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Kristen Bell is more than just a perky blonde actress. This 27-year-old Michigan native may be rising in the mainstream entertainment world, but to geeks everywhere, Bell is royalty. So where did she come from and where is she going? Allow us to enlighten you on the career of Ms. Kristen Bell.

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In another blow against freedom of speech on the Internet, Fox News is reporting that Google has taken the measure of de-listing the work of an anti-UN blogger named Matthew Lee. For several years, Lee has run the Inner City Press, a small news/opinion site that is focused on criticizing the United Nations. But since Google has teamed up with the UN on recent initiatives, Google has found that Lee's criticism is too much for them to handle.

Mr. Lee has been taking after big targets for a long time, so he is no newcomer to the scene. In 1987 he went after Citigroup with his corruption exposes, but since 2005 the United Nations has been his favorite target. He has especially focused on the "inner workings of what could be called the practical-applications arm of the international organization, the United Nations Development Programme."

As Fox News reports:

Many of Lee's stories were featured prominently whenever Web users looked for news about the U.N. using the powerful Google News search engine, a vital way for media outlets both large and small to get their articles read… But beginning Feb. 13, Google News users could no longer find new stories from the Inner City Press.

After the Government Accountability Project discovered the plight of Inner City Press and raised their own stink about the de-listing, Google claimed that the de-listing was a mistake but that it would take "a couple weeks" to fix the "glitch."

"We acknowledged our misunderstanding … but it takes time for the restoration to occur," [Google spokesman Gabriel] Stricker said. "The glitch will be resolved as soon as possible. We're working on it."

The GAP, however is none too happy about Google's "glitch." GAP's international-program director Bea Edwards told Fox that Inner City Press was "the most effective and important media organization for UN whistleblowers."

"We're alarmed. The question is, is what user sent the complaint? And it's probably not too hard to guess. We would guess the complaints came from the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)."

This isn't something new for Internet organizations like Google, however. Google and other Internet organizations like Newsvine and Digg have been embroiled in efforts to eliminate the conservative voice from the Internet for quite some time.

For instance, Newsvine recently canceled the account of the conservative news/opinion site called The New Media Alliance. And, as Noel Sheppard reported back in May of 2006, the conservative opinion site called The New Media Journal was removed from search engines by Google because Google deemed the commentary site a "hate site."

So, far from being the wild west of opinion, the Internet is seemingly more and more in the grip of leftist organizations that are out to eliminate conservative expression on the net. Add to this the liberals in Congress who want to reinstate the inaptly named "Fairness Doctrine," and we get ominous signs of the left's oppressive ideas of "freedom of speech."

It's just one more example that Jonah Goldberg is right. Liberals are closer to fascists than any conservative.

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In an effort to serve you even better (no, really. We’re being serious.), we are ramping up our blogroll here at Healthbolt, an entity that was heretofore non-existent, despite years of being on the web.

Our intentions are noble, but there are so many fantastic sites/blogs/magazines out there, we’re bound to miss a bunch. So we’re asking you, dear readers, to help us out. If you have a health-related blog that you write/read, a site you visit often or a mag you can’t live without, let us know. Be sure to give us a title and a link, if you have one. You can either hit the email button in the right sidebar by our names, or you can leave the link right here in the comments. We do, however, reserve the right to delete comments that are spammy and/or naughty. We also reserve the right to be discerning in who we add to the blogroll, so we’re sure we aren’t wasting our readers’ time.

So if you want to see your blog/site’s name in lights, give us a holler. And don’t forget to give a shout out to your other favorites, too.

Thanks, guys! Have a kick-ass day!

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I’m not gonna lie…I’m not a huge reader. As Mike Birbiglia would point out, I’m more “magazine smart” than book smart. But every now and then, I enjoy perusing the pages of a book usually on the recommendation of a select group of friends…all of whom I consider to be more intelligent than yours truly. Predictably Irrational is one of those books.

I had the opportunity to sample Predictably Irrational before its release date, which is today I might add. The book, which was written by Dr. Dan Ariely provides a refreshingly entertaining look at how we are fooled by irrational behavior, and how we can make better choices about our day-to-day decisions with simple strategies. Despite his big-ass experience (i.e. “Russell & Tate“), his approach certainly isn’t academic, but rather easy to interpret.

Chapter Three entitled “The Cost of Zero Cost” examines the way “free” items are “incredibly appealing” even though what we really want costs very little to begin with. For instance, standing in line for a couple of hours for a free meal at a new restaurant (I’m ashamed to admit that I did this when Chipotle opened its first franchise in San Antonio a few years ago), or falling victim to the buy two get one free gimmick when all you need is one. I remember while in college the credit card companies used to exploit our penchant for free t-shirts to lure students into applying for credit. These are only a few of the everyday experiences Dan Ariely discusses in the book.

I highly recommend this read. Of course, I got it for free. But that shouldn’t matter as you will find out in Predictably Irrational.

About Dan Ariely
Dr. Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavorial Economics at MIT, where he holds a joint appointment between MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the Sloan School of Management. He is also a researcher at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank and a visiting professor at Duke University. Dr. Ariely wrote Predictably Irrational while he was a fellow at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton.

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