I was just reading Kung Fu Monkey and found Lunch Discussions #213: Canaries and Meth. One of the funniest things I've read in a while.

Malcom Gladwell -- not just some random guy, but a respected author/writer -- just weighed in on the Harvard student plagiarism issue. It's been in the news again and again, and I've wondered what the big deal is. In Viswanathan-gate, Gladwell does a great job of putting things in perspective.

Let me get this straight. Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarizes a series of passages from Megan McCafferty's teen novels  "Sloppy Seconds" and "Second Helpings" for her debut novel: "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." After the story breaks, McCafferty's publisher starts huffing and puffing and threatening legal action, Viswanathan apologizes and goes on the Today show, her publisher Little Brown (which is incidentally my publisher too) withdraws her book from the market, Harvard launches an "investigation" and Viswanathan gets pummeled by a hundred angry columnists, pundits and bloggers.

Can someone tell me why? This is teen-literature. It's genre fiction. These are novels based on novels based on novels, in which every convention of character and plot has been trotted out a thousand times before.

[Read the remainder of his article here]

Prior to Drew's death, I had never lost anyone close. Of course I've known people who have died, but I never found myself counting the days or weeks since they were gone. The nearest was the death of my grandparents. They passed away years ago, and it was more or less "now you see 'em, now you don't". What I mean is that on a personal level, it just didn't matter that much. It was sad, for sure, and I'll never forget my grandmother's funeral where I was asked to bury her ashes (man was that creepy, holding that heavy box). But when you lose somebody, the less involved you were in each others lives, the less it matters when they're gone. (And of course it doesn't have to be mutual involvement, which is what makes it possible for so many people to feel sad when a movie star/musician/etc dies). That's what made it so hard for me when Drew died. He was much more than a friend. I feel like I lost a brother.

To nobody's suprise, the days and weeks and months continue to tick by. But now I'm marking time, and thinking about him. We're well beyond two months at this point, and things do seem different to me. It's rather depressing to realize, but sometimes it takes an awful experience like this to put your life in perspective and help you realize what's important.

A bunch of us talked about that at Drew's funeral, how great it was to put the silly details of our busy lives aside and spend a tiny bit of time together. But we don't do that on a regular basis, and it's a hard habit to break. Even more relevant is Drew's own crusade against apathy and hard habits. I can rarely remember him saying something like, "blah, I just don't feel like doing that". With him, the emphasis was on what he wanted to do, not what he didn't want to do. Maybe it was simply how he communicated his opinions, but it always came off to me like he was somehow immune to the apathy that cripples everyone else.

So as time keeps passing and our lives move forward, that's what seems to stick with me. Do what you want to do, and don't do what you don't want to do (unless it's for someone you know or care about, and then maybe you should go ahead and do it just to be nice). Life is what it is, so do what you can to make it enjoyable.

Complete with screenshots and a good amount of detail, Paul Thurrott discusses the latest test version of Windows Vista in Windows Vista February 2006 CTP (Build 5308/5342) Review, Part 5: Where Vista Fails. Having recently written about Vista myself, I was interested to see what he had to say.

He seems like a bit of a Microsoft fanboy, which makes it hit harder as he goes on to explain in detail why Microsoft "failed with Vista". In the end, he summarizes Vista as "a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates".

Ouch.

Tom Cruise has confirmed that he is a lunatic.

"I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there."

I cannot imagine anything nastier than eating that stuff. Ewwwww...

The news headlines crack me up:
Cruise: I will eat the placenta
Tom's Placenta Snack
Cruise to eat nutritious placenta
Cruise: I'll eat my baby's placenta

It really irks me when writers get up on their pedestal to make a contrived or weak point. (Didn't have anything interesting to say in your editorial this week? Better come up with something!) A good (but made-up) example would be blaming a vegetarian restaurant for the absence of meat in their entrees. In The mystery of the "short" cappuccino, Tim Harford argues that we should be upset with Starbucks for "hiding" product choices that are a better value for the consumer (specifically, cappuccino), and he goes on and on about it, as though to rile us up against Starbucks.

At issue is the unadvertised availability of a smaller, more traditional sized cappuccino. He argues that this smaller size is better, even going so far as to cite the World Barista Championship rules. This smaller cappuccino, which is not among the cappuccinos listed on the product board (so it must be requested by the customer), contains less milk foam (thereby increasing the taste), the same amount of espresso as the 12-ounce size (1 shot, so equivalent caffeine buzz), but costs you $0.30 less. Because Starbucks offers this drink at a cheaper price, but does so only by request, we should be angry.

