18 November 2010

Righthaven Business Model Receives Serious Setback

POWER TO THE PEOPLE! 

To the blogosphere, Righhaven, LLC was a vampire!  (Then again, most lawyers and their business model are vampires).

So it is with great pleasure that I re-blog Wired's coverage of a significant blow to the grubby lawyers.  Kudos to all of those who were sued and said "I know my rights!" and didn't give into these slime buckets! 

QOTD: Fed Res Virus Blocker

While reading about the increase in the 30 year mortgage rates on Zero Hedge today, I noticed that one reader/commenter posted a link to the NY Fed's statistics page.  Another, very humors and astute commenter had this reply:
Unfortunately, my virus scanner stops me from connecting to a Federal Reserve site. It claims the website is a known fraud.
Yep, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are thinking exactly that.  So much so, that even yours truly has been tempted send the the NY Fed President's name and "about" page to their "report fraud" email address (found here). 

While the above quote and idea are rather true and humorous to us laymen, they would probably draw an eye of specter from those who control our money supply. 

Picture of the Day: Print & Spend

Thanks to the Daily Reckoning for this one, so be sure to stop over to their site and read all of their good financial insight and data. 


Food Police are Here for Your Alcoholic Energy Drinks

As usual, when there are not enough criminals, the police state will always legislate more criminals (or in this case the usurping bureaucracy will arbitrarily make a rule to regulate something).  On Tuesday, we talked about Baltimore making illegal carry a felony but now, something far worse is rearing it's ugly head.  The FDA is coming for your alcoholic energy drinks

That's right, caffeine is now being labeled an "unsafe" additive to alcoholic beverages, and the manufactures of these drinks better cough them up, else the FDA Food Nazis will come looking for them!  A rash of teenage drinking and driving (already illegal) accidents related to these alcoholic energy drinks has spurn some sort of manufactured outrage on behalf of the government overlords.  It would seem that the social ills that follow drinking are now more dangerous when the caffeine is added directly to the adult beverage.  Making drunks more awake, enables them to have more bar brawls and engage in destructive behaviors that are never associated with passed out drunks.  Oh snap, don't tell the college age kids that they will have to lay off their Jager Bombs because they are now creating an illegal and dangerous drink!

Apparently a good cup of coffee after pounding down some happy hour beers never caused a drunk to be wide awake?  Isn't this one of the first things they teach you in driver's education classes?  That, if you have been drinking, nothing but time will allow the effects of alcohol to subside?  The whole cold shower and a cup of coffee to "sober" up has been the time tested urban legend that we have all heard preached to us, yet how many bars serve coffee and stock Red Bull?  All I know is that Drew Carey would be extremely disappointed with this decision. 

Simply more unintended consequences from micromanaging as John Lott points out.  I have to wonder what Mike W. will say over at Another Gun Blog, since he is the resident beer blogger of the mid-Atlantic.  I wonder how this will impact producers of craft beers that tend to mix coffee malts into their brew kettles? 

You can have my SPARKS when you pry it from my cold dead, tall and frosty, hands!