So SS -- Social Services, that is -- is coming after us and threatening we may lose our benefits, because of some "pension account" they think we may have at some unspecified bank. We're telling them, "Sure, by all means investigate this. We're 99.9% certain you're mistaken, but if you should happen to find such an account in one or the other of our names, please tell us about it, because we could really use some extra financial resources."
April 11th, 2004
Germany is preparing to start making life hard for spammers ... and that's as in hard time. A new draft law features heavy fines for both spammers and companies that use their services, with prison terms for the worst offenders.
( Other stuff at home and abroad ... )Update:
Fixed a missing link in the last story.
Car & Driver had the following comment on the Volvo YCC concept car:
"Here is a car -- the letters stand for Your Concept Car -- designed and developed by an all-female team to cater to women. The starting point is a neat coupe. Gullwing doors are obviously not the most practical of ideas, even if they are a good way of showcasing the car's features. Those include such things as a system to help the gals with parallel parking, a fixed hood with the windshield-washer filler on the outside, a storage compartment for a handbag, washable seat cushions with an embroidered floral design, and headrests that are scooped out to more readily accept a ponytail. You don't think anyone would find these features patronizing had a man designed the car, do you?"
(Emphasis on the last sentence mine. And actually, I expect the Berserkeley radfems, should the YCC come to their attention, to excoriate the designers as gleefully as they'd excoriate men who'd designed the same car, if not more so. After all, not only are they patronizing women and "promulgating derogatory stereotypes about women" by coming up with such design features, but by having the effrontery to dare design a car, they're acting like those hated men, and by designing those features for themselves, they're "buying into the misogynistic male-oriented power imbalance that oppresses women and treats them as inferiors," yadda, yadda, yadda.)
In other news from the same Chicago Auto Show, Fabrizio Guigiaro has designed a concept sports car for Toyota using the gasoline-electric powertrain and four-wheel drive from the Lexus RX Hybrid. The carbon-fiber car, named the Alessandro Volta after the inventor of the battery, has three-abreast seating with drive-by-wire controls which can be positioned for a left, right or center driver, and is estimated to do 0-60 in under four seconds and reach 155mph, while averaging 33mpg. Sounds good to me.
And to end up with the weird category, Rinspeed of Switzerland showed off a 120mph amphibious roadster powered by a turbocharged 750cc Polaris snowmobile engine, running on natural gas to develop 140hp. But wait, there's more! Get it into four feet or more of water and it becomes a hydrofoil! ("I swear I'm not making this up." -- Dave Barry)