Google Mail Introduces New Feature: Time Is On My Side

After extensive beta testing, Google releases an all new "wonder technology". Now everyone can say, "Time... IS on my side".

In a world where tech break-throughs (see the BrooWaha article, You've Heard About Web 2.0, But What About E-mail 2.0 by Gary Wells) come faster with each passing day, Google announced today the release of an all new tool that the company says will finally let you "Be on time, every time". According to beta user testimonials, Gmail Custom Time will let all Gmail users to back date any e-mail sent through Gmail since the service began in 2004. This will allow any electronic mail the user has sent to be re-dated to any appropriate date the user requires, essentially eliminating lateness forever.

"The entire concept of 'late' no longer exists for me," exclaimed customer Miriam S., a delivery girl by trade. "That's pretty cool. Thanks Gmail!"

Utilizing what Google calls the "Grandfather Paradox", Custom Time allows Gmail customers to utilize "an ensemble of parallel universes" to make sure that no e-mail to arrive late again.

"I just got two tickets to Radiohead," paralegal and beta tester Robbie S. told a gathering of media, "by being the 'first' to respond to a co-worker's 'first-come, first-serve' email. Someone else had already won them, but I told everyone to check their inboxes again."

A nervous Robbie concluded, "Everyone sort of knows I used Custom Time on this one, but I'm denying it."

With interest in cutting-edge ways to advance purpose-driven business strategies, even in the highly scrutinized world of corporate relations, Custom Time is not without its ethical "gray area".

Todd J., an investment banker with a major international firm explained his dilemma like this.

"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

The ethical dilemma experienced by Todd J. is not confined merely to the business world. Apparently, it is a concern in the esoteric world of spirituality as well.

"This feature", reasoned Michael L., a professor of Epistemology at a Midwestern Jesuit university, "allows people to manipulate and mislead people with falsified time data." The scholar went on to say, "Time is a sacred truth that should never be tampered with."

As for the creator of this new technology, Google puts it in a way it feels its customers will best understand in a series of FAQ's.

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk.

How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality.

How come I only get ten?

Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.

Their findings:

N = Total emails sent

P = Probability that user believes the time stamp

φ = The Golden Ratio

L = Average life expectancy

So there you have it. Another multi-billion dollar company takes advantage of a few loopholes in the space/time continuum (and various Federal regulations) and now offers a new service at no additional charge to its customers. Life is good, and as the month of April begins today, you can be sure that all is right with the world.

And The Butterfly Effect was just a movie.

For more information on Gmail Custom Time to Http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html.

For more information on the inherent gullibility of human beings, ask Dr. Traci.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday

Politics Is Easy - Comedy Is Hard

If it's an election year, there will be... JOKES. Bad jokes. Really bad jokes. And Bill Friday leaves no headstone unturned in his pursuit of a political punch-line.

In a 2004 interview, Mark Katz, official joke writer for the Clinton White House, was asked what the best one-liner he ever wrote that wasn't used was.

"Al Gore rejected this joke in 2000. 'It's true I got C's and D's my sophomore year at Harvard but in my own defense, that was also the year I invented the bong'."

If only candidate Gore had used that joke, maybe his political career wouldn't have reached a tipping point later that year in Florida.

Just last month another candidate, Republican John McCain, proved that comedy should be left to the professionals when he told this "joke" at the expense of former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and current South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

"After this meeting, if you'd like to talk to [the] senator, either senator Graham, we will provide translators for any of you that need to, find them hard to understand. I find them hard to... anyway."

(Crickets).

In America 2008, the idea that to become President you just have to be lucky enough to be born black, marry a future President, or spend five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war, is more than just a bad joke. Just as long as you hit the right punch line.

Who can forget Hillary Clinton's attempt at comedy.

"[Mahatma Gandhi] ran a gas station down in St. Louis."

(Confused Crickets).

The funny thing with politicians doing stand-up is politicians continuing to do stand-up. In a business where the risk/reward index dictates every word that comes out of a candidate's mouth, why do seemingly intelligent, college educated adults continue to try to gain popularity as if they were guest MCing open mic night at a dive bar in Hermosa Beach?

Even Barack Obama tells a joke. Once.

"Well, I think Bill Clinton did have an enormous affinity with the African-American community, and still does. . . . I would have to, you know, investigate more of Bill's dancing abilities, you know, and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother."

(Dead Crickets).

It's official. Everyone's a comedian.

