Wet Blankets

What's wrong with the mainstream media. Well fuck, what's right with it?

2009-08-12T10:48:00.001-07:00

First off, a little back story. You know the main stream media, right? Those boring people that you get on the television between american idol and gossip girl? The ones that make a nice writing surface for that overprice crossword puzzle you get sent every sunday? (I'm assuming. I have neither. And won't. I have nothing but contempt for this dilettante leechfuck rable. As you will too once you've finished reading this post.)

Weeeeelll. They seem to have a little bit of trouble with blogs. You know: like this one. Apparently, bloggers just copy all their hard research, and work, repackage it, and then bask in the public glory of it all.

Here, let me show you how it's done: instead of trying to write this post myself, I'm just going to crib a few other people's writing. Simpler, easier, and filling just as much space on the page.

Over the past months, I've heard several journalists make the same comment at various industry forums: That blogs are a "parasitic" medium that wouldn't be able to exist without the reporting done at newspapers.

I hear the frustration behind the comment. You bust your rear to get stories in the paper, then watch bloggers grab traffic talking about your work. All the while your bosses are laying off other reporters, citing circulation declines, as analysts talk about newspapers losing audience to the Web. It's not hard to understand why many newspaper journalists would come to view blogs as parasites, sucking the life from their newsrooms.

Well, boo hoo. Let's see how amazingly well these fuckers cover the news: maybe I should be going straight to the source after all. Another blogger's post, I rip off below:

This post may be a statement of the obvious, but it’s an observation I had this morning. As is typical, I skimmed the Kindle versions of The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal on my subway ride to work. I thought it was very interesting how the three papers described the audience at President Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire last night.
First up, The Boston Globe:
Obama’s audience at Portsmouth High School gymnasium was tame. The bleachers teemed with Obama supporters… The president wound up preaching to the choir, which applauded wildly at his calls for action on healthcare – at one point breaking into a chant of “Yes we can!”
Next up, The New York Times:
Unlike many of Mr. Obama’s town-hall-style meetings, usually filled to the rafters with supporters, Tuesday’s meeting included skeptics from whom he sought out questions. At one point he asked that only people who disagreed with his approach raise their hands to be called on. There were plenty who responded.

Finally, The Wall Street Journal:
Inside Portsmouth High School, Mr. Obama faced a friendly crowd, so much so that he sought out some tough questioners.
And just to round it out, I checked out Fox News once I got to work:
Obama faced no disruptions at his meeting, instead taking questions from supporters who soft-balled him opportunities to knock down criticism.
….and The Huffington Post:
The encounter was so friendly, in fact, that by the end Obama was even asking for skeptical questioners to come forward – to no avail.

Well, well, you little sacks of shit with your fedora hats and your pencils at the ready: go run to the payphone and phone in your scoop. You couldn't report yourself out of a paper bag full of flaming dogshit, and yet you complain when people report on your reporting? Your writing and your point of view would benefit a great deal from a strong dose of objectionism, delivered with a swinging blow to the back of the head.

Aliens; it's worse than I thought.

2009-06-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

The world hasn't ended, yet. But it certainly could. At any moment, with no warning, and in a whole bunch of creative ways. Consider the following.

1. Enormous geomagnetic storm
2. Geomagnetic polarity reversal
3. Gamma ray event
4. Methane clathrate release
5. Rogue black hole

Those are five ways that Earth or life-on-Earth-as-we-know-it could end in the blink of an eye with no warning. Some of them are hypothetical---no one has ever observed a black hole to exist, but they are highly likely---and some of them are real. All of them would be disastrous, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Take geomagnetic storms for instance. In late August and early September 1859, during the Carrington event, Earth was bombarded by energetic particles from the sun. The bombardment caused wild fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field, which in turn induced electrical currents to flow. The currents caused telegraph offices to catch fire, electrical transformers to explode, and generally wreaked havoc on anything that could function as a current path. If a geomagnetic storm the size of the Carrington event happened now, pretty much everything we use would break. Our power grids are synchronized using GPS signals, but those satellites would get blasted early in the flare, so our power grid synchronization would collapse over the next few minutes. A large part of the world's electrical power grid would turn off, melt, or explode. That would be pretty bad for a lot of the people in the world.

A really terrifying possibility is a gamma ray event. If there were an intense gamma ray burst in the local stellar neghborhood---or even in our galaxy, it could cook half the planet's atmosphere. Maybe nobody would die from the gamma ray exposure, but since this would destroy the ozone, you might just die as a result of the cascading mass extinctions. And if that didn't get you, the cancer caused by the gamma rays would eventually catch up to you.

In addition to the five things listed above, there are numerous other ways that the world could end with different degrees of probability and different amounts of warning. Plague, global war, ecological collapse, asteroid impact, and a host of human-caused possibilities.

Or, of course, aliens could invade.

The biggest wet blanket to date.

2009-06-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

Don't bother with the back story - it's just there so you know I didn't pull this out of my ass. Just read the last line - the one in bold.

John Williams of www.shadowstats.com notes that official US deficit statistics do NOT include net present value of unfunded social security OR Medicare expenses. A lot of folks have made a big deal about the US running a $1 trillion deficit this year. Well, if you included the net value of those unfunded Social Security and Medicare expenses we cleared a $1 trillion deficit in 2007, a $5 TRILLION deficit in 2008 and are on course to clear a $9 TRILLION deficit this year.

To give you an idea of how big a problem these deficits are, consider that the US government could tax its citizens 100% of their earnings and NOT have a balanced budget.

Let me explain in simple fucking english for you:

The US government could tax its citizen at 100% of their earning and NOT have a balanced budget.

What? You want a picture?

For fuck's sake. Shit like this makes wet blankery no fun at all.

Seeking Alpha: the coming economic collapse

What's wrong with politics, mainstream media, democracy and everything else.

2009-06-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ok. So, what's wrong with the picture to my left? Look closely.

Give up? THERE'S A DOUCHEBAG IN IT.

What's more, he's in the picture thanks to the lovely work of people like the ones sitting next to you right now: other douchebags. The thing is, they prefer a can-do,damn-the-torpedoes,good old american boy over someone, or rather, anyone with the slightest amount of brains,intelligence or expertise. Here's the science:

EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It's a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people's self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice. The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.
...

So if honest advice risks being ignored, what is a responsible scientific adviser to do? "It's an excellent question, and I'm not sure that I have a great answer," says Moore.

Actually no. If someone asks a question you don't have an answer, you respond by saying,

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, NEWBIE. I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. U.S.A!! U.S.A!!!"

After all, it's what they want to hear.

New Scientist: Humans prefer cockiness to expertise.*

* Correlations exposed may be subject to cultural variation, though they don't point that out in the article I point to. In other words, AMERICANS MAY BE THE ONLY ONES TO HAVE THIS STUPID ATTITUDE. I fucking hope so, because otherwise I'll have to stop hoping all together.

Ok, this is stupid science.

2009-06-08T10:36:00.002-07:00

This is stupid science. This is also stupid journalism. And, ultimately, it's just stupid.

To succeed in academia, you need to publish results. And, those results need to have a result, or you can't publish. In other words, if you don't find anything, you can't publish. This might make sense, but it is actual fact, a narrow and artificial criteria. Why? Because it means that if your hypothesis isn't proven, you through out all your work. And so someone else might have the same idea as you, and instead of reading your paper and not doing all the work, they just go through all the work again. There are more stupid things about this, but essentially academia is capitalism run amok in a socialist system. I won't elaborate.

To succeed in journalism, you might think you need to seek out significant emerging events and describe them, which is pretty much exactly >not< what journalists do. The problem is this: new stuff is generally not very well known. Things that are unknown need describing. And frequently that might go further than having an extended back story. It might even need research that goes further than the pages of your newspaper. And who benefits if people do that? Not the advertisers, and not your paper, and so neither do you.

And besides, people don't buy newspapers in order to read! How the hell did you get that idea? They buy the newspaper in order to, in unequivocal order of importance:

- be titillated
- have something to say to their coworkers and spouse to prevent the icy silence of broken dreams
- feel better about themselves
- be informed about stuff

So, what you need is news that pertains to hot button, titillating topics that reaffirm people's self esteem and sense of superiority, while being work-safe friendly in order to prevent outbreaks Naughtiness In The Work Place. of already have people excited about. A good example of this would be video games, and, more specifically, how horrible they are for you. Say, causing you terrible, life threatening problems such as staying-up-all-night-to-finish-that-last-level-on-a-school-night.

For your edification, here is a press release that meets all the above criteria. Apparently, staying up late and playing video games causes a lack of sleep.

I am amazed. I had no idea. Should this being the DSM-IV? I'm sure that, back when video games didn't suck, I had this disease in a most horrible way.

Computer/console gamers who play for more than seven hours a week and who identify their gaming as an addiction sleep less during the weekdays and experience greater sleepiness than casual or non-gamers, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday, June 8 at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies

Results of the study indicate that excessive gamers have significantly poorer sleep hygiene and sleep less on weekdays than other gamers; a significant positive correlation was found between the hours of game play and sleepiness. Gamers who reported that their gaming interfered with sleep slept for 1.6 hours less than other gamers, while those who claimed to be addicted to gaming slept one hour less on weekdays.

Woah. I had nooooooooooo idea.

Science Codex: Playing games late in the night makes you sleepy

Because I'm too fucking lazy to actually write anything for you to read, here's a sweaty goth.

2009-06-04T13:41:00.001-07:00

I'm going to post a post from someone else's blog, with a picture from their blog, about a paragraph and half of pointless self reference and followed with a pithy open question. I'm doing this in order to fool you into thinking that I am contributing anything to this exchange more than 'L@@K!! OVER HERE!! AT WHAT I FOUND!!!!!'

This is a most excellent day. Not only did I just find a blog devoted to pictures of sweaty, uncomfortable sunburned Goths, but I've also discoverd the secret to professional blogging: don't actually write anything.

What do you think?

I thought I was bringing the world a much-needed service with this blog. And then I found THIS http://www.gothcruise.com. These uber-Goths are actually living the nightmare! I could write for hours about how superb this is, and how we all, each and every Goth on the planet, should attend this irony-laden event, but my words pale into insignificance in the face of such awesome Gothness. I choose a quote from their marvellous FAQ, which sums up the very essence of my mission: "We find that the people who most enjoy the cruise are those in the scene who aren’t terrified by the ‘daystar’ and/or are comfortable using “Goth Block” (SPF 30,001) to keep from getting an embarrassing tan... This is vacation after all. You aren't expected to be uncomfortable 24/7."

Goths in hot weather

GREETINGS AND KINDEST FELICITATIONS, PEOPLE OF AMERICA, MY NAME IS BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA AND I WRITE TO YOU WITH GREAT SORROWNESS IN MY TIDINGS

2009-06-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

GREETINGS AND KINDEST FELICITATIONS, PEOPLE OF AMERICA,

MY NAME IS BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA AND I WRITE TO YOU WITH GREAT SORROWNESS IN MY TIDINGS. DUE TO AN UNFORESEEN ACCIDENT OF A CALAMITABLE PROPORTION, THE ECONOMY IN MY COUNTRY IS IN GREAT SHAMBLES AND WE ARE IN A TIME OF GREAT TROUBLES.

HOWEVER THROUGH CALAMITY COMES ALSO PLENTIOUS OPPORTUNITIES. THROUGH MY GOVERNMENTAL POSITION, I HAVE ACQUIRED ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE ON NUMERABLE EQUITY POSITIONINGS THAT ARE GUARANTEED TO RISE IN VALUE OVER THE COMING TIMES TO AN AMOUNT OF 500% (FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT, UNITED STATES PERCENTAGES), THAT I GREATLY WISH TO PASS ON TO YOU, IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY PROFIT AND PROSPER FROM MISFORTUNE OF OTHERS.

BUT, THERE IS, IN MY PATH A PROBLEMATIC ISSUE THAT COULD PREVENT ME FROM PASSING ON THIS VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE WITH WHICH I REQUIRE YOUR COLLABORATIVE ASSISTANCESHIP. TO THIS END: THE LIST OF EQUITIES (STOCKS) THAT WILL BE ON THE UPRISING IS SO LARGE THAT I NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT IN PAYING FOR THE LONG PHONE CALL THAT IS REQUIRED TO INFORM YOU OF THE PENDING INCREASE IN THEIR VALUE.

TO HELP ME, PLEASE WIRE DEPOSIT 700 TRILLION DOLLARS IN THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THAT I WILL BE IN THE ACCESS OF USING THE FEDERAL UNION TRANSFER WIRE TRANSFER, IN ORDER THAT I CAN ACQUISITE THE REQUIRED FUNDS TO PAY FOR THE EXTENDED LONG DISTANCE CALL TO YOU FROM MY LOCATION.

OF NOTICE TO YOU (ATTENTION PLEASE) - I AM NOT IN THE COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF THE AMOUNT IN WHICH I WILL NEED IN ORDER TO MAKE THE CALL TO YOUR LOCATION. AS SUCH I AM IN THE CHOOSING OF 700 TRILLION DOLLARS BECAUSE I WISH TO CHOOSE ‘A SUITABLY LARGE NUMBER’, AND SO FORTH ANY LEFT OVER FUNDS WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU WITH PROMPTNESS AND GRATITUDE. ALSO I MUST SAY, THOUGH I AM CERTAINLY MOST ASSUREDLY POSITIVE THAT IT WILL NOT COME TO PASS, BUT I MAY BE IN THE NEEDING OF MORE FUNDS IN ORDER TO COMPLETE THE TELEPHONICAL CALL TO TELL YOU OF THE EQUITIES (STOCKS) IN WHICH THERE IS SURE TO BE A 500% RISE.

