:: meanders ::

:: The Curmudgeon Waves Hello
The Curmudgeon can hardly contain herself over the cynicism the market can reflect. I remark over the "India-Pakistan news" that gapped the markets down yet again on the open, only to latter send the same market into a flush of goodwill surrounding the two minutes of silence observing the closure of the WTC recovery effort. The Curmudgeon could but think that while the right hand threw out a few coins of beneficence, the left hand was busy picking the purse clean. Both have validity and both reflect the contrary nature of the people that comprise The Market. They are no different than you or I, as indeed they reflect aspects of you and I. The wheel's spokes are at times bent and broken, but somehow strong enough to keep it meandering along.

:: SuperSize it -- Only 1000 Shares more...
This fast food promo, from The Hammer - Canadian Satirical News, seems vaguely plausible.

:: Deep Linking... and Space Links
Heard a piece on CNNfn regarding "deep linking", where content providers have their knickers in a twist over other sites linking stories that "bypass" the front page. The claim is that this is a copyright infringement. I don't quite get that leap, but the more obvious claim is that by providing a direct link to a story, the web surfer doesn't plow through four or five layers of the providing site's pages. The solution? Provider sites simply create a bypass to the bypass, redireting them to the front page... where of course, you can't find the story as you haven't a clue what section it is "really" in. This in fact has happened a number of times. Sometimes I just leave in frustration, sometimes I copy/paste the original link back into the browser, where the bypass won't redirect as I'm already on the "deep link's" front page. What I don't get is why internet advertising is considered "different" than print or TV. Why, on the internet, do they expect "click throughs"? The equivalent in print or TV is if I immediately drop what I'm doing and run to the phone to call Sprint and wander around there for a while. Or if I immediately fill out and send in every one of those annoying postcards that fall out of the magazines. People just don't do that. Why should it be different on the web? Just because I can? Stuff and nonsense. At any rate, that's about as huffy a scree as I can manage on such a lovely day. Just had a rogue snow-rain cloud pass by... it was all dark and drear when really enormous "flakes" of rain came pelting down. Just as quickly it spent itself and the sky is brilliant blue in the wide peeks through a few clouds. You must remember to look into the western sky tonight for this once a millenium grand planetary alignment (heads up a courtesy of Arch Crawford through the Pesavento grapevine). And while visiting space.com, be amazed by the new Hubble images... nature's pallet is vast and boundless in its imagination.