At least the women arent ACTUALLY engaging in sexual activity with corpses.... Slate reports on an interesting series of artificial inseminations using the sperm of dead soldiers...
"Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage." (Did McSweeneys take over the Los Angeles Times?)
CRAZY stuff going on over at the 'Jug ... viewer submission about How To Deal With Gossip by Catholic priest Father Jeffrey has some interesting 'related-video' suggestions:
George Packer: "Planning for Defeat: How should we withdraw from Iraq?" A devastatingly smart assessment of this depressingly dumb situation:
The war was born in the original sins of deceptive salesmanship, divisive politics, and wishful thinking about the aftermath. The bitterness of that history continues to undermine American interests in Iraq and the Middle East today. President Bush will have his victory at any cost, with one eye on his next Churchillian speech and the other on his place in history, leaving the implementation of his war policy to an Administration that works at cross purposes with itself, promising freedom and delivering rubble. The opposition is plainly eager to hang a defeat around his neck and move on from what it always regarded as Bush’s war. Before the U.S. can persuade the world to unite around a shared responsibility for Iraq, Americans will have to do it first. The problems created by the war will require solutions that don’t belong to a single political party or President: the rise of Iranian power, the emergence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the radicalization of populations, the huge refugee crisis, the damage to a new generation of Iraqis who are growing up amid the unimaginable. Whenever this country decides that the bloody experience in Iraq requires the departure of American troops, complete disengagement will be neither desirable nor possible. We might want to be rid of Iraq, but Iraq won’t let it happen.
New research infers that 'drinking to forget' may actually cause you to only remember your problems better, causing the need to drink even more, leading to alcohol abuse:
"People often drink to 'drown sorrows.' Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."
[via BoingBoing]
Sex is OLD SCHOOL... and not in like, a cool retro way
I was inspired today by visions of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.... So I took on the role of a youngin living the falsely destitute life of a wailing hipster... My autobiographical pseudo-journal entry follows below.
Sex is TOTALLLY old news. Whenever I 'do it' I have to put on Peter Bjorn and John and do a line just to stay awake. It's like, soooooo cliche, like were missionaries or something? Thats like sooooooo old school and jesuit-y. I usally have to text message in the middle just to stay on top of things, since im too emaciated to literally be on top. I wish something NEW would come out. I feel like post-modernity missed out on sex or something. I mean, having sex is like working for THE MAN-- PRODUCTION, PRO-duction. Fuck it. Im ANTI-duction. Im going to read some Nietzsche now.
I echo Kara Swisher's thoughts on Facebook:
"Oh, my. Oh, my. Dig a hole and hide. The end is nigh. And how do you spell Ponzi (as in scheme) again? ... More laughable still is that Facebook, according to the Journal story, might be holding out for a $15 billion valuation. Why? Because I believe Silicon Valley can now be considered to be at Delusional Level Red. Or green, given all the cash that is being shoved in Facebook’s direction now. ... 1. Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect. Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am. ... But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand."
The less-fattening the food, the less likely it is to have its anniversary celebrated -- and other rrules for celebrating cultural anniversaries. "Have you ever seen a story on the anniversary of Special K? Of course not," writes Joe Blundo. "But Chicken McNuggets have a 25th birthday coming up this year. Something tells me you'll be hearing more about this."
For all you font dorks out there, the New York Times has a lengthy piece about the conversion of signs on the Federal Highway System from using the font 'Highway Gothic' to a new creation, 'Clearview.' [via kottke]
PLUS: Here's the coffee mug you should be drinking out of while you read the article. [via uncrate]
Boy, this brings back some memories. The New York Time's review of the web browser Mosaic, from waaaaaaay back in 1993. Here, in their estimation, are the top things available to those with the 'killer app':
'Click the mouse: there's a NASA weather movie taken from a satellite high over the Pacific Ocean. A few more clicks, and one is reading a speech by President Clinton, as digitally stored at the University of Missouri. Click-click: a sampler of digital music recordings as compiled by MTV. Click again, et voila: a small digital snapshot reveals whether a certain coffee pot in a computer science laboratory at Cambridge University in England is empty or full.'
[via kottke]
Just getting around to reading this Rolling Stone story on the unbelievable advantage civilian contractors took on the willing Bush administration and, ultimately, you and I:
'According to the most reliable estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches.'
Absolutely a must-read.
Kottke: "'Virtue terrorists raping virgin teenage America' is quite the turn-of-phrase." (From a story about teen Christians campaigning against pop culture).
'First of all, it's set in Wisconsin ...'
'What is it, like Narnia?'
'No, it's a real place ...'
