My friend Kirby picked up this “Wash Away Your Sins Towelette” at some novelty store, figuring it would be right up my alley.

It was.

Here are the directions for use:

1. Remove moist towelette
2. Devoutly wipe away wrong-doing
3. Spot check for stubborn guilt
4. Wipe again as needed
5. Discard sins in waste receptacle
6. Go forth purified & moisturized

Natural outlet for these soul-scrubbing sanitary naps? Strip clubs, since everything from the girls to the upholstery tends to be iffy, both morally and hygienically. Think of the sense of satisfaction!

In order to wipe out all of my sins, I’d need about a 100-pack of these little things (or maybe a beachtowel-sized version). Fortunately, there’s a wide selection of additional sin-cleaning products.

Think you know where all those red states and blue states lie? Then try your hand at this drag-and-drop map puzzle of these United States.

Make sure you’re precise: It’s fairly unforgiving if you’re off by even a few pixels. Could be a problem when it comes to those middle-country rectangular states.

As if you needed any more indication that the Arena Football League was a joke: The Tampa Bay Storm opted to give departing free-agent players championship rings with cubic zirconia stones.

I guess if you want a quality sports championship ring, you need to win a Stanley Cup.

For months now, I’ve been sitting on three Gmail invitations. I haven’t been hoarding them purposefully; I’ve already offered them up to any and all takers, online and off, and simply haven’t been able to unload them. Such is life.

This morning, I noticed that, instead of three unwanted invitations sitting there, I now had four. Meaning Gmail-boss Google saw fit to bulk up my supply.

If I can’t shed three of the suckers, what makes them think I can dispose of four??

It’s not unusual to get a refill on the invites, especially when you’ve run out or gotten down to only a couple. But at that time, Google would resupply with a half-dozen or so extras. What is the purpose of bolstering the invite cue by just one?

Anyway. I’m sure just about everyone out there who wants a Gmail address already has gotten one; thousands of them are up for grabs at any given moment. But in case there are any stray Gmail-less souls pining away out there, I’m putting mine up for grabs. They’ll make great stocking stuffers!

In the past, I’ve tried to extract something from readers in exchange for an invite; I’ve learned of the futility of that. So this time, just leave your first name, last name and email address (read that last part again, and a third time too — Google’s requirements, not mine) in the comment box below. First come, first served get the four Gmail invitations.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t indulge in pointless navel-gazing posts about BlogExplosion. And, aside from a couple of mentions shortly after joining the service back in October, I haven’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I like BlogExplosion. It’s sent beaucoup traffic my way, and uncovered a few worthwhile blogs for me to visit. But I’m not as mesmerized by it as others seem to be.

In any case, if you are one of those BE clickthru monkeys, take note: Maybe it’s just me, but it appears the Mystery Credits are paying off like the proverbial Vegas slot machine this morning. In the course of my casual clicking, something like every third click brought up a Mystery Credit screen. Most have been for only 2 or 3 credits, but one did gift me with a big 25. So if you live for grabbing BE credits, hop to it!

If U2 can get a custom-branded iPod, it’s only right that other music notables get theirs.

The Christina Aguilera model sounds particularly enticing.

It took a while, but Microsoft managed to unload Slate Magazine, to the strongest suspected suitor: The Washington Post Company.

The purchase price wasn’t announced, but I’m sure it’ll be leaked out soon. I’ll be curious to see how much scratch the online mag commanded. With a readership of some 6 million, it had to be decent.

I believe the Post intends to use Slate as a springboard for establishing a nationwide popular-press presence. I’m not sure why Newsweek doesn’t fulfill that function; it is hard news, but can be redirected easily enough. I’m guessing the average Slate demographic would be juicy enough to bring in respectable ad revenue.

The key to this deal is the continued delivery of Slate content through the MSN network. If the Post can somehow swing a deal to do that same through AOL, and even Time Warner’s Roadrunner ISP, it could really ramp up readership.

