Sara Jane Olson rearrested

You think she should have let the answer machine take the call at home?

The Death of TV?

Wall Street Journal reports:
Could television be the next industry to become Internet roadkill? Online video has been a hit. Americans watched more than 300 million videos on Google's YouTube in December alone, and the amount of time spent watching video online grew 34% last year.

Blackberries picked apart

Years ago when the Day Planner was invented by someone in his garage, everybody had to have one. Suddenly, a business meeting couldn't happen without everyone dropping their Day Planners (or copies) on the conference room table. When the meeting was about to end, everybody scribbled in their calendar the date of the next meeting.

Today, Day Planners are out and in are Blackberries and Palm Pilots. Since these devices allow their owners to get email, they are great for something to do when you have nobody to talk to like in an elevator or in a restaurant when dining alone.

So does everybody who ownes a Blackberry or Palm Pilot really need one? Are we all really that busy that we can't wait to get to our computers to get our email?

Back to the Day Planner. When the phenomenon hit, a psychologist wrote that Day Planners were used more to make people feel important and busy, rather than because they were important and busy.

I submit the same holds true with this electronic devices. People want to look and feel important so they carry Blackberries around, checking email, hoping people notice. The email they are reading, most probably, is spam.

So next time you see some guy with his nose in his Blackberry, know that he is not reading a critical message about a great business deal he just closed. Rather, he is probably reading an email about a new medication that will give him a larger penis.

Maybe that is more important.

By the way, I have a Palm Pilot, but with the email function disabled.