This iPad ad made its debut during the Oscars ahead of its pre-order date of March 12th and release date of April 3rd. Not all were impressed but I think it works perfectly. Why? Because all it shows is how it looks and what it does. And it does a lot in those 30 seconds. Rarely do companies focus solely on their products to market them.

Another similar ad that worked was that of Google during the Super Bowl. It had the added dimension of weaving a story and even spurred plenty of video responses that Google obviously didn’t mind.

Only these two companies have come close to perfect brand management. Can you think of any other such campaigns?

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Post tags: Advertising, apple, branding, Google, ipad, minimalism

FourSquare, the location-based check-in tool was always aimed toward businesses. The first step was to get users accustomed (or addicted) to checking in wherever they go and help them compete for points against each other by giving away emblems like Mayor badges. Now, FourSquare has made it easier for businesses to access all this rich data regarding their location.

With the new tool, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to the place via Foursquare, when they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. Business owners will also be able to offer instant promotions to try to engage new customers and keep current ones.

It was an obvious direction for FourSquare and I had wondered why hadn’t they implemented it sooner. This move might in fact be useful for both consumers and businesses as the latter will try to attract and keep their loyal base happy. One more advantage I see at least in another screenshot is that managers and staff are identified and listed separately. I have seen couple of my ‘friends’ check in every day (including school nights) at a bar at Northgate, College Station and have thought, wow! She definitely has a drinking problem. Until I realized, she probably works there. Of course, she is the frikkin Mayor of the bar with no chance of anyone else ousting her ever. Now unless, businesses or FourSquare matches consumers with their spending habits, they have no reason to worry about backlash. FourSquare users are willingly signing away their geo-location privacy and if they do it smartly, there is no discernible harm.

This feature is available only to 30 small businesses but FourSquare plans to expand it to more than 900 businesses soon. This might just be the social networking app that small businesses readily welcome.

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Post tags: Business, foursquare, geolocation, socialnetworking

No one seems to think it will hold up on appeal, but yesterday a recently elected judge in Houston, Texas ruled that the Lone Star State’s death penalty is unconstitutional.

Bigelow vs. Cameron? Streep vs. Bullock? Forget it. The most riveting face-off during Sunday's Oscar ceremony came early: When producer Elinor Burkett wrestled the microphone away from director-producer Roger Ross Williams after their film, "Music by Prudence," won for best documentary short. What really happened? We reached both shortly after by cell phone, and got both sides of the story.

You can only wish they were as honest as 'Snakes on a Plane'

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings.

Confusing? Obtuse? Does Conrad need to stop by Politico's offices with a picture book and some finger puppets? I understand perfectly well how intelligent people who don't follow this debate closely might not catch on to the distinction. But this is what Mike Allen does all day — and, as I understand it, much of the night and the wee hours of the morning as well. How can anybody still not understand this? I'm at a loss here.

What? No 'Tere Ghar Ke Saamne'? Top Architecture Songs #pb

The world that surrounds the topic of Web Design is home to many debates and opinions on best practices or generally how things should and shouldn’t be done. While many of these opinions are accepted and taken on board by everyone, there are some that end up being split into two opposing camps. One camp will provide an expert opinion for one side of the argument, while the other contradicts with an equally valid argument.

Seven arguments Republicans should not be making against using reconciliation for health-care reform, and the one that they should.

this is about the user interface conventions and considerations which apply to creating software for the iPad platform (and touch-screen tablet devices in general). It is not a technical discussion of iPad-related APIs

IOGraph — is an application that turns mouse movements into a modern art. The idea is that you just run it and do your usual day stuff at the computer. Go back to IOGraph after a while and grab a nice picture of what you’ve done!

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This was misleading and I pointed it out to Mint Customer Service via email and even posted it on their help forums. Mint even acknowledged the problem and promised me that their engineers are working hard to resolve the problem as soon as possible. Also, I wasn’t the only one with the problem. So far in spite of being a major issue, Mint hadn’t yet resolved the issue when one of the users who had a similar problem posted a possible solution.

