Google Reciprocates ...

By J. Thomas Duffy

Earlier this month, we brought to you the news that Topeka, Kansas, in their channeling of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, was changing their name to Google, Kansas, in an effort to land a fiber optic deal Google is rolling out.

So, today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt returned the favor;



A different kind of company name

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.

[snip]

A change this dramatic won’t happen without consequences, perhaps even some disruptions. Here are a few of the thorny issues that we hope everyone in the broader Topeka community will bear in mind as we begin one of the most important transitions in our company’s history:

• Correspondence to both our corporate headquarters and offices around the world should now be addressed to Topeka Inc., but otherwise can be addressed normally.
  

• Google employees once known as “Googlers” should now be referred to as either “Topekers” or “Topekans,” depending on the result of a board meeting that’s ongoing at this hour. Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is clear: we aren’t in Google anymore.
  

• Our new product names will take some getting used to. For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe. Topeka Talk, similarly, is an instant messaging product, not, say, a folksy midwestern morning show. And Project Virgle, our co-venture with Richard Branson and Virgin to launch the first permanent human colony on Mars, will henceforth be known as Project Vireka.
  

• We don’t really know what to tell Oliver Google Kai’s parents, except that, if you ask us, Oliver Topeka Kai would be a charming name for their little boy.
  

• As our lawyers remind us, branded product names can achieve such popularity as to risk losing their trademark status (see cellophane, zippers, trampolines, et al). So we hope all of you will do your best to remember our new name’s proper usage:

Michael Arrington wasn't amused, but Boing Boing jumped into the spirit of things;

Also, Googlers are henceforth to be known as Topekans. Employees of Topeka who were originally from Kansas, be prepared for long, confusing conversations with your parents. No word on how this will effect stock holders. But if things go poorly, and you end up owning a hunk of the Sunflower State, the Konza Prairie is lovely this time of year. Just saying.

Additionally, Vladislav Savov, over on Engadet has a round-up of AFD hijinx, and it is hysterical.

We were rather partial to the "World's First Inflatible Lap Top' and "Real Helicopter Controlled by Nokia N900"

Happy April Fool's Day!

Bonus Google Riffs

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Google Flu Tracker Didn't Pick Up Swine Flu

Life Imitates Art ... Or, Did Burt Lancaster Invent Google Earth?

Breaking News! Giant Search Engine Downed By GOP and RNC Staffers ...Google Crashes! Besieged With “I’m Feeling Lucky” Searches From White House, Congress ...Amazon, D.C. Novelty Stores Hit With Run On Magic 8-Balls

(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Not a pox on both houses

By Creature

John Cole on David Broder's latest bi-partisan pony:

It is particularly galling to me that anyone could watch the last two years and have a “pox on both houses” mentality. One side of this debate has been deceitful, disgusting, and downright disingenuous about everything . . . Bipartisanship, Broder’s Rosebud, is dead, and it is pretty clear which side is to blame--the ones wielding the signs screaming Don’t Tread On Me from the Capitol Hill Balcony might be the place to start.

While I won't lament the death of bi-partisanship, to even nominally blame the Dems for its demise is ridiculous. The Dems are bending backwards to make their bills GOP-lite and all they've gotten in return is cries of Armageddon. David Broder needs to wake up.

Barack Obama and the Seven Samurai

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't have much to say today. Or, rather, I do, but I'm just too busy with other things to blog. I'll be back later with new posts, but make sure to stay tuned for more from my great co-bloggers.

I also need my anger and frustration to subside a bit. Consider:

1) NYT: "A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency's program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration's effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush."

2) NYT: "The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday."

Now, while I applaud the judge's ruling, a confirmation that Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program was (and is) indeed illegal, I oppose offshore drilling strenuously. But what especially angers/frustrates me -- and this is what links the two stories -- is how President Obama, whom I continue to support and whose victory, along with the Democrats', on health-care reform I consider an historic triumph, is essentially governing as, if not quite a Republican, a moderate-conservative Democrats in Republican clothing.

His health-care reform plan, a solidly moderate Republican effort, was hardly as progressive as it could have been, and ought to have been, but I accepted that political reality was what it was and that the plan itself was probably the best that could have been achieved -- not that Obama ever pushed for more, however, such as a public option. Meanwhile, the stimulus package was good but not enough and the Wall Street bailout was a concerted effort to reward some of those in the financial oligarchy who had helped cause the meltdown in the first place. And then there's the escalation of the Afghan War and... do I need to go on?

Well, Obama's been propping up some of the worst elements of Bush's national security state (even if he did away with some of the worst abuses), and now he's doing his best Sarah Palin impersonation on drilling. And for what? Bipartisanship? It's not like Republicans, excepting Lindsey Graham and maybe one or two others, are about to support a meaningful climate-energy bill, and it's not like they're about to go along with him, and his party, on anything else this year. They showed all their cards during the health-care debate, and all they've got is obstructionism and ideological extremism.

So what is it, then? Is Obama just playing the bipartisan card to win public support in anticipation of eventual Republican opposition? Is he just setting Republicans up to look bad? Maybe, but it's not all image. He really does seem to support domestic surveillance and he really does seem to want offshore drilling. His presidency, if we judge it on its record, is anything but solidly progressive, health-care reform (which is progressive only in relative terms) aside.

I know, I know. This is hardly news. Critics like Glenn Greenwald have been saying this all along, and they're right. I've been saying it, too, from time to time, though I've usually given Obama the benefit of the doubt, and I'm sure I'll continue to support him, not least because the alternative, Republican rule, is so much worse. But, while I realize he's in campaign mode and trending to the right in consideration of November, when running as bipartisan moderates could help Democrats stave off electoral disaster, there are real-world consequences to governing as a Republican lite. And for that Obama deserves our anger and frustration.

Alright, so I guess I did have a fair amount to say, and the time to say it.

But my intention here was not to riff off a couple of NYT articles but to say that I'm busy and, in belated celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the greatest film director of all time, Akira Kurosawa (who was born on March 23, 1910 and who died in 1998), to post the trailer for the greatest film of all time, Seven Samurai. Yes, I really think it's the greatest, tied with Kieslowski's Decalogue (which isn't really a single film) and ahead of, among others (and in no particular order), Ozu's Tokyo Story and Floating Weeds, Imamura's The Profound Desire of the Gods, Gance's Napoleon, Watkins's Edvard Munch, Girard's 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Lumet's Network, Altman's Nashville, Lang's M, Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan, Wenders's Wings of Desire, and another Kurosawa film, Ran.

Anyway, here it is -- a trailer that hardly does the movie justice, a movie that, to me, is about everything, as I often describe it. If you haven't seen, there's a massive hole in your life. So go watch it. All of it.

See you later.