I’m also guessing that, regardless of any content-delivery deals, the Post will start marketing Slate more aggressively. I feel that’s been Microsoft’s biggest failing with it to this point: Relying solely on online presence. If Slate gets more advertising on TV, radio and print, it will become much more visible on a consistent basis.

It’s quite the paradox: Just as diet sodas are gaining in popularity and becoming the growth engine of the beverage biz, their traditional “diet” label is seen as a negative quality, and thus is being replaced by “zero”.

As much as Americans guzzle flavored cold drinks, it’s natural that they’d want to cut back the calories that go with them. Fatty and high-calorie foods are too hard to give up, so drinks get in the dieting crosshairs.

The problem is that food products tagged as “diet” come with a decades-ingrained presumption of inferior taste and texture. It’s a built-in stigma, predicated as much on unappealing experience as on gender-specificity (the assumption that women are more prone to body-consciousness than men). It’s hard to remake that image, even among younger consumers who may not remember the harsh early-stage products that were introduced in the 1970s and 80s.

In addition to evoking a bygone era replete with brands like Metrecal, Patio Diet Cola, Sugar Twin and Tab, the word “diet” can have unpleasant connotations, said John Diefenbach, a partner at TrueBrand in San Francisco, also a corporate and brand identity consultant.

“It’s a word that represents something that doesn’t taste good, a punishment, and people don’t want to be punished,” Mr. Diefenbach said. “They want something that tastes good.”

So instead, a new tagline is rolled out; but at the risk of losing potentially valuable brand equity:

Still, there are risks to eliminating a word like “diet” from familiar brands.

“I have doubts about renaming products that consumers already know,” said John D. Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, an industry newsletter based in Bedford Hills, N.Y. “I’m not sure it’s a great idea.” The risk is that products may lose whatever competitive advantage they now enjoy in an overcrowded category.

Even so, “using names other than ‘diet’ makes sense on new products,” Mr. Sicher said, “as a way to broaden the segment.”

So why “zero”?

“What we found in the new name is that it appeals to nonusers of Diet Sprite,” whether those consumers had stopped buying Diet Sprite or had never tried it at all, said Dan Dillon, vice president for marketing in the diet unit of Coca-Cola North America.

“And ‘zero’ is a much better, more accurate description of the product,” Mr. Dillon said, because it extends beyond “zero calories, zero carbs, zero sugar” to encompass “zero color and zero caffeine.”

Maybe. But honestly, the term “zero” doesn’t convey a positive absence of unwanted elements to me, as much as it reminds me of a negative connotation: A nothing, a loser, a worthlessness. And this is coming from a typical 25-34 year-old white male, who does indeed have a bit of a problem with being seen in possession of a girly-like diet beverage (although I’ll still drink one, with an alibi like, “I just drink Diet Coke with Lime because they don’t make a regular Coke with Lime”).

I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way, and I’m sure market research will spit back some unpleasant feedback along these lines. That’s why I’m sure the “zero” movement will be stopped cold by this time next year, as much a non-starter as the former and current “free” tag.

Speaking of which:

Mr. Sears at Pepsi-Cola North America offered a similar explanation. “Diet lemon-lime is unique because it’s not just sugar-free and calorie-free but also caffeine-free and color-free,” Mr. Sears said. But because all brands “start with the word ‘diet,’ consumers lump all diet soft drinks together in one place in their minds,” he added, obscuring the “positive connotations” of having no color or caffeine.

“Taking off ‘diet’ and putting ‘free,’ a great, wonderful word, at the end lets us lead off with ‘Sierra Mist’ in the name,” Mr. Sears said.

Pepsi-Cola North America tried something similar a couple of decades ago, rebranding the caffeine-free versions of Pepsi-Cola and Diet Pepsi-Cola as Pepsi Free and Diet Pepsi Free. The renamings even served to set up a joke in the 1985 movie “Back to the Future,” when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), visiting 1955, is told by a counterman after he orders a Pepsi Free, “You want a Pepsi, pal, you’re gonna pay for it.”