He simply went to the Planning tab and clicked on the Edit Details of the category that was displaying the wrong amounts and unchecked the ‘Make this budget roll over’ option. The issue resolved immediately. So my question is, does Mint or it’s engineers know that the fix is so simple and that the roll over option is more confusing than helpful? Perhaps the explanation is so simple that the Mint engineers missed the obvious. Or are they simply fixing the basic problem? Mint could have easily pointed out that the rollover budgets are causing the anomaly after which 90% of the users with the problem would have been satisfied. But does Mint know it was that easy?

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Post tags: Internet, mint, money, problem, solution

I haven’t gone all Jackson Pollack but care to guess how I created this seemingly piece of art in just over an hour? It may look all chaotic but it has a method to its madness. IOGraphica is a fun and awesome tool that tracks your mouse movement on the screen. You install it, let it run in the background, and go about your business. The application traces a path of your mouse with black lines. The black dots represent the place where the mouse was stationary for longer periods of time.

I created this on my MacBook Pro and as you can make out, my dock is on the left. The Mail app is on the top left and middle left are where my Twitter and NetNewsWire app resides. The top right black dot is where my ‘Send to Pukka’ bookmarklet resides. How is this useful? Well, not much really but then not everything you install on your computer is. Or for that matter, most of what you install is for fun.

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Post tags: applications, art, mouse

Take some time today to really get acquainted with one specific tool that you use frequently. Poke around the menus and help files, search Google for “ tricks” and see what comes up. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.

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Post tags: Google, netnewswire, scripts, tips, Twitter

Whether you’re trekking to an exotic locale or revisiting an old haunt, get more pleasure from your vacation with these pointers.

Instead, the most important things I've learned are less formal, but have proven extremely useful when working/playing with data

Some self-righteous folks remind us that Qatar is not a democracy, nor does it guarantee freedom of expression. But Qatar’s record on free speech is not relevant; India’s is. And it is for Indians to reflect on why India’s most widely known painter feels safer in Doha than in Mumbai.

Buying your textbooks is expensive, and who has time to find high-quality, cheap used textbooks? Be smarter — at BookRenter, you can rent textbooks for a fraction of the cost, and have them delivered right to your door as fast as the next day.

I knew that you could easily create custom slide shows with QuickTime Pro, but why spent hard-earned $29.99 when you can get the same functionality free of charge by using built-in Mac OS X 10.5 technologies?

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Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, I believe that true potential of the iPad will be unleashed by what we have not yet seen. Just like the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry, I believe the iPad will change the way we consume media. Yes, the iPad will and is primarily a media consuming device. I have been primarily interested in books and magazines. The possibilities of embedding rich media within content are endless. Think of your favorite magazines and then imagine how better your experience would be if some content was interactive ^[1].

The media companies have already started designing their publications for the iPad. For e.g., Penguin Books:

The part about holding your iPad up to the sky to map constellations is something that no paper book can do. Another of my favorite magazine, Wired is also almost ready with its app and it looks even better than it’s paper version.

I hope other publications recognize the potential of this new medium and get started. The publishing industry thankfully has learned from the music industry’s debacle and looks willing to adapt and adopt new technologies.

P.S. The irony that the two videos above are in Flash is not lost on me :) But as both YouTube and Wired show, you can keep everyone happy by having two versions of their content. May the best technology win.

Update: Coincidentally, hours after I published this meandering post, I found Craig Mod’s beautifully illustrated and excellently-written article on how the iPad is challenging the very notion of books and yet retaining what we like most about them.

The iPad changes the experience formula. It brings the excellent text readability of the iPhone/Kindle to a larger canvas. It combines the intimacy and comfort of reading on those devices with a canvas both large enough and versatile enough to allow for well considered layouts.

Footnotes:

1. A National Geographic app for the iPad will provide the same stunning photos and also include video

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Post tags: apple, Books, content, ipad, Media

Where are the tea parties protesting against this stupid government action?

