Author: Ben Parr |
Announcements |
May 21 |
No Comments
So it’s time to make it official (it’s been long overdue): this is the end of the LUEniverse project. The LUEniverse was an experiment and a project of collaboration between writers of Generation Y, the social networking, technology-hungry crowd that isn’t afraid to share its thoughts.
Unfortunately, the LUEniverse could not overcome a lack of focus and the sheer difficulty of getting writing in on time. The articles were fantastically interesting, though. For that reason, we will keep the LUEniverse page up for posterity. It was my first attempt at blogging, as it was for nearly all of the editors and writers of the LUEniverse, and there was a lot we learned and gained in the process of writing, coding, and enduring ridicule.
So thank you to all of the readers and supporters, to the writers and contributors, and especially to the hard-working editors that put in a ton of time getting this site operational and coordinating with me to make this project into a reality. No regrets.
You can still follow me via my personal blog on entrepreneurship, internet marketing, and tech’s future, which are the subjects I know best. You can also contact me Twitter or email (ben@benparr.com)
Thanks for everything.
- Ben
Author: Ben Parr |
Sports & Recreation |
January 11 |
No Comments
Today Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for steroid use. Marion Jones, for those of you who do not know, was one of America’s most prominent and talented track and field competitors, winning five gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She was uncovered for her steroid use after the BALCO steroid investigation, stripped of her medals, and now must report to the slammer by March 11th. Roger Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of Baseball, has been linked to steroids via the now infamous Mitchell Report and his former trainer, Brian McNamee. He has been summoned to give a sworn disposition to Congress and his own testimony to the House Oversight Committee. After all is said and done, it will likely end up that both men will back up their cases and it will be clear that either Roger Clemens, who stands to lose his entire reputation and the Hall of Fame, or Brian McNamee, who stands to go to jail, lied to Congress.
Steroids have clearly become a contentious point of American culture and debate. Athletes continue to find ways to pass screening tests and use steroids because, let’s admit it, they work. They make you stronger, faster, and more powerful than your opponents. They may also shrink your testicles and turn you into a rage-induced monstrosity, but let’s set that one aside for now. What’s important is that America’s athletes do act as role models to the children of this country, regardless of how shallow of role models they may actually be. The steroid use of athletes probably has encouraged some children, especially those with pro athlete aspirations, to use them. More importantly, it sends a message about cheating. And here’s that message:
Cheat your way to the top, and you can become a legend.
Read the rest…
Author: Ben Parr |
Internet & Gaming |
January 8 |
No Comments
Note: This post was written as a response and commentary to Mazyar’s post on minds1anda.com. Since then his post and opinions have been modified. I will not be re-modifying this article to reflect those changes. I might make another response post, though.
Facebook had a very good 2007. It closed a 240 million dollar equity deal to boost its value to $15 Billion, it had perhaps the greatest innovation of the year with Facebook applications (more on that in a bit), and it even nearly became the word of the year (w00t? Come on). This hasn’t quieted the critics, however. It came under assault for Beacon, its advertising program that places what you do on outside websites onto news feed (for example, I have one friend who keeps adding recipes to epicurious.com and it keeps showing up on my news feed). It has also been criticized by some experts who believe that Facebook is overvalued. Even Bruce Jaffe, Microsoft’s VP of Corporate Development, said that it “paid a premium” with its investment in Facebook.
Let’s get to the meat of the issue, shall we? Is Facebook worth $15 billion now and what should Facebook do to validate that valuation? My dear friend Mazyar Kazerooni, Mind 1 of minds1anda.com wrote about this very subject in a recent post. For those of you who have not already basked in the glow of his post, here’s a summary of his recommendations:
- They need to loosen their ad policies.
- They need to allow social ads to be placed on third party sites
- They need to build a system for third party sites to collect deep demographic information on their users
- They need to build a system for companies to easily find potential employees
Right now, Facebook earns between $100 million and $250 million, nearly all of it on advertising revenue. They are a private company, so we can only speculate. Peter Thiel, Paypal co-founder, venture capitalist and Facebook’s most prominent investor, stated that Facebook’s internal financial models predict a $1 Billion revenue stream by 2015.
I believe that projection is too low. It has more potential than that by 2015. Perhaps they’re trying to be conservative to shatter expectations. In any case, Mazy’s two recommendations on advertising are, in my opinion, steps in that direction. Facebook has two important pieces in the financial puzzle: information and eyeballs. But they cannot rely on advertising on the Facebook platform alone to act as the revenue stream of the company. And I doubt that it will stay that way for very long.
Read the rest…
Author: Ben Parr |
Business & Politics |
January 5 |
No Comments
If you have been following the 2008 Presidential campaign, you now know that Mike Huckabee trashed Mitt Romney in Iowa, 34% to 25%. And if you have been following the campaign, you also know that the next big state in the race, New Hampshire, is a fight between Mitt Romney and John McCain. If Mitt loses New Hampshire, you can expect his campaign to spiral downward into oblivion. His cash and his organization could not beat a campaign that only broke into the mainstream three weeks ago (Huckabee) and a campaign that imploded during the summer and has now been resurrected from the dead (McCain). This is what you get for always changing your stances on issues. Do you have any core values, Mr. Romney?
It’s obvious from just watching the candidates interact that Romney and Huckabee loathe each other. Ed Rollins, Huckabee’s campaign manager, sums up the mood between the two camps very well: Ed Rollins wants to punch Romney’s teeth out. Oh, and he wants to shoot him in the groin. Ouch. The same animosity exists between McCain and Romney’s camps as well, and you will see that come out in the coming days as Romney tries to wrest New Hampshire from McCain’s grip.
If you saw the last debate, McCain and Huckabee were not attacking each other, but were pounding Romney instead. They also have defended one another from Romney’s attacks, praising each other in the process. I’ve been watching the interactions between McCain, Huckabee, and Romney in recent weeks. I’ve been talking to friends I have in Washington (I used to work for Congress), and I’ve been following the commentary. You know what? From all of this, I firmly believe that McCain and Huckabee made a deal: team up together, and if one of us wins, the other’s the runningmate.
Read the rest…
Author: Michael_Gilly |
Business & Politics, Life & Love, Opinions & Editorials |
December 14 |
No Comments
This story is just Part I in a series on working in fast food. Mainly McDonald’s, the point of view from which this was written. Take a look.
McChronicles
By Michael Gilly
Have you ever worked fast food? It sucks. Sure, for the first few months, it’s easy for a teenager that can work after school. However, that’s the only time you should work fast food. As soon as I turned 16, I got a job at McDonald’s. I felt so blessed. Out of all applicants, I was chosen. About two months into my job, I learned why I was chosen above all others. I had an I.Q. above 60.
Chapter One:
Fries
Should you ever work at McDonald’s, they might ask you what station you’d like to work at first. Do not ever answer that with fries. I, on the other hand, received no warning. I asked to do fries. For about two months straight, they never taught me anything. They left me there. During the big rushes, I was put on fries. That is like having the devil kick you while castration is occurring.
So you have your three sizes. Small, Medium and Large. Not too hard. A Large is three Smalls, a Medium is two. However, people don’t realize this. They could get a Large for less than $1.50 or get three Smalls for $3.00. What do people do? They get the three smalls. Then, when I tell people this, they try for some bullshit excuse like “Oh, it’s for my three kids!” If you have three kids, then why not dump the fries out and separate them?
Chapter Two:
Coworkers
Coworkers are important to any fast food joint. They decide on what your day will turn out like. If you have bad coworkers, you will probably have a bad day. Example: There was an older woman that would not learn how to shut up for two seconds who always demanded you cook her food. Even worse was when you don’t have the food, and you even mentioned it to her. She’d go ballistic. However, if you have good coworkers, your day might be good. Example: the biscuit maker at my McDonald’s was the sweetest woman in world, not to mention a better cook than my own mother. She even gave me a birthday card once (wasn’t even my birthday(. Every time I worked with her, we’d talk while working and hours turned into minutes. She was so awesome.
Girl coworkers can be a pain though. I had a couple of coworkers that had crushes on me. One time, a 24-year old was leading on a female coworker. Then, he started dating another coworker. Oh, that was the talk of the summer. Turns out the guy had no interest in the girl, he was only using her (he says he wasn’t). Another girl was crazy. She would have sex with any guy that said hello to her. One of my friends thought it would be an easy ride. He had sex with her. Then, she tried to have sex with me. I said to her, “I only buy new products.” Oh, she was so angry. Luckily, her ass got fired for stealing ice cream.
Chapter Three:
Managers and Employers
Just like your coworkers, your managers decide your day. If you have a strong manager that you like, your day will be easy flowing. If your manager has anger issues… like one of my managers, your day will be worse than Hell. This manager would just stand there. Staring and demanding his employees around. He was the worse manager in the world. Somehow. he became assistant manager. However, the other assistant manager was probably the best in the store. Better than the general manager. She would always make sure everything was stocked and clean by the end of the day. Guess who did stocking? I did (See Chapter 7).
Employers, however, usually don’t care about you. If you can comprehend how to do stuff, you could have a job and keep it until you screw up. The owner of my store had a regional manager. She didn’t like me very much. She wrote me up the first time she met me. What did I do? I had cold fries. The owner never came about but a couple of times. I knew her son though. He was sort of a jerk.
Author: Dave K. |
Science & Technology |
December 12 |
No Comments
The predominate discussions on the benefits of one wireless provider over another have been, to this point, mostly regarding network; it’s an argument that pitted technologies like CDMA, GSM and EVDO – more commonly an argument between Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel.
This argument is about to be pointless.
At the end of January 2008, the FCC plans to begin auctioning off parts of the 700MHz spectrum – an auction that many wireless providers and (perhaps expectedly) Google, among others, will be bidding on for some time. And for good reason.
The 700 MHz spectrum, currently used to carry over-the-air television, provides massive improvements to both coverage and network speed – perhaps the two most important aspects of any wireless network. The coverage area has three or four times the range of current technologies and can offer speeds comparable to that of today’s cable or DSL standards; however, no major provider is expected to use the new network to give a major overhaul to their respected voice coverage area - only their data networks.
Instead, this auction seems to be shifting the focus of coverage into a different direction.
It was just a matter of time before cell phones became the tiny, portable computers we all thought they could be. Apple’s iPhone was a good start – but for everything it got right, it got just as much wrong (more on this latter). However, with the 700MHz comes the opportunity for change, and, luckily, most wireless providers are looking to do just that Read the rest…
Author: Colin Cole aka King Jasper |
Opinions & Editorials |
December 9 |
No Comments
I remember a day back during my senior year of high school, when I was sitting in my AP German class. The class was generally run at a nice, leisurely pace, and I always had a pretty good time there. Everyone in the class knew each other, and we were all pretty decent friends. I recall one specific day in particular where some anonymous buddy chucked a pencil at me from across the room, hitting me right on the face. It wasn’t a terrible, blinding pain or anything, but it didn’t exactly feel great, either. “Ow,” was all I really said as I rubbed my cheek. “What the hell, dude!”
And that’s when it happened - my teacher gasped out, in an apparent moment of shock. She demanded I repeat to her what I had just said, and so I told her - and right then and there, she wrote me up for a god damned detention, for a “vulgar use of profanity in the classroom.”
Of all the really stupid things in modern day society that bother me, one of the worst ones is probably the concept of censorship. For instance, I know had I said something “nicer” or more innocent sounding instead, like “what the heck,” my teacher probably wouldn’t have looked twice. But really, it’s not like my meaning or the point I’m making is any different, I’m just using what’s considered a “nicer” word.
Remember that episode of Recess where TJ invented a new word - “womp” ? I sure do. He was tired of all the bullshit about censorship, and so he was like, “okay. If you’re going to get mad at me for saying a word, I’ll just say the same thing with a different word.” And for the whole episode, he’d go around saying things like “this womps,” and other clever uses of the phrase.
But - here’s the thing - whether or not TJ was saying “don’t fuck with me,” “don’t mess with me,” or “don’t womp with me” - he was saying the same thing. They’re two different words that mean the same thing! They’re called synonyms.
Much like I can say “I went down to the store today” or a more cultured, sophisticated, “this afternoon, I traversed across the city to the Grocery and Department shop,” while they’re two different sentences, they mean entirely the same thing.
And there’s the hypocritical blindness of our modern censorship movement. When we tell children, youth, or anyone to say things like “muck” or “screw” instead of “fuck,” “heck” instead of “hell,” and “dang” or “darn” instead of “damn,” all we’re doing is painting those choice words as “bad,” when that’s really all they are - words.
Just like the teachers in Recess eventually figured out “womp” meant the same thing as other words and shouldn’t be allowed to be said, our conservative culture needs to realize the same thing applies to their own movement. It’s not the words themselves that should be stigmatized against - it’s the meaning behind those words. Otherwise, what’s to stop “heck” from one day becoming a bad word?
… Either way, the issue of censorship is a total bullshit one anyway. Even if the meaning behind those words is “mean” or “not nice,” it shouldn’t be anyone’s business to interfere. Making other people conform to your own social standards simply because you don’t want to be offended is a selfish, self-deprecating system that eventually leads to a substanceless, cultureless society - especially in regards to all that “political correctness” garbage - holy shit, does that whole issue piss me off.
… but that’s a subject for another day.
Author: K.H. aka CCS |
Opinions & Editorials |
December 8 |
No Comments
Note: The opinion of the author is his alone, not of LUEniverse. We thought we’d warn you.
Preface: If you don’t like reading, just read the bold print, that should get your attention.
Show them something they’ll never forget! Invite your friends over to your living room, turn on the HDTV and turn off your brain. Remember the snacks as well, we wouldn’t want to suddenly become hungry or dissatisfied while we view our mindless programming. Entertainment is our goal. Big, comfortable lifestyles with lots of food on the table and the electronics humming away in all parts of the house. What’s the hottest new item to buy this holiday season? How many top 10 lists of the Best Gifts of 2007 have you read through already?
It’s fucking pathetic.
Read the rest…
« Previous Entries