Poor Dave Chappelle. (Well, no, not poor, really.) He’s been laid up lately with the flu, resulting in the writing and production of the third season of his show being behind schedule.

Hey Dave, hollah at your boy here! You need some pinch-hit writing help, I’m here for you. I’ll be glad to help you out.

You’re jealous. Right now. Of something or someone. General or specific. To some degree.

That’s okay. We all are, at any given time. It’s human nature.

But here’s a question: Does is make more sense to be jealous of someone, or their situation, if they’re happy about it, or if they’re dissatisfied with it?

Example Number 1: Your friend has a great job that pays great, and she knows it, and she’s thrilled about it. You don’t, and you trade places with her in a second.

Example Number 2: Your friend has a great job that pays great, but she doesn’t see it that way. She complains about how it’s not right for her, doesn’t pay enough, and it leaves her feeling empty. You feel she doesn’t realize how lucky she is, and resent her to the extent that you wish you were in her place, because you’d love to have what she has.

Substitute the job situation above with anything applicable: Relationships, money, skills, whatever.

So which scenario is more appropos? Do people more often feel envy in positive frameworks, or in negative ones? Is one more “right” or “wrong”?

Doing any last-minute Christmas shopping? Then you’re in luck: Sculptor Arturo Di Modica has put his famous 7,000-pound bronze bull sculpture, which sits in the heart of New York’s financial district, up for sale. One hell of a stocking stuffer!

There are some conditions attached: The buyer can’t move the bull from where it now is, and must donate it to New York City. So what does the purchase price get you?

In exchange, the buyer will get a tax break and branding rights, said the report. The owner’s name will also be placed on a plaque designed by Di Modica that will sit next to the bull, the [Wall Street Journal] said.

In other words, you’re paying for naming rights to one of the financial world’s most distinctive symbols. The only thing that could top this would be if the NYSE sold off its naming rights. So I expect a healthy sales price for this little chunk of real estate.

Merrill Lynch is one of the rumored interested parties, and since their corporate logo is a bull, that’s not surprising.

If the markets go all bearish soon, you’ll know the reason.

Not down with the Botox Nation or plastic surgery? Facial acupuncture may be your ticket to a fresh face.

I wonder how this compares to a natural facelift.

Quien es mas macho: Robotron: 2084 or Smash TV?

I’m extreme oldschool, yo. Robotron all the way!

The above image by St. Pete Times illustrator Steve Madden sums it up nicely: The NHL lockout lingers, it’s down to Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow as the battling proxies, and there’s no end in sight.

Hall-of-Famer and Tampa resident Phil Esposito weighs in for the first time (that I’ve seen):

Esposito understands both sides. He has been at each end of the players’ pay scale, once making the minimum as well as being the league’s highest-paid player. He spent the late 1970s as president of the union, fighting owners for things such as pensions, health care, better salaries. He also has been an owner, running the Lightning through the 1990s. And, adding even more perspective, he is a former GM of the New York Rangers, a franchise blamed for sending player salaries out of control.

“Every time there has been a problem, I’ve backed the players,” Esposito said. “Even the last time in ‘94, I thought the players were right. I was an owner then, but I thought the players were right.

“But, this time, for the first time in my life, I think the players are wrong, dead wrong. I don’t understand why they won’t accept a salary cap.”

Esposito believes that players will still get their money, that the cap won’t make a difference in salaries. He might have a point. The owners’ proposal, which uses a salary cap, gives players about 54 percent of the league’s revenues. The union’s offer, based on a luxury tax, gives the players about 56 percent of the league’s revenues.

