Herding Cats: Blimps, Bees, Bad Commutes, and Vuvuzelas for BP

Good news, everyone! Not only is Futurama back on the air, but I have for you an oven fresh crop of random stories in this week's financial roundup dealie!

CNN: Chinese Companies 'Rent' White Foreigners - China: the perfect place for a fake wealthy American industrialist to reap the benefits of his caucasianality! Business practices over there are truly the stuff of legend, but this is essentially no different than how the GOP will sometimes surround the podium with token minorities during stump speeches. It's too bad this strategy only works in "second- or third-tier cities," but at least we know that pasty white unemployed college grads will always have a job option if they can make it out to rural Manchuria.

Consumerist: BP Offices To Be Serenaded By Orchestra Of Vuvuzelas - It didn't take long for the highly irritating nature of vuvuzelas to become cliche, but that doesn't mean systematically utilizing them as buzzing trumpets of moral outrage is any less awesome. BP's headquarters definitely deserve far worse (probably to be vandalized, burned, sacked, raped, and pillaged), but that's not to say that hundreds of these terrifying contraptions won't make for one particularly hellish workday for the people who destroyed the Gulf of Mexico.

MainStreet: The Sad Side Effects Of A Bad Commute - Any Southern California resident will tell you that cars should come with three gas mileage metrics: city, highway, and Los Angeles (my new Hyundai gets about 30/20/10). If you've seen Office Space, I definitely had a Samir-attacking-his-steering-wheel moment the other day when it took me 45 minutes to go less than 2 miles on Santa Monica Boulevard. Maybe if we send them enough white people, China will lend the city $20 billion to build a subway or some other public transportation network that we'd actually use!

Gizmodo: Finland's Broadband-As-Legal-Right Available From Today For Everyone - It's hard for us urban/suburban folk to imagine what life is like having no alternative to a dial-up internet connection. My family got our first broadband cable modem almost a decade ago, and the FioS speeds I enjoy at my current apartment are over 400 times faster than what you poor souls in rural broadband-free areas have to endure. Ironically, Finnish reindeer herders in the frozen tundra of Lapland are now guaranteed better internet than you! I guess we can add this to the list of reasons why you don't see many Scandinavians immigrating to the US of A these days.

The Guardian: Blimps Could Replace Aircraft In Freight Transport, Say Scientists - Blimps are awesome. I'm totally willing to accept their airspeed deficiency if it means I get to spend a relaxing few days floating across the ocean in spacious luxury instead of being crammed into a coach seat on an overbooked AA flight for 12 hours surrounded by hundreds of coughing and sneezing strangers. Also, as many Gizmodo commenters pointed out, blimp proliferation would lead to something even more awesome: SKY PIRATES. Hopefully the freight blimp pilots will be smart enough to avoid Somalian airspace.

io9: 20 Careers That Will Make The Future Less Dystopian - Speaking of pirates, futuristic Gawker blog io9 says we'll need an army of "pharmaceutical pirates" to smuggle cheap versions of new drugs into Third-World countries once the global economy collapses for reals and Earth turns into a dystopian hellscape. Or I could be a beekeeper! Wait... never mind. My money's on a huge boom in "environmental cleanup technicians" - a few million of them would have really come in handy starting about 74 days ago.

Have a beertastic 4th of July weekend, folks! And remember - there's nothing dumber, or more American, than mixing alcohol with fireworks.