When you gotta go, you gotta go

The Israel Defense Forces called off a raid in Palestinian territory after a soldier posted details, including the time and place, on the social networking website Facebook

Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs.

This front-page story in yesterday’s Washington Post featured a quotation from Justice Antonin Scalia, taken from a 2006 Yale Law School presentation, in which the Justice calls the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause "flotsam." Flotsam is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "floating debris": trash, in other words. Talk about trashing the Constitution.

Wired's Ryan Singel makes a good case in this article that cyberwar hype — like terrorism hype — has been fuelled by government contractors who have a product to sell, and who don't give a damn about the consequences to the net or to freedom

Not knocking on Pandora or Last.FM but Grooveshark is pretty awesome. Especially for popular songs.

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When you hire out a contractor to do work on your home, you want things done right and at a reasonable price. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of people get screwed by hiring a ‘jack of all trades handyman’ who said they could just about everything. In reality, they could do a lot…. of destruction, that is (oh snap)! No, really folks – to protect yourself from getting ripped off by a contractor, make sure you take these steps:

If architecture is about solving problems, rehabbing the Houtex was a dream project: The awkward buildings posed lots of problems.

Here are 22 pictures that will have you taking the escalator every time.

Does that mean you cannot blog anonymously in WV anymore? If yes, I would be illegal if I lived there

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It cannot get any better than dogs catching food in slow motion. A truly awesome and brilliant ad

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Post tags: dogs, pets, slow motion, video

Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

The importance of a unique, memorable and well designed blog, especially within the design community, should not be underestimated – First impressions will always count and your blog gives you an opportunity to showcase your skills and highlight how professional and serious you are as a designer.

Get up to 30% off your favorite gift cards and 90% cash back on unwanted gift cards.

Attic is a slick music controller for all those unplayed albums that are collecting dust sitting in your iTunes library. Listen to, create playlists of, and shuffle through your forgotten albums.

A fantastic workplace

In the pursuit of saving water — finding a low-flow shower head with high pressure — I took an inordinate number of showers, sometimes several a day. I compared the merits of 17 shower heads, each with a standard half-inch connection. Criteria included how well each could deliver an acceptably robust shower, and the usefulness of the various spray options. Also, I tested the flow rates stated by the manufacturers with a bucket and stop watch. Everyone told the truth.

Wildlife photographer Greg du Toit was so determined to capture the perfect image of wild lions drinking he sat submerged in their watering hole for three months.

The defiant photographer had endured a year of failed attempts at getting the right picture after building hides and digging trenches near the animals' drinking spot.

In a final desperate effort, the 32-year-old decided to take the plunge and climb into the murky pool with his camera and ended up contracting several tropical diseases.

If you are based in India and want to withdraw money from PayPal to your local bank account (or your credit card), you need to have an Importer Exporter Code.

The Importer Exporter Code, or IEC in short, is normally required by manufacturers and companies for international trade but with this new RBI ruling, the hundreds and thousands of freelancers, programmers, web designers and small companies who depend on PayPal for foreign payment will also have to apply for an IE code.

Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a wireless multi-touch TRACKPAD, KEYBOARD and fully customizable and programmable REMOTE CONTROL for your PC or Mac! It does EVERYTHING all the other remote control apps does – AND MORE!

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Another minor milestone for this blog. The last milestone was reached 1045 days ago. Blogging is less of a priority now and this blog has definitely been far less frequently updated. So thanks to all those who continue reading.

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Post tags: blogging, milestone, Personal

'Undetected rapists' on campus: A case study that uses Texas A&M to highlight problems of repeat offenders #TAMU #pb

I thought I’d pick out a sampling of my favorite blog entries from the last five-ish years—with a special focus on the older hints that still work in Leopard and Snow Leopard. These aren’t necessarily the best hints, or the most popular hints, but ones that I just find personally interesting and/or useful. In no particular order, here they are.