I find it hard to believe that Espo doesn’t know why the players reject a salary cap. A cap would require the players to give up something that Esposito fought to secure in the NHL over thirty years ago: Guaranteed contracts. If the owners are firm about wanting a hard cap, the only way to achieve that is by doing away with guaranteed deals and go with NFL-style voidable contracts. Granted, it’s possible that the owners might bend on that, resulting in something of a softer salary cap (like what the NBA has). But as it stands, if the players cave on on the cap issue, they also cave on having guaranteed contracts. That’s the issue that I feel hasn’t been recognized by outside parties, and makes the current impasse understandable.

Today’s print edition of the Times includes a nice spread of hockey writer Tom Jones’ proposed solutions to the outstanding issues: Luxury tax, salary cap, salary arbitration, entry-level contracts, miniumum salary, and free agency. Inexplicably, this feature isn’t posted on the paper’s website (or else I simply can’t find where it’s buried; if I do locate it, I’ll post the link).

All of Jones’ solutions are basically halfway compromises between the union’s view and the league’s. The luxury cap compromise is especially goofy: A $40-million payroll triggers a dollar-for-dollar tax bill (so a $60-million payroll would result in an additional $20 million going to the league).

I found the salary cap solution to be kind of interesting, if of questionable feasibility:

UNION: Refuses to accept salary cap because it says it eliminates the free-market system.

NHL: Says it won’t do a deal without a salary cap. Under the league’s plan, the cap would be based on each team’s revenues, and payrolls would be capped between $34.6-million and $38.6-million and then increase in future seasons.

OUR PLAN: There is no salary cap, but there is a salary floor. In our system, teams would have to spend at least $25-million to collect the luxury tax funds. This discourages teams from simply collecting money while not paying for a decent on-ice product. Any team spending less than $25-million on payroll would be forced to pay a dollar-for-dollar tax for every dollar spent under $25-million. For example, if a team spent $20-million on payroll, it would owe $5-million in taxes.

It’s interesting, and combined with the luxury tax, would make for something of an equitable system. But there’s no way the owners are going to agree to such an onerous minimum. Insofar as the entire concept of a cap/floor is acceptable, it’s unfair to the owners anyway: Suppose a team decides on a youth movement, and just by virtue of who makes the roster, winds up with a bunch of kids with little more than entry-level salaries? The team would have to cough up an equal amount of money in tax.

At this point, I’m crossing my fingers on a last-minute deal that would allow something like a 40-game schedule. Keep hope alive…

You already knew that Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger has the “Roethlisburger”. But did you know the rookie phenom also has his own official blog?

(I checked it out on Roethlisberger’s official website, and the blog is indeed for real.)

The Roethlis-blog is a fully-feature weblog, powered and hosted by TypePad and equipped with commenting capability. That’s somewhat unusual — celebrity blogs often don’t include an easy means for feedback, understandably so. (On the downside, there doesn’t appear to be a way to trackback.)

As you’d expect, given his schedule, Roethlisberger doesn’t post every single day. But it is updated pretty often, and it provides a good window on the life of a first-year NFL player. He’s doing a better job than most blogging sports figures: Of the blogs cited as examples in Bryan Curtis’ “Jock Blogging” piece for Slate back in May, only a couple (notably NBA owner Mark Cuban’s Blog Maverick) are updated with any frequency.

I just happened upon a new TV commercial for Duke University. The ad, entitled “A Different Shade of Blue”, features the school’s cartoony Blue Devil athletic mascot cavorting in a stuffy academic library.

I noticed that the establishing shot of the Blue Devil showed him clearly listening to an iPod. While this might merely be a visual shorthand for conveying how hip Duke is, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the school’s program of giving incoming freshmen free iPods as learning devices.

Could they be positioning the promise of a free iPod as a student recruiting incentive? I believe the iPod experiment was supposed to last only a year, but maybe they’re floating the concept as a permanent feature of enrollment at Duke. I’m sure other schools are dangling even crazier ideas, like snack bars and p2p services, in the competition to attract kids; providing an iPod isn’t much of a stretch, especially if it’s officially being presented as a classroom tool.

