Obama got up on a little roundball action yesterday.  I got a problem with his long pants and tucked in shirt but, other than that, the boy went nuts.  So much so he inspired me to make a little vid.  ENJOY!

Sneaky Sharks Are Smarter Than Our Media

I was watching the “important coverage” of this morning’s shark attack in California when I happened to notice this headline. Is it just me or is this sort of obvious?

I love that.  Sharks “typically attack from below.”  Below what, the water?  As far as I know very few sharks have the ability to attack from “above” the water but they are crafty buggers so who knows. Frankly that would be a news story worth reporting…

Ironically, this headline is almost as useless as a story about a swimmer getting attacked by a shark.

If you’re a Total Recall fan you’ll recall that creepy little mutant kid from the slum on Mars.  No I’m not talking about Kuato, he was a creepy little mutant adult. I mean “Mutant Child,” the little kid who touches Quaid’s face and predicts “your career is going downhill.” Here she is looking freaky:

The name of the little girl is/was Sasha Rionda and, thankfully, it looks like she grew out of that awkward mutant stage. She’s the host of a Spanish language show on CNN and, uh, she’s pretty much hot now.

More here and here.

Robots are bad; always have been, always will be.  Either they’re soulless jerks intent on exterminating humanity or they’re incompetent fools easily reprogrammed to cause hijinks.

But I have never known them to be addicts…

Until now.

C3PO Smells Smoke!

Oh No! R2D2! Smoking a Cigarette!

Beep Boob Beep (”Lay Off Me Man, I’m Just Trying To Relax”)

Dee-Dop-Doot (”Fine Narc, I’ll Snuff It”)

Lest you think this is some lame Photoshop job on my part, here’s the video evidence:

I don’t know what chemical you have to put in a cigarette to get a robot to smoke it but, dammit, the geniuses in Durham have figured it out.

The Daily Punk

April 22, 2008

(ShenaigaNation Edition)

1. When I Called Hillary “Pinocchi-Ho” I Meant I Consider Her To Be a Lying Whore.

I took some heat for calling Hillary a “Ho.” I think people thought I was using “ho” in the popular context, to mean a female. That is derogatory and I would never engage in such a practice. In fact when I called her a “Ho” I was using that word in the “derivative of the word whore” sense. That is, I believe she is a lying whore.

Don’t get all freaked out, there is a very solid basis for my statement. Here is the definition of a whore:

whore. n.

So the first two don’t apply. I doubt she’s promiscuous — gross — and I don’t believe she is a prostitute.

But the third definition fits.

How else can you explain the fact that she not only accepted — but actively sought — the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Mellon-Tribune, a conservative newspaper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife? In case you haven’t heard of him, Scaife was the primary backer of The American Spectator, whose Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton. Among the facts the Project attempted to prove:

There are a whole bunch more but they hardly bear repeating. The point is Hillary once hated this man. Indeed, her statements about the “vast right wing conspiracy” were based on the work and acts of Scaife.

But apparently the immense pain and personal anguish she suffered at the hands of this man was irrelevant if she could get something from him. So she put aside her hatred of the man and sought the endorsement.

That’s whorish behavior.

2. Earth Day!

Hey it’s Earth Day.

3.  Dude Stuck in Elevator

New Yorker Nicholas White was working late. He got in the elevator to take a “smoke break” and was stuck in the thing for the next 41 hours. Apparently no one knew he was there. Here’s a great time-lapse video of him in the elevator.

Check out a few things as you watch it:

1. Dude doesn’t ever seem to go to the bathroom.
2. He never untucks his shirt.
3. Somehow he manages to not go completely berserk and tear the elevator apart. Me? I’d have broken that armrest bar off in the first fifteen minutes. This guy? Chill.

4.  I Made Another Absurd Movie

This one has some sweet Teen Wolf love.

5.  “Top Scientists” Name “Life Changing” Books.

New Scientist Magazine asked a number of “top scientists” to name the book that changed his/her life. Okay make sure you understand what I’m saying here — “Changed Their Lives.”

Here’s the list:

1. Farthest North (Modern Library Exploration) - Steve Jones, geneticist. This is a “recovered” book; meaning it was out-of-print for a number of years. It’s about one of the early explorers to the North Pole.  Okay, that sounds moderately interesting.
2. Art of the Soluble - V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist.  This is a collection of essays about the scientific process. It’s called the art of the soluble so evidently there is a lot of dissolving of materials in water.
3. Animal Liberation - Jane Goodall, primatologist. The first “animal rights” book that exposed the unethical practices employed by the scientific community against animals. What did you expect Jane Goodall to be interested in? Chick loves apes man.
4. Foundation (Foundation Novels) - Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist. It’s some sci-fi nerdery written by Isaac Asimov.
5. Alice in Wonderland - Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist. You know this one. Brutal.
6. One Two Three . . . Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science - Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist. Okay this is the rare book on here that might be relatively interesting. Here’s one of the many positive reviews: “There’s … magic in these pages. Gamow was one of the greatest of 20th century physicists, and at the same time, a great teacher whose passion for the sheer fun of math and science was communicated in his books …”
7. The Idea of a Social Science: And its Relation to Philosophy - Harry Collins, sociologist of science. God, who even knows about some of this crap. There aren’t any reviews on it and the title makes my head hurt. The “official review” says this is a “brave and interesting little book.” Well at least it’s short.
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions: with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables - Peter Atkins, chemist.  Okay, wait a minute…this is a goddamn reference book! This guy’s life was changed by a reference book?! Holy smoke. Let’s go ahead and jump to the unfair conclusion that Doctor Atkins doesn’t get laid much.
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory - Oliver Sacks, neurologist. Okay this looks pretty cool: “A distinguished Soviet psychologist’s study…[of a] young man who was discovered to have a literally limitless memory and eventually became a professional mnemonist. Experiments and interviews over the years showed that his memory was based on synesthesia (turning sounds into vivid visual imagery), that he could forget anything only by an act of will, that he solved problems in a peculiar crablike fashion that worked, and that he was handicapped intellectually because he could not make discriminations, and because every abstraction and idea immediately dissolved into an image for him. It is all fascinating and delightful.”
10. A Mathematician’s Apology - Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician. An essay by an old mathematician who recognizes his cognitive functions are kaput. This could be interesting but it’s out of print.
11. The Leopard - Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist. This looks kind of cool. The scientists score another hit (albeit another obscure hit): “Giuseppe di Lampedusa, also an astronomer and a Sicilian prince, was 58 when he started to write The Leopard, though he had had it in his mind for 25 years. E. M. Forster called his work “one of the great lonely books.” What renders it so beautiful and so discomfiting is its creator’s grasp of human frailty…”
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series) - Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist. This isn’t about Darwin. It’s about how other authors have reacted to their contemporary society’s ideas and acceptable of Darwin. You don’t want to read this just move on…
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe - Lawrence Krauss, physicist. Oh lord. You know Catch-22. The other one is about the Big Bang. Or, specifically, the first three minutes of the Big Bang. One can only wonder at the excitement that awaits the reader in that book.
14. William James : Writings 1902-1910 : The Varieties of Religious Experience / Pragmatism / A Pluralistic Universe / The Meaning of Truth / Some Problems of Philosophy / Essays (Library of America) - Daniel Everett, linguist. Why did I undertake the task of finding links for all of these damn books? This is boring the hell out of me.
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Chris Frith, neuroscientist. This guy’s life was changed by “Blade Runner.”
16. The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal - Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. This woman is a real fan of the ape’s I tell you what.
17. King Solomon’s Ring: New Light on Animal Ways (Routledge Classics) - Marian Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist.  Five reviews, five five-star reviews. Sounds pretty decent actually.

6. ShenanigaNation

People are asking why exit polls are so skewed in these primaries.  Here’s a guess: I think Obama does better in the exits because of the “shenanigan quotient.” For example, ditto-head Republicans switch sides, waltz in and vote for the weaker candidate on the other’s side, then tell the exit-pollers whatever they like.

ShenanigaNation I tell you.

This is another of the problems that come from a prolonged, unnecessary primary. In addition to the expense and discord, the GOP’s early finish makes the Democrats’ returns less accurate. If the GOP race was still under contention, it’s possible a true “Democrat” vote would have revealed a candidate by now. But there’s no party leadership, the acrimony drags on, and the actual outcome is decided by Republicans.

Great.

Isn’t this fixable? What harm is there in requiring people to declare their party six months in advance or before any state holds its primaries?  The other races could, of course, be left open to late registration but wouldn’t that be more likely to produce a truly “Democratic” outcome?

I did a pretty crude little mashup of the audio from Bill Clinton’s 2004 Kerry speech with the video from today’s Hillary ad. It’s crude but effective. If you can do a more polished job please do! Send me the link though so I can replace this one.

Bush famously used scare tactics to convince voters to reelect him. First in defeating John McCain by alleging he had black love child, then against Kerry with the Swift Boat perfidity.

During the campaign, former President Clinton campaigned in support of Kerry and spoke out against such negative, pessimistic tactics:

“Now one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this: If one candidate is trying to scare you, and the other candidate is trying to get you to think; If one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one is appealing to your hopes; you better vote for one who wants you to think and hope…”

Of course, Bush’s tactics worked: McCain lost in the 2000 primary and Kerry lost in the 2004 election, despite one-time commanding leads for each.

Hillary took note. Here is her new campaign ad, released today on the eve of the Pennsylvania Primary:

Hillary depicts the image of numerous great former Democrats in her ad; FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. But is there any question her true mentors are Karl and W? It’s easy to pay lip service to the ideals of optimism — as she so forceful noted in her rebuke to the bitterness comments — but actions speak louder than words. This is cynicism, pure and simple; and a far cry from the “thought” and “hope” candidate her husband endorsed in 2004.

The quote speaks volumes. Of all the memorable statements made by the great Democrat Presidents she depicts in her ad, which does she choose?

Maybe I’m naive but I prefer the candidate who would have chosen this quote instead:

And — at this point — that isn’t Hillary.

Daily Punk

April 18, 2008

(Watching the Wheels Edition)

1. “Screw Em,” Hillary Said. So Bill Did.

Hillary is “astonished” at this whole bitterness thing. “Why would they be bitter????” she says, “this is ‘Merica dadgummit!” Then she whipped out a banjo, pounded a deuce-deuce, and snapped into a Slim Jim.

But turns out Hillary wasn’t always such a “Lady of the People.” In fact, she was downright disdainful of common folk a mere fifteen years ago.

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

“Screw ‘em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”

“Screw em” huh? Well at least now we know why this happened:

“Hilly Told Me Ta Do It!”

2. Sorry Mr. Kristol, It’s Not All Equal

Nick Krystol wrote an article discussing how the continuing animosity between the candidates is causing the constituents of each to become further entrenched. The point being that people tend to read articles and information that favor their candidate while ignoring those that don’t. This results in an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality. This is what I call an “obvious observation.”

I also call it “wrong.”

(To read the rest of this go to ImperfectUnion.com).

3.Hillary Holds Up a Pinocchi-Ho Shirt!

Okay this is just shameless self-promotion but it can’t be helped. You want the shirt, go to Third Estate Tees!

4. Republicans Suck. Episode IV: A New Pope

The Pope is in town and apparently he advocated an open immigation policy. You might think this is because the United States is a safer and more prosperous place to live than, say, Mexico City. Tom Tancredo, however, good Evangelical that he is, of course knows better:

“I suspect the pope’s immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church,” Tancredo said. “This isn’t preaching; it is faith-based marketing.”

This is officially dumb. Why in the World would the Pope give a shit where his subjects live? Do Latinos become Catholics when they move to this Country? If a Catholic-Mexican moves to this Country and becomes an American-Mexican does the Church gain more members?

I figured it out! Mexicans don’t count to Republicans! No wonder he’s confused.

5. Baracky!

This is actually worth watching.

Finally…

6. April 20, 2008: The Day the Inevitable Happened

If you had April 20, 2008 in your “When Will Slutty Pictures of Miley Cyrus Emerge” pool, you won. I feel bad enough linking to them I sure as hell am not going to post them.

Krugman Parses Obama Comments With a Fine Tooth Comb; Hillary Gets the Brush. (Off, That Is)*

Krugman does the old meta-analysis of Obama’s guns, faith, and steel comment citing a whole boatload of evidence to show that Obama was not quite, perhaps, 100%, technically correct about such causation. And thus he thinks the party should:

[U]rge Mr. Obama to stop blurring the distinction between Clinton-era prosperity and Bush-era economic distress.

Wow. So many lies strewn on the battlefield and this is the one Krugman focuses on? I love Krugman but read this article, read the whole thing. This is exceptionally thin. Krugman is nothing if not fat: with ideas, with facts, with enthusiasm. This whole “Obama is wrong” however is flat. It is positively UN-Krugman. There are two possible reasons for this: either he is struggling to for something — anything — negative to say about Obama or he recognizes his disengenuity.

What was that?! “Disengenuity,” you say?! That’s Paul Krugman damn you!!! You better back up those words or there’s gonna be a wispy beard in your face, stat!

Well check Krugman’s archive. There is absolutely nothing rebuking Hillary for her lies, oh, I mean, “exaggerations.” Here let me put another set of quotation marks on that word, I’m concerned the disdain isn’t seeping through sufficiently with just one set: “”exaggerations.”"

On the other hand we have this article positively castigating Obama for what appears to be little more than a difference of opinion (a difference of opinion about an opinion no less!).  And Krugman actually has the gall to call these statements “untrue.”

Fine Journalistic Effort Mr. Krugman.

___________

*(Yup. That was yet another Corny Over-Extended, Barely-Credible Analogy.)

Jesus. I almost think this makes her more of a bitch:

The Yale University Office of Public Affairs has just announced that the senior art project for Aliza Shvarts is a hoax. In reality, Shvarts is a performance artist. Her project included “visual representations” as well as a press release and narrative materials.

Shvartz told three senior Yale University officials, which included two deans, that she did not impregnate herself, nor did she induce any miscarriages. The project was intended to be an art piece of creative fiction to draw attention to the “ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.”

Yale commented on Shvartz’ project, saying “She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art. Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.”