URLs du Jour

2008-02-20

  • Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: the frog from Hell.

  • I try to remember to capitalize Hell. "Because it's a place. Like Scarsdale."

  • One relatively fresh kind of Hell is the Security Question. Josh Levin wrote an excellent Slate article a few weeks back on the topic.

    Verizon wants to know my favorite ice cream flavor, Google's got designs on my library card number, and Wachovia needs my favorite all-time entertainer. Yahoo! is asking where I met my spouse, and Bank of America wants the details of the honeymoon. Like those squiggly pictures of letters and numbers, weird personal questions have become ubiquitous totems of online security. If you tell the bank your favorite grade-school teacher or cartoon character, the thinking goes, it'll be easy to confirm your identify when you misplace your account number. This thinking is dumb.

    Go read to find out why it's dumb. Alternatively, you can read Lore Sjöberg's take on the matter here here. "It's funny because it's true."

  • And, speaking about funny-but-true things, Jim Geraghty transcribes a bit of Michelle Obama's speech:
    Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
    Jim asks: "Does anybody on the left side of the aisle find this rhetoric a little creepy?" I'm not on that side, but, yeah.

    I'm not sure why, but it also reminds me a bit of the ad for Happy Fun Ball.

    Yes, it's Happy Fun Ball! The toy sensation that's sweeping the nation! Only $14.95 at participating stores! Get one today!

    Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.

    Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.

    Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.

    Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.

    Exercise for the reader: interchange "Barack Obama" and "Happy Fun Ball". Those of you who wish to play it the hard way, stand upside down with your head in a bucket of piranha fish.