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For the past several days I have been suffering from a cold and cough.

Until now, I figured some rest and soup was all I would need. But now I am concerned that I may be on my death bed.

According to this CNN headline, “Brown had been suffering from cold, cough” , I may be much worse off than I thought.

Jesus, I am dying…  Why……

Oh, wait, the lead sentence states that James Brown “had been sick for months”. And further, “The cause of death was congestive heart failure related to pneumonia, according to Brown’s professional manager, Frank Copsidas.”

Whew.

So, now the only mystery is why CNN’s story was titled “Brown had been suffering from cold, cough”.

Millions of Americans apparently are not about to die, but merely have a cold and cough. If, however, you have been sick for months, have heart problems, pneumonia, and a cold and cough, see your doctor immediately.

So, you think that you are cool cuz you own a MacBook Pro? Well, there is a lot more to cool than just owning the right machine, you gotta look the part.

The folks over at Life Clever will help with that. They’ll even tell you where to shop and the total look will only set you back about $160.00. And since you just laid out over $2,500 on your laptop, this makes more than just fashion sense.

Designer Andy Spade must be getting pretty desperate to sell his Jack Spade bags.
From the Cool Hunting website comes word that Jack Spade is selling Frog Dissection kits in its New York store.

Finally a reason, other than a laptop, for carrying a man purse.

Don’t get me wrong, I have long carried a messenger bag and more recently a laptop/messenger bag. But, I don’t need a dead frog to justify it. But then again it would definitely justify my man purse.

Not only can it loosen you up a little before you head home, it can also lead to greater wealth:

People who consume alcohol earn significantly more at their jobs than non-drinkers, according to a US study that highlighted “social capital” gained from drinking.

The study published in the Journal of Labor Research Thursday concluded that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than teetotalers, and that men who drink socially bring home an additional seven percent in pay.

“Social drinking builds social capital,” said Edward Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University and co-author of the study with fellow researcher Bethany Peters.

…

The researchers found some differences in the economic effects of drinking among men and women. They concluded that men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than non-drinkers. link.

So I’ve got to wonder now if that extremely small percentage of the population that is getting most of the benefits from our nation’s economic growth over the past dozen years or so are all hanging out at the same exclusive bars laughing their asses off at the rest of us.

This past spring I found my new favorite men’s clothing line, Trovata.

I was first drawn to the cut and color of my first piece. But upon finding this letter stitched inside my shirt, I fell in love with the line. Each season brings a new line of clothing combined with a new fictional story which is literally woven into the clothing (more information in the links that follow).

I was able to obtain two additional pieces this past spring (my lucky B-Day shirt and a great T-shirt). Both of these shirts get comments on a regular basis. Check out the details in my B-Day shirt. In the t-shirt which reads “Archaeology – Dig it”, I have had Archaeology graduates stop me to discuss rocks (yeah, I like rocks too…) and outside the PCC a woman laughed and yelled at me across the parking lot that ‘Ross’ on Friends would have loved that shirt (yeah, he was a real person…).

This past week I also grabbed me a new corduroy jacket. I love this stuff. Their spring 2007 line has just been announced and looks to be quite fun.

The Southern California company is only a few years old, but is making quite a name for itself. Last fall it won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund top prize in New York.

New York magazine covers the Spring 2007 Fashion Week and has more on the label here.

Stephanie Rogers has a great post about the history of Trovata here and she gives a nod to a brief PSFK post.

In Seattle, Trovata clothing can be had at Barney’s downtown and Blackbird in Ballard. I like both stores, but really have to encourage everyone to check out Blackbird. It is a great store. Outside of Seattle check out Revolve Clothing online.

Every time I fly, I find myself annoyed by the preflight announcements. As they rattle on over the PA “…In the event of a water landing…” I want to interject “We will all die!”, but I never say it, don’t wanna jinx the flight. Instead I look at the illustrated safety card and think that about how ridiculous the illustrations are. The guy over at airtoons.com has come up with his own illustrations for the cards.

Today I came across this post on Boing Boing and it made me chuckle. The post is a summary of the original piece in the Economist speculating on what a truthful announcement would be like.

Highlights include:

The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits are makes a dramatic difference to your chances of survival if we have to evacuate the aircraft.

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero.

Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it.

Please consume alcohol in moderate quantities so that you become mildly sedated but not rowdy. That said, we can always turn the cabin air-quality down a notch or two to help ensure that you are sufficiently drowsy.

But unfortunately, the airlines know better than to scare the flying public like that. Instead we all sit there half-listening, looking at SkyMall magazine wondering who in the world buys that stuff.

Karma does in fact have a strange way of working itself out.

This example comes in the form of last weekend’s Quadrangle Festival in Texarkana Texas where dying pigeons fell from the sky, dampening the mood at the festival.

According to news reports, the pigeons were poisoned by the downtown branch of Capital One in an attempt at nuissance control. So, when the birds began to fall from the sky at this Capital One sponsored event, Capital One found itself with some explaining to do.

Of course, Capital One didn’t do this on their own, they hired out the dirty work to a pest control company. In response to questions about the poisioning, Jarrod Horton, president of Anti-Pest Co. stated that “…unfortunately sometimes the side effects are the birds might have convulsions or the birds might die…”.

Really, you think so?!?

Here are some fetival patron quotes from the Texarkana Gazette article:

“What is this telling our kids? If we killed them (animals), we would get a ticket or a fine. We raise our kids to protect these animals and they come and poison them,” said Martin. “What other animals could they kill in the process of doing this?”

“I saw the pigeon nose dive the concrete,” Flanagan said. “It just kind of hobbled over and around and sat there and twitched.”

Another man at the festival, who declined to give his name, said, “They threw a dead one over there in the bushes (along the wall across from the front of the Perot). They’re just flying around here and falling out of the sky.”

I am shocked that such little value is placed on life, but am encouraged by the fact that these innocent little guys used their last breath to rain on Capital One’s ‘parade’.

I encourage you to let Capital One know how you feel about animal cruelty and the poisoning of pigeons.

Their information is:

Capital One
Downtown – Texarkana
100 West Broad Street
Texarkana, TX 75501
(903) 838-2000

I came across an interesting link today on the WhatReallyHappened website. I came across this link to a YouTube video that’s a nice reminder of my own existence.

[youtube]a15KgyXBX24[/youtube]

(Thanks to Viper’s Video Quicktags for the plugin to post videos.)

I went jogging yesterday around Green Lake with my iPod Shuffle and my faithful companion Lucy (seen below reading about Paris).

While jogging I began to reflect upon the shuffle’s size and design. The Shuffle fits nicely in the palm of my hand with the controls beneath my thumb. Without breaking stride I could crank up the volume, skip a song or stop the music all together. (When jogging with a dog on a crowded path any and all of these may be required.)

Today I was over at the Apple website and wouldn’t you know it, a new iPod Shuffle. Has Apple finally exceeded customer utility? This totally reminds me of this sketch I saw last fall on SNL, in which Steve Jobs introduces several new models as each one becomes obsolete.

While I have yet to see the new shuffle in person, this Apple image indicates to me that it may in fact be TOO SMALL. I for one think that the original iPod Shuffle was just the right size and design. I won’t even get into the new versions’ lack of a USB port for use as a USB flash drive…

Apple made several other announcements today, including the ability to download movies via iTunes and new versions of the other models of Ipods.

Additionally, there was mention of an item code name iTV. Now this is an item that will either be huge or totally ‘Newton’. Anyhow, Apple is making the bold attempt to bridge the gap between the pc and the home entertainment center. Should anyone be able to successfully crack this nut, it would be huge.

On Monday The New York Times reported this:

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity – the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards – has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

…

For most of the last century, wages and productivity – the key measure of the economy’s efficiency – have risen together, increasing rapidly through the 1950’s and 60’s and far more slowly in the 1970’s and 80’s.

But in recent years, the productivity gains have continued while the pay increases have not kept up. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Benefits accounted for most of the increase.

“If I had to sum it up,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the institute, “it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.”

…

In 2004, the top 1 percent of earners – a group that includes many chief executives – received 11.2 percent of all wage income, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than 6 percent three decades ago, according to Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists who analyzed the tax data.

And on Wednesday, The New York Times reports:

The nation’s median household income rose slightly faster than inflation last year for the first time in six years, the Census Bureau reported yesterday.

The rise, however, had little to do with bigger paychecks – in fact, both men and women earned less in 2005 than 2004. Rather, census officials said, more family members were taking jobs to make ends meet, and some people made more money from investments and other sources beyond wages.

…

The small uptick in median household income reported yesterday, 1.1 percent, was not enough to offset a longer-term drop in median household income – the annual income at which half of the country’s households make more and half make less.

That figure fell 5.9 percent between the 2000 census and 2005, to $46,242 from $49,133, according to an analysis of the data conducted for The New York Times by the sociology department of Queens College. The difference was so sharp, in part, because the 2000 census measured 1999 income, which was at the height of the dot-com bubble.

…

The new data also showed continuing erosion in the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance. In 2005, an estimated 46.6 million people had no coverage, up 1.3 million since 2004 and increasing the percentage of Americans without health coverage from 15.6 percent of the population to 15.9 percent.

After recent decreases in the numbers of children without health insurance, this year’s data found that their numbers grew between 2004 and 2005, rising from 10.8 percent of those under 18 to 11.2 percent.

Republicans were very pleased with these numbers.  Why?  Because their plan is working.  The figures cited in these two articles show that they have successfully shifted much of the nation’s income from the lower and middle classes to the upper classes.

Corporate profits are up!  Taxes on dividends and capital gains are down!  Hooray for the super rich!  They can hire the proletariat to cater to their wants and desires.   And that’s good, because those extra jobs increases household income by getting more people in each household to work for less money.

There’s a name for this type of government:  Fascism. 

The working class fought against fascism during the Roosevelt years and made solid gains.  Now it seems that we must fight the same battles all over again.