Do watch both videos. One shows the app in operation, the other shows how it works.
January 23, 2011
January 21, 2011
Have you ever asked yourself if you should work for free?
If so, Jessica Hische can help you figure out the appropriate response:
Click to see full image (NSFW language)
H/T to Tim Harford for the link.
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January 20, 2011
A theological breakthrough
DarkWaterMuse found a bit of net litter that suddenly became the trigger for a profound religious revelation.
I stumbled across this today:
Ya, it’s an old landmark bit from the internet’s past life but has anybody considered the implications?
Not to spoil the suspense for anyone, but the implications really are staggering.
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This is not the powder you were hoping for
This is bound to show up in some “stupid criminal tricks” roundup:
Florida cops have cuffed a burglary gang who broke into a house and stole the ashes of the owner’s father, believing they were illicit narcotics.
The victim returned to her Silver Springs residence to discover she was short of a few items, including electronics and jewellery. Rather more disturbing was the absence of the ashes of her departed dad, and those of her two Great Danes.
[. . .]
“It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine,” local Fox News reports.
Once the penny had dropped, the master criminals ditched their booty, which police are trying to locate.
January 19, 2011
Hollywood gets exposed to “the nihilism of the British way”
Did you watch the Golden Globes awards the other night? I didn’t, but I rather enjoyed watching Ricky Gervais do his introduction (courtesy of YouTube and literally hundreds of contributors). It may be one of the larger gaps between image and reality . . . the way Americans think Brits talk and how they slag one another off:
Anyone from anywhere can be cruel, anyone from anywhere can be witty, but there is something particularly British about cruel wit. John Lennon, with his withering remarks about Ringo Starr (“Not even the best drummer in The Beatles”) and the avant-garde (“French for bullshit”), had it. Writers past (Evelyn Waugh) and present (AA Gill) have it. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has it, and gets into political scrapes when he flaunts it.
The anything-goes approach applies as much to everyday conversation as it does to comedy, where the subject of British irreverence has been analysed to death (and where America has plenty of acid-tongued geniuses itself). It feels natural to those of us who grew up with it, but British banter — the playfully barbed conversational style adopted by groups of friends in bars, offices and even classrooms up and down the country — can baffle and perturb foreigners. It is especially jarring when set against the popular image of Britain as a more decorous and civil place than most. Even tamer badinage in this country can, to a foreign ear, sound like enmity. The moment the ice is truly broken between two newly acquainted Britons is when one teases the other about something. Reginald D Hunter, an American comedian who does most of his work over here, says Britain is the only country where people will introduce you to a friend by saying “This is my mate Barry, he’s a bit of a twat.”
America is a land of Regency etiquette in comparison. So much so that it pays any Briton to be a bit more mindful of what he says and how he says it when enjoying the company of Americans (with the exception of fervently Anglophile Americans who, judging by friends of mine who fit that description, are caustic conversationalists). The rules are just different. For example, the c-word, which in Britain has lost much of its toxicity, remains a no-no.
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You’d have to admit, it would be an interesting ride
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January 18, 2011
The Elder Gods will not be mocked
Oh, wait. Yes, they will:
H.P. Lovecraft’s elder god Cthulhu is supposed to be terrifying, hideous and awe-inspiring—but whoever knew he could be this darn cute? Check out 14 toys that take a slimy monster and turn it cuddly.
Cthulhu My Little Pony
Cthulhu Christmas Wreath
H/T to John Kovalic for the link.
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January 17, 2011
Modern updates to Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary
I’ve always been a big fan of Ambrose Bierce’s collection of definitions, The Devil’s Dictionary. Many of his definitions ended up in various places in my original quotations website, as more than a century later, they were still both funny and true.
Paul Bonneau has a list of updates in the Bierce tradition:
A Cynic’s Political Dictionary
Democracy: Mob rule.
Republic: A euphemism for “police state”. See “Police State”. Also, a geographical region in which representative government is practiced. See “Representative Government”.
Representative Government: A refinement in Democracy in which a mob of people select the least moral among them, to police their morals.
