Wow, this is in league with the million dollar home page and the lady that had advertising tatooed to her forehead (sidenote: found this and thought it was somewhat related and definitely interesting).

There are some very interesting ideas on how to make money emerging. This guys offering to legally change his name to whatever you want (“…company name, website address or any other name you choose”) and then break a Guinness World Record so that whenever anyone mentions his record they will be saying your chosen name. He’s doing this to raise money for his internet startup. Sounds like this has more to do with exposure than money since he’s already gotten some good reviews from some credible people. If you’re interested, the top offer (as of me writing this) is $16,000 or you can “Buy it Now” for only $250,000.

Blueprint for Dictatorship – antiwar.com

“America is headed for a military dictatorship – and recent legislation makes this all but inevitable. Last September, Congress passed the Defense Authorization Act, which empowered the president to declare martial law with very little provocation, namely in the aftermath of a “terrorist attack or incident.” Having determined that “the execution of the laws” is hampered by the “incident,” the president can unilaterally impose martial law – without the consent of Congress, which need only be informed of the event “as soon as practicable.” The only condition attached instructs the president to report to Congress after 14 days, and every 14 days thereafter”

I guess politics are, like web2.0, all about gradients, not two-tone layouts in which things are either fuschia or cornflower². And a false sense of user participation. And AJAX, and made-up words that facilitate the ownership of a domain name with five or fewer letters. Wait, what?

An excerpt from Apathy? written by Rachel on intensify.org, brought to my attention by Ben.

From:       kristinknit@charter.net
Subject:     CONGRATULATIONS!!!Your Email Has Won £1,000,000.00 In The CocaCola 2007 Promo(contact fiduciary agent immidiately)
Date:     January 30, 2007 8:37:49 AM MST
Reply-To:    winning_claimsagent001@yahoo.co.uk

THE COCA COLA COMPANY
PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD
DEPT:COCA COLA AVENUE
STAMFORD BRIDGE LONDON.
SW1V 3DW UNITED KINGDOM

THE COCA COLA COMPANY OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annualfinal draws held on
(25th of January 2007)  by Coca-Cola in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion.Your email  was among the 20 Lucky winners who won £1000,000.00{One million Great Britain Pounds} each in the THE COCA\COLA COMPANY 2007 PROMO.
However the results were released today 30th of January 2007 and  your email was attached to ticket number (7PWYZ2007) and ballot number (BT:12052007/20)
The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031,643 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet.
To begin the claim  processing of your prize you are to contact the fiduciary agent as stated below:

Mr William Carpenter
22 Garden Close, Stamford,
Lincs,PE9 2YP,London
United Kingdom.
Email:winning_claimsagent001@yahoo.co.uk

Yours Faithfully,
Management.

Seriously how many people fall for this?  It must be enough to justify continuing sending this stuff out, which is just sad.

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit.We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

- Woodrow Wilson 1919

Richard D. Heffner: “You’ve said that the objectives of the people who have created social security programs, the people who want to provide for the aged, who want to provide for the poor who want to achieve objectives that have been identified with minimum wage and social security. That the objectives were valid; and you shared them. Now, if you share them, how would you have achieved those objectives?”

Mr. Friedman: “The only way you can achieve them”

Richard D. Heffner: “How?”

Mr. Friedman: “In my opinion, which is by voluntery cooperative action. You see I think there’s been one underlying basic fallacy in this whole set of social security and welfare measures. And that is the fallacy, this is at the bottom of it, the fallacy that it is pheasable and possible to do good with other peoples money. Now you see that view, has two flaws. If I’m gonna do good with other peoples money I first have to take it away from them. That means that the welfare state philosophy of doing good with other peoples money at it’s very bottom, is a philosophy of violence and cohercion. It’s against freedom. Because I have to use force, to get the money. In the second place; very few people spend other peoples money as carefully as they spend their own.”

Mr. Friedman: “…it assumes some how that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men, but government is an institution, whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men get into a position of controlling them.”