Archives for December 2006

My next job will be driving one of these bad boys all around the country. I’ll be the most popular guy at every stadium.

On the other hand maybe I’ll just opt to pick up one of the other bad boys listed at:

Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)

The list is here.

AT 22, Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, is being labelled as the next Bill Gates. But even the Microsoft founder might have hesitated before blowing the chance of a $1.6 billion (£819m) offer for his fledgling business.

Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social networking website, has told Yahoo!, the internet giant, that $1 billion is not enough to sell out. Now leaked documents suggest that Yahoo! was willing to raise its bid to $1.6 billion.

Facebook, which he launched as a service for Harvard students in 2004, has become the seventh busiest website on the internet, and with 13m users is the second biggest social network in America.

It has also become popular on British campuses, partly because it allows users to ensure that only people from their own university or place of work are put in touch.

However, it has also been blamed for carrying abuse about students and tutors. In one case, an Oxford University don found that someone had created a false profile in his name, claiming that he had been a member of the Hitler Youth. Although Facebook does have a facility to report unpleasant comments, few universities have the resources to patrol its pages.

There have also been warnings that students who post embarrassing personal material on the site could find it being used against them by future employers.

Zuckerberg cultivates the appearance of a dishevelled student but he keeps a tight grip on his company. He used to hand out business cards which said “I’m CEO . . . bitch” and has joked that the company is aiming for “world domination”.

His stake in the company is thought to be about 30%, worth $500m at the highest of Yahoo!’s valuations. Industry sources suggest that he has rebuffed suitors because he thinks he can do even better and because he does not relish the restrictions of corporate life.

One story has it that Microsoft had to abandon a planned 8am conference call with Zuckerberg because he said that he would still be in bed then. Zuckerberg, who often turns up to his office in Palo Alto, California, wearing Adidas sandals, took exception to a drawing in The Wall Street Journal because it showed him wearing a shirt with a collar instead of his habitual T-shirt.

Click here to read the whole story.

Reports out of Atlanta are saying that James Brown has died at the age of 73.

There are a lot of things that can be said about James. For now I’ll just focus on the music and say thank you for some great times.

Updated: Here is part of the CNN obituary.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — James Brown, the legendary R&B belter, a singer and songwriter who created a foundation for funk and provided the roots of rap, a man of many nicknames but a talent that can only be described as one of a kind, is dead.

Brown died early Monday at Atlanta’s Emory Crawford Long Hospital of congestive heart failure, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was in Atlanta for a dental appointment when he fell ill and was admitted to the hospital over the weekend for treatment of “severe pneumonia,” said his agent, Frank Copsidas.

“It appears what happened is that he did die of a heart attack as a result of his pneumonia,” Copsidas told CNN Radio.

Brown — known variously as “the Godfather of Soul,” “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” “Soul Brother Number One” and “Mr. Dynamite” (and often introduced as all of the above) — was known for his elastic dance moves, razor-sharp musicianship and all-stops-out performances.

He was, literally, an impossible act to follow: Keith Richards has said that the Rolling Stones’ appearance following Brown in “The T.A.M.I. Show,” a 1964 concert that appeared on film the next year, was the biggest mistake of their lives. Brown’s performance in that show even earned an ovation from the backing band.

“You have the Rolling Stones on the same stage, all of the important rock acts of the day, doing their best — and James Brown comes out and destroys them,” producer Rick Rubin wrote in Rolling Stone.”