Presumably, though, Pope Ratz is opposed even to these very nontraditional condom deployments.
And yet, we still miss Kozmo
Sort of a companion piece to the top-ten-tech thing, CNet gives us their picks for the Top Ten dot-com flops. Ah, those were the days.
Um, wow.
So, this aquarium moved a large octopus into a bigger tank, assuming that its strength and stealth would keep it safe from the other critters in the new environment — a population that included sharks in the 3 to 4 foot range.
Something weird happened. They kept discovering shark carcasses at the tank bottom each morning, so they stayed up to see what happened (link to embedded RealVideo at PBS). As it happens, the shark turns out not to be the indisputed food chain king in this particular tank. (Link via MeFi.)
Why We Love Fred Clark, Part 1,234,583
Read this piece on August 6, Presidential daily briefings, and the wonder that is the Bush administration.
Why you shouldn’t buy “locked” online music
Read this; the gist:
I have CDs that I have owned for nearly twenty years. I have made back-ups of those CDs. I have converted those CDs into mp3s and more recently into AAC files. I can play them on any device that I want simply by changing the format. If my hard drive dies I still have my CDs. If my portable player dies I still have my CDs. If I decide to run MacOS, Linux, BSD, Windows or any other operating system I will still have my CDs and my CDs will still sound better than the files I downloaded. I have some serious doubts that if music purchased online today will be playable three years from now without breaking the DRM.
He speaks Truth. (More on this issue here — same blog, different author.)
Top Ten Tech We Miss at CNet
Spot on, particularly number 10, but not for the reasons they cite. It’s only with the Treo that Palm devices approach the intelligence of the Newton 10 years ago, and even now they fall short of some of its abilities. Of course, the market moved toward “small and cheap” and away from “big and expensive,” and Steve wasn’t about to keep a Sculley product around, but the Newt was (and is) seamless and friendly in a way that Palms still aren’t.
Dos gardenias para ti…
Ibrahim Ferrer, 1927 – 2005. (Pic via CNN; news and more via MeFi.)
Mmmmm, venomous rabbits
No, really (via MeFi).
Happy 30, buddy
Today, my brother turns 30. We observed said event on Wednesday night with a trip to Philip M’s via booze-filled limo — I flew over to attend as a surprise, orchestrated by my sister-in-law — but today’s the actual day.
Happy birthday, Frank. I love you. See you soon.
“The street finds its own use for things.”
Lately, we’ve heard a lot about some sort of Euro-craze for a song/ringtone called Crazy Frog. We had no idea until moments ago that this track is little more than a remix/mashup of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” (from Beverly Hills Cop) and this loop we blogged in 2001 clearly (originally) intended to be an imitation of an F1/Indy car (or, as some suggest, a two-stroke motorcycle engine).
For horses, by horses, out of horses.
If you like the funny — and I think you do — then head on over to see Leave It To Bush, episode 3, co-starring Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Fucking Walken.
(Longtime Heathen will recall our affection for episode 1 some months back.)
Shiman tackles the true Canon
Holy Shit: What the Hell is Wrong with Wisconsin?
It is now illegal to prescribe, dispense, or advertise any form of birth control on any University of Wisconsin campus. From the linked story:
Wisconsin State Rep. Dan LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, introduced this bill based on the belief that “dispensing birth control and emergency contraceptives leads to promiscuity.”
What. The. Fuck?
(Of course, our other reaction is “thank God it’s not a Southern state.”)
Best Tire Ad Ever.
We have Lindsey to thank for this one.
Bachelor Team, are you listening?
We believe the following quote from Dr Thompson adequately captures the Proper Breakfast for sometime during the festivities:
The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three newpapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music…All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked. Hunter S. Thompson on breakfast [from “Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’76”]
Venn-O-Matic
If you go here, you can make your very own Venn diagram. Here’s a sample from longtime Heathen MAD:
Great. Now TSA will see this, and we won’t be able to take binder clips on planes, either.
