http://www.gravitycollapse.com from Marc's brain to yours Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:22:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today my current RSS reader of choice alerted me to an article at one of my favorite publications, the Christian Science Monitor. The title of the article says it all: "Top five greenest nations on the planet." Naturally, whenever you read something like that, your bullshit detector should be beeping and ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2010/01/consumption-counts-for-nothing I am a twitter user and a facebook user. On facebook, I have it set so that the status message is automatically pulled from my twitter stream. Recently, I've noticed that many of my tweets don't make it onto facebook. One reason I like the twitter messages going to facebook ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2010/01/facebooks-not-so-great-firewall As a quick follow-up to yesterday's somewhat rambling post on the subject: even if the government expels the company, Google won't be leaving China. Seemingly lost amidst all the windbaggery on this topic is the fact that according to Alexa, google.cn is as of this writing the #3 most-trafficked website in ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2010/01/google-wont-leave-china The Chinese expat net-o-sphere is abuzz this week with Google's challenge to the Chinese government. I've seen commentary ranging from mindless protestor-like exaltations of a company "sticking it to The Man" to the more patronizing and pragmatic "why would Google want to give up all the money they can ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2010/01/clever-pr-move-google-give-u-the-ball As an expat I don't do much driving in the U.S. these days, but in May I went back for a visit, and after a little drive through 5 states, I was reminded of a problem that needs to be addressed: civilian Ford Crown Victorias. I can't for the life of ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/08/down-with-crown-vics I was going on with a normal day, getting work done, listening to music, and now, here I am drowning my sorrows in beer and questioning the significance of my existence. I visited a site that I never visit today: Walmart. This screen capture is a portion of the site's ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/07/walmart-visit-sparks-existential-crisi McDonald's China has fairly recently launched 24-hour delivery service in Beijing, to most parts of the city. That's good news for those of us who need a dose of heart disease at 2:00 AM. Here's a portion of the flyer they've been stuffing under people's apartment doors to advertise the ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/05/puzzling-marketing-mcdonalds-china-24-hour-delivery After reading Trent Reznor's expletive-filled mini-rant about Apple's App Store approval process, which I basically agreed with, it got me to thinking: why does Apple want to be the decency police in the first place? Apparently, when you submit your app to the App Store, they have people using it and ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/05/a-suggestion-to-get-apple-out-of-the-censorship-business So, just like everyone else, I failed.  I did not stick with my resolution to post a new Mandarin word every day or two.  However, I have been making a slightly more concerted effort to improve my speaking, and hey, it's still 2009, so I can come back to it. I've ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/04/mandarin-vocab-4-%e4%b8%93%e8%be%91 I'll continue the "5 great" list with these 12" gems from the 1980s. They may not necessarily be my favorite 12" tracks of the 1980s, but these are instances where the remix of the song improves markedly on the original version. And this also means it excludes tracks ... http://www.gravitycollapse.com/2009/02/5-great-1980s-remixes-that-are-better-than-the-album-versions