Here's an awesome video of Prince playing Radiohead's song "Creep." He sent a bunch of takedown notices to Yahoo but I managed to find a copy. Radiohead was like "Hey, you can't send takedown notices for our music."

This is what I saw when trying to enter a comment on boingboing today. Apparently they have a machine that instantly fact-checks your comment and then refuses to post it if it is wrong. And no, there was no captcha involved here, just a comment box.

By way of followup to my SMS Texting article, it seems a few readers are taking it seriously and have filed a class action lawsuit against all the major carriers for price gouging. The suit appears to be focusing on the fact that people are getting charged to receive messages that are unsolicited and cannot be blocked (I assume they mean selectively).

For the last few days, I have been riding my bike to work. I'd like to say this is a choice I have made for health and wellness reasons, but I won't deny that there are economic factors weighing in far heavier than any desire to stop being such a fatty. Well, I guess being a fatty weighs in heavy too, but in a different way.
Apparently there is some rumor going around that riding a bicycle is actually less efficient than driving a car. People argue that the amount of food (extra food?) you have to eat to propel yourself around town via pedal is enough to offset any money you would save. At least, that's what I got from skimming over the argument. That's right, I didn't even dignify it with a "peruse."

A few people have done the math and discovered that this, of course, is not the case. I want to go one step further in the same spirit as my "True Cost Of SMS" article and do some really elementary math (as it is all I am capable of) on the subject.

So first, let's compare fuel sources.

A car requires gasoline. As of today, the average price for a gallon of gasoline is $3.80 and will propel you, on average, 25 miles. The average driver racks up 12,000 miles per year or 32.8 miles per day. In what is probably the most advanced math ever featured on these pages, that comes out to $4.99 in gas per day.

If you want to get down to it, a gallon of gas contains about 31,000,000 calories (ref). If we could live off of gasoline, it would be the cheapest food in existence. The daily recommended caloric intake for humans is 2,000-2,500. According to the United Nations, the average American actually consumes something more like 3,770 calories per day (ref). No wonder we're a bunch of fattys.

So first let's get the most obvious statement out of the way: Humans are much more efficient then cars.

The average American eats the number of calories contained in a single gallon of gas every 8,223 days. That's 22 1/2 years. $3.80 for 22 1/2 years worth of food? Suddenly gas isn't sounding so expensive! To put it another way: One gallon of gas could power a human for over 22 years, or a car for 30 minutes.

But, since we can't eat gasoline and we're talking about daily costs, that's not really a fair comparison.

So we're spending $4.99 a day on gas, how much are we spending on food? A lot less than you might think, actually. According to the Buereau of Labor Statistics and their 2004 report named "blah blah blah something really boring;" the average American spends $6.33 a day on food. That's $3.67 on food at home and $2.67 on eating out, in case you're wondering (ref).

So, if we trust the math we are spending $6.33 on 3,770 calories of food per day. To answer how much it costs in terms of food to ride your bike to work, we'd have to know how long it takes you to get to work. For me, it's about 3 miles or 15 minutes. But feel free to do your own calculations.

Alright, so biking along a flat surface for one hour will burn 441 calories (ref). That means I'm burning about 110 calories to get to work. Let's also add in the return trip, bringing us to a total expenditure of 220 calories for my trip to work and back.

Applying our math from above we find that every penny we spend buys us about 5.95 calories worth of food. Some simple division (well, simple for a calculator anyway) tells us that the cost of the 220 calories I need to ride my bike to work and back is $0.37. Here are is a table showing these results:

Roundtrip Cost of Riding Your Bike To Work If it Takes You...
30 Minutes (6 Miles): $0.37
60 Minutes (12 Miles): $0.74
1.5 Hours (18 Miles): $1.11
2 Hours (24 Miles): $1.48

To compare that to driving:

Cost of Driving Your Car To Work (Assuming 25 MPG and $3.80/gal)...
6 Miles: $0.91
12 Miles: $1.82
18 Miles: $2.74
24 Miles: $3.65

In real world examples, I think you tend to use up a lot more gas simply because you're sitting there in traffic, starting and stopping, and generally getting much worse gas mileage.