Office Guns, for all your workday ballistic needs.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Hundreds of years ago, scientists were branded (sometimes literally) as heretics and thrown in prison for discovering facts those in power found inconvenient (for example, heliocentrism).
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX-Jackass) presumably wishes he was in power then instead of now. Barton is using his committee chairmanship to harrass scientists whose work supports a conclusion with which he disagrees, namely that climate change exists. He’s demanding they turn over not just data but also personal and financial informationMore information available at the American Institute of Physics. Even some Republicans are calling the move “misguided and illegitimate.” This, of course, matters little to Barton.
Near as we can tell, this is not a joke
From CNN comes this, under the headline “New Mel Gibson film to be in Mayan”:
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Actor-director Mel Gibson is well on his way to cornering a new niche market in Hollywood — movies written in exotic languages. A year after breaking box-office records with “The Passion of the Christ,” which was shot in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, Gibson has struck a deal with the Walt Disney Co. to release his next picture in a Mayan dialect.
Things We Get Asked, or Cool Things We May Have Forgotten About, Albeit Briefly
“So, have you ever seen Sting live?”
Yeah, we’ve seen Gordon. Twice, really. Once, years ago, at what we still think of as the best venue for large scale live music in the southeast (RedOak Mountain Ampitheater in Birmingham, Alabama). Earlier than that — spring 1991 — at UNO Lakefront in New Orleans, though, was the definitive sighting.
Back then, before Sting became the punch line for Jaguar commercials, he was still interesting. He was touring in support of his last good record (The Soul Cages), and had fer-crying-out-loud Concrete Blonde opening for him. In that pre-Internet-as-we-know-it era, nobody in Tuscaloosa knew it was happening until I went back to Hattiesburg for spring break — and discovered, via a local record shop, what was happening the following evening in the Big Easy. My little brother and I quickly signed on, and then we called certain other Heathen at their ancestral home, and consequently he and a couple others (J.B. and M.E.) were screaming down I-10 from Florida to Louisiana.
They missed the true opener — a damned shame, since in all honestly we were bigger Concrete Blonde fans than Sting fans — but they got there in time to see something extraordinary. After the CB set and the requisite period of silence, the lights went down, followed by a simple follow-spot and two guys walking out on stage: a tall pale blonde dude, and a black guy with short dreads and a big-ass drum.
Sting started talking. He told us about how he’d wandered into a bar in Santa Monica or someplace months before, caught by the rain, and heard this guy. He went backstage. He, being Sting, got him a slot on his tour. He informed us that in half an hour or so, he’d be out to play his set; in the meantime, we were to listen to the dreadlock guy.
Dreadlock guy was Vinx. Nobody, mostly, knows who the hell he is even now, but at that moment in 1991, it was easy to believe he was about to be a big-ass star. He held the arena in his hand with an ease I’ve not yet seen again. The material he did was incredible and solid and true. I immediately bought his record, and then the follow up, and then. . .
. . . he vanished. Of course, he was still there. He just didn’t have major label support, or the exposure the comes with it. He’s still out there, but the records I know are now, criminally, out of print. This guy’s the real deal. See him if you have the chance. Buy what recordings you can. He’s real. I sit here, nearly 15 years after the first time I heard his voice at UNO Lakefront, and I still can’t believe how few people know how awesome he is.
So that’s what we’re telling you about this evening, shifting POV and all. Go. Buy. Listen.
Today’s amusing AIM conversation
[SomeoneWeKnow]: It's official, I've got a new entertainment-industry-whore contract. Sean "Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, relentless hack" Combs.
[Heathen]: Gonna bling-out his servers, fo shizzle?
[SomeoneWeKnow]: I'm gonna pimp him some Catalyst, nizzle.
[SomeoneWeKnow]: And some linaaaaxxxxx!
[Heathen]: I can't believe you just said that.
[SomeoneWeKnow]: Since I'm only moderately certain I said what I intended, I can believe that.
[SomeoneWeKnow]: Of course, as Snoop said, "Nizzle does not mean neighbor."
