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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Maybe I should start documenting SMART people...

Okay, tonight's first contestant has to be the PR man behind this new automobile idiot light:


Do You Know What This Symbol Means? By Colin Bird (Courtesy Yahoo!news)
Do you recognize the symbol here? It lights up in your instrument panel and loo
ks like a U-shaped pictograph with treads and an exclamation point in the middle.
Do you understand what it means now?
If you guessed a low tire-pressure warning, you are right. If you didn’t recognize the symbol, that’s also understandable because one out of three drivers do not, according to Schrader, a company that makes tire pressure monitoring systems.

The warning for the TPMS lights up when one or more of your vehicle’s tires is 25% below the manufacturer’s recommended pressure. The system is now required on all vehicles starting with the 2008 model year.
The issue here seems to be that the public hasn’t been properly educated on the warning symbol, which is supposed to be “idiot proof” and understandable across a wide variety of cultures and languages. Yet 46% of drivers couldn’t figure out that the icon represents a tire and 14% thought the symbol represented another problem with the vehicle entirely, according to Schrader.
As we said earlier in the week, properly inflated tires are vitally important to your safety. Low pressure will affect your braking, acceleration, stability, cornering and fuel economy. The government instituted the TPMS mandate after the Bridgestone/Firestone tire failures on the
Ford Explorer in 2000, a controversy that was partly attributed to inadequately inflated tires.
Well, two out of two people here couldn't identify it. Scrappy tried, but I told him he was already an idiot and thus disqualified.
Contestant number two? From Russia with love, I give you Boiko the Great:

Russian Tycoon Orders Workers to Find God or Get Fired
Lauren Frayer ContributorAOL News
(Aug. 17) -- A Russian tycoon has told 6,000 workers at his private dairy company that they'll be fired if they've ever had an abortion, or if those who are "living in sin" don't get married within two months. Vasily Boiko, who officially changed his name to Boiko-Veliky, which means "Boiko the Great," has set a deadline of October 14 -- a Russian Orthodox Church holiday -- for any of his unmarried employees who live with a partner to get married, or get fired. "We have about 6,000 employees, most of whom are Orthodox, and I expect them to be faithful and to repent," Boiko told
Reuters last week. His order came in an internal memo to workers at Russkoye Moloko, which means "Russian milk" and whose products are sold in many Russian supermarkets.Boiko told Ekho Moskvy radio that a woman who's had an abortion "can no longer be an employee of our company ... We don't want to work with killers," according to Reuters.The ultimatum also comes amid Russia's worst drought and wildfires on record, in which suffocating heat and smog have doubled the normal summertime death rate in Moscow. More than 2,000 homes have been destroyed by fires, and a third of Russia's wheat crop has succumbed to the drought. The government has banned grain exports for the rest of the year, and promised subsidies to farmers and agriculture businesses like Boiko's. The tycoon blames Russia's extreme weather this summer on what he called a lack of ample religious faith. "Such an extreme situation is punishment for the Russian people's sins," he told daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, according to The Daily Telegraph. "I need to take extreme measures including looking at the way my employees treat God."But government officials say such extreme measures could violate Russia's labor laws.About two-thirds of Russians belong at least nominally to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has seen a revival of popularity since the 1991 collapse of the secular Soviet Union. But one of Boiko's former employees told the independent Moscow News that the tycoon hasn't always been so religious, and characterized some of his business practices as "certainly not Christian." The unnamed former worker said Boiko apparently had an epiphany while in jail for fraud allegations in 2007.
And the earthquakes are due to women dressing in revealing clothes, etc., etc. Of course when you're dealing with a country that brought you this headline a few weeks back:

Heat Wave and Vodka A Deadly Russian Mix; Hundreds Drown
Russians Desperate for Relief; Worst Drought in 130 Years
(July 14th, ABC News)
maybe the "great" one has a point.
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The preseason NHFFL week one results are in. The defending champ SVA starts out with a totally meaningless 15-7 win over the Rhinos; the T-Cubs Ohio Connectionof Benson and Harrison whomp the KCAs 24-13; the State Ducks get a Monday night td from Brandon (I don't care if Eli wants me to go the other way, I'm coming thru) Jacobs to top the Beagles 25-22; the Elks edge the Rangers in a snoozer 14-11; the Angels top the Clock BBQs 24-19; aaaaand inOT, the B2s top Buzz 21-16.

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