Beginning this week, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper New York city commuters choose as a last resort for something to read on the way to work in the event their train station newsstand doesn’t have the NYTimes, the NYPost or a three-month-old copy of Tiger Beat, announced it is moving to a pay-for-content web model.

A spokesman for the paper described the new model, which will attempt to charge five dollars a week ($260/year?!) to customers who aren’t subscribed to the Optimum Online cable system or the newspaper, as a “pioneering Web model.”

The “pioneering” web model is modeled after another famous pioneering venture, the Donner Party, which ended in catastrophe and human cannibalism as the group of early settlers starved to death due to poor planning and an over-ambitious agenda.

Contrary to most prior evidence and common sense, Newsday is excited about what they are calling a “hyper-local” approach to news.

It’s why your local Pennysaver paper is such a media force.

Who is going to pay $260/year for hyper-local news about Long Island?

What the hell is “hyper-local” news anyway? I really don’t care about a story that the trains ran late again yesterday or that a cultural group has formed to help preserve one of the world’s top three most annoying accents.

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Hyper-local. Hyper-boring.

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Newsday Creates ‘Pioneering Web Model’

Former Vice President Dick Cheney suggested President Obama “do what it takes to win” in Afghanistan. Which is some pretty strange advice, given the fact the U.S. hasn’t “done what it takes to win” any conflict in the last 50 years.

Cheney also chastised the Administration and said, “The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.”

In a brief reply, the White House suggested Cheney “stop talking like somebody’s grandmother” and “tend to his own knitting.”

In a wide ranging interview, the former Vice-President also said he felt the country needed to start using the word “fiddlesticks” more and lamented the decline of cut crystal candy dishes.

“Quite frankly,” said Cheney, “The country’s gone to hell in a hand basket since I’ve left office. These young whippersnappers have no sense of fun. Why, we used to watch that fellow Andy Rooney every week on 60 Minutes. He was a real hoot.”

In a related story, the Vice-President did have high praise for continued efforts by the Obama Administration to put the government in control of everything and curtail individual rights.

“Damn fine job on that score,” said Cheney. “Damn fine job…”

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“Take my advice, don’t you pay any attention to 300 years of military history, either…”

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Image: Zuma Press

Post from: EveryJoe

Cheney Tells Prez: Stop Dithering on A’stan

Josh Rutner was a unique Wal-Mart employee. He took his job seriously.

Josh was tasked with being an “asset protection officer” for the gigantic retailer. So, when a customer bolted on the check at Wal-Mart’s food counter and then ran out of the store with 43 dollars worth of golf balls in his pockets, Josh chased the thief down in the parking lot and held him until police arrived.

They held an employee awards ceremony for Josh the next day and rewarded him for actually giving a rat’s ass about the company by giving him a pink slip and, as a special bonus, a lifetime ban on working for the company again. Ever.

Wow. Talk about being soft on crime. The Wal-Mart policy on shoplifters makes law enforcement in Hollywood look like the Spanish Inquisition.

Wal-Mart spokesperson Michelle Bradford says the store’s no-chase policy is clear. “We take the safety and security of our customers and associates very seriously. There are specific instructions as to what an associate can and can’t do during a shoplifting episode.”

With all the potential for legal liability, it’s easy to see why Wal-Mart has this particular rule in place and what the proper course of action is in this situation.

Steal as much stuff from Wal-Mart as you can and sprint out the door with it.

If you get past the octogenarian checking receipts, it’s like a game show — you can keep whatever you’re carrying.

If you can’t chase a shoplifter, what exactly is your store policy for preventing theft? Grab a megaphone and attempt to reason with the thief as he runs out of sight?

In this case, it looks like “every day low prices” is also accompanied by “every day low company I.Q.”

For eight bucks an hour and lousy benefits, Wal-Mart should be handing out prizes to anyone who can stay awake during their shift, let alone try to help the company out by doing a good deed.