'Who knows about it? HIPSTERS?' [via Defamer]
The New York Times' (first-ever?) parrot obituary: number one on the most-read list. Seems vaguely significant.
Has anyone noticed (or does anyone care) that in the billboards and other material for the movie 'Resident Evil: Extinction' - which apparently has some tie to Las Vegas - the word 'Fabulous' on the infamous Strip icon has been changed to 'Fantastic'?
Google Reader learned how to count past 100!
In the past, if any feed had more than 100 items, the number would be displayed as '100+' next to the title. Also, If you had more than 100 items combined among your feeds, the total would show up the same way.
This morning, I noticed in my GR tab that I had 315 unread items. '315? OH!'
Also, you can collapse the sidebar and view the feeds full screen. Not sure if that's new, too, or if I'm just noticing it now. Or noticed it before and forgot.
UPDATE: OK, so apparently the collapsing sidebar IS new, as well as a search function for Tyson (which I overlooked entirely) and the ability to use the browser's forward and back buttons within the reader.
I'm still waiting for them to implement being able to sort starred items by feed, instead of just lumping them all into one hole. Search will help, but often I know from which feed I starred something, just not when, exactly. Apparently there are some new forums where I can post suggestions. So I will!
UPDATE 2: Someone else already had the idea and voiced it. As an aside, a super cool feature in this forum is live searching of the keywords in any post you make. It's how I found this post.
Tom Wolfe Reviews Entourage By Blair Becker via McSweeney's
By 'computer' we mean 'PC,' of course!
Instead of getting ready to go to work, I'm reading the NYT magazine story about Rick Rubin that's been referenced everywhere on the Internet (but took until it was linked from Engadget, of all places, for me to decide to read it) and I see this little ad:
I thought, 'I wonder if this company is actually trying to sell virus protection to Mac owners, or if they just thought the MacBook Pro looked better then a Dell.' I clicked on the ad (perhaps an Internet first for me) and found this chart on their homepage:
So, yeah. I suppose with Boot Camp you can run Windows on a Mac, so the lines are a little bit more blurry then they've been in the past, but somehow I don't think that's what the ad designer had in mind.
"Some people out there in our nation don't have maps." Brilliant. Miss Teen South Carolina answers a question. An update: The 18-year-old got a chance to redeem herself Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show when she was again asked why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map.
My wife and I love Christopher Walken. He's just so odd. Sure, he's picked some lame movie roles lately, but hey - everyone needs to eat, right?
He redeems himself for all past indiscretions (as if the 'Weapon of Choice' video hadn't done that already, right?) with some home video of himself cooking a chicken ('I use a lot of salt!') on new website imcooked.
And, seriously, what's with the shot of the cat at the end? [via LAist]
I don't know what I like more about this cover of 'YMCA' by a Finnish band(?): the 'young men' dancing in the background (around the 1 minute mark) or how seriously the musicians seem to be taking the performance. [via BoingBoing]
A Dish Named Penis
I went to Kenka a few nights back to guzzle some $1.50 beers with a friend who had just arrived home from serving as a monk in Bali. In the midst of shit shooting and beer gurgling, a Japanese Camera crew decided to plant themselves at the table next to ours and start filming the hostess consuming a variety of delights.
Mind you, Kenka exists on a block famed for $9 sunglasses and underage piercing parlors. There is Japanese soft porn on the walls. The menu has a cartoonesque image of a woman's buttocks being assaulted. This is by no means classy dining.
The hostess of the show started out eating edamame and Sapporo. Easy. She moved on to some sort of multi-colored roughage. Hard on the stomach, but doable. Her director than placed what looked like a meaty ribbed twinkie in front of her. A penis.
She poked and prodded the bull penis in horror, and screamed maniacally at her director for making her consume a fairly large package. I chuckled. My friend giggled. She turned to us looking for empathy. My friend said he would try the penis.
Apparently it was semi-frozen, which made me cringe. Better to eat a flaccid penis than a semi-hard one-- the icy crunch definitely less appetizing than a chewy muscle. My friend masticated, picked his teeth, and received a roaring cheer from the restaurant. I found myself in a scene from Lost In Translation; yet instead of Bill Murry frustrated with a wary grin, my Murry was a post-monk with a penis chunk stuck between his molars.
I bought him another beer.
The War as We Saw It -- Seven soldiers writing in the NYT: "In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear."
Virginia's new tourism campaign posters show hands making a heart, which is also a sign for the Gangster Disciples. "It has come to our attention that the heart/hand symbol used in the new Virginia is for Lovers Live Passionately campaign has a meaning other than what our agency intended."
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