Day: January 16, 2012

The McBournie Minute: Coolness and Google+

Every now and then I get the urge to rant about something involving social media. This is one of those times. Don’t worry, I’m not bashing Facebook and the people I know on it. I’m not even trying to convince any of you to follow me on Twitter.

This time it’s about Google+, the fastest-growing social media network on the planet right now. Heck, it’s beaten out MySpace and LinkedIn in terms of size. It’s in a lot of ways the anti-Facebook, in that it’s simple to use and a whole lot less annoying.

So why does it suck? Am I just cooler than everyone else, or do I just no longer have friends because I’m not cool? Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Coolness and Google+

The bald and the beautiful

Much like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we celebrate today, Rebecca Sypin of Lancaster, Calif., and friend Jane Bingham of New Jersey also have a dream.

That dream is of a “beautiful and bald” Barbie doll. Not satisfied with destroying the body images of little girls with hair, the two have launched a Facebook campaign to convince Mattell (or, less desirably, another toy company) to add a hairless Barbie to their line.

Mattell has, to date, not committed to the doll, saying they receive “hundreds of passionate requests for various dolls” and will keep their application on file. If that response sounds political, it’s probably because of a rival request from the Little Brothers of America, whose Facebook group claims that an already bald Barbie will put millions of younger siblings out of work.

Now it’s cancer rather than hair growing on palms

Okay, remember how in Back to the Future, plutonium was needed to power the DeLorean, but the Libyan terrorists wanted it back?

Now swap in tissue boxes with DeLorean and Bed, Bath & Beyond with Libyan terrorists and you’ve got this story.

A shipment of tissues box covers making their way to the California corner of Bed, Bath & Beyond (if they’ve got time, Saturday’s looking busy) were delayed in their travels. At a truck scale, the radiation sensor was set off, probably setting off tornado sirens and klaxons left and right. The box covers apparently had been coated in low levels of cobalt-60. Triple B is now offering a recall on the products.

The radiation is reportedly not too dangerous to people if they left them in their bathroom, but I have a feeling my old suitemate from college, Sploosh, might have a bad case of testicular cancer if he bought them.

This is your brain online

If you are reading this, there’s a very real possibility that you are hurting yourself.

According to a new study, if you’re addicted to the Internet, your brain could be damaged. Scientists found “abnormal” white matter in the brains of the web addicts, while those who aren’t hooked on the Series of Tubes did not. We don’t really know what that means, though, because our brains are already gone.