Random

It's always troubling when a salesman looks into the future and tells me that I'm going to love something.

How can he possibly know? It makes me feel so terribly obvious, devoid of secrets and subtlety.

Oddly, Apple has decided to use the opportunity of this weekend to tell me why I'm going to love the iPad.

How does Apple know I don't? Perhaps I dated it for a while and decided it was too short or too demanding or just too beautiful for me?

A new Web campaign for the iPad swoops in after a similar exercise for the iPhone, … Read more

Sleep has possibly eluded you since you saw Phil Jackson's first tweet.

You wondered whether the former Lakers and Bulls coach was having severe trouble typing or whether he'd perhaps lost his senses.

You must now decide which of these is fact. For the tweet that read: "11 champ;ipnsikp[ ringhs" is actually, intake of breath, an ad for AOL.

Indeed, that very same AOL that you have always loved and respected, never more than now.

I am grateful to Deadspin for bringing me this painful information and making me believe that all humans have aspects … Read more

Those who were planning road trips in West Virginia were worried.

Especially those who were included in Google's list of eminent and lucky people who would be the explorers of Google's wonderful, breakthrough (and possibly insane) eyeglasses known as Google Glass.

For a Republican legislator had proposed a bill -- after reading just one Technically Incorrect post -- that would ban anyone in the state from wearing Google's glasses and driving.

Gary. G. Howell explained very cogently that he was not against the invention, but that he feared it would be just as distracting as texting. And … Read more

When you join Twitter, the elation of suddenly experiencing free access to self-expression can be Zen-like.

You become at one with it. It becomes at one with you. Until the point where you're not sure which is you and which is it.

I feel sure that such feelings overcame Phil Jackson -- the NBA coaching great -- when he joined Twitter and 55,000 people immediately genuflected in the face of his Zen.

His account, @PhilJackson11, has been verified. It describes him as "coach and author." I have not read one of his books, but I suspect they don't necessarily include the character sequences that appear in his first tweet.

For it reads: "11 champ;ipnsikp[ ringhs."… Read more

You thought it was all done bar the noisy debating. And even that was abating.

But not just yet.

After Shawn Moore posted a Facebook picture of his 11-year-old son, Josh, with a fetching .22 rifle, child-protection experts and police arrived.

Moore, of Carneys Point, N.J., was outraged. So was his lawyer. The police wanted to enter his house and examine the safe where he kept his guns. They wanted to know that his son would be safe.

The police, though, had no warrant.

Subsequently, the authorities explained that there was a heightened sensitivity, after the Newtown massacre.

New … Read more

Some things are hard to believe.

Is it possible that "Dancing With The Stars" is still on television? Is it possible that Victoria's Secret is creating lingerie for tweens? And how likely is it that Dennis Rodman really is a better friend to Kim Jong-un than is Eric Schmidt?

Actually, talking of North Korea, how likely is it that the country has a myriad of hovercraft, hovering in readiness to invade, say, North Carolina?

I wonder only because the country's Central News Agency released a photograph this week that showed many hovercraft in action.

Yet now … Read more

Perhaps they're still mourning Judi Dench's death in "Skyfall."

Perhaps they're remembering the words uttered in that movie that there are no secrets anymore.

It seems, though, that in some corners of British intelligence, password protection needs a little, well, protection.

A gentleman called Dan Farrall was rather stunned, you see, when he applied for a job at the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Among many other (secret) things, GCHQ exists to protect Kingdomites from cyberattacks. How odd, then, that it seems rather open about passwords.

Farrall, a university student, describes on his blog … Read more

Frustration is an essential element of the human condition.

Nowhere is it more essential than at work, where people can be openly hostile, appallingly manipulative or, if you happen to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, passive-aggressive till your toenails crack.

You don't know who your friends are, so you have to be careful where and to whom you air your frustrations. However, given its essentially public nature, perhaps Twitter is not the best place and Twitterers are not the best ears.

Some people, though, can help themselves no more than when they are confronted with a chocolate … Read more

It's possibly one of the less pleasant experiences in life to come home after a night with your boyfriend to discover someone is using your laptop.

Yes, sitting right there in your living room, browsing her Facebook page as if this was, in fact, her house.

This, sadly, is what apparently happened to a 33-year-old resident of Athens, Ga.

As the Athens Banner-Herald has it, the homeowner got back to her house Sunday lunchtime to find an unknown (and currently unnamed) blond woman allegedly browsing Facebook.… Read more