Although, with the ongoing recession, the advertising slogan, “Welcome to Wal-Mart. Just take what you need.” could be pretty compelling.

In a related story, Wal-Mart said it hopes to offset shoplifting losses by firing 90% of its cashiers since no one will use them anyway now that they know they can just walk off with stuff.

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“Where the hell is my getaway car?”

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Just Doing My Ex-Job, Ma’am

Prison officials at the Orleans Parish Prison in Louisiana have served a number of warrants on people who were using tennis balls to smuggle contraband drugs to inmates by lobbing the balls over the walls of the prison.

Guards became increasingly suspicious as inmates abandoned their traditional interest in basketball and weightlifting to suddenly start training as ball boys.

Prisoners explained they had donned sport shirts with a huge Polo logo on the back and were chasing tennis balls as rehabilitation and training for jobs at next year’s U.S. Open Tennis Championship.

The plot to smuggle drugs was discovered when the relative of one of the prisoner’s left a topspin lob short and it landed in a guard tower.

Inmate Sam “Slingblade” Powers was reportedly furious at his live-in girlfriend for leaving her shot short.

“If I’ve told that b*tch once, I’ve told her a thousand times … you have to brush up the back of the ball and follow-through,” groused Slingblade.

Prison officials have since cracked down tennis playing against the wall of the prison and say the problem of contraband drugs in tennis balls is a thing of the past.

In a related story, the warden at Orleans Parish Prison noted many of the prisoners reacted positively to the tennis ban and continue to stay in shape as a result of a surge in popularity of jai alai.

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Prison line judge has surprisingly few disputed calls

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Little Help, Please

In a reversal of previous statements, Kansas police say they now believe the entire story of Dorothy Gale, the young girl who claims she was denied a return ride to her farm by a wizard in a balloon, was a hoax.

“After studying Miss Gale’s body language and that of other farm hands involved, we have concluded the young lady made the entire story up,” said county sheriff Al Jimerden.

“We felt further investigation was warranted when Dorothy mentioned a talking scarecrow, but we could not discount the possibility of someone with advanced knowledge of animatronics playing a trick on her,” said the sheriff.

“But when she started going on about flying monkeys, we were pretty sure we were dealing with a made-up story,” added Jimerden who credited crackerjack police work, questions raised by forty thousand bloggers and Kansas’ hostility toward the theory of evolution for helping uncover the ruse.

According to sources, police first became suspicious when Dorothy’s story switched from black-and-white to color midway through the tale. However, officials did concede Ms. Gale’s story has been remarkably consistent over the past 40 years.

Sheriff Jimerden said police will continue to track down all leads and said they will continue to investigate whether the entire “Oz” hoax was simply a publicity stunt for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

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There’s no place like a reality show…

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Police Now Say Balloon Story A Hoax

A team of incredibly freaky scientists at the University of Toronto say they have uncovered the secret to sex appeal, unleashing what they referred to as a “sexual tsunami” among the fruit flies used in the experiment.

By altering the genetic make-up of fruit flies so they didn’t produce a particular odor or pheromone, the scientists were able to create a male fruit fly which proved irresistible to both the male and female of the species.

Kind of like the Richard Gere of fruit flies.

Professor Joel Levine, who led the study and also heads the campus Fruit Fly Porn Club, said the research had significant implications for humans.

The professor noted that “although pheromones play a key part in the human mating game, ours is far more complex than that of fruit flies.”

Plus, they’re so tiny it’s really hard to have sex with them.

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Simply irresistible

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Scientists Create ‘Sexual Tsunami’

Has there ever been a more ridiculous time sink than the amount of money, press coverage and trampling of individual choice associated with worrying about global warming?

If someone can point it out to me, I’d love to hear about it.

