Ford is running a series of snappy ads, actually quite catchy, for the 2006 Focus. Two of them can be seen on the Ford Canada website

The third though is what caught my eye.

Each of these ads features a series of people shown in a state of total captivation as they remember their high performance experiences while driving a Focus.

One of the people shown in the third ad is a television sound guy, complete with boom and mic. What stands out is his T-shirt.

For Rockstar Games.

Rockstar is of course the company that gave us Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, & 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Within these games people do four or five things: steal cars, run over usually innocent people, shoot at things, drive way too fast on city streets, and evade the police.

A lot of people really hate this company, alleging of course that they encourage young people to engage in reckless or illegal activity. Rather than the healthy blood and gore found in games like Doom.

What’s more, earlier this year Rockstar took a lot of heat when clever gamers discovered how to access a hidden, sexually explicit part of the latest game.

Rockstar’s next release will be about Table Tennis. No joking.

And Ford? I have no idea.

Yeesh, what’s more pathetic, that this information was released by the US administration, or that US News and World Report printed it?

Top American officials who study Cuba and dictator Fidel Castro, 79, now believe that his Parkinson’s disease is so bad that he will be dead in four years. “The Parkinson’s has gone beyond the stage that it can be controlled,” says a top U.S. official. “He’s not going to live forever.”

The guy is 79 years old! This is “news?”

He certainly looked pretty good a few years ago when he attended the funeral for late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He also got a significantly larger round of applause than Brian Mulroney, who arrived just before him.

The idiot who invented Daylight Saving Time obviously didn’t have children.

Yes, I just spent most of an hour trying to get child bodies that knew it was 8:30PM into bed at the imagined time of 9:30PM. I dread tomorrow morning.

Not that I find the change any better. It is simply not natural or healthy to shift your entire life by one hour twice a year.

I’m a rationalist. I believe in science and the scientific method. I believe that major decisions should be done after research and after careful thought is given to the possible outcomes.

I believe that Daylight Savings Time is an utter crock.

From a page about Daylight Saving Time.

The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.

Make better use of daylight? What earthly difference does it make that one hour is in the evening instead of the morning? What about the presumed 50% of the population that actually likes mornings?

I’m sorry, but this sounds like bullshit to me.

Daylight Saving Time also saves energy. Studies done by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that Daylight Saving Time trims the entire country’s electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances.

Again, the claims to energy conservation just don’t make sense to me. Running a TV for three hours takes the same amount of electricity whether it happens in the dark or during the daylight. Same with every other appliance. Consequently the only possible thing that could account for a decrease in energy consumption is lights.

Except that the people who are turning lights on later in the evening are also turning them on earlier in the morning, so surely that nets out too.

There is a public health benefit to Daylight Saving Time, as it decreases traffic accidents. Several studies in the U.S. and Great Britain have found that the DST daylight shift reduces net traffic accidents and fatalities by close to one percent. An increase in accidents in the dark mornings is more than offset by the evening decrease in accidents.

Again, this seems so illogical that I just can’t buy it. How could changing the clocks by an hour reduce accidents in the afternoon? And if that extra hour of daylight did that, wouldn’t they increase again six months later when the clock turns back?

None of this of course addresses the significant impact on workers, parents, school children, and all of the other people who find their routines and lives significantly disrupted. Somehow we are all supposed to just accept this without complaint.

To add insult to injury, Daylight Savings time starts weeks earlier next year. It isn’t because of global warming, or some climate change, or because the earth is tilting more or less on its axis.

No, it is being moved because the American government decreed that Daylight Savings Time start earlier. Our Ontario government of course bent over and immediately agreed that everyone in this province should also switch clocks weeks ahead of time.

That’s why during March next year in Thunder Bay sunrise won’t come ’til 8:10 AM!

Bah. Idiocy!