| Sunday, February 18, 2007 |
16:06 - Bring on the Rapture, Pt. 2
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/aboutus/products/MapleCheddar.aspx
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Is it just me, or is this not the most revolting-sounding combination of flavors on the face of the planet?
Especially the way that TV ad introduces it, with that guy in the office listing the ingredients in it to his co-worker, hesitantly, sort of chuckling nervously in between each one:
"Cheddar cheese...."
"Egg...."
"Heh.... maple— ... —ffffffflavoredsausage..."
I swear I keep expecting him to say "maple-flavored sauce", which would be a pretty awful-sounding replacement for syrup. And "flavored" means (of course) that there's no actual maple in the thing. Not that that would necessarily make it worse.
"America Runs on Dunkin," says the ad. Yeah, well, there's no such thing as Dunkin Donuts out here on the West Coast, so whatever sense it makes for them to be advertising on cable out here, it serves no purpose for me but to deepen my gladness that I live where I do.
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13:43 - Bring on the Rapture
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/02/18/chat.room.lawsuit.ap/index.html
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Society hasn't really fallen this far, has it?
WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP) -- A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.
James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.
In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict." He claimed protection under the American with Disabilities Act.
I guess this is a better form of PTSD than holing up in the mountains of Oregon and hunting federal agents who come to arrest you, but... in some ways, maybe not.
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| Saturday, February 17, 2007 |
13:21 - <deep breath> MEEEEEEEEEEEEEME!
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They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!
Don't you feel like this now?
That kid's got a film career in front of him, if you know what I mean.
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| Thursday, February 15, 2007 |
14:20 - Witness the birth of a plastic turkey
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/4598
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Boy, check out this marvelous example of a misleading, bait-and-switch headline: U.S. Senator: It's time to ban Wikipedia in libraries, schools.
If true, surely cause for outrage; banning Wikipedia is something the Chinese government does, not ours, right? But wait—read the actual article:
Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among other things, would require that any school or library that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block access to interactive Web sites, including social networking sites, and possibly blogs as well. It appears that the definition of those sites is so vague that it could include sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators. It would certainly ban MySpace.
(Emphasis added.) So it's not about Wikipedia at all, but about social networking sites where child predators are known to hang out. Wikipedia is a complete red herring here. This is just a proposed law with an overly broad definition; no library or school in the country would think of banning Wikipedia under the same aegis as a blacklist against sites like MySpace, and Stevens certainly never suggested that they should.
Or, as the very first commenter put it:
The headline of this blog is completely misleading. It claims the senator is specifically going after Wikipedia. But the blog article says, "it appears that the definition... is so vague that it COULD INCLUDE [emphasis added] sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators." That does not sound like something you would attribute to the senator... it is something you would attribute to the commentators. In other words: "Commentators: Senator's plan would ban Wikipedia in schools and libraries".
But it's Ted Stevens, who we all love to pick on. And while I'm no Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens fan, it drives me nuts to see someone lambasted for an idea he didn't even have. His infamous "series of tubes" definition of the Internet, as I've said before, makes perfect sense when you realize that he's a layman who very likely had the Internet explained to him as a series of pipes, which is exactly the metaphor that my previous company of seven years has used in making its entire business case selling networking infrastructure. Pipes, tubes—what's the difference? Apparently everything, if what you've got in your head is a cartoon of some doddering old guy waving his cane around and reminiscing about how many "tubes" were in his field radio in Doubleya-Doubleya-Eye-Eye.
And in the case of this law, what's clear to me is that he's still a layman about the Internet, and has only a vague understanding that there's a difference between regular websites and "interactive" websites, and it's the latter ones that have the capability for inter-user communication and, thus, predators. What he doesn't grok is that when sites like Wikipedia are added to the mix, the line between "interactive" and "non-interactive" becomes very blurry indeed, and once that's pointed out to him there's simply no way that the proposed law will not be amended so that sensationalist headlines like this will no longer be possible.
But even Glenn Reynolds can't resist the temptation: "TED STEVENS: Ban Wikipedia!"
This is how urban legends get started—the ones that outlive the people who gave birth to them.
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| Wednesday, February 14, 2007 |
00:39 - DEATH TO CONVENTIONAL THINKING
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO8l-Bd1O4
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Via Marcus and CapLion, approximately simultaneously:
Wow. Now that's some prime cuts right there.
Unlike, via evariste, this iPhone knockoff. Though I've got to say... remember how everyone was saying how the iPhone's screen was so much clearer and sharper than anything else evar? And yet it's only 320x480. Whereas the Chinese clone is 720x480. That's, like, more than twice the pixel density, and on a smaller screen to boot. That's gotta count for something, huh?
(Check out those screen icons, though. Not only are the form factor and the screen layout cribbed from the iPhone, the icons—especially the address book and Web browser—are stylistic clones of the Mac OS X equivalents, carefully re-rendered in new and exciting positions.)
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15:50 - Now this modern art I can get into
http://tyrisr.livejournal.com/16918.html
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Hey, remember Apple's storefront design for the iPod Hi-Fi?
That's got nothing on these marvelous genre-bending ads, via BrianD.
My favorite has to be the Axe Effect Mousepad.
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| Tuesday, February 13, 2007 |
13:01 - Beware the Curse of the Apple Mummy
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Via George—this series of videos by Alfred DiBlasi, who opens a storage unit and unearths several decades' worth of Apple and technology nostalgia, is highly entertaining. Someone get this guy his own show.
The Tomb
Tomb Raider
There's more by the guy, too, if you follow the links at YouTube.
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Brian Tiemann