Take a step back and try to imagine any other reason why reasonably sane people would sit by and consider any one of the following scenarios as a normal, everyday occurrence:

– Allowing the government to make your purchase of big screen TVs illegal

– Having some faceless bureaucrat determine where, when and how you can take a vacation

– Worry about the extinction of an Arctic animal whose population has quadrupled in the last 30 years while listening to someone suggest it may be time for legislation to ban giving birth to human children

– Burning bunnies for biofuel

Really, people. When we’re feeding corn to our cars and bunnies to our heating plants we’ve officially lost our minds.

Although, I hear poodles make great tiki torches and putting them to good use at a barbecue is the kind of widespread social change we should all be willing to get behind.

I think we just found our cause for Blog Action Day 2010.

Let’s go over a few key points in the global warming kerfuffle…

1) Nature does not have intrinsic value. And it most certainly doesn’t have intrinsic value at man’s expense. In many ways, this is the key underpinning on which much of the global warming discussion rests.

Should human’s be allowed to use nature to better their lives or is man, as a number of environmentalists have phrased it, a “virus on the face of the planet?”

Or, as Objective Standard editor Craig Biddle notes, why is it the case that “..glaciers must be left free to grow or shrink according to natural causes, but any human activity that might affect their size must be prohibited. Naturally generated carbon dioxide (such as that emitted by oceans and volcanoes) and naturally generated methane (such as that emitted by swamps and termites) may contribute to the greenhouse effect, but such gasses must not be produced by man”?

It’s time we stopped apologizing for progress and making life better for ever increasing numbers of people. If the cost of progress is one-tenth of a degree of planetary warming every 10-15 years, so what? We’re humans. We’re at the top of the food chain and we can adjust.

If you live in New York City and the average temperature were to climb 10 degrees in the next — let’s get totally crazy and say — decade. What would be the big deal? That’s not environmental Armageddon, that’s Miami, Florida.

2) All climate is local. Right now, people in the northern U.S. are experiencing record cold temperatures. And, quite frankly, it sucks. But there are plenty of folks in South America, Arizona and Italy who have really great weather.

If the average global temperature goes up two degrees over the next century, yes, there will be more people sweating for longer periods of time in North Carolina.

But guess what? Fewer people in Vermont will freeze to death. We’ve had different climates in different parts of the world for 50,000 years now and people have lived all over the globe and adjusted. Even when cable TV consisted of the funniest guy in a loincloth reporting on the day’s mastodon hunt.

3) When it comes to climate, we have comparatively very little idea of how it works. See also: global drought predictions in the 70s, global warming predictions for the past 10 years and hurricane predictions for the last five years.

Now, do we really want to have the audacity and arrogance to suggest we know the exact right temperature the world should be kept at?

I can’t even agree with my wife on how to set the temperature in our bedroom, can you imagine the debate in the U.N. over how cold to keep Hamburg, Germany?

And perhaps the only thing nuttier than thinking we have the ability or scientific knowledge to come within five degrees of whatever target we decide on is putting the government (or even worse, a committee of governments) in charge of executing and paying for such a plan.

Remember when we were told how if the polar ice caps melted sea levels would rise and flood 80% of the world’s coastal cities? It was going to be a disaster of Biblical proportions.

But wait… most of the talk this past summer was how it would soon be possible to sail a boat over the North Pole. It was the worst polar ice melt anyone had ever seen.

Do you remember how the Statue of Liberty was almost completely submerged this summer because of this massive loss of Arctic ice mass? Yeah, me neither.

As far as I know, Ms. Liberty never even got her toes wet. Chalk it up to another successful climate change prediction.

Can we all just take a minute and admit we are largely clueless and powerless when it comes to a controlled altering of global weather, temperatures and overall planetary climate ambiance?

And yet, like some gigantic, collective, bad handyman husband … it’s just so hard to resist the urge to take a stab at re-wiring the entire planet.

You’d stand a better chance of Jon and Kate Gosselin performing successful brain surgery than having the United Nations get within 10 degrees or 10 billion dollars of whatever it was they were trying to do.

