No one startup should have all that Power.com. (But you could! “confidential. sealed. bid. auction. ends. august. 17. 2011.,” as the website puts it.)

Hero New York Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries is “writing legislation” (translation: getting attention for a project that will never become a law) that would somehow “punish real estate agents for inventing neighborhood names and for falsely stretching their boundaries.” (It would also require city approval for the naming of neighborhoods, which, no way, no how, no thank you.) And yes, while it’s most amusing that the alleged law would forbid making up silly new neighborhoods, it would be nice if something could prevent the realtor-based spread of Williamsburg into Brownsville. Who else is to blame for all of this? Curbed. They’re monsters like this! Also New York mag, which recently went postal on TWENTY HOT MICRONEIGHBORHOODS. Twenty hot illegal microneighborhoods!

Here you can find “a complete 120 Minutes Flashback Mixtape, sourced mostly from July, 1st 1988.”

We’re on record for being con on war-mongering pro-colonialist Harvard biz school prof Niall Ferguson, but here is a substantial accounting of Fergusonianism and his Civilization: The West and the Rest. (Warning: green type on black background!) It’s pretty choice.

In part:

The vaguely controversial/edgy thing about Civilization (which, btw, devalues both the Sid Meier game and the classic BBC series of the same name by Kenneth Clark, art historian and earlier generation of televisual don) is it outs and says supposedly un-P.C. things like Asia was decadent and colonization — specifically British colonization — was good for all! Snore. What’s offensive is the tone of all this — not that he hates the “East,” whatever that is, but that he despises his audience enough to ham through big metonymic set pieces comparing the Ottoman sultan’s harem and Frederick the Great’s enlightenment palace with the smirked assurance that, because he’s pumping out discrete facts they probably don’t know, the rubes watching will surely assume that what he’s saying means something. He calls the distinctive western values of, um, “work,” “competition,” et al. — wait for it — “killer aps.” (In the first scene, he asks a multihued class of kids what they think distinguishes the West, and the kids pretty much respond, “guns,” “germs,” “steel,” which he ignores as, apparently, obvi.) Also, eighteenth-century Prussians have much nicer handwriting than eighteenth-century Turks. (“I don’t read Ottoman, but I know what good penmanship is.”)

Here, in two minutes and 41 seconds, is a roundup of everything there is to dislike about Apple.

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams “isn’t is a calculating evil genius asshole hellbent on screwing over investors.”

What’s happening, America? Let’s check in with today’s small-town American newspaper, the Antrim Review of Antrim County, MI. It seems there’s something of a enigma that has been puzzling the locals:

The Elk Rapids Historical Society was offered the United Methodist Church on the corner of Traverse and Pine Streets in Elk Rapids last November and some residents are wondering why they haven’t moved out of the cramped, damp basement of the old town hall and taken possession yet.

What gives, Elk Rapids Historical Society president Dan LeBlond? Don’t you want to get out of the basement you currently inhabit?

“The Historical Society has always had a dream to come above ground, get a bigger facility and be a little more visible in the community. Maybe we’re being a little cautious but my answer is that the turtle won the race.”

Ah, prudence. Especially in these troubled economic times, an abundance of caution is a good thing — particularly with voters having recently rejected a property tax that would have helped the Society. Good luck, Elk Rapids Historical Society members! Good luck, Antrim County! Enjoy the upcoming Stone Festival!

Today’s small-town newspaper of the day is the Washington County Observer, hailing from two hours east of Tulsa, serving the greater Greenland, Arkansas area. Spring has arrived, and so has the West Fork ice cream truck man, who hopes that “this is the year his small business will turn a profit.” This is a terrific story about a guy who had a crappy job who found a busted old truck, fixed it up and starting making his own snow cones and lemonade. And pickle snow cones! Which apparently kids love! American hero! Also, in the (very funny) weekly video from the publisher above, he discusses web metrics, and promises that he will not kiss a pig or a donkey if they get to 1000 Facebook fans. (He is not concerned about the Foursquare.) In his spectacular Betty Boop tie! Also did you know that only five students from Arkansas got into Yale this year?

by Reeves Wiedeman

The word “quale” is a noun. It comes from Latin, rhymes with Pixar’s robot, and means, most commonly, “the quality of a thing.” For instance: the particular redness of a particular McIntosh apple. According to the OED, this usage first appeared in 1675, then again in 1875, which, as far as I can tell, was also its last usage. Or it was, until a few weeks ago, when a friend of mine earned 32 points by playing the “e” on a Double Word Score in a game of the Scrabble-simulator “Words with Friends.”

