The Associated Press reports that the only thing more dangerous to your health than smoking is not smoking. It seems a man in Florida was the victim of a prank gone wrong when his "smokeless" electronic cigarette exploded in his face. I'm sure his friends didn't mean him any harm, but a childhood spent with the Three Stooges, the primary educators in America's sterling public education system, left them unaware that it is a bad idea to plant explosives near human faces.

"[The man] was trying to quit smoking so he was puffing on the device Monday night when it blew up, fire officials said." Unfortunately for that fellow, his plan failed: he's still smoking. Literally.

The Associated Press did the right thing bringing attention to this threat to humanity. Think of the dozens of people nationwide who are trying to quit their cigarette habit by smoking cigarettes. Because everyone knows that the best cure for inhaling tobacco smoke is putting acid-filled tubes in your mouth. Crisis averted!

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Take a look at the blog post below this post. See how I referred to the Associated Press? Some bloggers would have just posted the entire article on their site. Technically, that's copyright infringement. Now it seems that someone plans to do something about that.

According to David Kravets of Wired magazine, the company Righthaven is buying the rights to stories published by sources such as the Associated Press and Wired magazine and then suing the pants off of anyone who dares to steal that information. As I see it, there is just one small problem with that plan: bloggers who reproduce news items verbatim are not typically affluent people.

It is hard, as they say, to get blood from a stone. Similar methods of stringent pursuit of copyrights have recently helped the recording industry make hundreds of thousands of dollars, discounting the 8-digit millions of dollars that they have paid in lawyers fees. That's not a very good business model, unless of course you are a lawyer.

What does this have to do with Wriphe.com? Well, not much. I don't steal stories, and no one would bother stealing mine. But if you were thinking about that, I now know who to call to do something about it. And we will take your lunch money.

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