So my lovely finance Stacia went a bridal show here in NYC a couple weeks ago. I missed out on all the “fun”, but apparently Stacia is the luckiest person on the face of the earth. She seems to have “won” virtually every drawing she put her name into… from free waxing to vacation getaways, she has probably been getting a call every other day from someone telling her that she won a contest. Amazingly, our friend Mandy who went with her also seems to have won all the same contests. Funny how that works.
Anyways, today’s call came from 21st Century Today’s Bride. They told Stacia that she won 2 nights and 3 days at a hotel from a choice of hotels, a $500 gift certificate, and the ability to purchase goods from their website for “up to 50% off”. All we had to do was go to a presentation at a hotel out by Laguardia airport about some cutlery. What a bargain right!
Well, of course 2 seconds of looking around the internet came up with this post from Ryan Cragun’s Blog describing how this is in fact a scam. I guess that the hotel stay is actually a timeshare thing (even though the lady on the phone assured us it was not), the $500 is for a scam site where everything is super overpriced, with shipping costing just as much as the items, and the cutlery that we can buy from them is overpriced and of poor quality. This is all according to the comments from Ryan’s post.
So thanks internet & Ryan for saving Stacia and I an afternoon out by the airport!
In honor of Ryan here is one of my favorite clips from Mr. Show:
Ever wonder how Wal-Mart can do so many terrible things yet always seems to come out relatively unscathed? You can thank the spin machine that their PR company for that. I just read an excellent article in the New Yorker about Wal-Mart and spin.
I just got through watching “An Inconvenient Truth” for the first time. If this movie is not a call to action on climate change I don’t know what is. If you have not seen it, do yourself and the world a favor and take 2 hours out of your day to watch it. Once you have here are some good places to go to start doing something about the problem of global warming:
I just got through watching this movie and I am MAD! For those who don’t know, Who Killed the Electric Car is a documentary about why it was that the all electric car was developed and deployed and subsequently destroyed by the major car companies. The short version of the story is that California passed a law mandating a certain percentage of cars sold in California be zero emission at certain dates. The car companies complied and developed these cars, but at the same time they fought the legislation. As soon as they were successful at turning over the ruling, they took back the cars they had produced (and were leasing to customers) and CRUSHED THEM. Watching the callousness in the way the car companies essentially rooted against their own product is astounding. Taking cars off the road that work perfectly and destroying them so that no one would know about them is just about the most heartless, cold thing I have ever seen.
For a better synopsis of the issues than I can give, please check out the Plug in America. I am as big a fan of anyone for developing a hydrogen based economy, but this movie makes the point (and rather well I might add) that electric vehicles can work NOW. A hydrogen based economy needs a massive infrastructure to be built before we can even begin to have one… battery based electric vehicles require NO additional infrastructure and can boost fuel economies to over 100 mpg right now. The movie deals with all this and more and will make you want to go out there and change the world!
On Wednesday March 21st Al Gore will be going in front of both houses of congress to testify to the urgent need for action on global warming. He wants to get as many people to sign a “postcard” to congress to let them know that the people want action. His goal is half a million signatures by Wednesday morning (and it looks like he’ll make it). You can do your part right now and signing his pledge…your note will be sent to your representatives in congress. Global warming effects us all (hence the global part)…do part of your part right now and go sign Al’s letter!