More than ten million people have downloaded “Words with Friends,” and many others play similar versions: Facebook Scrabble, Pogo, Lexulous. The game feels more refined than flinging birds from slingshots and is best enjoyed, as its name suggests, with people you know. I play against friends, family and co-workers in California, Missouri and Massachusetts, and, in many cases, the game has become our most frequent contact.

In short, we’ve entered a New Age of Electronic Scrabble — a Golden Age, even, bringing together former roommates, mothers and sons, friends and long-distance lovers. But there’s a dark side to “Words with Friends” — a nefarious quale, if you will — that represents the greatest smartphone-induced threat to our nation’s integrity since the Blackberry ruined pub trivia. It appears in the form of “zax” or “hame” or “henting,” each of which are underlined in red as I type this in Microsoft Word, and each of which have been successfully deployed against me in “Words with Friends.” And I’m certain that when my opponent played “hame,” she was as surprised as I was to find that the word existed.

In short, the problem we face is an epidemic of guessing. Unlike traditional Scrabble, where you can demand, on the spot, that your opponent find “zax” in the dictionary, “Words with Friends” opponents can be separated by zip codes, boroughs, even time zones. The game offers no penalty against guessing — it simply declines your attempt, politely encouraging you to try another improbable-but-high-scoring combination of letters. My friend “had a feeling” that “quale” was a word, so she guessed. Another friend played “zikurat” (45 points) before informing me that, of course, “ziggurat” has a number of alternate spellings. Admittedly, I’ve made a number of questionable plays myself.

Here’s a list of words that I’ve seen used in recent games, with accompanying definitions adapted from the OED:
• Arf — in certain dialects, a form of “argh”
• Dungs — to cover with manure
• Gar — a fish with long bill-like jaws
• Haled — to pull (past tense)
• Heeder — a male sheep from nine months old to its first shearing
• Malfed — no OED entry!
• Quod — to put in prison
• Varve — “a pair of thin layers of clay and silt of contrasting color and texture which represent the deposit of a single year (summer and winter) in still water at some time in the past (usu. in a lake formed by a retreating ice-sheet)”
• Yar — to snarl, as or like a dog
• Zona — “zone,” if you’re an anatomist

Each of these appears in something called the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon, or, ENABLE, a public-domain dictionary used by “Words with Friends” to determine which words count and which don’t. I’d guess that many words on this list are beyond most players’ vocabularies — and yet online Scrabble creates an irresistible scenario where we play words we don’t even know.

Scrabble, it seems, has met its steroid problem, with its own competitors threatening the game’s integrity under the banner of, ”Well, everybody’s doing it.” Chalk this up to the Internet enabling (remember the dictionary’s acronym?) yet another flaw in human nature. So, until the overlords of “Words with Friends” institute a penalty for guessing, something must be done. To that end, I propose all players abide by a simple honor code: For words of three or more letters¹, you should be able to offer a definition.

It’s impossible to enforce, of course. But try we must. Otherwise, what will we do if, God forbid, we somehow find ourselves playing a real-life game of Scrabble against a real-life opponent? Skills atrophied, will we just stare blankly at our tiles, wondering if “Phrzk” might possibly be a word?

¹ The use of two-letter words opens up so many layers of Scrabble strategy that it would be foolish to require anyone to know that “jo,” “aa,” and “ka” are defined, respectively, as a Portuguese coin, a stream, and the “name given by the ancient Egyptians to a spiritual part of a human being or a god which survived after death and could reside in a statue of the dead person.” Thus, they’re fair game.

Reeves Wiedeman plays “Words with Friends” under the name ReevesW. He welcomes all honorable competitors.

Oh this is great, great great, the story of the lawsuit brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, hosts of the Gay Softball World Series. I don’t even want to summarize and spoil anything for you, but the issue at hand is: how many straight people, if any, can play on a gay sports team? (There are of course a number of sub-issues, including “Are White People Racist” and “Do Bisexuals Exist?” Which, oh God, really people?) Anyway, the phrase GAY TRIBUNAL comes into play.