Collecting and watching video is one task every personal Mac is put to use for. While QuickTime or VLC can play pretty much any kind of file you throw at it, it’s a lot better to get video to reside in your iTunes library. iTunes is the the most fussy video manager, mostly because Apple wants you to buy content from their store, but it’s also your one way ticket to watching video on your iPhone, iPod, iPad, or AppleTV. So you have to learn to deal with it.
Here’s a little guide, on using some of the video converters on the Mac, that will make sure the process is as smooth as can be.

Designer Steven Heller traces the evolution of the tiny symbols for each Olympic sport since their appearance in 1936

There's no escaping the fact that many of the vehicle-blamed accidents reported were actually caused by driver error (something Toyota will never say out loud), and many of the owners of these automobiles know that. As noted before, brakes always win out over engines, even at full throttle; that has been tested and proved many times in the past 20 years, including recent Car and Driver tests on Toyotas. So, if someone claims a car was speeding out of control and the brakes refused to work, from an engineering viewpoint that claim is instantly suspect.

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Both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB is heavily tilted toward Hollywood movies although the latter has records for all movies, including Bollywood. There are only a handful of Bollywood/Indian movie critics which is surprising given the number of movies we churn out and even among those critics, the reputable ones (like Roger Ebert kinds) are even rare ^[1]. I do my little movie review thing on this blog but it is merely a reflection of my uneducated personal taste. In spite of low number of movie critics, I have always felt that there is a demand for movie reviews aggregators which give you a quick snapshot of movie ratings. Coincidentally two such sites popped up at around the same time and both are impressive efforts.

Review-Schview

Designed and managed by Chugs, the resident web designer for Indian blogs (including DesiPundit) has created this ultra-simplistic reviews aggregator for latest releases. He collates ratings from 28 movie critics and averages their ratings. He uses a scale of 1- 100 and translates five-star ratings and descriptions to arrive at his score. The movie critics include ones from official newspapers and dedicated movie bloggers (WOGMA, Passion for Cinema, etc.).

As he tells us in his FAQ and disclaimer, he started this site for fun, is not comprehensive, and doesn’t use any weighting mechanism for reputable critics (says, he is bad at Math). An impressive effort that gives you a quick score of the movie reviews presented in a simple design inspired by Josef Müller Brockmann. Since it is a personal venture, I’m not sure how long it will last considering Chugs currently hosts it on a sub-domain of his personal design site instead of a dedicated domain. I understand that reading reviews every week and updating the site can get tiresome especially if he is plans to do it on his own but I hope this site lasts longer than I expect it to.

ReviewGang

ReviewGang also started as a fun project (most cool sites do) by Manu. Compared to Chug’s site, this meta-review site is more comprehensive and even uses weighting to adjust ratings by notable movie critics. In addition to presenting an aggregated score of movie critics on a 10-star scale, it also allows users to create profiles and rate (and review) movies displayed via a separate Viewer’s Rating. I exchanged couple of emails with Manu and he intends to create an Indian version of IMDB while promising to stay away from junk gossip content as seen on Zoom TV even if it costs him pageviews.

Currently, you can also see movie trailers of upcoming releases in addition to reading movie synopsis and reviews (direct links for full reviews are provided). ReviewGang presents movie reviewers in three distinct categories – Critics, Editors, and Users. If you run a movie blog and review movies regularly, you can be promoted from a user to an editor. As a user, you can also continue rating and reviewing movies on the site and accumulate points and be promoted to an Editor if you amass 250 points. I’m not sure if Editor ratings are included among the Critics ratings or the Viewers ratings.

The easy and quick access to movie reviews by critics, editors, and users is great. So is the access to movie trailers that we often have to Google for. The FAQ could be better with detailed explanation of the process and backend mechanisms for transparency sake. I wonder if enabling comments on user reviews would generate meaningful discussion or should a separate forum like on IMDB exist purely for throwing around random ideas about the movie (goofs, trivia, or maybe even gossip). As I have cautioned Manu via email, he better beware of ‘feature creep’ as he works toward making ReviewGang into an IMDB for India.

