The SmartS Club

There is no lack of sites web-wide the authors of which believe "modesty" must be a talibanesque expletive. Guys (mostly) who smack their lips too shamelessly in total complacency of their writings buy themselves some chunk of electro-space and install a website called Smartass or the like. If you are *certain*, however, that your brilliance will enlighten the world, go call your site bigthink.com . Then, no name, no topic seems too big to tackle and to comment on. I have to disappoint you, however, bigthink.com is already taken. Those big talking folks at bigthink just published a collection of 'visions' by so-called experts and ask us (yes, me, you, the plebs!) which one of those visions might influence 'the world' the most. We are allowed to cast our vote. The visions come in handy in easily understandable little video-clips. Just in case we are too stupid to read. http://bigthink.com/ideas/39160 Those 'visions' are stunningly unimaginative: e

The new format 'Smart-SPresso' will start shortly - delivering lucid as well as tartly formulated comments on web-wide utterances. Stay tuned. And be prepared to comment vividly!

Do you know the feeling that just when you return to a website to get a screenshot of an incredibly incredible post you realize that it has been taken off seconds after you got there? Instead of cursing and cussing and calling 'liars' those smart-s'ess amongst us who always claim that 'the internet never forgets' you should dig up the archives of waybackmachine.org and thumb through history. Even though I failed to excarvate my favourite from the german weekly "Die Zeit" of May 10, 2005 I am confident that one or the other embarassingly useless piece of historical document is stored forever somewhere in California ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive ). My favourite? Well, in Germany a notorious cannibal was sentenced to 13 years in prison. An apprentice at Die Zeit had a preliminary headline set free to the public, reading "13 Jahre Haft für einen Haps (okay okay das geht nicht)" (something like:"13 years for a mouthful (oka