To start with, Tim cites the World Barista Championship rules, and points out that Starbucks' smallest listed cappuccino product size does not comply with the rules. Reality check: How long did he have to go hunting to find that the WBC even existed, let alone that they had specific rules for a cappuccino? Does he have any data to show that Starbucks customers know about the rules, or that they even care? I submit that Starbucks customers do not care about the rules (or even know that they exist), and I expect that none of them has any idea about what constitutes a "traditional cappuccino". Go look at the menu at any Starbucks and count the number of completely invented, made-up coffee (and sometimes non-coffee) drinks on the menu. There are many. If Starbucks customers cared about rules or traditional drinks, they would not throw their money at the latest coffee invention from Starbucks. Any visit to Starbucks proves that customers are quite likely to order something extremely non-traditional.

Another aspect of his argument is that we should somehow be offended for spending the extra $0.30 on milk foam, as the additional 4 ounces is not espresso but rather more milk. To this, I ask, are you perfectly happy spending $2.35 on the traditional, 8-ounce cappuccino, which is nothing more than a smaller quantity of espresso and milk foam? What are the actual costs of coffee and milk that go into making that $2.35 cappuccino? Who says that $2.35 is a fair price for an 8-ounce, but $2.65 is not? Reality check: All prices at Starbucks are inflated, and by far exceed the cost of ingredients. In general, this applies to all coffee shops on the planet, and all restaurants and bars, too. It is always cheaper to buy the ingredients yourself, whether it is coffee beans, milk, sandwich meat, or whiskey. If you are a customer with a complaint about drink prices at Starbucks, you should:
a) only order a double espresso from now on (it's the best caffeine value for your dollar at $1.75), or
b) avoid all coffee shops, permanently, and make your own coffee drinks at home.

If you do not choose one of the above, you must recognize that you have no grounds to stand on when complaining about product value for anything sold at Starbucks. If you feel that $2.35 is a reasonable value, but $2.65 is not, you are insane. All of their prices are inflated beyond the value of the actual ingredients. None of it is a good value. Get over it.

Lastly, it is important to point out that the perceived value of a cappuccino (or any other drink) for any coffee shop customer is not defined by the championship rules or traditional style, but is determined by the customer who consumes the drink. One simple argument in favor of a larger sized cappuccino might be that you get more hot drink stuff to consume, so it will last longer. Tim may be correct that the taste quality of a larger size is not traditional, but his value criteria are not the same as Starbucks customers. Starbucks customers are in general untraditional, as is much of the Starbucks beverage menu. Flaming Starbucks for offering non-traditional beverages is about as silly as flaming a vegetarian restaurant for not serving you a steak. If you don't like the products, go somewhere else.

The bottom line is this: If there is a market for Starbucks to sell their products at the prices they choose, you have no say about it beyond keeping your own money in your pocket. Making claims about product value from any retail food or beverage establishment is just silly. It's even sillier when you're talking about Starbucks.

Rented Alex & Emma over the weekend, and didn't get more than 20 minutes into the film before ejecting it. Dumb plot and absolutely terrible acting.

I give this movie a -338 out of 5 stars.

Last week, there was talk of Motive's stock being delisted from Nasdaq (Motive may be delisted).

On Monday, it happened (Motive being delisted by Nasdaq).

According to the articles above, Motive was delisted because they could not comply with the SEC's filing deadlines, due to the company's decision to restate financial records all the way back to 2001.

Alfred Mockett, the new CEO, said:

"The restatements are not a reflection on our core business or strategic vision, but an indication of our commitment to address past accounting issues, correct them, and put them definitively behind us."

Is that a true statement? I don't know. Could be. But maybe not.

In fact, there's a realistic chance that Motive is on a permanent, unalterable downhill slide, and he was brought in as the fall guy. I hope they're paying him a lot of money, because it will be difficult to find a new job when your last position was standing at the helm of a company that went straight into the toilet. That will never look good on your resume, no matter how you spin it.

Motive stock is now trading on Pink Sheets for about $3/share. Latest price info here: http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=motv

I just placed a Kraftwerk reference in a suprising source - Jay-Z's (Always Be My) Sunshine. It's not a direct sample, but is extremely similar to Kraftwerk's The Man Machine, most noticeable right at the end (at 3m49s).

I don't think I would have come up with mixing rap with German techno-pop, but the result is good.

A few choice tidbits from Extensive Cell Phone Use Linked To Brain Tumors:

... if you spend many years using your cell phone for at least an hour a day your risk of developing a brain tumor is 240% higher than a person who never uses one. ... even the location of the tumor tends to be on the side of the head where the phone is used.