Work Profanity

I decided today that now that I’m employed I can swear on my blog again, so here is a post involving both work and profanity.

The Top Ten Sources parent company just bought Stylefeeder, which is a of multi-store wishlist, plus a way to share shopping lists, and also works as a way to browse for stuff that other people like. The revenue comes from affiliate programs.

It’s still got some kinks to work out– there’s bugs related to iframes and flash-heavy sites like the Icon Motorsports catalogue, but mostly it’s incredibly neat.

And then there’s the usual risks you run into when you let any random user add content to your site. I added my favorite Threadless shirt to my style feed and tagged it (accurately) as “Threadless t-shirt unicorns fucking.” The site dutifully added “fucking” as a keyword, and then suggested a link to Flickr photos tagged with the same word.

Still, it’s an incredibly neat site, and a lot easier to use than, say, Mugshot.

A family story and three links to the Times

My mother’s father used to read the San Diego local paper, at the time a highly local and highly right-wing rag. He insisted that the New York Times was too influential. My father, ignorant of naval rules, disagreed freely and told him that the Times was influential because it was better, and that he should read it.

Things I have learned in the Times today: There’s an incredible World-Cup billboard in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is a pretty boring town, but it’s going all-out this year. (See also Top 10 Sources for World Cup Soccer). All that new Voice over IP stuff is insecure. It’s vulnerable to brilliant exploits like traditional telephony was in the 70s and 80s. Ohio is replacing Florida as the land of fucked-up electoral politics.

Take that, San Diego Union-Tribune.

Insurance for a house on fire

So, the lesson is that If you have insurance, don’t use it, or you’ll never get insurance again. What’s the point of health insurance if you’re afraid to get care when you need it?

When I went to my unemployment seminar lo these many months ago, the one thing everyone wanted was health insurance. Most of the crowd there had been at Bay Bank or Fleet for years and was part of the giant Bank of America buyout/layoff. Many of them were getting close to retirement. They’d have been happy to retire early, but they needed insurance. For the rest, the feeling was “I don’t care how bad the job is, or what the pay is, as long as there’s insurance before my COBRA runs out.”

It’ll get worse before it gets better, especially since political discussion these days seems to consist of illiterate xenophobes advocating English-only policies when their parents should have been practicing abstinence-only policies, and social discussion is limited to Paris Hilton in a pink leopard-print sailor outfit.

Would you like to see my new hat?

Via Slate:

The New York Times called this answer “artful.” That’s not the word I’d use. Artful should be reserved for things that hide the truth but don’t deceive. A hat is artful. A toupee is a lie. Bush’s answer was toupee-like. Even if it was technically true that Bush had not talked to Snow about “resignation,” the president knew his confected statement was deceptive. I’m reluctant to call it a lie, but the president abused our trust.

Clever language, except where he kind of waffles on it. Go ahead, point out that the president has no hair. Do it.

And while we’re at it, I want a pony and an impeachment.

The Guardian on College Sports

The Guardian has a great piece on the Duke lacrosse scandal and what it means for college sports. Apparently it’s been circulating at UVA and other sports-heavy colleges around the country. The upshot: hot teams bring recognition and tuition-paying undergrads. They also bring down academic standards and increase corruption, violence, binge drinking.

Great stats: “One survey showed 50 students die each year from alcohol poisoning. American students spend $6bn a year on alcohol, more than on books, snack food and all other drinks combined.” “The fact is that male student athletes, who make up only 3 per cent of the student population, account for 19 per cent of campus sexual assaults. Professor Richard Lapchick of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics of Sport at the University of Central Florida believes that one in seven female students is sexually assaulted at college. Yet few incidents are reported and even fewer lead to prosecution.”

(If the crimes go unreported, how do the reporters know the real numbers? My guess is that the data comes from surveys, or possibly from a disparity between medical-center reports and criminal charges filed…)

Of course, to me, the Duke scandal just confirmed everything I have thought about lacrosse players since junior high school.

Now with employment!

I start full-time work June 1 at Top 10 Sources, as an editor and researcher.

In this job I will not be matching the earnings of my high-school clasmates like Terence or Nat. However, those guys have to wear pants when they go to work, and I don’t.

Right now I’m having trouble coming up with ten good Spanish-language baseball blogs, so I may have to switch to just blogs sobre deportes or something like that.