News That Makes You Go hmm . . .

Hey, hey! Stolen cars are at their lowest rate since 1987. There's good news.  Guess the high price of gasoline is deterring more than the 'Club' and lowjac.  And better yet, Detroit's not in the Top 10 City list for stolen cars, either.

Verizon is doing away with unlimited data plans.  Might as well.  My Blackberry Curve chokes when using the IE web browser so often it's almost useless. I downloaded the BOLT browser (free) from the Blackberry store and it works much faster.

And what's with the price of coffee?  Are they making *that* from oil, too? I'm cutting back to half a pot for the family in the morning (one cup each) and skipping it at restaurants, too.  Analysts blame it on the demand for green coffee (green coffee beans are those picked, processed wet, dried and then milled, but not roasted. That  is usually left to the bean purchaser) and also to poor growing conditions in South America. I'm betting the speculators are driving prices more than anything else.

The FDA approved some new graphic warning labels for cigarette packages.  Now we need financial advisors to start advertising on them, too. (That might deter people more than image of a diseased lung.)  I was in a local store recently and saw a Marlboro pack price of $6.25!  No wonder the new 'growth' industry seems to be tobacco shops.  Rolling your own is more popular now than it was in the late 60's.

NPR covered a story about a facebook post from Lab42 that says of the surveyed men, 27 percent who judge themselves to be overweight ate at fast food outlets more than seven times a week. Crap! How did that happen! I just bought a new belt.  (The study group was composed of 500 men aged 18-35.)

I'm busy unsubscribing from all the things that I signed up for that sounded like a good idea at the time, but that have proven to have absolutely no value to me.  First one? Groupon. Nice coupons if you live in Metro Detroit, but at an hour away there was never anything that made me want to jump in the car and drive for.

I'm extending that to magazines, too.  I love golf but when you get all of these great 'ideas' about how to hit longer tee shots or make better chips, it just seems to confuse my game.  I'm actually hitting straighter and playing more consistently now that I quit reading golf magazines - and watching golf improvement shows. Tournaments are different. Let me know if you want to camp out in front of a TV to watch a tournament some time.