Mr Blue, 1933 – 2005
Edward Bunker, once the youngest inmate at San Quentin, passed away last Tuesday. He started writing while still inside, and his success therewith carried him to Hollywood; he is perhaps most famous for his role as Mr Blue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 Reservoir Dogs.
Dept. of Encouraging Statistics
OS X is making significant inroads in corporate America. Sure, the hardware costs a little more, but how valuable is stability? How valuable is total immunity to Outlook viruses? How valuable is just-plain-better platform security?
What to do this summer
Go see the final Tamalalia. Don’t believe me? Ask Everett.
Ok, sure: I am the president of IBP. But I have that role because I’ve been a volunteer and supporter for years; I like what they do, and think you might, too. This isn’t pure boosterism. It’s worth your time. Tamarie has created Houston’s only original musical series, and she’s done it for ten years. Check it out.
This weekend is all sold out, but remaining dates are: 8pm on July 28, 29, 30; August 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, September 1, 2, 3; also late-night 10:30 shows on July 30 and August 6, 20, and 27. Tickets are $10 to $17. For an additional ten bucks, on Fridays at 10:30 you can pick up on Miss Lily’s Drunken Lodge Hall Revue on the cabaret stage and make an evening of it. All performaces at the Axiom, 2524 McKinney, +713 522 8443.
Read this.
Jon Carroll has one of the best damn columns I’ve ever read today. It’s got Groucho in it, for crying out loud. Go. Read.
All you need to know about the “new” HP
Among the layoffs is Alan Kay — one of the founders of Xerox PARC.
Dept. of Art Sure to Irritate Mrs Heathen
A museum in London has an exhibition that is, basically, a running faucet. It wastes about 9,200 gallons per day.
Bullshit, Bullshit and More Bullshit
Between Rove and Roberts, this is getting little play in the mainstream media, but the House voted to extend the PATRIOT Act yesterday. Billmon reminds us why this is a very, very, very bad idea. PATRIOT is a hodgepode of expanded search & seizure powers protected by a veil of secrecy in the name of “national security,” and will end up being abused even if it hasn’t been already. Governments are loathe to give up power once they get it, and every government in the history of the world has abused the trust and power granted it by its citizens. Let your congresscritter know how you feel.
In the “useless security theater” department, NY will now do random bag searches on the subway. Like that’s gonna deter anybody from anything.
Finally, it looks like somehow we got the Irish drunk enough to give the CIA authority to secretly interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland even if they’re not suspected of any (Irish) crime. WTF? We proclaim we’re defenders of liberty, but we consistently behave as agents of government power trumping said liberty.
Whatever else they say, we know at least this is mildly fishy
Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has only been a judge since 2003. We have more experience writing a snarky blog than he has deciding cases, but we don’t think we belong on some sort of supreme blog council.
Doesn’t a SCOTUS slot imply more bench time than that? Shouldn’t it?
He canna take any more a’this, Cap’n
James Montgomery Doohan, 1920 – 2005. Previously unknown-to-us fact: Doohan was a D-Day veteran.
Occasionally funny, but definitely NSFW
FuckThisWebSite.com has pictures that may make you giggle, if you’re anything like us. (Not porn, but with liberal f-bomb usage.)
Honey, why can’t we register for one of these?
BoingBoing lives up to its slogan by pointing us to The Most Beautiful Machine, a brilliant piece of sculpture if ever we’ve seen one.
Of course, it’s not as though normal people NEED to be reminded about what a tool Santorum is
Ol’ Man-on-Dog Rick Santorum is at it again, proclaiming the clergy molestations to be essentially consensual homosexual relationships, and then making it abundantly clear that he thinks State regulation of birth control is A-OK.
Damn.
The Oxford American shames us by pointing out that Larry Brown died when we weren’t paying attention. He had a heart attack last November 24. He was 53.
