The cartoon network managed to “rick-roll the Macy’s parade”:http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/11/just-in-case-yo.html
(via Wil Wheaton).
I saw this, and I had to share…
(copied from “Will Shetterley”:http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2008/10/orwell-or-huxley.html)
Jeff K says: “pain” and “fear” don’t seem to be quite the right words, although they are not completely wrong.
It strikes me that people who write tend to make associations on paper not unlike the process of paranoid thought, and thus come off as “fear”. Its just a slightly unvarnished side to the creative process, in my humble opinion.
The real problem is the unwillingness of people at large to re-establish the context of their beliefs as the context changes, or indeed if it is not known.
Example: “Okay I want to write a book called ‘Clockwork Orange’ about the hedonism of violence and emotional music”. Director “Well, let’s make it into a movie for a buck”. Public: “Oh cool! Let’s beat the director up just like in the movie!”. Director: “Ban movie in Britain for life”.
Pretty funny actually… (CWO was on a few days ago). Ain’t it sad knowing someone who’s been “cured”? [joke]
I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now, after finally becoming annoyed over some issues in SharpReader (understandable, since it is not being maintained anymore :-).
Anyway…
Google Reader allows me to share stuff I find interesting on a “web page”:http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15419747095041590871 and an “Atom Feed”:http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F15419747095041590871%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fbroadcast
Enjoy!
PETA, “People Eating Tasty Animals”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Eating_Tasty_Animals is an organisation I can get behind! PETA, “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals”:http://www.peta.org/, on the other hand, is not.
It’s not that I don’t support the ethical treatment of animals; I do, and PETA has exposed quite a few legitimate animal cruelty issues. But PETA’s mission seems to go far beyond reasonable! They seem to want people to stop using animal products in any way (food, clothing, etc.), which often drifts into the absurd:
“Mama’s milk ice cream cone, anyone?”:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080930.WGTMILK0930/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080930.WGTMILK0930
bq. PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream.
I suppose as an attention-grabbing PR stunt, it’s brilliant. But really; what were they thinking when they came up with that one?
Nita says: I believe the phrase is “they were thinking they’d get exactly what they got” – free publicity and as far as I can tell, that’s PETA’s primary purpose in life.
PETA does not want Ben & Jerry’s to use Breast Milk–it was tongue in cheek. WoW, people really do go overboard with what is in print and take everything so literally. PETA has had great success in changing industry. Whether or not you agree with their tactics, the fact of the matter is that they get it done. There are several other animal welfare organizations out there that have accomplished little compared to PETA. People don’t read fine print, they don’t take notice of the soft spoken. People take notice of things that stand out—so Peta stands out and gets their attention anyway they can to get people aware of a situation and talking about it. Trying to get people to understand that animals are entitled to be free to live the way they were meant to is far from absurd.
Since I _know_ you all don’t have enough to do in your copious spare time, I give you “Chronotron”:http://www.kongregate.com/games/Scarybug/chronotron – a flash game in which you and your past selves work together to solve puzzles.
(mu ha ha!)
Laurie says: And just when I was being productive… turns out me and my past self make a very good team! :)
I’m glad to hear that you’re a team player :)
“Evidence-based Medicine”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine sounds like a good thing, until you realize that sometimes collecting the data required causes more problems than it solves. These guys took this argument to an extreme:
“Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials”:http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1459?ijkey=425457f110f8db584617b87a1eace92eaa39ff02
bq. Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.
I’m sure they’ll get _lots_ of volunteers for the study… :-)
Bob says: That article is brilliant! A bit over the top and stretched the analogy to breaking point but does make a valid point.
Hey! you read my weblog! cool! :-)
bq. …it’s too early for men to blame their inability to commit on a single gene, although Lucas guesses it’s an excuse that’s “certainly going to be used.â€
“A study of Swedish twin brothers found that differences in a gene modulating the hormone vasopressin were strongly tied to how well each man fared in marriage.”:http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/09/01/bonding-gene-could-help-men-stay-married.html
(via “Diane Duane”:http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/)
The Weakest Link
I thought I had posted this photo a long time ago, but I can’t find it now, so here it is again. (It came up on Fairly Oddparents this morning).