PLEASE REPLY TO MY HOTMAIL ADDRESS WHERE INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO DELIVER THE MONIES TO MY FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNT BANK, SO THAT I CAN BEGIN THE DELIVERY OF THE NAMES OF THE EQUITIES (STOCKS).

I WAIT IN HUMBLE SUPPLICATIVENESS FOR YOUR GENTLE RESPONSE.

THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU AND KINDLY PLEASE YOU.

BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

(written in response to Obama’s statement that “now may be a good time to buy stocks”, a month or so ago. You are thinking 'ooh but look at all the green shoots! He was right! Yeah? Well go talk to you grandmother about how things felt before it all fell apart in 1929. No, fuck that: talk to her about the stories she was told by >her<>real< great depression)

Obi-wan Kenobi is a dick.

2009-06-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Obi Wan Kenobi is a dick.

I came to this conclusion while rewatching Star Wars an hour ago.

Let's say your sketchy neighbour tells you that the father you never met is actually a really great guy, who was killed by James Earl Jones. Or not James Earl Jones, but some big nasty mean corporate asshole who goes around grabbing people by the throat and generally being unpleasant to work for. Really unpleasant.

So, you go after this guy, naturally, since he killed your dad, and in his dying gasp, he tells you he was your dad all along, and Ben never bothered to tell you.

If you are like me, you would be pretty pissed at Ben. He's a dick.

Pothead

2009-06-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Just a Reminder

2008-11-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

That nothing is perfect, perfection is unattainable, there is always more work to be done, you can never really relax.

Look at laundry. It never stops.

Look at house maintenance. A house falls apart almost as fast as you can prop it up.

Look at joggers. They keep running and running and will never get there.

Now look at your self.

Willful ignorance opens it's fat mouth and speaks with a horribly grating accent, again.

2008-10-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

The current wettest blanket of them all thinks that we shouldn't be wasting valuable resources performing research on fruit flies. Of course, when you don't "believe" in "DNA" or the "theory" "of" "evolution" "by" "natural selection" then you wouldn't really understand what kind of an impact fruit fly research may have on things such as autism or dare I say, Down syndrome.

"That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA," she said. "And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research in Paris, France, or a public policy center named for the guy who got the earmark. In our administration, we're going to reform and refocus. We're going to get our federal priorities straight, and fulfill our country's commitment to give every child opportunity and hope in life."

This is hard not to laugh at...

2008-10-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

Faniq writes:

You probably heard a few years ago that T. Boone Pickens, who chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management, gave Oklahoma State a $165 million donation to be used all for helping the school's athletic program. And the largest portion of it was going to be used to beef up the school's football stadium and football facilities.

Well, there was one problem with Boone's donation. He left the donation in the hedge fund, which initially seemed to be a good idea as oil prices soared in a post Katrina economic climate, swelling the initial gift to over $300 million. That was before things began to turn in 2007, as international demand for oil failed to meet projections, causing the fund to come to a sudden standstill, and then dropping on mistakes made by fund managers, who were managed by Pickens.

Anyway, Pickens resisted pleas by some OSU Regents to bank a good deal of the balance out of the fund when it exceeded $300 million, which was only 14 months ago. Instead Pickens decided on borrowing almost $200 million needed to expand and renovate Boone Pickens Stadium on the Stillwater campus, despite the fact that the donation was dropping in value.

Now, here's the bad news. Yesterday all indications were that OSU Regents had been told last Friday afternoon that a large portion of the Pickens donation in the BP Capital hedge fund was virtually wiped out by margin calls on the funds investments in the third quarter.

Since when did universities turn into investment firms? I wonder if the economics department advised on this decision.

One of these two men is going to be president of the united states.

2008-10-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

In case you think it was photoshopped.

What's wrong with the economy part 1

2008-09-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

Happy joy unicorn land

2008-09-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

In happy joy unicorn land, the nice asian man next door has kindly asked that we stop borrowing his lawn tools and kitchen equipment, since if we insist on using our hats and shoes as cooking pots and chopping up our furniture for firewood, he is concerned that he won't ever see again the nice things he lent us for our barbecue last summer.

Chinese regulators have asked domestic banks to stop lending to U.S. financial institutions in the interbank money markets to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday. The China Banking Regulatory Commission's ban on interbank lending of all currencies applied to U.S. banks, but not to lenders from other countries, the report added, citing a source. End of Story

Marketwatch (HONGKONG)

That is stupid #4. Alaskan Manly Men Gourment Coffee, Ahar!

2008-09-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

Ahar mateys! Come aboard an' try some of my delicious grog. Ahar! I mean coffee: coffee thick as a slurry o'fish bait rolling around in a ship's hold after a long voyage, with the delicate aroma of a skipper's armpits and the barest hint of o'stale crab meat.

Come meet me for a cup at your local supermarket. No autographs please! But I am available for children's parties. Ahar! I mean p-arghties, of course.

Surprise! Theism negatively correlated with IQ

2008-09-13T12:09:00.001-07:00

What's worse: that it took so long for someone to get round to doing this research, or that this research is more important than ever in the 21 century?

University of Ulster professor Richard Lynn will draw the conclusion in new research due to be published in the journal Intelligence, the Times Higher Education Supplement reports.

Lynn and his two co-authors argue that average IQ is an excellent predictor of what proportion of the population are true believers, across 137 countries. They also cite surveys of the US Academy of Sciences and UK Royal Academy showing single-digit rates of religious belief among academics.

Oh, I know what's worse. That I'm going to have to tread on eggshells when taking about this with so many people I hold dear.

"Sarah Palin's Big Day" - Slart's version

2008-09-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

Let me see now, excited old man with hard-on, soccer mom (ooooh sorry, 'hockey mom'), taking care of her kids. Sounds like a winning presidential ticket to me.

"Sarah Palin's Big Day"

2008-09-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

I saw a news headline on CNN today, watching the one-eyed-monster and drinking coffee.

"Sarah Palin's Big Day"

Whether or not one's political views tend towards conservatism, liberalism, or hopefully, moderation, whether or not one runs red, blue, or green, something in the title and subtle implications of the header lit a fire under my ass.

One may not agree with everything a politician does, says, demonstrates, or enacts into law. One may find hypocrisy throughout the legal system, and in practices of politicians in public and private life. One may fear the ramifications of certain measures taken by those in power, sometimes meant to protect us, sometimes serving a purpose benefiting those who sat down behind closed doors, hands in the coffer, and said "Yes, let's." For the sake of this wet blanket, please for the moment suspend these thoughts. Let's look at Sarah Palin as a public servant, one of many, all of whom hold different value systems.

Her "Big Day". Like she's some prom queen or debutante getting ready for her "coming out" into society? Oooh, Sarah! Where did you get your hair done? What designer are you wearing tonight? What's your morning ritual? What's your color chart? How do you manage to look so put together with five kids, a grandbaby on the way, and a state to run? Am I crazy for finding this offensive to all women? She might as well wear a veil and tell the audience she's waited for this moment her whole life, according to the announcement on the news. Why doesn't the media rise above and beyond trivial jibes and let one's opponent become done or undone without derisive, childish comments? Tongue in cheek is only good for gentle admonishment; it is much harder to act like an adult and give everyone equal credit to individual existence and values, whether or not one is in agreement.

The undertones of the "Big Day" statement wrench my female innards. I have a feeling some reporters will be focusing on her dress style and makeup rather than the fact she's a first in many political arenas, much like a certain member of the Democratic camp. Will they treat her as a politician with ideas to bring to the table (or ideas to oppose), or will they truss her up and bring her to stage as an oddity, a skirt suit show instead of suit and tie? Women, after all, were granted the right to vote after everyone else. Her "Big Day". Like she hasn't been running a state for the past two years, like this is the first speech she's ever given in her life. Similar to Obama's ethnicity and background forced to the forefront to make an issue of or take issue with--at the end of the day he is an American, plain and simple. This is how I view him, and how I view Palin. He has broken ground, much like Palin (following in Geraldine Ferraro's footsteps). He gets a Historic Moment In Time, she gets a "Big Day". Well, paint my nails and call me premenstrual! Obama called a reporter "sweetie" and dismisses her, but that's no matter now, is it?
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juy9NwI8_i0 )
She should be flattered he even noticed her, right? We'll let women play the game but won't give them any chips to bet with. And if she makes a fuss, there's always a stake and lighter fluid handy.

I don't give a sh** who anyone votes for or what people believe; I have my own path (always open to discourse and discussion). We all get to believe what we want in this country, and speak freely without fear of persecution and imprisonment, but while the constitution governs our supposed basic rights, there are those who refuse to govern their own mouths when it is their responsibility to the public to do so. All I hope for is that the person elected to office will give a hoot about this country and guide us towards a better state of being, even if I don't agree 100% with his or her beliefs. In the meantime, we are subjected to behaviours and opinions unfit for media representatives and public servants during the political gladiator fight. Deep wounds are reopened, rubbed with salt, and badly dressed with dirty linens. Reporters and campaign managers stand no better than schoolyard bullies. CNN, among other news agencies, took a big wool one, dunked it in a bucket, and held it over my face this morning. Of course, this is not the first time a mainstream media outlet has degraded a public servant--I'm touching the tip of the iceberg. Anyone remember the New Yorker's "humorous satire" of Michelle & Barack Obama? Where do these people get this stuff?

But then again, maybe I'm just experiencing some PMS, right? After all, women do tend to get a little emotional at times and it may affect our judgement. I'd better get back to finding the perfect cookie recipe, and I've got a pile of laundry up to my neck, mostly consisting of blankets.

Suspension of Disbelief

2008-09-02T06:39:00.001-07:00

This morning, my underwear reminded me of something I'd like to share: suspension of disbelief. I'll spare you the entire train of thought, but suffice it to say that I got to thinking about the movie The Incredibles. Specifically, I was thinking about the superfast little boy who zipped up from his school desk, put a tack on his teacher's chair, and zipped back to his desk before anybody could register that he was not in his seat.

Ok. That's fine. Let's suspend our disbelief. Grant the little tyke his speedy feat. But what about all the consequent phenomena? Just how fast was he going? Faster than sound? He would have made a shock wave and everybody in his class would have heard the sonic booms. Let's say he stayed under Mach 1. His trip through the classroom would have left the air stirring like the wake of a semi truck. The tack he placed probably would have been sucked up into the low pressure zone he made as he vacated the spot he was in as he placed the tack. A roaring wind would have ripped around the classroom. Surely people would have noticed.

Completely unbelievable, even if you posit the one incredible thing. That brings me to the general point of this particular wet blanket. Suspension of disbelief is great. I like it. But there's only so far a reasonable person can go with it. We can easily suspend our disbelief regarding phenomena outside the human experience or outside the realm of knowledge. But once universal laws start getting stepped on, the disbelief suspension gets less and less easy.

Take for instance another movie, X-Men: The Last Stand (colloquially, X-Men 3). I'm willing to grant Wolverine his claws and healing ability and metal-coated skeleton. I can grant Professor X his telepathy. There are lots of the mutant powers toward which I am willing to suspend disbelief. But what about that one dude who kept throwing those spikes at Wolverine? Where did they come from? Where is all the mass coming from? And the scene with the bridge and Alcatraz? OOH! That is completely unbelievable, it had me spluttering and pointing in disbelief. Bridges are the shape they are because some really smart people spent a lot of time and energy designing them. And suspension bridges absolutely depend on the cables to hold them up. That bridge would have collapsed the moment that our nearly believable Magneto stopped holding it up.

I have another movie example. In Starship Troopers, which by the way absolutely murdered Heinlein's novel, a ship in orbit around a planet is shot down. Hm? Things in orbit don't fall out of orbit just because they get broken into two pieces. They are already falling. That's what orbiting is. They can't just fall out of the sky. Remember the Chinese weather satellite? It is still up there in pieces.

When well understood physical laws get violated, I start asking questions. And so should you. I don't mean to be a killjoy (or should I say, "wet blanket?"), but I do want people to do a little more thinking and question asking than they seem to do now. And if you are a movie maker, I would be happy to act as a believability consultant.

This Week's Official Wet Blanket:

2008-08-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

My Dog, for committing the ultimate in Wet Blanket Behaviour: Ruining Birthday Parties.

He just ate the birthday cake my husband spent all night last night baking for me. We were going to share it with our new neighbours and the only people we know in this god-forsaken podunk upstate town in the middle of nowhere.

The kicker: lots of sugar and lots of flour wreak havoc on a little dog's sensitive digestive system.

That Is Stupid #3: How do you make corn chowder?

2008-08-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of potato soup
1 can whole kernel corn
2 c. Half and Half
Salt and pepper to taste
1 can New England clam chowder

Combine all ingredients in large saucepan. Heat to blend, eat with crackers.

Yeah, eat with crackers, cracker. Why not just buy 5 cans of corn chowder? What kind of moron decided that corn chowder according to the above recipe was a good idea? The scary thing is that some people would consider mixing 4 cans of condensed soup together to be "cooking" and a "creative effort."

Well, I don't. And you shouldn't either.

Try the following, instead. It is a product of intelligence guided by experience.

Actual Corn Chowder

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
Sautee chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until onion becomes translucent.

3 cups milk
Place milk, onion, and garlic in a pot over medium heat.

2 potatoes
salt
black pepper
Cook cubed potato over high heat in the pan in which you cooked the onion. When browned, add to the pot.

3 ears corn
1 spring onion
Slice the kernels off of the cobs and into the soup. Put half of a sliced spring onion into the pot. Fry up the other half of the spring onion so that it is crunchy and use that as a garnish.

1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
salt to taste
water
Make the soup taste nice, then let it cook for a few minutes. Add water to the desired consistency, or more milk if you'd rather.

If you're vegan, as I'm sure some of you are, substitute coconut milk for the cow's milk.

McCain/Palin 2008

2008-08-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

Damn it, I was so excited when I saw Palin on the ticket. Should have known better.

What's wrong with global warming.

2008-08-28T13:36:00.002-07:00

The repubs get the word into their heads and think it means warming. It doesn't. It means turbulent weather.

Watch the spot just west of New Orleans.

Creationism is rampant

2008-08-28T07:47:00.001-07:00

The United States is a country that was founded by puritans. An article in the NY Times last week discusses a teacher, David Campbell, who is struggling to teach Florida public school kids the theory of evolution by natural selection. Struggling because these children have not only been indoctrinated with ludicrous creationist bullshit by their parents but they've also been taught not to think, ask questions or come to conclusions on their own. They've been taught to adamantly, brutishly stand by something that they aren't, by virtue of the thing itself, allowed to question.

It upsets me greatly that people actively choose ignorance. I am disheartened by the fact that they willfully misunderstand what science tells them. The worst part? The wet blanket? It's only getting worse, thank you very much Kansas State Board of Education. The mere fact that there is a need for laws that explicitly require evolution to be taught in school is depressing. It means that there are thousands of teachers out there, teaching hundreds of thousands of students, in the name of science, that a man with a white beard waved a magic wand one day, presumably out of boredom, and we all appeared. Or worse, that perhaps out of sheer laziness, he just invented a way for it to perpetuate itself and that's where natural selection comes in.

"[Americans] have a deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, and I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately). " James Baldwin, The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American, January 25 1959 .

What's wrong with politics #1

2008-08-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

The election coming up is probably going to Obama. Well, more than probably - he couldn't lose it if he tried. Very hard. Extremely hard. The amount of difficulty involved in losing the election is directly proportional to how shitty the last people left everything.

And whoever comes next, and whoever comes after that, some things are now damaged beyond repair. The shitheads have run the country into the ground face-first and a lot of what's broken is gone forever. No use crying over spilt milk. Can't turn back the clock now.

Shitheads 8, Non-shitheads 0.

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Mattresses

2008-08-18T22:39:00.001-07:00

Here's a fun game I play. First, I walk into a mattress store and ask what's on sale. Then, I throw my hands in the air and shout along with the salesman, "EVERYTHING'S ON SALE!!!!" Oh how we laugh, the salesman and I. And while he's still chuckling, I turn around and walk out, because I fricking hate mattress salesmen.

Courtesy of my new hero at slate magazine.

Hmm. Does anyone else have any advice about mattress purchase and selection to share?

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You go girl!

2008-08-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with the internet #1

2008-08-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

The internet is a huge waste of time.

I've wasted time on the internet, and I know it. You've wasted time on the internet, and you know it. So has everyone else you know and they all know it.

If all the time that everyone you know wasted on the internet was used productively, then the world would be a much, much better place.

But it won't. It will be wasted on the internet.

What is the world coming to?

2008-08-17T19:40:00.000-07:00

Two funny incidents stand out in our recent trip across the country that make one wonder what the world is coming to.

One night we were forced to stay in a hotel due to an unfortunate combination of bison and rain. We took one of the three vacant hotel rooms left in the entire city of Cody, Wyoming at a place that tried not very hard to be posh and upscale, The Cody. When checking out in the morning, I had the following conversation.
"Hi, I'd like to check out. Room one-sixteen." I said this hoping that they hadn't noticed that we had kept a dog in the room.
The hotel clerk, different from the one the night before clickety-clacked on her keyboard and said, "Okay, you're all set."
She hadn't offered me a receipt. "Thanks. Could I have a copy of the receipt?" She nodded and there was a pause while she did something with the computer hidden away beneath the reception desk. I continued, "We're moving across the country for work, so this hotel stay will be tax deductible."
She was just about to hand me the receipt when I said that; my comment stopped her. She peered at the receipt and said, "Oh. Ah think they added tax to this."

The other thing that happened was also in Wyoming. We bought groceries at Woody's Grocery in Newcastle, WY. The scanning of bar codes by the teenaged clerk proceeded as per usual until she came to a couple grapefruits. She put the grapefruits on the scale, punched a numeric code into the computer, and the monitor came up with oranges. I said, "Those aren't oranges." She fumbled with the computer for a moment, voided the oranges line, and turned to the bagger, another teenager, and asked, "What are these?"

What is the world coming to?

