Udpates, Dancing Cows & More

Well, it's been about three months since the last Webrider. Time for some new stuff and some udpates.

What's an udpate? I typed the word, and I didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up on Google. You can type a word into the Google toolbar and search window. If one of your
search words is underlined on the results screen, you can click on the underlined word, and
it will bring you automatically to a Dictionary.com definition. Sure enough - Google was
smart enough to ask me if I meant update, and in fact, I did. Nevertheless, there were almost 5800 hits on the word update.

Here are some interesting links on updates where spellchecking was deemed to be an unnec-essary indulgence

.Flash Online Summer 2000
... Columnist and social critic challenges literary journalism students to write about
poverty. ... Alums: Keep in Touch! Send us an udpate The best-read section of any ...
flash.uoregon.edu/U00/ - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

Flash Online Winter 1999
... Shot. Alums: Keep in Touch! Send us an udpate The best-read section of any alumni ... Relations
at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. ...
flash.uoregon.edu/W99/ - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from flash.uoregon.edu ]

Since they must be highly educated professional journalists at the University of Oregon, they must be ahead of the curve on this whole spelling thing. Henceforth I will reject the obsolete term update to show my advanced journalistic skills by udpating at every opportunity.

On with the dancing cows. Timewaster of the month - The MILKO DANCING COW http://www.fjallfil.com/index_eng.html Milko is a Swedish (chocolate?) drink. They have a
great site. On this site you can build your own music video where the Milko Cow sings and dances in a Rap, Heavy Metal or Disco video. You've got to see it to believe it. It's a Shock-
wave plug-in & it takes a while to load, but it's worth it.

Be a clothes Designer - Cafepress.com. Are you tired of being stuck in a boring dead-end
job simply because you have a law degree? Did you ever have a profound inspiration for a custom T-shirt slogan that would make you a millionaire, if only you knew how to print them
up and distribute them? If this sounds like you, check out the link for Cafepress http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/index.aspx. At Cafepress, you download your artwork to
them, and they will print up T-shirts, mugs etc. with your design on a publish-on-demand
basis. They give you a commission on whatever sells. The merchandise isn't cheap, but for
small production runs, and with no inventory expense, it's not outlandish, and it appears to be easy.

In a more general sense, if you think you have an idea that might change the world, but you
want to try it out - or have someone else pick it up altogether, spread the word at halfbakery.com. http://www.halfbakery.com/. Incidentally, I learned something from this site. Those white sleeve-lessT-shirts are called "wifebeaters". Now I can go on the Jerry Springer Show with confidence.

Conspiracy of the Month Back in the mid-90's there were some really great conspiracy
theories. It seems like things had gotten kind of dry, then I ran across this link. Checkout this headline from http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html. How will President George W. Bush personally make millions (if not billions) from the War on Terror? The old fashioned way.
He'll inherit it. Meet the Carlyle Group.

I don't know about you, but when I need to make an important decision, I need to ask a
psychic pig. Finally a site just for me. Napoleon the Psychic Pig. http://www.bigfatpig.com/ .

Timewaster - Runner up: Weirdlinks.com I've been known to throw some weird links up on
this page, but I'm just an amateur. I have deliberately avoided becoming a frequent visitor to
this site. http://www.weirdlinks.com/ .

Post-Oscar Celebrity Watch Now to get even with those skinny well-dressed celebrities,
here are links to celebrities who are not at their best.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/fatcelebs.html, http://www.ebaumsworld.com/celeb.html (Don't worry, these links are not x-rated, or even R-rated.)

Midi Files Update Since I wrote last year about midi files, I've both lost my whole collection,
and rebuilt it. There are a few songs that I haven't been able to lay my hands on. If you have
any of
these, please send me an e-mail (conslaw@aol.com). Don't worry, I don't commercially distri-
bute these things. I just play them in the background while I work on really important stuff
like this column.
Theme to Love American Style,
I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight, Boyce & Hart
Love Stinks, J. Geils Band
Driftwood, Moody Blues
Legend of a Mind (Timothy Leary's Dead), Moody Blues
Theme to Arthur (the cartoon series), Ziggy Marley
Theme to (Disney's) Doug (the cartoon series)
The Woman Needs Love (just like you do), Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio.
Cheese & Onions, The Rutles
Sweet Love , The Commodores
On & On, Stephen Bishop
Kick it out, Heart
Usually through my Googleteering, I can find what I want. The songs above are the only
ones that I drew a blank on. I even found a great repository of French midi files at http://www.miditext.com/. This includes excellent midi versions of songs
by a 1990's band from Quebec called Les B.B. While I'm in wishlist mode, here are two
other things I humbly must confess I haven't been able to find as The Googleteer(tm):
Spanish Lyrics to the Theme from Gilligan's Island (la tema de la Isla de Gilligan)
Wav file of Jesse Jackson reading Green Eggs & Ham on Saturday Night Live
Steve Martin's Christmas Wish ______________________________________________________________________

Sun StarOffice Update Last year I wrote about Sun's StarOffice free software suite. If you upgraded to the version 6.0 beta last fall, your Beta software will expire March 31st unless
you download and install the patch below. The patch will keep the software active until June 1, 2002, by which time Sun expects the retail version to be available. http://chtah.com/a/hA8mPW9AFEw3jAI4FYmADYo6k7O/patch Retail version? Yup. Sun is
going to discontinue the free distribution of the software, at least the Windows version. Yes
Virginia, the web freebies are disappearing.