I first saw this on “Bruce Scheier’s security weblog”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/the_weakest_lin.html.
(As it turns out, I had uploaded it to Gallery, but still never linked it here. Must have been distracted. Damned kids, get off my lawn! :-)
Neil Patrick Harris is a god of understated comedy. Nathan Fillion is a perfectly over-the-top dumb hero. I loved the first installment; waiting for the next two!
Check it out at www.drhorrible.com before Sunday, after which you’ll have to pay. Of course, you should pay anyway to support the artists, but free lets you choose…
Coming soon to an Intertube near you:
Neil Patrick Harris! Nathan Fillion! Felicia Day! and, of course, Joss Whedon!
First episode goes live (and free!) on July 15th; second and third are each two days later, and the whole thing goes away (ok, behind a “give us money!” link) at midnight on July 20th.
you’ve all heard of “lolcats”:http://icanhascheezburger.com/ by now, right? Well here are new, never before captured photos of “lolgrues”:http://www.eblong.com/zarf/lolgrues/ in teh wild…
(well, I laughed… :-)
“Episode One”:http://www.shadowunit.org/breathe.html of “Shadow Unit”:http://www.shadowunit.org/ is up. In case you were actually thinking of getting work done today…
I found “wright house”:http://www.wright-house.com/steven-wright/steven-wright-jokes.html, a site that has a long list of so-called Steven Wright jokes. The difference? They’ve annotated the list; they mark jokes as authentic, or else name the comedian who actually said them.
“what’s another word for synonym”?
A completely over-the-top review of a Bic pen:
Amazon.co.uk: M. Williams “Matt Wil…’s review of Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, b…
Some of the comments on this review are equally hilarious:
bq. I often use pencils to write notes on paper, but have been thinking about changing to a pen. Is this pen a good starting point for a novice?
and so on…
What does 120 calories look like?
(hat tip: “Jeremy Zawodny”:http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/)
The no-corn-syrup diet | overstated
I love the venn diagram! (hat tip: “Jeremy Zawodny”:http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/)
I’m not sure if this is irony or hypocrisy. The Carpenter’s Union is outsourcing its picket lines to random people off the street, paying them $1 above minimum wage ($8/hr) to protest … low wages.
Megan McArdle: Harry Potter: the economics
bq. The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?
An interesting touch on the subject. It seems true that in the Potterverse, magic is free, something that never works very well for story telling. C.S. Friedman just published _Feast of Souls_, the first book in a trilogy based on the opposite extreme; the source (and cost) of magic is life force. in _The Magic Goes Away_, Larry Niven deals with magic as a finite resource, to interesting effect. There are lots of other examples in SF&F literature.
So why don’t we care about this inconsistency in Rowling’s work?
Because nowadays, dissing Rowlings works in public is much like going to Rome and picking on the pope?
I think it goes something like this:
1. Magicians can conjure up anything, so why would any of them be poor?
2. Hey, if they can do that, why would any muggles be poor either? Or have diseases?
3. Hm… Why are so many people in the real world poor/hungry/sick, when we could clothe/house/feed/cure them if we wanted to?
4. This train of thought is making me uncomfortable, so I’m going to stop worrying about it and get back to the story.
From Bruce Schneier’s security weblog:
bq. Here’s a “clip”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig from an Australian TV programme called “The Chaser”. A Trojan Horse (full of appropriately attired soldiers) finds its way past security everywhere except the Turkish consulate.
bq. At least they remember their history.
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig
This sounds familiar:
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue
A-yup. Painfully so.
Yah – I saw this in a few places yesterday. Utterly brilliant for me, though I suspect confused the hell out of a lot of the non-internet savvy people…