Practicalmadness

Kenneth Lay, former chairman/CEO of Enron, surrendered to the FBI this morning and is expected to face indictment in a federal courtroom in Houston later today. Lay still maintains that he has done nothing wrong, and was part of the 98% of Enron staff who were honest, hardworking Americans.

In charging Mr. Lay, the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force has reached the top of the corporate hierarchy at the company, which has been under broad investigation since it was forced into bankruptcy in December 2001, costing investors tens of billions of dollars and putting thousands of employees out of work. So far, criminal charges have been filed against some 30 people, including former executives and advisers who have been charged with aiding Enron in its deceit.

Life in a glass house

The vast right-wing conspiracy by Republican’s looking to make total asses of themselves by trying to make themselves look better than John Edwards has begun. At a campaign stop in Edwards’s home state of North Carolina, W. was asked to compare his own running mate, President of Vice Vice President Dick Cheney, with Mr. Edwards. His response was characteristically short and…well, it was characteristic: “Dick Cheney can be president.”

Wait, was that an invitation? A concession? An order? Of course, what W. is trying to say here is that since Dick Cheney can be president, John Edwards cannot. Which may be a valid point: Cheney’s old and corrupt, Edwards is young and (at worst) far less corrupt. From the GOP way of thinking, Edwards needs to be a few decades older and have ruined many, many more lives to be remotely qualified to hold public office in this country.

Nigritude ultramawhat?

Blogger Anil Dash has won a search engine optimisation contest, where websites were challenged to use any means at their disposal — from link/keyword spamming to, like, generating actual content — to get the highest Google ranking for the terms “nigritude ultramarine.” Dash’s innovative solution? Asking his readers to link back to him using those words.

Dash maintained, his victory proves…that the Web is a meritocracy. “A page that’s read by people instead of robots is going to do better,” he said.