Hey, if it's an election year, let's leave the jokes to the professionals - the professional magicians, that is. Former "Dancing with the Stars" contestant and sometime illusionist Penn Gillette told one, almost accidentally, to a crowd during a recent performance, and retells it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY4gpmvMjrY. Maybe now that his dancing career appears to have ended, he can pick up where Mark Katz left off.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday

Olympic Flame Will Roll Through Tibet On Schedule

The Olympic torch will be lit this coming Monday, beginning a journey that will take it to the world's highest height, Mount Everest, and China's most embarrassing low, Tibet.

[As seen in deadspin.com]

Disregarding public outcry internationally and within the borders of Tibet, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee reaffirmed its plans to carry the Olympic torch through Lhasa.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, organizing committee executive V.P. Jiang Xiaoyu told reporters that public concerns over possible Olympic violence was uncalled for and that the region had, In his words, "basically been stabilized." The so-called "Journey of Harmony", the name given by the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, is scheduled to pass through 135 cities on it's way to the Chinese capital for the start of the Games August 8.

Recently, dissatisfaction with Beijing's hosting of the games has taken more visible forms in the voices of some well-known figures. Already Steven Spielberg, who was to act as artistic adviser to the opening ceremonies, quit amid continuing Chinese involvement in the form of arms sales to the country of Sudan in their conflict in Darfur. China is Sudan's number one customer in the export of crude oil.

Great Britain's Prince Charles has announced that he will not be attending the ceremony in support of the Dalai Lama. On Wednesday the chief of the Communist Party in Tibet, Zhang Qingli had this to say about the spiritual leader of Tibet:

"[he is] a jackal in Buddhist monk's robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast."

Further clarifying his position during a teleconference with members of Tibet's government an leaders of their Communist Party, Zhang continued:

"...we are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique."

Already, China's air quality has come under serious scrutiny, with many athletes questioning if Beijing's claim that air quality will be safe to compete in this Summer. Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie, the fastest marathoner in history, has already said he will not compete in that event at the games. The Chief Medical Officer for the International Olympic Committee, Arne Ljungqvist, said that therapeutic use exemptions (TUE) for asthma inhalers will be granted to athletes in far greater numbers should air quality not improve in time for the games.

To underscore the growing snowball of bad will rolling downhill toward Beijing, Andrew Leonard, writing in Salon.com said, "as a public relations exercise, so far, the Olympics are turning into a disaster."

Just last Friday, 5 girls burned to death while hiding in a clothing store in Lhasa. Rioting is the norm in the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama. Yet in the days since the clothing store deaths, even more rioting - international rioting - is fast becoming a real threat to the "Journey of Harmony".

Today in London, the possibility of disruption by anti-China protesters became front-page news as the announcement of the deployment of 2,000 Metropolitan Police officers, marine and air support, plus mounted police along the torch's route to the town of Greenwich.

With less than 5 months until the games of the 29th Olympiad, so far the focus of the world is on anything but athletics. And what happens during the two weeks of the Games may only play a small part in determining the Games' future.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday

Obama Addresses Controversy Over Controversial Pastor

At the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Barack Obama sounded very "political" on the subject of his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

In a speech today in Philadelphia, Democratic front-runner Barack Obama defended the words of his long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

More or less.

Obama, who has finally begun to feel the heat of a campaign in which he is now the clear leader, had come under fire for comments made over the past several years - particularly in the wake of 9/11 - by the man whose words, Obama said, "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country."

Wright, who has been a controversial figure in the pulpit of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ since becoming pastor in 1985 has stunned many in recent weeks by his comments over the pulpit. A random sampling making the news services do have an inflammatory tone:

"The government gives [black Americans] drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America'. No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people." Wright went on, "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."

Last Sunday, outside the church, an unnamed member of the congregation defended Wright saying, "I wouldn't call [his comments] radical. I call it being black in America."

Quoted on ABC News.com, Bill Burton, a press spokesman for the Obama campaign said, "There are things [Wright] says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

Wright announced his retirement from the pulpit of the Chicago church last month.

Last week, at a Chicago fundraiser just outside the Cabrini-Greene housing projects, Obama supporter Frank Kulle told Pamela Jones, a reporter for the CBS television affiliate in Chicago, "I suppose some people will listen to it, and I think the candidates have to be tested in some way and this is just part of rough-and-tumble politics."

And in this time of political testing, Barack Obama took to the rhetoric of politics, neither embracing nor condoning the rhetoric of the man considered the candidate's spiritual mentor.

