PSoTD

From eBay:

Hurricane Katrina New Orleans Domains NOReliefFund.com

10% of selling price donated to American Red Cross! NR

Starting bid: US $1,000.00

Wow, a whole 10% on a $1000 plus domain! And the domain cost you what, $10 to register?

Network for Good has the links for Katrina disaster relief donations.

Funny how things change. From Napa News:

The annual Burning Man counterculture festival kicks off Monday on the northern Nevada desert -- and some Reno businesses could not be happier.

Recognizing the economic opportunity generated by the offbeat event, more hotel-casinos and other businesses are warming up to Burning Man buffs by offering special deals.

More than 35,000 people, many from the San Francisco Bay area, are expected to attend the weeklong gathering leading up to Labor Day on the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno.

"It blows my mind that in the last five years the businesses in Reno have turned around and embraced us," festival spokeswoman Marian Goodell told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Last year, the Golden Phoenix Hotel Casino & Resort became the first Reno resort to directly advertise to "burners" and offer special room rates.

The Golden Phoenix is offering special rates of $29, up from $19.95 last year. Participants only need mention they are with the event to get the deal.

The Reno Ramada also is offering special rates: $26, compared with the usual rate of $69. But burners must make reservations for post-event stays ahead of time.

Twin City Surplus in Reno is running a television advertising campaign targeting participants who need camping gear for the desert gathering.

Dozens of other businesses -- from grocery stores to gas stations -- have created links on the Burning Man Web site listing themselves as "burner friendly."

It may be a locking gas cap.

It's not about food or water or gasoline or such staples today. But it seems somewhat ominous about the American mood...

Va. Laptop Sale Turns Into a Stampede

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

"This is total, total chaos," said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare.

Some other comments around the blogworld about this event:

Radical Hapa: There has been a lot of talk over the years about the technology gap between rich and poor... Microsoft take note please.

The Republic of T: I almost considered going to one of these "iBook for $50" sales that was going on in my area last week... Now I’m kinda glad I didn’t, because apparently these things are not pretty.

The Eclectic Econoclast: When the price mechanism is not used to ration scarce goods, other rationing devices must be used. Some of the criteria include:

* Strength. Stronger people or countries muscle out the weaker ones. * Queuing. First-come, first-served -- but it requires some enforcement. * Privilege. Those who know the right person or live in the right place benefit.

YesButNoButYes has a few photos.

The problem with this, of course, is that humanity can't improve how it treats the planet until a major industry decides it is to their immediate benefit.

From Insurance Journal:

The insurance industry's share of the world's total economic losses from weather-related catastrophes is rising and 60 percent of these weather-related losses are attributable to small events as distinct from headline-catching catastrophes, according to a scientist who has studied the issue for decades.

The insured share of weather-related losses that was a negligible fraction in the 1950s has increased to 25 percent in the last decade, reports Evan Mills, a scientist in the environmental energy technologies division in the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Mills found that from 1980 through 2004, the global economic costs of weather-related events totaled $1.4 trillion (inflation-corrected), of which $340 billion was insured.

"To put the burden of these costs on insurers in perspective, recent average annual losses surpass those experienced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States," he notes.

And the good news?

"The good news is that the insurance industry has played a valuable historical role in loss prevention," says Mills. "Insurance companies were founders of the first fire departments, building codes, and auto safety testing protocols. But the role they will play in climate change mitigation and adaptation remains to be seen."

Mills' Science article documents innovative steps being taken by some insurers. Recognizing that insurance is a tool that helps society adjust to change, risk and economic loss, Mills believes that insurers have a significant opportunity to become more engaged with the science of predicting the potential impacts of climate change, for example, by coupling their existing "catastrophe models" with climate models.

"It's important that insurers, their regulators, and the policy community develop a better grasp of the physical and business risks from climate change," Mills says. "The most effective solutions will require public-private partnerships."

Yesterday:

As it has in the past, the Senate should reject permanent repeal of the estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth. It should reaffirm the policy of the nation since 1916: The estate tax is a fair way to tax heirs who receive millions of dollars in wealth they did not create.

From DMNews.com:

With a title like "Suicide Prevention: Let's Not Kill the List Industry," few marketers could resist a panel discussion on privacy at yesterday's Direct Marketing Association List Vision 2005 conference at the Marriott Marquis.

"We list people are afraid," said Harriet Heyman, vice president and senior strategic consultant at Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing and chair of the DMA Ethics Committee. "Our universes are shrinking, consumers are opting out, public data is being threatened — but if we alleviate consumer fears, ours will go away, too."

What consumer fears are they talking about? Theft of identity information from such databases? Constant spamming?

Good luck with that. Me? I'm all for individual ownership - and complete management of rights - of one's own consumer/personal information.

Anyway I look at it, Blockbuster (the video rental chain) sure seems like a doomed enterprise.