Also, if you're the average American you probably have some extra calories stored away and could ride your bike to work plenty before ever having to spend an extra dime on food. Speaking of which, people who drive cars also have to eat - meaning that you're paying for food anyway - you're really not spending anything more than you would anyway by riding your bike, bringing the actual "cost" to virtually nothing (except the feeling that your insides want to be on the outside).

I also didn't add in the costs of buying your car, taxes & registration, maintenance costs, or repairs. Let's just say that driving a car is not an efficient way of getting around, although it is highly effective in terms of speed.

Recently, two church handbooks were published via the popular site Wikileaks. In what was no doubt a knee-jerk reaction from the lawyers that the church employs and probably not the church leadership, a cease and desist was immediately sent, asking for the material to be taken down.

It seems obvious for anyone who spends time on the Internet that trying to get documents removed from the net is like trying to take the pee out of the pool. You'd have to drain the whole thing - and since you can't drain the Internet you pretty much have to roll with the punches on this one. Sorry guys, that's just the way it is.

For reference, this is how things work in Internet land:

Church: Hmm... We want to keep this document somewhat private
Wikileaks: Hey everyone! Look at this document that Church wants to keep private!
A few geeks: Hey, cool. I'm going to read that.
Church: Woah there! They don't have a right to publish our copyrighted material!
Media: Hey everyone, check out this developing situation!
Everyone: Hey. cool. I'm going to read that.

So as you can see, reacting to the situation is only going to make it worse. It's called the Streisand Effect.

Furthermore, Wikileaks is run by the same guys who run The Pirate Bay. It's hosted in Sweden. Do a little searching on recent attempts to get them to take down material.

Here's an idea. While the handbooks in question didn't contain anything really that bad, why not get people reading a book that you'd actually want them to read? Here's how:

1. Hire someone to publish inspiring talks, scriptures, etc. on Wikileaks. It's not hard - "wiki" means anyone can publish stuff on there.

2. Make a big fuss about them publishing your content. Be sure to invoke the DMCA in your legal demands. This will make your claim even more ridiculous as the DMCA doesn't even apply in Sweden - thus ensuring wider media coverage.

3. Everyone will suddenly want to read your "secret" ;) documents.

Sunday school is so much more exciting when you think you're reading "forbidden" documents!

Deat Malt-O-Meal,

I just wanted to write in with a great product idea that is so good I'm sure you won't be able to resist it. I was just snacking on some golden puffs (the package said they were good for snacking - and it was right!), and it came to me.

People are always saying they love breakfast for dinner. You know, pancakes, eggs, bacon, the whole nine yards. Or, if you're poor like me - cold cereal. And I don't just love cold cereal for dinner, I love it for breakfast too. And sometimes lunch if I run out of Top Ramen.

So here's my idea: dinner for breakfast! Think about it! It's the next logical evolution in mixing up meals! Picture it: You've done breakfast for breakfast, you've seen breakfast for dinner, and now Malt-O-Meal presents Dinner for Breakfast!

You could have all sorts of varieties. A steak and potatoes dinner breakfast cereal could consist of little beef flavored corn pieces shaped like steaks (that's an easy shape to make), and little marshmallowy potato pieces. Instead of milk, you could encourage kids to use A1 steak sauce (hey, cross branding opportunity!).

Other varieties could include "Pepperoni Pizza" with little pizza slices and round pepperoni (think cooke crisp-shaped), spaghetti and meatballs (the meat balls could be like crunch berries except meat flavored), and hamburger and fries (tons of cross-brand opportunities there - I'm sure McDonalds would be on board).

Then you could encourage kids to use an alternative to milk for each one. Liquid cheese for the pizza, spaghetti sauce for the spaghetti, and a milkshake for the burger and fries.

You've spent enough time immitating, Malt-O-Meal, it's time to start innovating. I give you this idea free of charge, and will eagerly await the day that you bring dinner for breakfast to the mainstream.

Sincerly,

Sam Garfield