Coverage still up at NPR and the MIssissippi Writers Page. If you haven’t read what he’s written — Pat Conroy famously said he wrote “like a force of nature” — do yourself a favor and pick up something from your local independent bookshop.
Dept. of Stuff We Need
A Cellular squirrel seems like a fine idea.
16 July 1945
Best. Animated. Gif. EVAR.
We’re assuming this won’t impact us on the grounds that fundies still have to comply with DoD mandates
This privacy advocate is convinced that RFID tags are a harbinger of Revelation’s “mark of the beast.”
Why does Fox News hate America?
Fox’s John Gibson stated yesterday that Rove deserved a medal for outing Plame, and that she should have been outed “by somebody.”
What you need to know about Valerie Plame
The GOP spin machine is in full force trying to make it appear that Plame wasn’t an actual undercover operative, which would mean that Novak and Rove are off the hook. This is the new big lie. Fortunately, it’s hard to argue with actual facts.
We love that guy.
So, Scottie has been getting a pretty rough time from the White House press corps over the Rove thing and, well, the lies he told about the Rove thing months ago. They’re being pretty tenacious, and refusing to let the issue drop, which is pretty amazing. Jon Stewart describes this phenomenon best:
We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters.
Watch This Movie
Primer is the best $7,000 movie you’re likely to see this year; they certainly loved it at Sundance. Bullet pitch: garage-based tech startup guys attempting to manipulate gravity end up manipulating time. It’s quick (77 minutes), which is good, as you’ll probably want to watch it more than once.
I mean, really, what’s not to like?
Via BoingBoing, we present the LapJuicer: a fruit-juice-extracting device designed for use by, um, adult entertainers at work.
Dept. of Amusingly Ineffective Methods of Contraband Concealment
Here’s something fun.
And by “fun” we mean “that sucks.”
We’re trying to send a set of addresses to our friends who are throwing us a party. As it happens, Apple’s address book has no “arbitrary export” feature, which SUCKS. It’ll do VCards (which are great for moving between address management tools, but lousy for arbitrary data manipulation), but that’s all. However, it does have an address-label printing feature, which OUGHT to be at least good enough to get us past this roadblock (leaving aside the issue of data-lock-in for a minute, anyway).
However, in previewing the labels, we noticed that sometimes it was using the partner/spouse information in the addressee line (as in “Chris B___ and Cathy P____”) and sometimes not (as in “Edgar A____”, with his lovely wife nowhere to be found). Both records had the spouses listed in the “spouse” field. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth resulted before we were able to figure out for the Applecare dude exactly why this was. (We’re pretty sure this isn’t the way information is supposed to flow on those calls.)
As it turns out, when printing labels, the Address Book checks to see if there’s a record for the spouse. Unaccountably, if there is, it decides NOT to append the spouse name to the adressee line. Sure enough, Mrs Edgar has a record of her own, but Cathy does not (sorry, Cathy). The theory held up well; the minute we created a record for Cathy, she disappeared from the addressee line with Chris.
But it gets even suckier: For some reason, Tony’s spouse wasn’t showing up, either, and Emily doesn’t even have a record; she’s listed — with both first and last names — only as his spouse. However, we do know two other people named Emily, but with different last names. This partial match is enough to make Address Book omit her from the addressee line.
The AppleCare response? Don’t use the Spouse field, which means returning to the morass of somehow fitting differently-surnamed couples into a single set of firstname, lastname fields. Uh, no thanks, jackasses.
So: Way to go, Apple! Looks like I’m about to fucking TYPE the addresses into Excel manually. What. The. Fuck?
The Most Disturbing Headline on Metafilter in Living Memory
“RIP Chet.”
Of course, it’s about Chet Helms, but there you go.
Miss Live 8?
No problem; just download the Quicktime files from here.
And then there’s this
Found on Flickr
In which we comment on things overheard at lunch
If we were in the legal profession, we probably wouldn’t say things in public like “Sure, there’s no way he can win; he’s got no case — but what do I care? It’s not contingency, and he’s paying $250 an hour.”