From Mail and Guardian:

Suicide theme park proposed for Hong Kong island

A Hong Kong official said one of the territory's tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot, a media report said on Tuesday.

The morbid suggestion to create a ghost-town attraction where guests were dared to spend the night in "haunted flats" came at a meeting of local leaders on little Cheung Chau island.

Councillor Lam Kit-sing said the island should capitalise on the grisly reputation of one of its holiday homes, where 20 people have taken their lives in the past eight years. Another five people attempted suicide there.

Lam believes the macabre park could be an added attraction for the millions of people expected in the city when Hong Kong Disneyland opens in September.

"A dirty spot yesterday will be an attraction tomorrow," he was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post.

"This is innovative and has a selling point."

The proposal received little support from fellow councillors, the paper said. - Sapa-AFP

First of all, God speed, Peter Jennings.

There are now 60 items on eBay posted relating to Peter Jennings. 41 have been posted in the past 24 hours.

Two for one in the same article...

Richard Chashoudian started handling dogs when he was 17, but realized fairly quickly he couldn't earn a living that way, so he turned to judging dog shows. Along the way to becoming an expert in judging terrier breeds, he carved out another sideline: Dog sculptor.

After 30 years working on making bronze figures of champion dogs, he's taken a commission on an ambitious project. He's sculpting a life-sized bronze of one of President Bush's dogs, Barney, a Scottish terrier.

I thought this was silly, but that was nothing compared to the next plum, because this sculpture is going to be a prize piece at...

The Presidential Pet Museum has a temporary home outside Washington, D.C., but the Presidential Pet Museum Association is working to open a multimillion dollar museum in downtown Washington. The museum focuses on the relationships that many presidents have had with their pets.

Modern first pets such as the Clintons' cat, Socks; Caroline Kennedy's pony, Macaroni; and the Nixons' dog, Checkers, have often been in the spotlight. The Presidential Pet Museum documents other less famous White House animals.

MULTIMILLION DOLLAR PRESIDENTIAL PET MUSEUM?

Any wonder why people think Washington DC is out of touch?

Whenever someone dies, or is near death, the sale of items on eBay relating to that person jacks up. And so, now we see the promotion of items relating to one Saddam Hussein trumpeting his future death as they try to sell items, such as...

Saddam Hussein autograph signature signed document

(Marketing pitch: Saddam will be on trial soon... then he will be DEAD!)

You have to wonder who is bidding on some of this stuff..

IRAQ/IRAQI REPUBLICAN GUARD OFFICER UNIFORM SADDAM ERA

Iraq military Towed Artillery License Plate Saddam Era

Iraq Police Uniform Shoulder Rank Set Saddam IP / Army

Considering that people are still dying in high numbers in Iraq due to a war ostensibly because he was in power, it's a little ghoulish that there's so much eBay trade depending on Saddam Hussein's "brand value" (422 items at this count). But capitalism knows few boundaries...

Who buys $8 a roll toilet paper?

There may be more to this than it sounds, but it sure seems like Florida's public universities are using September 11th as an excuse...

Out-of-State Enrollment at Florida Universities Decreases as Tuition Rises

During the past three years, enrollment of out-of-state students at Florida’s public universities has dropped nearly 13 percent, reports The Palm Beach Post.

The tuition money lost from those students, estimated at 18.6 million, supplements Florida’s low costs for in-state students.

Officials attribute the drop in out-of-state students to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and stricter visa policies as well as the state’s high nonresident tuition costs. Florida’s out-of-state tuition and fees were the highest in the nation last year—$15,540 a year. The national average for nonresident tuition and fees at public universities is $11,351.

I'm sure 9-11 had a small impact on out-of-state registrations in Florida. But publicly attributing it to this drop in tuition money is both an excuse and a subtle nudge for victimhood status for Florida's public universities. If they lowered their out-of-state tuition, would such enrollments go up and the tuition money increase from this population? They should find out, and quit blaming 9-11.

and the fourth best retirement place in the world, according to this article.

Hey, it's a new month, time for a Benny Hinn update:

A representative for Benny Hinn Ministries has confirmed a report in The Dallas Morning News that the Internal Revenue Service is investigating the televangelist's organization. Critics of Hinn have alleged he improperly profits from a ministry that doesn't meet the IRS definition of a church. Hinn's organization is estimated to raise more than $100 million a year. According to documents given to the News by Trinity Foundation, a watchdog group, Hinn's personal annual earnings were listed at $1,325,000.

Somehow, I'm not surprised. A few posts from the blogvironment:

P! has a must-read post.

The article examines the history of corporate personhood and "corporatism", which I happen to think is the most important (yeah, you read that right) issue in the world. All those people dying of AIDS and starvation in Africa; bombs on the subways, riots and resurgent socialism in South America, the retrenchment of human rights and freedom everywhere, the capture and control by gansters and criminals of the government of the United States . . . corporate personhood and corporatism are at the root.

Please read it.