Representative: A politician who claims to be able to simultaneously represent two other people who hate each other’s guts. See “Politician”.
Senator: A politician who spends more time drunk. See “Politician”.
Election: A type of circus, provided for entertainment and for giving a veneer of legitimacy to politicians. See “Politician”.
Politician: A euphemism for “liar”.
Public Servant: A euphemism for “master”.
Voter: A euphemism for “slave”.
Media: People whose job it is to propagate politicians’ lies far and wide.
Political party: A collection of people who participate in mindless team sports in an election. See “Election”.
Democrat: A Republican who claims to care. See “Republican”.
Republican: A Democrat who claims to support liberty. See “Democrat”.
Minarchist: An Anarchist in training. See “Anarchist”.
Anarchist: A slave suffering slavery burn-out.
Government: An amalgamation of masters.
State (or Country): An amalgamation of masters and slaves. Also, a plantation.
Police: Overseers on the plantation; also, tax collectors.
Taxes: A euphemism for “plunder”.
Police State: Typically refers to a country other than the one you happen to be a slave in. Also, a place where other people mind your business.
Jail: A jobs program for jailers.
School: A jobs program for teachers.
Teacher: One who turns children into voters for the government. See “Voter”.
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January 15, 2011
What do you do when you find something cool on the Internet?
If you’re cool, you do something like this:
Original work by Caldy and Rosscott. H/T to Royce McDaniels for bringing it to my attention.
Remember, kids, everytime you re-use someone’s creative work on the Internet without giving credit, God (or your Deity of choice) kills a kitten. Don’t make God (or your Deity of choice) kill any more kittens!
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January 11, 2011
January 10, 2011
An introduction to ecoNOMNOMNOMics
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January 9, 2011
QotD: New jeans? Sure. New-looking new jeans? Sorry.
Yes, it would seem that sometime in the last decade, the American people have become so fat and so happy and so inordinately lazy that they no longer want to put their own wear, sweat and stress into their Levis. Nope, it seems that the entire country will only buy jeans that have already been worn into a shambles, reduced, as new, to the rags I already had at home.
You’ve got new jeans at the Gap that look like they’ve had non-union and unlucky sweatshop employees of Sri Lanka of all shapes and sizes stuffed into them and then dragged for miles along country roads. They’ve got jeans with the off-the-rack look as if they’ve been sandblasted at a construction site in Tijuana — after Happy Hour.
You’ve got jeans that look as if the person inside them was persuaded to run through a scene of “Dirty Dancing” with a belt-sander.
You’ve got jeans that seem to have been stolen out of a wedding reception in Afghanistan after a predator strike went terribly wrong.
And you’ve got jeans that I swear have the finish and light golden color stained deep into the blue that you could only get if you buried them in a Chicago feedlot and let several herds of cattle rain down on them for a month.
Pre-shredded, pre-torn, pre-raveled at the seams, pre-faded, pre-pissed upon and a dozen other industrial or inhuman processes all combined to give me a section of men’s jeans at the Gap that looked like the changing room right next to a mass grave. All displayed proudly and marked and priced as “New.”
Gerard Vanderleun, “Pre-Owned Jeans”, American Digest, 2011-01-08
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January 2, 2011
Dave Barry’s 2010 review
Who better than Dave Barry to recount to us the manifold miseries we endured and depths of despair we plumbed:
Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out about 75 percent of all of the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes, we can, because they were not exposed to “Jersey Shore.”
So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. (Or “Jersey Shore.”) The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation firsthand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it.
The leak was eventually plugged by non-policy people using machinery of some kind. But by then our faith in our leaders had been shaken, especially because they also seemed to have no idea of what to do about this pesky recession. Congress tried every remedy it knows, ranging all the way from borrowing money from China and spending it on government programs, to borrowing MORE money from China and spending it on government programs. But in the end, all of this stimulus created few actual jobs, and most of those were in the field of tar-ball collecting.
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December 30, 2010
Font geek humour
How geeky do you have to be to find this sort of thing funny as hell?
H/T to Eric S. Raymond for the link.
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December 24, 2010
Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?
If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!
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