Return Gifts Before You Receive Them

Amazon.com has a great idea, but why did they have to pick on Aunt Mildred.

Undoubtedly, the Thread and Bobbin Sewing Kit that Aunt Mildred sent from Amazon.com for Christmas will never see a stitch.

Gifts sent via some warehouse many miles away are not only unwanted, but also a multimillion-dollar headache: They have to be repacked, labeled, dropped off and shipped back to Amazon’s Island of Misfit Toys. Then a new present has to be packed, labeled and shipped again. Efficient, the process is not.

Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon’s innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to “Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,” the patent says. “For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.

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New e-Bible is Big Business

Less than a week ago, Bible mega-publisher Zondervan released its newest translation of the New International Version of the Bible and saw it fly up the charts to become the top seller in the Apple store under Religion/Spirituality and No. 13 seller across all categories over Christmas weekend. On Amazon, it was No. 3, at $9.99 behind older Bibles selling for $1.99.

This is the first time any Bible translation has gone straight to digital. The print version goes on sale in March.

Before the e-book launch, this new NIV was pretty much known only to scholars looking for changes in critical language. Zondervan already updated their original 1978-published NIV classic once this decade. The disastrous Today’s New International Bible, flamed out after scathing controversies over whether the translation was “gender accurate,” “gender neutral” or just theologically off base by dropping the old familiar pronouns that a bank of scholars ruled didn’t really express the original manuscripts.

Back to the drawing boards. This time Zondervan leadership got out in front of critics. As promised two years ago when they announced the new, new NIV would be underway, they brought in in scholars, pastors, missionaries and laypeople to review any text changes with the Committee on Bible Translation.

Their e-book Bibles are now 25% of Zondervan’s e-book revenue, according to a press release from the company, today.

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Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes

Across a variety of tasks, we are beginning to find a consistent pattern where conservatives are more responsive to threat/disgust, more responsive to angry faces, and less sensitive to gaze cues than liberals,” said researcher Michael Dodd, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Liberals, on the other hand, are proving to be more responsive to positive/appetitive stimuli, more responsive to happy faces, and more sensitive to gazes.

Possible explanation:

One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face.

Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.

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Speaking of eyes, any red-blooded American male of the 80’s should know these set of eyes.

Sorry, Betty Davis, you ain’t got nothin’ on her.

Posted in Political, Pop Culture | 1 Comment

Bag of Randomness

  • I feel there’s a lack of a huge after Christmas sale.
  • Hawaii’s governor plans on ending the Obama birth certificate once and for all.  I hate to break it to him, but people will believe what they want to believe.
  • Remember that Money Drop couple that guessed the right answer but the show told them they were wrong?  Well, it turns out the show admitted the mistake, but instead of giving them a chance at starting from their $800,000 correct answer, they are willing to allow them to start over on a new taping of the show.
  • My 401k is getting close to recovering from the huge market drop off a few years back.
  • I’ve always wanted to watch Ice Station Zebra just to try to figure out Howard Hughes fascination with it.  He reportedly watch this movie in a continuous loop.
  • I don’t understand why the 49’ers would fire a head coach with just one game remaining.
  • I forgot to mention this, but I recently took about three whole minutes out of my schedule to become an organ donor.  I hope you will do the same, if you’re a Texan you can do so here.  For me, there isn’t a reason just to let my body rot or be cremated if there was a chance to save a life.  God gave me this body, and I want to give what I can of it to others.
  • I recently discovered that Jerry Jones is the Chairman of the NFL Network Committee.  Is it possible the guy has too much on his plate?
  • Wisconsin town asks: Where’d we bury that time capsule? – I remember burying a time capsule in a geography class in high school.  We all thought that they way Mineral Wells spent their money, the building it was buried next to would still be there a decade later.  Several years later that building was tore down and a new high school was built over it.  I have no idea if that time capsule was ever found.
  • Man quits job, makes living suing e-mail spammers
  • You always hear girls referring to their friends as “girlfriends” but you will never hear a man refer to his friends as “boyfriends.”
  • Grace
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments