Apple versus Microsoft.

I can't sleep, so naturally I am splitting time between television and videos on the Internet. I laughed out loud quite a few times watching this ad for a new smartphone that "runs Windows Vista and connects to the Internet through AOL!":


In the interest of a small amount of fairness:

Japan.

I just can't seem to wrap my head around the myriad facets of Japanese culture, from the vestiges of the Samurai Bushido to Ganguro to 2-D relationsips. Further confusing my understanding of Japan are commercials featuring celebrities from the United States. In the hopes that someone can help me understand how the many distinct subcultures of Japan create the outward appearance of a (somewhat-cohesive, although significantly caste-like) single culture, enjoy these hilarious commercials from Nic Cage and The Governator:

Improved technology.

A new method of storing bicycles (I am not sure this will ever become widespread because of: 1. Complications related to the use of underground space in large cities; and, 2. The negative environmental impact associated with the use of the motors in the parking unit, which offsets at least part of the benefits of riding a bicycle.):


Improved delivery of ketchup and mustard:

Whackjob Roundup.

Maureen Dowd wrote a hilarious article this week entitled "Sarah's Ghoulish Carousel" about Sarah Palin's recent fear-mongering and attempts to keep her face in the national spotlight. The article includes hilarious lines like: "Consistency was long ago sent to a death panel in Palin world."

Michele Bachmann has revealed that she will only run for president "If I felt that's what the Lord was calling me to do [...]." Apparently Bachmann only decided to run for Congress because god "called" her to say that she should. After she was told by god to run she prayed and fasted for three days to confirm that she had correctly heard god's will. Jesus Christ that is crazy (note the lack of direct address--I refuse to talk to Jesus, even if he did manage to get Bachmann into office).

Feel free to add other deserving whackjob news to this thread.

Let's bring the blog back, people. I miss reading the posts here.

Astronauts and Jon Stewart

...because they are the best people, two unrelated articles:

Why Neoconservative Pundits Love The Daily Show

Scientist Tackles Ethical Questions of Space Travel

More articles.

1. "In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable" - This NYT article attempts to explain why, both physiologically and psychologically, some soldiers in war zones are significantly better than most at detecting dangerous situations (e.g. soldiers who are known for their ability to identify IEDs before detonation).

2. "In Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin" - This NYT article discusses a study of truck drivers (based on eighteen months of taped observation) that shows that texting while driving increases the risk of a crash by up to twenty three times. The authors claim the pattern extends to non-commercial drivers as well. The research is currently undergoing peer review.

3. "Should Thursday be the New Friday? The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek" - Scientific American discusses the potential benefits of four-day workweeks (e.g. four days of ten hours each instead of five days of eight hours each), citing Utah as an example of the savings that can be had: "Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. For those workplaces, there's no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays—nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday's midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million."

On a lighter note

LOST season 6 promos!!!

Not spoilers, just little teases to keep you guessing...


Oceanic ("30 years" (since 1979, so we know it's current) "with perfect safety record"??)

Hurley ("nothing but good luck"?? and check out how the people behind him look like, but aren't, Locke, Walt, and Michael)

Kate (DIDN'T kill her stepfather??)

And biggest "holy shit" of all: the official ABC teaser


ALSO: a promo poster featuring ALL the characters, dead and alive...probably just an advertising ploy, but what if this means the bomb really did "hit the reset button?!?






Thank you, Comic-Con.

Another weird one

Free plane tickets?!

Two Very Different Articles

Two articles I thought were worth sharing:

2-D Love

Casualties of War in Iraq - it's very long but absolutely worth finishing.

I guess I'm not stupid...

...at least that's what Dr. Jon LaPook, who works for CBS and has an awesome name, tells me: "No, you're not stupid if you're confused about health care reform."

His piece in HuffPo today is about how politicians, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, etc., have intentionally made this issue impossible for most people to get a handle on. And he lays the four main goals of the legislation:

Coverage expansion and subsidies. This is where most of the estimated trillion dollar price tag over ten years would go -- to expanding Medicaid for uninsured and lower income people and to help people who can't afford it pay on a sliding scale for insurance through new health insurance exchanges.

Insurance market reforms. This is about fair play in the insurance industry. Advocates want to eliminate practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions and jacking up premiums if they're sick. The most controversial proposal is the
establishment of a "public option" -- a government insurance plan that would compete against private ones.

Delivery and payment reforms. This is about delivering more effective care at a lower cost. About 20 percent of the 2.5 trillion dollar annual health care price tag does not contribute to better health.

Prevention. This has been long overlooked in America. Spend a few dollars on foot care for a diabetic and you may prevent a foot amputation and thousands of dollars in expenses.

I know embarassingly little about the health care system, so I'm curious as to what you guys think about this. Clearly, the reforms mentioned above are needed, but does the current legislation go about it in the right way? Is it an efficiant use of a trillion dollars? Etc. Thanks!

Governor Sanford *should* resign

Generally speaking, I wouldn't say infidelity necessitates an elected official's resignation (unless they support DOMA or something like that), but the AP reports that the governor spent nearly $40,000 on air travel for five flights to Brazil, sitting in first/business class while he aides sat in coach. And that is grounds for resignation.

"The Jews and Their Lies."

Holy shit. I had no idea Michael Steele and the RNC could be so stupid as to create The Obama Card, a game that allows players to use their Obama credit card to purchase "Anti-semitic, anti-Latino, and overtly pornographic literature - with pictures to boot" (AMERICAblog). Apparently this material helps the public understand just how Obama's spending is destroying our country.

Using a search engine modeled after Amazon's, 'players' search for keywords relating to items they wish to purchase. A search for Jews brings up a set of thumbnail images including, you guessed it, "The Jews and Their Lies." One can also, with proper searching (as done by AMERICAblog), find items like "Sex Secrets of Escorts" and "Porn: Have Anal Sex and Call Her Best Friend for a Threesome". Seriously.

Also hilarious is the fact that certain words are banned: one must use homosexual instead of gay, and the word vagina is banned.

Check out the AMERICAblog post to see screenshots of some of the searches (for some reason Blogger won't let me upload these images).

TV and space

both make me unreasonably happy.

Thus today was a good one for fucking around on the internet, because I got to dissect the brand-new Emmy nominations (BSG was once again criminally overlooked, although I'm really happy about the recognition Breaking Bad is getting) and check out lots of Apollo 11-related NYTimes content (today being the 40th anniversary of the launch): reader's photos and memories of what they were doing at the time, a cool page of NYTimes' original coverage, and, best of all, really amazing photos taken by the astronauts, many of which I'd never seen before.

Phthalates and Penile Volume

A very bizarre op-ed in the Times today.

One more MJ post.

Footage of Michael Jackson's hair catching fire during a 1984 Pepsi commercial shoot has just been discovered:


As always, I recommend everyone see the four-hour, made-for-TV mini-series The Jacksons: An American Dream, which dramatized the same accident in this way:

Public vs. Science: Evolution and Climate

So, Gmail informs me that there have been 42 posts and comments since the last time I read anything over here ... even though I'm still not caught up, I felt compelled to pass on this fascinating study which not only compares what the public thinks about evolution and global warming with what scientists think, but it also shows the difference between what the public thinks that scientists think and what they actually do think.

Only one?!

In the fall of 2006 the Secular Coalition of America announced that they would award $1,000 to the person who identified the highest-level atheist, humanist, freethinker, or other nontheist currently holding elected public office in the United States. SCA Advisory Board Chairman Woody Kaplan, a civil liberties activist and former member of the ACLU's National Board of Directors, took some of the suggested names and interviewed close to sixty members of the U.S. House and Senate. “At the time, twenty-two of them told me they didn’t believe in a god,” Kaplan recalls. “Twenty-one of them said, ‘You can’t tell anybody.’ One of them said you could: Congressman Pete Stark.”

Here is his acceptance speech. Nothing earth-shattering, but that's just it - how is it possible that his simple, logical thinking is so rare among elected officials?

This sounds too familiar

“People often don’t know what products acetaminophen is in,” said Dr. Lewis S. Nelson, a medical toxicologist from New York University who was the panel’s acting chairman. “It isn’t that hard to go above the four-gram dose. If you took a couple acetaminophen for a headache until you got to the maximum dose, and then maybe later you take Tylenol PM and some Nyquil for a cold. And your back hurts, so you take Vicodin — by now you’ve probably gotten to a seven-gram dose.”

I am glad NYT put out an article to mitigate the hype/scare of last week's panel decision, but Dr. Nelson, who I work with, has a point here.

Strange Syntax

Not stabbing in the head, but stabbing the head. Struck me as odd.

Snake eyes, everyone loses.

The above photo shows the aftermath of a fight between a 13' python and a 6' alligator in Florida's Everglades in 2005. Apparently the python swallowed the alligator whole and began to digest it, inspiring the alligator to claw at the insides of the snake. In the end both animals were dead, and as can be seen in the picture above, the hindquarters of the alligator were sticking out of the python. (In case the image is too small to be meaningful: the scaly thing sticking toward the lower-right corner of the picture is the alligator's tail, while the other two points are the ends of the torn-in-half python. This just adds another item to each of two lists: 1. Reasons no one should live in Florida until they are old enough that they can't leave the house; and, 2. Reasons I am not cut out for any kind of wilderness adventure.