"[Wright's words] expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America." And in the same speech:

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

In a March 11 letter to the New York Times - a response to an earlier interview of him - which Jeremiah Wright stated was, "...one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years.", the man at the center of the controversy called his spiritual protege, "...a man who was a devout Christian... whose Christianity was not just 'in word only'."

With the Pennsylvania primary now just two weeks from today, the time of Barack Obama, politician, is at hand. Will today's attempt to disarm a political bomb before it went off be Obama's last? Or with the big finish of the race for the nomination give Hillary Clinton and her camp the opening they've been looking for by the time the August Convention rolls around?

Only time will tell.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday

Dodgers' Last Game In Vero Beach - Dodgertown No More

The Los Angeles Dodgers played their final game at Holman Stadium in Vero Beach, Florida today. It marks the end of a sixty-year relationship between a team, a town and history.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the Houston Astros 12 to 10 in a game at Holman Stadium, Vero Beach.

Something that will never happen again.

What happened in the game - Raphael Furcal going 4 for 5 with 2 triples; Jason Repko's fight to make the team, by raising his spring average to .343 - except for those of us who read box scores of exhibition games on the Internet, won't matter soon. In a couple of days, the team will pack up their belongings and head west - first to Arizona to finish out the spring season, then on to LA.

But what will be remembered by those who chose to is that today, St. Patrick's Day, 2008, was the end of the line for Vero Beach. And with it comes the end of the old Dodgers legacy.

In 2009, the Dodgers will hold spring training in a new facility in Glendale, Arizona.

Vin Scully, Dodgers' play-by-play voice now entering his 59th year with the team put it this way:

"I guess really this is cutting the umbilical cord. For 50 years we've really still carried the residue of Brooklyn, but it's time now for them to get closer to their fan base in Los Angeles."

And the fan base in Los Angeles, most of whom aren't old enough to remember who Sandy Koufax was, now get to grow closer to their team even as the team grows farther away from one of the richest histories in sports.

Dodgertown, was the co-creation of Dodger boss Branch Rickey and Vero Beach Cadillac dealer Bud Holman back in 1948. It was Holman who contacted the visionary Rickey the year before and sold him on the idea of planting a training facility on 2,000 acres of military base in the middle of rural Florida.

"One more time," public address man Dick Crago said into the microphone, "Welcome to another fine day of baseball at Holman Stadium."

On last time. One last game. One last sell-out crowd of 7,327.

In 60 years, Vero Beach, and Holman Stadium have seen a lot of changes, and made a few changes of their own. Holman Stadium, at the request of black Dodger players to then Vice-President of Operations and future team owner Peter O'Malley, became the first Grapefruit League stadium - the first southern stadium - to integrate the grand stands 1961. One of the players, left fielder Tommy Davis, in his autobiography Tales From the Dodgers Dugout said, "It didn't dawn on [O'Malley] at the time. But to his credit, the next day everything was gone. They white-washed all that stuff. And we had to physically take the black people to seat them in other spots around the stadium... we just took them and told them to sit wherever they wanted to from now on. That was the integration of Holman Stadium."

Just for the record, Geoff Geary won it for the Astros. Starter Chad Billingsley who worked 5 innings, took the loss. The last loss.

"This is very emotional for me," said one-time Brooklyn Dodger fan and better known TV celebrity Larry King. King attended the game the day before against the Boston Red Sox.

Oddly enough, this season the Dodgers will be celebrating another stadium from their past, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was the Coliseum that was home to the Dodgers during their first 4 years in LA. In this, the 50th anniversary of the team's move from Brooklyn, the Coliseum will host an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the Red Sox on March 29th.

I wonder if, years after the team has become a part of the community in Glendale, AZ, there will be any kind of tribute game in Vero where not only the stadium, but the elementary school (Dodgertown Elementary) bear the name of the memories of history. After the proposed acquisition of the facility by the Baltimore Orioles, will it even matter? In this little baseball village, where the streets have names like Vin Scully Way and Roy Campanella Boulevard, will it be long before Jackie Robinson Lane, the main street in Dodgertown, is renamed Brooks Robinson Drive?

The Big Dodger in the Sky forbid!

"It's a sad day, but it had to happen," 80-year-old Dodger icon Tom Lasorda said. "It's the right thing to do, to make our Los Angeles fans happy, and it's something we'll have to accept."

If you say so, Tommy.

Being St. Patrick's Day, the Dodgers wore the traditional green caps. Being "Everybody's Irish Day", the mood was more like an Irish wake.

"Today is tough," Tom Lasorda said. "Tomorrow will be worse."

You said it.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday