Tag Archives: unitedstates

Sriracha Hot Sauce Catches Fire

A Business Week profile of the Sriracha Hot Sauce company including its founder, its history and some reasons why its been so successful. My own introduction to the fabled hot sauce was fairly typical – when I started working at the Sask Publishers Group, my boss took me for Vietnamese food (is it possible I […]

*Please* Don’t Believe In Psychics. Please! Pretty Please!!!

My life has developed over the years to a point where I endeavour to lead my life and make my decisions from a place that’s focused on using evidence, science, skepticism and facts to determine how I understand and interact with the world.  This is the culmination of many things coming together – my lifelong […]

Dying Man’s Wish – Leave $500 Tip on a Pizza Order

I’m not sure if this fits as a May Day story or not but I like the sentiment – people who do tough jobs for very little reward sometimes deserve to be surprised with some over-the-top generosity (although there’s also a flip side argument that if we paid decent wages to our servers, tipping wouldn’t […]

10 Things Wrestling and Religion Have In Common

I don’t watch wrestling as much as I used to but Wrestlemania Sunday is always a special day. I rarely shell out the sixty bucks for the PPV but have watched when I’m with a group of people or at a bar or something. But this year, through the magic of the Internet, I may […]

‘Rasslin and the Tea Party

The WWE is currently running an angle where a couple of bad guy wrestlers (“heels” in wrestling jargon) are acting like members of a quasi-Tea Party-like group while a Mexican wrestler is the good guy (“babyface”) standing up to their bigotry. This is unique for a couple reasons – wrestling is not known for being […]

Mitt Romney’s Damning “47 Per Cent” Video and the New Politics of Privacy

In a world where smart phones and other recording devices are ubiquitous (and increasingly undetectable), when will politicians (and political advisors) realise that everything they say (even in semi-private and private) can and will be recorded? Probably never…

Costco or CommunistCo?

Costco pays its workers a living wage and sees profits soar while Wal-Mart stomps on workers and its profits flatline. At Costco, we know that paying employees good wages makes good sense for business. We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to […]

RIP Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013)

There are two kinds of Internet celebrities – those who get famous for something they did online (anyone from Justin Bieber to Psy to Paris Hilton and so on.) Then there are Internet celebrities who are famous for what they’ve *continually* do online (anyone from Cory Doctorow to Lawrence Lessig to Julian Assange and so […]

Friday Fun Link – Sea Turtles at Anini Beach, Hawaii

Since I chose swimming with turtles on Anini Beach on the north shore of Kauai as the highlight of 2012 for me (see question #40), I thought I’d mark the one year anniversary of our departure on that trip with a video of that memorable moment…

The Day Obama Won The Internet: The Inside Story of His Reddit AMA

Very interesting behind-the-scenes look at how Obama’s Reddit AMA was proposed, how it happened and how it impacted his campaign. This was a day of political-campaign and Internet firsts, the sitting president subjecting himself to a free- for-all question-and-answer session with a hardcore community of pot-smoking freedom junkies who hated drones and loved porn and […]