From USA Today's article on transplanting hair from dead people:

Some may think such a move — to don the hair of a cadaver — would be extreme, but nobody should underestimate the determination of balding people to reverse the scourge of a receding hairline. Spending on hair-restoration surgeries in 2006 topped $1.2 billion worldwide, a figure that does not include spending on proven drugs such as Propecia and Rogaine or any number of disreputable gadgets and balms sold online or on late-night television.

Nobody should underestimate the determination of desperate men to get laid, either. Does that mean a large portion is turning to necrophilia, USA Today?

Labels: baldness, usa today

USA Today's got me on a roll. Maybe I should just start an anti-USA Today blog. But, then I'd have to read more USA Today.

"Yet another music format is merging onto the infotainment superhighway, and it may help force the CD player down a one-way street to the eight-track landfill."

What is this absolute wonderment of infotaining, CD-slaying goodness? The MVI disc, of course. The "format poised to succeed the fading DVD-Audio and SACD." Yup, you heard right. Your precious DVD-Audio and SACD discs are approaching worthlessness.

MVI lets you get audio and video off the disc. It plays in DVD players (good), computers (even better), but not CD players (confusing and inconvenient).

Yes, the record labels are trying to invent new technologies to get you to buy ALL of Yung Joc's Hustlenomic$, not just choice selections like "I'm A G." Otherwise, Yung Joc won't be able to justify the dollar sign as an "s" in the title. Help a G out, will ya?

Idea: put more than three good songs on most albums, and people will buy them. For years, consumers were forced to buy an entire album just to enjoy the few good songs there. Labels milked it as long as they could, even to the point of forcing listeners to get music illegally in order to get it the way they wanted: digitally, and per song (free helped). Find a way to move your content online, because the audience you're trying to capture with this new format lives online. As of this writing, there's not even a Wikipedia entry for MVI.

Labels: media, music, usa today

I know, I shouldn't be reading USA Today.

A grade schooler would've been proud had they written the front-page story in today's Money section: "People buy small cars even though they can be deadly."

The gist of the story: madmen everywhere are buying more small cars, despite their horrifying safety levels, just to save a dime on gas.

Just look at this devastating chart:



This means, that if you're in a small car, you have a 0.0108 percent chance of dying in a car accident, versus the much safer 0.0055 percent chance of dying if you're in an SUV. This chart should be titled: "Foolish cheapskates and their small-car death wish."

When you're talking "deaths per million," and the highest number barely cracks 100, you probably don't have enough to write this particular scare story.

To further kill the story's validity, USA Today includes this chart:



Thank God they put that drastic 0.2 percent jump in small car sales in bold, otherwise I might've seen that 4.2 percent increase in SUV sales. Why did that number go up? Where's my "People buy more SUVs even though they can't afford the payments or gas" story?

Come on, USA Today.

Labels: media, usa today