A Piece of that Good Ol' Capitalistic Pie

Why do Larry and Sergey, founders of Google, look so smug?

Maybe it's because they are barely in their thirties and already gazillionaires. The search engine industry is a huge cash cow and Larry and Sergey are riding it all the way to the bank, laughing.

Isn't it time us average Joe Americans get a cut of that glorious search engine cash? Well, now we can.

Zotspot is a new kind of search engine that lets YOU profit from every search you do. And the more people you sign up for Zotspot, the more you make because everytime THEY search, you also profit. Its like a pyramid scheme without the "scheme" since you pay nothing to get started.

Sounds too good to be true? What's the catch? Well, to be honest, the Zotspot search engine is markedly inferior to Google's. Some queries that appear as the first item in Google won't even show up in Zotspot.

I guess it just goes to show that capitalism "works." There's a reason why Larry and Sergey are rolling in dough.

For more info, check out these articles about zotspot:
Yahoo Finance News
Boston.com Business News
CNet News.com
ZD Net India
Earth Times

Beauty and the Beast Syndrome

I recently heard my beautiful friend say that her husband is "So cute and so handsome." It totally caught me off guard because he's totally NOT. If I may put it midly, he's like a shriveled up corpse-like bobblehead.


It's interesting how, quite often, men do not have to be physically beautiful to be considered attractive to women.

This is a lesson that can be easily gleaned from a reliable source of modern anthropological behavior, the supermarket tabloid:

Exhibit A: Hot Christina Aguilera and her short, scrawny husband.



Exhibit B: Hot Jennifer Lopez and her shriveled-up corpse-like husband.



And, the quintessence of Beauty and the Beast Syndrome, Exhibit C: Hot Victoria Secret's supermodel Heidi Klum and her craggy-faced husband.


Why is it that this does not happen in reverse? You almost never see hot guys with significantly less attractive looking women. In fact, when women hit their 40's, most husbands start seeing a little honey-on-the-side.

Evolutionary psychologists would probably say that a woman's aesthetics indicates her healthfulness and thus her ability to bear healthy children. Men, on the other hand, don't need to look good to evolve successfully. They need to be a "good provider", which does not necessarily correlate to physicality...

But that's not really true. Back in the day, it was the strongest, buffest cavemen who caught the kill right?

Once in junior high, a teacher explained that men are "turned on" by visual things, whereas women are "turned on" by romantic gestures. Ha ha ha. That's a gross thing to hear from your teacher, but whatever, the man was just trying to relay to us the facts of life, I guess. And I suppose that does explain the Beauty and the Beast syndrome.

So single guys, drop the dumbbells and pick up some Shakespeare.

I don't want to talk about it.

Cal lost.

Nail-biting!

I'm so nervous. Cal v. USC. On the line: Rose Bowl. Pac-10 title.

1st Quarter:
Cal 2
USC 3

2nd Quarter:
Cal 9
USC 6

Cal hasn't been to the RB since the 50's. Tonight could be THE night.

The Tipping Point

Now is that day in 365
when there are just as many leaves

on the ground as in the trees.

Not-so-smooooth Jazz

I love me some Coltrane on a rainy day,
when cloudy skies are drenched and gray,
and the pavement gleams,
and it's dark as night in the morning.

I love me the ballads on a sultry sax,
and a mellow bass while I chillax,
with some Merlot,
reclining before a crackling fire's glow.

Or at least that's how his music makes me feel,
even when the reality is:
I'm slaving away at my desk,
sipping a Nalgene-knock-off of Crystal-Lite laced water
in front of the glow of a blazing
halogen lamp.

The Well-Dressed Toddler: Winter Edition

If I had a little girl...

"Look," you said...

"No reason. Just because,
I know you love flowers."

You've come a long way since that time

you picked me up for a date holding

a loaf of sweet Italian bread

in lieu of flowers, because

you had never bought flowers before, and

going to a florist made you nervous.

First things first

I've sometimes wondered, of all the 3 basic human needs (to eat, to relieve oneself, and to sleep), which one takes precedence?

Well, recently while waiting for my flight to board in SF Int'l Airport, I had the opportunity to find out.

As I sat down, I realized that I was starving and wanted desperately to buy some crappy airport food. But then I realized that I couldn't get up and stand in line because I urgently had to pee. Yet the thing holding me back from going to the bathroom was my incredible fatigue. But I was too hungry and needing to go to the bathroom to fall asleep! Arrrrgh!

It was like Catch-33.

And so I sat there at Gate 9, miserable and deprived for a few minutes.

But then a beautiful thing happened. My body instinctively took over and that day I found out which urge takes precedence for me: sleep.

After conking out for 30 minutes, I then went to the bathroom, and finally bought an overpriced sandwich.

And all was well.