Both sites are impressive in terms of design and content. Although ReviewGang by admission seeks to be more comprehensive, I’m not sure Review-Schview intends to go down that path ever. Chugs and Manu could even collaborate and pool their resources toward a even better site. Or maybe the competition will keep both on their toes. As these sites get popular, they may have to guard against fraud, especially on ReviewGang since it incorporates a user feature. I hope to see both these sites maintain their dead-simple interface and yet offer more.

Footnotes:

1. Everyone will agree that Baradwaj Rangan is one of those rare movie critics who can boast of a solid reputation in the blogosphere

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Post tags: Bollywood, India, Movies, reviews

On Tuesday, Facebook was awarded a major patent for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network”.

You can walk into a Barnes and Noble and buy a copy of Maxim, but you won’t find a copy of Hustler. Not because Hustler wouldn’t sell, but because selling pornography goes against the Barnes and Noble brand.

I still don't understand why anyone would want to #pb

In honor of Black History Month, 5 hints for starting the conversation about race (good news: it doesn't have to be awkward!)

Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color.

If you don’t have to worry about composition and timing, because you can always combine several photos or move things around later in Photoshop, then, well — what is a photograph?

Thad and Sarah Lawrence use Photoshop to create a surreal photo album documenting their relationship

Citibank will read your blog to see if you are worthy enough to bank with them

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We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.

Ouch! So first man to.. works? RT @thej: Sachin second person to score double century in ODI

Just when you thought it was safe to leave your desk or office. I found these creative and hilariously funny images that I had to share them with all you graphic and web designers out there who design from your own cubicle.

RT @a__muse: Lomborg gets pawned – I bet this does not feature in Ms. Ghose's reading list.

Awesome user pages

@cgawker Yeah but if all you want is a visual map without first listening to songs, Live Plasma is a nice toy -

Reducing the paper at home saves money, lowers your trash load, conserves environmental resources, and teaches good stewardship.  All of this adds to more sanity, an essential component to a healthy family.

Rocketbox is a powerful, new way of searching your e-mail in Apple Mail.app. It's never been faster or easier to find what you need.

StartupVisa.com was created by Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar, Brad Feld, Paul Kedrosky, & Manu Kumar to help raise awareness and change policy around the EB-5 visa, which enables investors from other countries to get a visa in exchange for starting a business in the US with $1M in capital (or $500K for economically targeted areas) and the creation of at least 10 US jobs.

Now if you Google for a solution to this little irritation you’ll find slick scripts that, if you find out what name your Mac recognizes your camera by, can automatically launch (or not launch) iPhoto as required. I went for the easier option which was to create a simple Automator Action to take some of the frustration away.

The furor was kicked off by comments from Anamitra Banerji, the head of product management and monetization at Twitter, who told MediaPost.com that “We are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.” He declined to give an exact date on when the micro-blogging site would launch an ad platform

By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

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College Station got its third snow of the season. Blame El Nino (not global warming) please. The first time wasn’t much and the second time, we were in San Francisco stranded at the airport. The third time is the charm. We are expected to receive nearly 2-4 inches of snow ^[1] and it is still snowing. We don’t have a kid so naturally the subject of our photos is Lucy who is more than willing to offer dramatic ’staring-in-the-distance’ poses. More photos.

Footnotes:

1. Compared to the Northeast blizzards, 2-4 inches is not much but remember, we never get snow so thrice in a season is highly unusual

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Post tags: College Station, Lucy, snow, winter

I nearly quit FourSquare last week. Not because of the privacy concerns that suddenly everyone realized they were subject to in the social networking world but because I didn’t really see the point of it all ^[1]. FourSquare is a geolocation-based ‘game’ where you ‘check-in’ at places you go to and based on certain factors, you are awarded points. If you frequent a place often enough, you are anointed the Mayor. Currently, I’m the Mayor of Kroger Co Store 383 and Barnes and Noble in Bryan and College Station respectively. In metro cities, restaurants, bars, and other business offer special discounts to frequent customers based on their FourSquare ‘badges’ in order to make you frequent them often and boost business. Currently, no such offers or promotions are available in my town hence my decision to leave it. ^[2]