Do you crave ice cubes? Compulsively chew on the ice in your drink? Then you might have pagophagia, a symptom of iron-deficient anemia.

One of the commenters on Kevin, M.D.’s post noted that he’d never remember the term “pagophagia” (and he’s a med student!). If you speak the Greek, like I do, it’s pretty easy to remember: “Pago” is the Greek word for “ice”, and “phagia” is related to the root verb “to eat”. So it’s simple like that.

I have a friend who used to make an annoying habit out of eating ice. I don’t think he ever raided the freezer for cubes, but without fail, he’d munch on the leftover ice in his drinks. We used to rag on him about it, making up nonsense like how it would erode his tooth enamel over time. Now, I wonder if he didn’t have a touch of anemia.

One down, one to go. Courtesy of Time Warner Book Group, the following is my brief review of David Harris’ “The Crisis : The President, the Prophet, and the Shah — 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam”.

By way of background, not only did I run a teaser for this review yesterday, but last month, I also made note of an interesting tidbit about Ayatollah Khomeini’s name.

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The present-day War on Terror inspires an impulse to examine the roots of Islamic animosity toward Washington and its Mideast policy. The natural starting point: The 1979-80 Iranian Hostage Crisis, a flashpoint event that crystalized public attitudes on both sides ever since.

But how useful is the Crisis as a case study to be applied to today’s dynamic? The parallels seem obvious, taking into consideration the broad outlines. But is what happened during those 444 days a quarter-century ago as apparent as it seemed to the public eye?

Harris’ “The Crisis” examines the extensive behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the hostage-taking, the negotiations to free the captives, and the drawn-out resolution. Every step of the way, the accounts and recollections provided by the likes of Hamilton Jordan, Abolhassan Bani Sadr and Robert Armao speak to just how complex the process was, and how much depended upon managing the situation instead of making futile attempts at guiding it.

Harris devotes a tremendous amount of background to how the political culture in Iran led to the Islamic Revolution. The hostage situation doesn’t occur until halfway through the book, underlining the importance of what led up to the Crisis.

Much of that prelude centered around the Shah of Iran, reviled in his country for running a repressive regime commonly assumed to be an American-backed client. The U.S. backing of the Shah, right up to the end, ensured an anti-American character to the Revolution; but the antecedents to the uprising illustrated ample opportunities for Washington to potentially forge ties with the post-Shah government (though not without collateral diplomatic damage). The Iranian fixation on the Shah wound up precipitating the hostage-taking, and his eventual fate, after a lengthy stint as an nomadic exile, accelerated an end to it.

Harris attempts to portray the Shah as an all-to0-human character, done in by his own shortcomings. At times, it’s overdone: The author continually strives for irony by referring to the Shah by his many honorifics (“King of Kings”, “Light of the Aryans”, and others) simultaneously, but despite the story of his continuing physical and political deterioration, the effect makes the Shah more of a mystical figure.

The Shah is only one of the three central characters in this book, the others being Jimmy Carter and Ayatollah Khomeini. Character studies on each mainly concentrated on their upbringings and rise to power, and were supposed to serve as context for their later behavior. While comprehensive, I’m not sure just how useful it was in interpreting the chief developments in the Crisis. In particular, the Ayatollah, potentially the most intriguing of the three, is the sketchiest study (doubtless due to the greater difficulty in getting an accurate account of his later years).

Somewhat surprisingly, very little focus is put upon the individual hostages themselves, or to their captors. A decent overview of the raid on the American Embassy in Tehran is provided, as well as how conditions were for a few specific hostages and specific hostage-takers. But in this book’s scope, they’re almost relegated to one of many sidebar stories, with the macro-political stories taking precedence. Personally, I preferred this approach, as I feel it got to the heart of the matter; but those expecting this book to deal more directly with the hostages could be disappointed.

