Welcome to Thursday! Yesterday I outed myself as one of the millions of Americans who knows zip about college basketball. I guess that's what happens when you go to a Division III school. On the plus side, I received a quality liberal arts education that allows me to do… well, this.
We'll start with something fun -- a Queens man played the lottery using the last three digits of Bernie Madoff's prison number and won $1500. The Daily News points out that this is a "16,000% return on his $9 investment - far more than even Madoff promised his bilked investors." It turns out that 501 other people hit a winner with those same three numbers (0-5-4, if you want to try it out yourself).
Back to the NCAA for a moment: Yahoo! Sports released a report claiming that the University of Connecticut violated recruiting rules in their contact with former player Nate Miles. Lots of people claim that the NCAA's rules are too confusing to follow, but I have an easy solution: hands off. Oh, but what about the shoe companies? They can contact the players. Well, under my plan, they can't. No one can. Amateur is amateur. If you want to play college ball, you can't accept any gifts from anyone at all. Ever. End of story. Of cause, its not that easy, but the solution isn't "make the rules go away", which is what some nudniks are saying.
Speaking of nudniks, somebody bilked Apple out of 9,000 iPod shuffles. What, you couldn't get them to send you a Touch? Piker.
A Chihuahua named Pebbles saved her owner from freezing to death when the two were stranded in the mountains of Wales. Beverley Burkitt is a dwarf, small enough that the little dog could keep her warm until help arrived. I still prefer bigger dogs, but this is a sweet story.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that our "insatiable demand for illegal drugs" is partly to blame for all of the violence happening in Mexico. "I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility." Well, it takes a village.
Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin would like to help newspapers survive by letting them "restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks." Since many of them are losing money anyway, sure, why not? The bill had no co-sponsors as of Tuesday. BusinessInsider thinks that there are some papers that will survive even without Cardin's bill. Personally, I like newspapers, but I'm forcing myself to read more news online beacuse that's where it's going, whether I like it or not.
Twitter is going to start trying to make actual money, although maybe they shouldn't bother -- despite having no revenue at all so far, the company was recently valued at $250 million, according to Julia Boorstin at CNBC. Potential sources of cash are "the ability to search what people are saying in real time", and since such searches are valuable, the ads placed next to them are also valuable. And Twittter CEO Evan Williams also wants to start "charging companies who use the site to reach customers, helping them better target and communicate." I know it makes me sound like a luddite, but sometimes I hate the new economy. Would somebody please go back to making money by making stuff that people want to buy?
Finally, Monster vs. Aliens opens tomorrow. If you have kids, you'll probably be seeing it. Let us know what you think.
That's all for today -- see you on Friday, folks.
Image: SXC
Read more:
