Quotulatiousness

June 14, 2010

Hallmark gets attacked for “racist” message

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:06

Sometimes a company will innocently create a message that is completely misunderstood. Hallmark is having an attack of the “racist” accusers, based on someone mis-hearing the term “black hole” as “black whore”:

The bad news? Rather than stand up to this idiocy, Hallmark looked at its bottom line and figured a PR war with the NAACP wasn’t worth it. The card’s been yanked from the market. The good news? The clip’s destined to be a viral hit and big media outlets like FNC have already picked up the story. (A segment ran within the past hour or so.) I hope the outrageously outraged enjoy the widespread derision they’re going to draw for it. The best news? If this is what the L.A. NAACP now considers a priority for direct action, Los Angeles must be completely racism-free. Three cheers for progress.

H/T to Jon (my former virtual landlord) for the link.

June 12, 2010

In this case, a tie is (kinda) okay

Filed under: Britain, Soccer, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:51

In international competitions, it’s always hard to watch when your first and second favourite teams play head-to-head. Had Canada made it to the World Cup, I’d be cheering for Canada first, England second, and USA third. Canada didn’t qualify (again), so I had to watch my other two preferred teams fight it out. A draw at least leaves both teams alive for advancing out of the group stage.

To see how the game unfolded according to the Twitterati, check this Guardian page, where it tracks the progress of the game against the hashtagged posts on Twitter.

June 11, 2010

It’s not really about market share: that’s just keeping score

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:45

Eric Raymond thinks a lot of people are missing the point on the ongoing iPhone-Android battle:

It’s not about whether or not Apple will be crushed. It’s not about who makes the “best” products, where “best” is measured by some interaction between the product and the speaker’s evaluation of the relative importance of various features and costs. It’s about what the next generation of personal computing platforms will be. Down one fork they’ll be open, hackable, and user-controlled. Down the other they’ll be closed, locked down, and vendor-controlled. Though there are others on each side of this struggle, in 2010 it comes down to whether Apple or Android wins the race to over 50% smartphone market share; after that point, network effects will become self-reinforcing until the next technology disruption.

If he’s right — and he very well might be — then Apple’s moderately disappointing upgrades in the newly announced iPhone 4 may have handed the long-term advantage to Google. This may be bad news for Apple shareholders, but it’ll be a long-term positive for mobile computing.

QotD: British humour

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:02

God we’re rude, aren’t we? The British are so rude. We’re obsessed with bums, tits, willies, lavatory humour, vicars, knickers, smells, foreigners, fat tummies, fat slags, Fat Les, fat wrestlers, Benny Hill, Carry On Up The Khyber, Viz, Private Eye, men dressed as laydeez, women dressed as anarchic schoolgirls, sitcoms that offer howling tsunamis of verbal abuse, from The Young Ones to The Thick Of It. We love to see an irate, fictional British hotelier smacking his Spanish waiter around the head. We admire the host of BBC2’s Newsnight when he roasts politicians with scarcely believable belligerence. We quiver when a middle-aged, redheaded quiz-show hostess tells her guests how thick, ugly and badly dressed they are. We lap up radio shows in which grouchily opinionated men insult members of the public who hold views contrary to their own. We celebrate Christmas by buying our loved ones “lavatory books” with titles like Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Complete Shit In Pants?

John Walsh, “Naughty by nature: Why has Britain become so rude?”, The Independent, 2010-06-10

What could possibly go wrong?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:

Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?

June 10, 2010

“If I had a MBillion dollars”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

OTF threatens to punish students for ‘sins’ of the university

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Spite and malice are the only reasons for this kind of blatant blackmail attempt by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation:

Nipissing University and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation may be headed for a full-blown confrontation over the institution’s decision to confer an honorary degree on former Ontario premier Mike Harris, a polarizing politician largely abhorred by the teaching community for his education reforms.

The federation warned the university in a May 12 letter that it “cannot predict how teachers may demonstrate their displeasure” if the ceremony goes ahead, but university president Leslie Lovett-Doust said on Wednesday Mr. Harris will, indeed, receive the honorary Doctor of Letters on Thursday afternoon.

[. . .]

The teachers’ organization has already hinted some of its members may choose not to place Nipissing students in highly coveted student-teacher positions, and the federation may add teeth to that veiled threat.

“The OTF executive could, as an option, inform Nipissing that we are going to recommend to our members that they not take teachers for practicum placement from Nipissing University,” said Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, one of four affiliate organizations under the OTF.

Mike Harris has been out of politics for (effectively) the entire time the Nipissing students were in high school and university, yet their future careers are now being explicitly threatened by the OTF. What possible way can these young adults be held responsible for the actions of a long-retired politician? Clearly, even the idiots at the OTF don’t think this is reasonable . . . but they do think it’s worth ruining their public image to prevent Mike Harris from being given an honorary degree.

Update: Matt Gurney scrawls his illegible “x” on the dotted line of the protest petition:

Former premier Mike Harris personally and single-handedly destroyed my childhood. Just ask the Ontario Teacher’s Federation and its other, affiliated unions. They will happily confirm that Mr. Harris did indeed, knowingly and willfully, set out to ruin everything in this province that was pure and good. And they will not let that go unpunished.

The article, which must have been dictated and then painstakingly transcribed, is finished with this bio note: “Matt Gurney is a member of the National Post editorial board, even though, having been educated during the Harris years, he is, of course, illiterate.”

Enough with the camel jokes!

Filed under: Europe, France, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:05

The French Foreign Legion has a storied history of bravery, endurance, and inappropriate relations with camels extraordinary fighting skills. They do, however, also have some less-savoury attributes:

The Legion has a lot of dirty laundry that almost never gets exposed due to the unit’s notoriously secretive nature. For one thing, desertion is, and always has been, rampant in the Foreign Legion. As far as modern, 21st century armies are concerned, the Legion has some of the worst desertion rates in the world. This is the reason why small arms and light weapons are ALWAYS kept under lock and key under the watch of armed guards 24/7 when they are not being used at the range, training, or combat. French Army authorities know that, given the high rates of desertion, it’s too much to risk having renegade soldiers running around the French countryside with loaded assault rifles.

Furthermore, substance abuse, particularly alcoholism, is even more of a problem in the Legion than in other armies. It is not hard to see why, considering that the Legion has often sent its men to isolated duty stations in some of the most inhospitable and violent regions on earth. Finally, unlike the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, or British Army, corporal punishment (e.g., punching) is still very much alive and in practice in the Legion, and often comes in the form of sometimes savage beatings administered by NCOs as a means of instilling “discipline”. The Legion’s notorious military police section possesses an even more sinister reputation for brutality and mistreatment. Much of this abuse is directed towards captured deserters and the grim reputation of Legion stockades is well-deserved indeed.

QotD: Historic first

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

In defiance of 143 years of tradition, the government plans to replace our aging CF-18s before they enter their third or fourth decade of obsolescence.

Chris Taylor, “Canadian defense procurement shocker”, Taylor Empire Airways, 2010-06-08

Photography: locals versus tourists

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

By way of BoingBoing, here’s a Flickr collection showing the different photo locations chosen by locals and tourists for many cities. Toronto doesn’t show as much difference as many other cities do:

Blue dots are by locals, red dots are by tourists, and yellow dots could be by either (not enough information to determine).

Penn Jillette wants more politicians like Rand Paul

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

June 9, 2010

QotD: The transition curve of higher taxes

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 17:21

The point where things start to go wrong seems to be about 50%. Above that people get serious about tax avoidance. The reason is that the payoff for avoiding tax grows hyperexponentially (x/1-x for 0 < x < 1). If your income tax rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you 11% more income, which wouldn't even cover the extra cost. If it's 90%, you'd get ten times as much income. And at 98%, as it was briefly in Britain in the 70s, moving to Monaco would give you fifty times as much income. It seems quite likely that European governments of the 70s never drew this curve.

Paul Graham, “Why Startups Condense in America”, 2006-05

Glee as piracy central

Filed under: Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:13

Christina Mulligan points out that a popular mainstream TV show is not only encouraging illegal behaviour, it’s actually indulging in it:

The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines.

In one recent episode, the AV Club helps cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester film a near-exact copy of Madonna’s Vogue music video (the real-life fine for copying Madonna’s original? up to $150,000). Just a few episodes later, a video of Sue dancing to Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit Physical is posted online (damages for recording the entirety of Physical on Sue’s camcorder: up to $300,000). And let’s not forget the glee club’s many mash-ups — songs created by mixing together two other musical pieces. Each mash-up is a “preparation of a derivative work” of the original two songs’ compositions — an action for which there is no compulsory license available, meaning (in plain English) that if the Glee kids were a real group of teenagers, they could not feasibly ask for — or hope to get — the copyright permissions they would need to make their songs, and their actions, legal under copyright law. Punishment for making each mash-up? Up to another $150,000 — times two.

I’ve never watched Glee, but I find this quite an amusing juxtaposition, as the corporate owners of Fox are among the loudest and most active copyright enforcement goons around.

Confused by international finance? Monty can help

Filed under: Economics, Europe, France, Germany, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

If you’re finding the up-then-down-then-under-the-table performance of your investments unfathomable, you’re probably wondering who can explain it all in a way that makes perfect sense and allows you to figure out the best way to handle your personal finances. If you find such a savant, let me know.

For the “real” story about why the markets are doing an imitation of an unstable personality on conflicting medication, here’s Monty’s “Wednesday Financial Briefing”:

Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are still waging war against “the speculators” who had the temerity to point out that Euorpean finances were a God Damn mess. A spokesmen for the holders of European sovereign bonds warned the leaders that they were “teasing the gorilla in the monkey-house”. Sarkozy was heard to say that he farted in their general direction and that their fathers smelt of elderberries. Chancellor Merkel only muttered darkly, “I will break you!”

Interbank loans at Spanish banks are drying up. This tightens credit and leads to busted bond auctions. “Fitch can kiss my ass!”, said an unnamed source at Banco Santander who blames the problems on Fitch’s recent downgrade of Spanish debt. Just to show how not-broke they are, Santander bought back their stake in their Mexican unit from Bank of America for $2.5 billion. When asked if this was a wise move given their weak balance-sheet, a Santander representative lowered his trousers and mooned the press-pool.

US debt will climb to 19.6 trillion by 2015, according to a Treasury report to Congress. Tim Geithner assured everyone that, in true Keynesian fashion, every dollar of debt translates directly into GDP growth. Somehow. When pressed on the issue, Mr. Geithner began to cry and had to be excused to the lavatory to pull himself together.

Book written in 1944 tops Amazon bestseller list

Filed under: Books, Economics, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Admittedly, this is an updated and supplemented version of the original text, but it’s still impressive to see it selling so well.

Update: American Digest has pages from the picture book version:

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