So, thanks for stopping by on Blog Action Day but, as regards the topic of climate change, we should all kick back and relax.

And find something more important to worry about — like whether Ryan and Ashley DiLello are both going to make the final 20 on So You Think You Can Dance.

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Yippee! December in Nova Scotia!

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Global Warming. So What?

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Russia Refuses To Back Iran Embargo

Putin Says Sanctions Don’t Work … Better To Use Poison

“Trust me, Iranians love sushi….”

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Pepsi iPhone App Offers Guys Pick-Up Lines, Chance To Post ‘Conquests’ On Facebook

iCreep App Proves Hit With Key Stalker Demographic

Wants you to come up to the house for an energy drink and to meet Mom…
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‘It Ain’t Me … It Ain’t Me … I Ain’t No Senator’s Son’

Son of Ex-Governor Charged With Killing Ex-Girlfriend, Abusing His Father

Oooo, they point the cannon at you…

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Model: ‘I Was Fired For Being Too Large’

And…?

“Back the hell away from my chocolate!”

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Anheuser-Busch InBev Sells Theme Parks To Blackstone Equity Group

Wall Street Firm Plans to Introduce New ‘Housing Market’ Roller Coaster; Claims Ride Will Be Scariest Ever

Say what?

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We’re Number One!

Mazda Introduces Car That Runs On Urine; Gas Stations Urge Drivers Not To Top Off Tanks

Dude. Just spring for a bus pass, already…

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Bizlevity News Headlines — 10/14/09

The Supreme Court yesterday scheduled time on its docket to hear an appeal by former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

The Court will decide whether to uphold lower court rulings which convicted Skilling on 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading, lying to auditors and refusing to clap for Tinkerbell.

Skilling and his lawyers are asking the Court to consider whether the “honest services” fraud statute was applied correctly, a move which should make this the fastest case in Supreme Court history.

The lawyers are, in essence, arguing that “even though Skilling committed illegal financial maneuvers, he did so in order to save the company and did not profit from it.”

Which all sounds fine and dandy until somebody brings up the minor legal point of Skilling being a top executive at the company, having lots of stock options and making $132 million as president of Enron in 2001.

Geez. Cut the guy some slack, will you? It’s not like he just made up numbers, cooked the books and then lied about it.

No, wait … it’s pretty much exactly like that.

Never mind. I have to go declare the 17 cents I made in interest on my bank account last year.

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“Of course, my client did a bunch of illegal stuff, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty…”

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Supreme Court To Hear Enron CEO’s Appeal

For the second time in less than a week, the world was shocked at the Nobel Prize Committee’s selection of a winner of one of its annual awards.

Last week’s surprise was Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize for pretty much just being a likable dude as he beat out Matt Damon, Tom Brady and former American Idol contestant David Archuleta.

This week, Dr. Mrs. Jabo (wife of famed humor blogger, Mark Jabo) won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her groundbreaking work proving it was possible to save money by buying things on sale.

Committee members spent three weeks poring over a 3700 page rationale explaining why, if you bought that sexy little black Tahari outfit when it was on sale, you’d actually end up with more money than if you hadn’t spent 70% of the suit’s original price.

“Quite frankly,” noted one committee member, “we didn’t really understand the math behind it but by the end of the presentation we figured it would just be easier to agree with the young woman.”

Dr. Mrs. Jabo predicted it would not be the last time a woman won the Nobel Prize. “There is exciting work being done by female scientists in the field of psychology which explains why it’s totally reasonable for women to want men to want to go antiquing during the NBA playoffs,” noted the doctor.

In what could be a rare husband-wife win, Mark Jabo is in contention for this year’s Nobel Science Prize for his theory of quantum physics which offers empirical proof of how your wife is always right … or will be eventually.

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Honey, it all makes sense. Just do the math…

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Nobel First! — Woman Wins Economic Prize