Friday, May 2, 2014

1.        Walmart has announced it will start offering auto insurance.  ***   Coverage and rates will be competitive with other providers, but to file a claim you have to go to China.

2.        Researchers at IBM have developed a new computer named “Debater” that can argue.   ***   It’s very powerful, but every day they have to convince it to turn on.

3.        Today is “National Honesty Day.”  ***  Actually, it was Monday, but since it’s not today, I can say it is.

4.        Al Feldstein, the man who catapulted Mad magazine into an icon of pop culture, has died at the age of 88.  ***  But Mad magazine is no longer the leader in published cynicism, satire and slapstick.  For that, we now have the Congressional Record.

5.        In a speech to the National Rifle Association, Sarah Palin said that if she were president she would baptize terrorists by waterboarding them.  ***   However, she said their godparents could attend and afterwards there would be a nice cake and ice cream reception.

6.        More than 100 attendees at a food safety summit in Maryland came down with food poisoning.  ***  We haven’t seen that kind of irony since 100 women got pregnant at a Planned Parenthood convention.

7.        Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda has been suspended for ten games for using a foreign substance to help him grip the ball better.  ***  Apparently the illegal use of sticky material is fairly common, but you know things are getting out of hand when the umpire has to send a Haz-Mat truck to the mound.

8.        After Paul Simon and his wife were each given a misdemeanor summons for domestic violence, they separated by one of them leaving the courtroom first and going to a different location.   ***  OK, that makes 51 ways.

9.        A new machine called the “Pothole Killer” can be operated by one man and can fill a pothole with special patching material in 2 minutes.  Doing it the old way, it would take four workers to fill a pothole.  ***  Or maybe five if they were small and the hole was deep.

10.     Because some specialized Lego sets now cost several hundred dollars, an entrepreneur in California has started a Netflix-type business that lets you rent a set.  ***  And for an extra fee, they’ll also mail you a kid to assemble it.