Conslaw on Cars: Cars Cars Everywhere & Not a Car to Drive The annual Consumer
Reports auto issue is on the stands as I write this. Of special interest: CR lists the top vehicles
in 10 different categories
.http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=150245&

FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=21135&bmUID=1017164502409&WebLogicSession=
PKCy1hQc2ubk RFNmmm9nlhLcCb5630q9hm09eyuGCSt9DFrrTEhl|352297338890295599/169937910/5/
7005 /7005/7002/7002/-1|-2595602216150555789/169937909/5/7005/7005/7002/7002/-1|3
52297338890306132
Not a single one of these cars or trucks is UAW-made. For those of you who are not
UAW-LSP employees, you need to know why this is important to those of us who are.
We are contractually required to drive UAW manufactured cars to work. Lest someone think
that Consumers Union has a particular anti-American bias, it should be noted that out of the 27 nominees for MotorTrend's Car-of-the-Year award, only one, the Ford Thunderbird, would be
a qualified UAW-built vehicle. The Thunderbird is hardly in the price range of a $48,000/year UAW-LSP attorney.
Where have all the cars gone? The short answer is that they've become trucks. A more precise
answer is that the Big-3 have been abandoning the car market and spending a larger and larger portion of their R&D budget on new truck models. While trucks might be more profitable in
the short-run, in the long-run the overall competitiveness of the American automakers has been deteriorating because of an unwillingess to compete in the market for mainstream sedans. It has
been two years since Ford GM or DC brought out a new or substantially revised family sedan.
(The most recent by my accounting being the Dodge Stratus/Chrysler Cirrus and the Saturn
LS.) The Dodge/Chrysler twins were arguably a reskinning and not a redesign, with powertrains
retained from the previous editions. The Saturn is a revised version of a mid-90s Opel. At best
the 2000 versions of these cars were marginally competitive with their then-current competition, and they were vastly outsold by the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry. The domestic makes
haven't produced anything new in family sedans since the 2000 model year, and the Ford
Taurus and other GM sedans haven't been comprehensively updated since 1996. Most aren't scheduled for replacement for several years.
For the 2002 model year, the foreign-make competition has gotten a lot tougher. A new-from-the-ground-up Nissan Altima comes with full-sized room, a 175 hp base engine that puts competitors to shame, and a 240 hp 3.5 liter V-6 optional engine that yields performance numbers equal to the better luxury cars or muscle cars. The Toyota Camry was also rede-
signed, most notably including a more powerful 155 hp. 2.2 liter engine that retains smoothness excellent fuel economy.
Volkswagen subtly refined the Passat but noticeably bumped the standard engine from 150 to 170 horsepower. The Altima, Camry, and Passat quite frankly blow away the competition at
their pricepoints. I recently test-drove a Passat. I could immediately tell why it is Consumer Reports' highest rated sedan. I could not think of a single negative thing to say about the car.
I couldn't say the same about the similarly priced Saturn LS-200 that I drove.
The Big-3 are whining that Americans don't want to buy cars anymore. That's wrong. Amer-icans are still buying cars, they just aren't buying cars from the Big-3. Despite the trend towards SUVs and trucks, the family sedan is still the largest single car category. Detroit has not invested in upgrading its car product lines, and the result is that previous bestsellers like the Ford Taurus are becoming less and less competitive. Instead of being completely negative, I will say that all cars today are better than ever, and although Big 3 makes don't appear to be very competitive
to me on the new market, there are some excellent used car deals due to the undue depreciation that American cars tend to get hit with disproportionately. I recently drove a 2001 Lincoln LS luxury sport sedan with a V-8 engine that was a blast to drive. New, that car lists for almost $40,000. At an estimated used selling price of $26,000 as a certified used car with about 15,000 miles, it's quite a deal. You can get a two year old Taurus for $10,000. Ditto for a Dodge Intre-pid.

In the short term, for UAW-LSP attorneys, if you want a family sedan, and you want to drive it to work,
I'd say look to the used markets or try to wait until at least next year. The new car lots are disappointing.

There appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel for future model years. General Motors
is starting to open the floodgates of interesting and attractive cars that it has sold for a longtime
overseas but not here. The neatest models come from GM's Holden Subsidiary in Australia. Check
out the Holden websit: http://www.holden.com.au/app/gmbp/au/en/gmbp/gmbp/homepage Bob Lutz' show has publicly come out in favor of importing Holden's Monaro muscle 301 HP
muscle car, perhaps rebadged as a Pontiac GTO.
It looks like as early as next fall, there might be a new UAW-built competitive compact sedan
that we can drive to work. It'll come from none other than Mazda, but it will built in the Ford/Mazda Flatrock Michigan plant. The car is the MAZDA 6, the replacement for the 626.
The initial information is encouraging. Here is the Edmunds.com preview article: http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/preview/articles/47610/article.html ________________________________________________________________________

From Cafe to Hybrids Not long ago, a bill to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy
(CAFE) standards failed in the Senate in the face of intense lobbying by the automakers. That
paragon of right thinking, Trent Lott, held up a picture of the 2-seat European SMART car and indicated that we'd all have to drive cars like that to raise CAFE average to 35 MPG by 2013.
If any of my dear readers believe Senator Lott, I urge you to check out the new Honda Civic
Hybrid, a four-seat 50 MPG hybrid that should hit dealer showrooms about the time you read
this. In the space of three years, Honda has decreased the weight and space requirements for
the hybrid components by about 40% over the first generation Honda Insight. http://www.autoweek.com/cat_content.mv?port_code=autoweek&cat_code=reviews& l oc_code=index&content_code=06093240
Forget 2013, as it stands today, it looks like the Civic hybrid would satisfy 90% of the auto-motive needs of 90% of the population. As to the other 10%, Honda's working on an answer
for them too with an investment in Flexcar, a car sharing firm. What's Flexcar? Think of it as a line of credit at your local car rental place. http://www.autoweek.com/cat_content.mv?port_code=autoweek&cat_code=carnews& l oc_code=index&content_code=06474541

Don't just think that Roller Coaster is Dangerous - Know it! Have you ever been at an amuse-
ment park and wondered, "I wonder how many people died on THAT ride?" Here's a website that you
can use to look for the answer -http://members.aol.com/rides911/accidents.htm

Play Misty(of Chincoteague) for me.
Virtually all of us who are now UAW-LSP attorneys are of the generation where we read (or
were supposed to read) Marguerite Henry's juvenile novel "Misty of Chincoteague" in fifth
grade. If you're wondering if they still swim the horses every year, the answer is yes. Here's the homepage for the Chincoteague Island: http://www.chincoteague.com/index.html

________________________________________________________________________

Bad Businesses of the Month (or three months or until whenever I update this)

#1 Worldcom Wireless I've had to field a half dozen complaints about this company in recent
months, and they really have miniscule marketshare here in Central Indiana. They can go
months without billing an account, then hit customers with a bill for several hundred dollars. From my personal experience it is really difficult to get a hold of someone in customer service. When you do, they are seldom responsive. I'm embarassed to admit that I'm a Worldcom stockholder. Right now the stock's not worth enough for me to go out of my way to sell it.

#2 The Dish Network (Echostar Communiations Corporation) I've seen multiple complaints of
billing credit cards without authorization, or when authorization has been revoked. They em-
ploy small local companies as sales agents who often provide contracts with terms totally differ-ent from that which Echostar claims are applicable, then Echostar denies that the consumer
ever got the contract that is sitting right on my desk. They ignore such applicable legal documents as the statute of frauds and the Home Solicitation Sales Act. I predict that in the
near future, some smart class action lawyer is going to tag these folks but good.

THERIPOFFREPORT.COM- A Consumer Complaint Site that's not for Wimps. I don't think
these folks censor complaints at all. I haven't seen this much trash talking since Reggie Miller's
last 3 game suspension. This site even has a section where you can dish on your spouse BY
NAME for infidelity. Here's the Ripoff Report for the Dish Network: http://badbusinessbureau.com/results.asp?submit22=Search+All+The+Latest+Rip- Off+Reports+Now%21&q1=ALL&q2=&q3=&q4=&q5=Dish&q6=&q7=

Here's the Ripoff Report for MCI/Worldcom http://badbusinessbureau.com/results.asp?submit22=Search+All+The+Latest+Rip- Off+Reports+Now%21&q1=ALL&q2=&q3=&q4=&q5=Worldcom+MCI&q6=&q7=

Monty Python & the Holy Grail Action Figures I've been known to quote a Monty Python line
or two, but even I would not pay $200+ for dolls based on characters in Monty Python & the
Holy Grail. (I'm waiting for the 20% off sale.) Here's the URL. http://store.artistdirect.com/store/artist/merch/aisle/0,,469706-987,00.html ________________________________________________________________________

Parting Words

Well enough of the usual mishmash. Everyone have a happy Spring. With any luck, I'll be back
in the summer with another installment - unless you raise the cash to pay me not to. If you have
any comments, any tips on interesting sites, or any other comments, please feel free to e-mail me
at conslaw@aol.com. If you are a spider program trolling for e- mail addresses, thank you but
no thank you, I get enough spam already. Bye Bye.