However, people are quitting or not joining FourSquare citing privacy reasons. This gained momentum when a site, PleaseRobMe.com hypothesized that based on your check-ins at other places, you indicated that you are not at home and hence vulnerable to burglary. At face value, it makes sense but if you think about it, it is ridiculous. Aren’t you already tweeting your current activities outside your home or updating your Facebook status and uploading photos when you are at a party away from home? So how is FourSquare any different? Andy Baio unearthed similar concerns about answering machines on your home telephone and newspaper funeral service announcements in the 70s and 80s. As far as I know, unlike Google Latitude, FourSquare doesn’t place a roving GPS tracker on you broadcasting your movements across the city and visible to all especially Jack Bauer. In fact, the GPS locator used by FourSquare isn’t even all that accurate and often while adding venues, it places me smack in the middle of the Texas A&M Drill Field when in fact, I’m a mile away at a restaurant. Taking advantage of these shortcomings, people have even appointed themselves as the Mayor of North Pole ^[3]. You have the freedom to check-in or not wherever you go and there is no compulsion to check-in every day. And just because you checked in at Great Clips on Sunday morning doesn’t mean your wife isn’t at home.

So like any social networking tool you are using, there are a few things you should and should not do if you value your privacy. Gawker has covered quite a few and I’m adding a few more:

• Don’t add random strangers as friends: Since you are sending out information about the places you frequent, you can be more selective in adding friends than say, on your Twitter list. In fact, I have found people from other countries trying to ‘friend’ me on FourSquare baffling because you don’t have the same restaurants, or stores so even the recommendations angle doesn’t work. I removed a bunch of people that I had added earlier and I hope they don’t take it personally. I don’t. But then adding out of town ‘friends’ should assuage your privacy concerns, right? As in real life, in two words – choose wisely.
• Don’t check in from work: Becoming a mayor of your workplace is not just lame but sad. I’m sure your boss will not include your FourSquare checkins in your annual review. And these check-ins are the privacy holes that you should keep away from.
• Don’t check in from home or your friend’s place: After work, don’t go home and check-in at home with a message saying, you are glad to be at home. That in fact is where PleaseRobMe directly applies and perhaps you deserve to be robbed. Of course, being a Mayor of your own home is even more lame than being the Mayor of your workplace. While you are at it, extend the privacy courtesy to your friend by not checking-in to his home while you are visiting. Not only is it rude but also a gross violation of someone else’s privacy especially if he is not on FourSquare. Did I mention that the pinnacle of lameness is being the Mayor of your friend’s home?
• Don’t check-in from places you don’t want ‘friends’ to know about: This is so obvious that I hesitated to include it. But then again, don’t underestimate the stupidity of people. Some feel compelled to indulge in their social networking habits so a specific tip like this makes them feel less guilty.

The rules are pretty simple and easy to follow to avoid being a FourSquare jerk. In spite of that, if you have friends who have visited your home and know that you are out and then proceed to rob you, you have larger problems than a FourSquare profile.

Footnotes:

1. @desinole says that he uses it to keep a list of places he visits. I agree that if used judiciously, it provides excellent patterns and trends in the places you frequent
2. I eventually returned after finding that Yelp!, the business-review site that also offers check-ins wasn’t as intuitive.
3. Reliable sources tell me it is definitely not Santa Claus

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Post tags: apps, foursquare, game, geolocation, GPS, privacy

If Schmidt doesn't think people's privacy is important he should post his own search history and email contact list on the web and get back to us with a lecture on the Patriot Act.

If only the GOP would actually act on their top two priorities when in power, it wouldn't seem as crazy

A too-good-to-be-true loophole opens the door for world travel for one smart observant guy.

No.9 is my top reason.

There is no way this is ultimately going to be used just for "honest positive feedback"

Sigh! You would think we are some tiny island nation that constantly needs validation -

Talk about a political masterstroke, first the military and then the independent Senator that GOP can't rant against

Seven great movies that star architecture

Now that's what death panels would really be like. The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. Rather, education is.

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