Zero to One-Eighty » usa

Wired: GM killed the wrong brand

Adrian Cooke — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:57:19 +0000

This has been burning me for a while. The El Camino was discontinued in 1987. In 2010, Pontiac were planning to reintroduce it with this:

2010 ~~Holden Ute~~ Pontiac G8 Sport Truck (Photo: General Motors)

But even before they killed Pontiac, GM nixed the return of the American ute. Some things are just too pure for this world. Chuck Squatriglia for Wired confirms the people’s choice:

General Motors is unloading three brands and tossing one overboard in a scramble to stay afloat, but the one it scuttled may be the one it should have kept.… It turns out Pontiac, which got the axe, is the brand people wanted to see saved.

Almost 10,000 responses to the article’s poll say the same:

Which brand should have been killed? n = 9,993
Pontiac	Saturn	Hummer	Saab
6%	27%	55%	10%

Ding, ding, ding: we have a winner.

El Caminos on Flickr

Adrian Cooke — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:59:50 +0000

By simonov, Gush Party and mezone

Beautiful.

Whitehouse.gov

Adrian Cooke — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:38:09 +0000

Before:

After:

Better.

Update: ReadWriteWeb reviews whitehouse.gov from the beginning using the Internet Archive.

The Big Three and the good fight

Adrian Cooke — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:12:26 +0000

Jim at Sweet Juniper! last week:

One thing I do like about GM, Ford, and Chrysler is that they are companies that still make something. What do the vast majority of the Fortune 500 companies even do? What does Goldman Sachs do? What do all those companies in Silicon Valley make? They shuffle paper, sure, transmit blips of binary code, attend important meetings, and make “deals.” Maybe brown people somewhere across an ocean will make whatever it is they’re selling or shuffling on paper or e-mailing each other about. But in Detroit, and in plenty of other industrial cities across this country there are still people making things without exploited labor, and believe it or not that still means something.

and this week:

It’s no secret that Americans don’t like to confront real issues of class. But I’m going to do it anyway. I think this ugly response to a mythology perpetuated about blue-collar workers is particularly shameful because so many American white-collar workers in both the public and private sectors are incredibly lazy themselves. God forbid a factory worker should step away from her job twisting the tops on the toothpaste tubes for a minute, but just because someone has a Bachelor’s degree that apparently entitles them to dick around on the internet all day with impunity.

I really like this blog. (Via Kris.)

A time of bad debts

Not your average Tuesday

Adrian Cooke — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:00:32 +0000

How much longer can you, personally, delay your voter registration if you are a United States citizen?

Adrian Cooke — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:57:02 +0000

Voter registration deadlines for the U.S. presidential election begin today. Google has a tool for finding voter registration info by ZIP code.

Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude…

Adrian Cooke — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 19:21:13 +0000

Am I wrong?

(Even the) Pope calls for an end to the Iran Crisis:

Pope Benedict XVI has called for a negotiated solution to the Iran nuclear crisis, in his traditional Easter message in St Peter’s Square in Rome. “May an honourable solution be found for all parties, through honest and serious negotiations,” he said. He also affirmed Israel’s “just right to exist in peace” while calling on the international community to help the Palestinians move towards statehood.

Amen to that. At least it’s an ethos.

Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen The Big Lebowski then you’re like a child who wanders in in the middle of a movie…