Asteroids

2008-08-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

At some point a huge asteroid will hit earth. We won't be able to do anything about it--it's probably on it's way right now. There already have been some near misses, and evidence of asteroid collisions with earth in the past. People have surmised that firing nukes at an asteroid will break it apart, but what if you miss? Where will the pieces go? What if they hit earth? The scale of destruction will be huge. Extinction of the human race will be inevitable due to an inhospitable atmosphere, unless we start digging down and construct massive underground networks and shelters immediately. Wow--we really need to get on this, now that I think about it. So many things need to be taken into consideration. Living underground we'll be deprived of sunlight, a necessary life ingredient which processes nutrients/vitamins in the body as well as bolsters the spirit. While we can mimic sunlight with UV lamps, everyone knows it's not the same thing. We won't be able to grow fresh produce without fertilizers and hydroponics. Food will not be produced fast enough for all the people underground unless we begin this endeavor now, and it definitely won't be organic or wholesome. We'll be miserable. And pale, and probably have very poor skin and develop nutrient deficiencies which will make our hair and nails disgusting. No one will want to have sex because we will all look horrendous. The human population will die out slowly, or we'll go bonkers and kill each other within the first few months. So the human race will become extinct anyway, I guess no matter what we do.

Killjoy
Party Pooper
Spoilsport
Fuss-budget
Fusspot
Worrywort
Persona non grata
Aguafiestas
Rabat-joie
Guastafeste
Spielverderber

Seriously--Spielverderber.

That is stupid #2: The Toyota "Segway killer"

2008-08-01T19:31:00.001-07:00

What's lamer than the Segway? A segway clone. Something this stupid must be seen to be believed.

Wait, I don't want to see it. I want to see the person who thought designing something to be driven with your knees was a good idea. Maybe give them some spare change to spend on more malt liquor.

Tokyo — TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) announced today development of the "Winglet", a personal transport assistance robot ridden in a standing position.

Shit, I was so mistaken, it's not a cheap-late-japanese-segway-ripoff, it's "personal transport assistance robot ridden in a standing position." Whatever you do, don't mention Segway. I did once, but I think I got away with it.

The Winglet—still being refined— is one of TMC's people-assisting Toyota Partner Robots. Designed to contribute to society by helping people enjoy a safe and fully mobile life, the Winglet is a compact next-generation everyday transport tool that offers advanced ease of use and expands the user's range of mobility. The Winglet consists of a body (with a projected area the size of an A3 sheet of paper) that houses an electric motor, two wheels and internal sensors that constantly monitor the user's position and make adjustments in power to ensure stability. Meanwhile, a unique parallel link mechanism allows the rider to go forward, backward and turn simply by shifting body weight, making the vehicle safe and useful even in tight spaces or crowded environments.TMC has created three models, the "L", "M" and "S", each having different handling features that allow consumers to select a model appropriate to their needs—from "practical" to "hands-free sporty". TMC plans various technical and consumer trials to gain feedback during the Winglet's lead-up to practical use. Practical tests of its utility as a mobility tool are planned to begin in Autumn 2008 at Central Japan International Airport (Centrair) near Nagoya, and Laguna Gamagori, a seaside marine resort complex in Aichi Prefecture. Testing of its usefulness in crowded and other conditions, and how non-users react to the device, is to be carried out in 2009 at the Tressa Yokohama shopping complex in Yokohama City.TMC is pursuing sustainability in research and development, manufacturing and social contribution as part of its concept to realize "sustainability in three areas" and to help contribute to the health and comfort of future society. Toyota Partner Robot development is being carried out with this in mind and applies TMC's approach to monozukuri ("making things"), which includes its mobility, production and other technologies. In a related development, TMC unveiled the "MOBIRO" mobility robot, designed for use in a sitting position, in 2007. TMC aims to realize the practical use of Toyota Partner Robots in the early 2010s by furthering its robotic development and strengthening collaboration between industry, government and academia.

In other words, blah blah blah blah blah, it's a Segway. But don't mention Segways.

It's not a Segway: Live from Akihackabarabarrara news

What is wrong with mainstream media #1

2008-08-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well, what's not wrong with it? Let's start there.

And finish there too.

What's wrong with holliwood #1

2008-08-01T18:38:00.001-07:00

You can blame it on internet piracy, or audiences getting stupider, or film makers getting stupider, but whatever the cause, you can't deny that movies are going to be getting worse and worse as time goes on, even from the sorry state they are already in.

Can't deny it.

Music too. Pretty much.

That is stupid #1: The £40,000 rocking horse

2008-08-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

Almost $80,000 for a pony ride "you can ride at any time of day" in the comfort of your "centrally heated or air-conditioned" living room, that doesn't involve ponies, or riding, or anything like that.

(Racewood Simulators) designer and company managing director Bill Greenwood said: "Private individuals buy them who don't have space for a horse in central London.

With one of our simulators you can ride at any time of day in a centrally heated or air-conditioned environment.

You don't need the space or a dressage arena because it's not physically going anywhere - you can put it in a small room or in a garden shed."

Moron.

The amazing Ridemaster courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

Wet blankets unite

2008-07-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

We have nothing to fear. Well, plenty to fear, but nothing we can do about it, so why bother with fearing?