What struck me most about Harris’ presentation of the facts was how The Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam (the group responsible for the hostage standoff) managed to paralyze not one, but two governments. While the flummoxing of Washington was apparent to the world, the way the Students manipulated Iran’s Revolutionary government was more subtle. And yet it was this defiance of Tehran’s secular authorities that prevented an otherwise-attainable timely solution, and more than anything set the tone for the poisoned relations between the U.S. and Iran even today.

As an historical anatomy lesson, “The Crisis” is a very comprehensive work. Harris covered all the bases, from all sides, and paid due attention to how governments function in the face of seemingly unmanagable circumstances.

Where the book falls short is in the alleged attempt to link the Hostage Crisis to the beginnings of today’s militant Islam. It’s a weak attempt that’s given barely a couple of paragraphs’ worth of mention. I have a feeling that it was injected into the title simply to make the book seem less musty and more relevant to today’s events. In reality, the book stands well on its own as a history book, and Harris shouldn’t have to apologize for that.

“The Crisis” is a great recounting of a critical juncture in American history. The presentation has many aspects of a real-life political thriller, making it an engrossing read.

How long should a testing period last? If it’s an online service, it’s so indefinite that it’s become an enshrined state of being.

“You can just release your beta into the world and you don’t have to do any testing, because your users will do it for you,” said Jonathan Korman, the principal designer at Cooper, a consultancy that helps developers with usability issues.

“I think it’s indicative of this philosophy of the indefinitely rolling release schedule that happens with Web applications,” he said. “Because you don’t have to send out anything shrink-wrapped, you have the luxury of making little tweaks every day.”

So basically, it’s the ultimate in outsourcing: Instead of conventional product testing in a controlled environment, you release the unfinished wares to the users and rely on them to find the flaws.

In a way, it’s ideal. Exposing an application to real-world wear-and-tear will uncover more issues than any internal testing arena, and that should lead to a better final product.

The downside? The coming of a “final” product comes into question, because the bugs and tweaks never seem to stop coming. Meanwhile, despite the testing status, the user cycle accelerates on its own, turning a beta product into, for all intents and purposes, the established product. People get used to working with what’s there.

“If you have a beta, you expect it to not be perfect,” said Blake Scarbrough, a Web designer. “Once it’s launched, you expect it to be perfect.”

Companies may also keep their products in beta indefinitely because during that period, they are likely soliciting invaluable usability input from users — something they may no longer be able to do once they tell the world they have finished a product.

“If it’s already completed, you really don’t have that desire to give them feedback,” said Scarbrough.

I think this is nonsense. There is such a thing as Version 2.0 — nothing’s ever “completed”. What the use of public beta testing has impressed is that there’s some sort of insider cache to user feedback, and that’s simply not the case when that feedback is coming from thousands of people. In this sense, “beta” doesn’t mean what it used to.

Naturally, in order to get away with this, companies have to keep these betas free. That’s a natural fit with Web applications, where cost of delivery effectively is zero. That also avoids the assumed contract that comes with charging for something — as long as no money is exchanged, no guarantees are made.

In an effort to make this approach universal, Google Blogoscoped is encouraging blog owners to stick the “beta” tag onto their sites, thus making the concept chic. Indeed, it’s all a journey.

It’s been confirmed: Scotland is gorging itself on deep-fried Mars Bars.

You know what I bet would go great with these? That old Scot standby, haggis. A steady diet of those two delicacies should shrink your lifespan quicker than the Super Size Me regimen would.

It’s nutritionally negligible, but take note: The “Mars Bar” sold in Europe is known in the U.S. as Milky Way. Basically, the only difference between this and the American Mars Bar is the presence of almonds. And I hate almonds, deep-fried or not.

I’m feeling a bit puckish this morning (not to mention sleepy). So here’s a silly quote; by all means, let it sink in before clicking through to the hyperlink:

“I am Death, Destroyer of Lawns.”

And, if you’re actually interested, the meta-context, and the ur-context.