Apropos my earlier post about Crickett rifles, here’s the promotional video that shows how your child can walk in front of its muzzle while you’re distracted doing something else:
The money shot, in case this video happens to get taken down for some reason:
Attention, Michael Weinmayr:
“UNDER THE SMOGBERRY TREES: The True Story of Dr. Demento”
$3,585 left to go in the next 40 hours.
You know, it’s not so much that I’m surprised to find that I’m to the left of the Obama administration again. It’s that he’s going out of his way to meddle in this when both the FDA and the courts provide plenty of political cover for a decision to leave this the hell alone.
This is the decision of someone who believes that the government has a moral obligation to ensure that any 13-year-old who gets raped, assaulted by family, drunk, or drugged, and then gets knocked up, has to go through with an abortion or bearing a child. Because, you know, otherwise she might sleep around too much.
The Australian Christian Lobby neglected to renew their domain. Then this happened.
The problem with protecting against phishing: everyone’s a guppy.
Who needs graphics when all you need is Post-It notes and the patience of Ray Harryhausen?
Thanks to The Awl for making me realize that the anniversary of the OBL killing also happens to be the anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”. I think that escaped my notice before.
Spit-take funny Onion article.
Dick Cheney Vice Presidential Library Opens In Pitch-Dark, Sulfurous Underground Cave
[T]he subterranean library will include more than 2.7 million photographs, thousands of razor-sharp stalactites, 4 million documents offering a legal basis for torture, scalding-hot green smoke wafting out of the cave walls, an original manuscript of the Patriot Act, hundreds of sick and hungry cave bears, and 15,000 audio recordings from Cheney’s private meetings.
Many customers ask us if it’s safe to check their bank account at a WiFi hotspot, and while we encourage you to avoid entering your password on public networks, there are simple steps you can take to limit the possibility of compromising your data. For one, disconnect from the hotspot as soon as you finish your session. Two, go into your browser’s settings and click “Delete Cookies.” Three, rip all the wiring from the establishment’s walls and ceilings. Four, douse the premises in gasoline or acetone and set it on fire. And five, immediately reset your password upon returning to a secure network. That’s it!
Excellent story about Steubenville and how the criminals became the victims in the media:
By emphasizing the boys’ good grades and bright futures, as well as by describing the victim as “drunk” without clarifying that the defendants were also drinking, many mainstream media outlets became active participants in furthering victim-blaming rape culture.
I’ll add the obvious point the article misses: the media had to create victimized rapists because the true victim was anonymous, and we don’t sell news stories without a sympathetic hook.
I have big problems with the term “rape culture” because it’s so often applied to situations that aren’t rape; I think it helps to perpetuate the myth of virginal women and rapacious men in these cases. But I have no question that it definitely applies to the twisted ways we think about coerced sex.
Being a Penn grad finally paid off.
As the former owner of several Nokia phones, I deem this pretty frickin’ cool.
Here’s How You Eat All the Pellets in Snake and ‘Win’ the Game
Examining a SEPTA token under a microscope is an excellent weight-loss plan. Possible side-effects: agoraphobia.
Monthly staff meetings at Le Bec Fin—no reservations, just barge in.
Yesterday at the track, today at the stables.
“Heartwarming” is rarely in the same sentence as “Steve Jobs,” but I think this qualifies:
A friend of mine was dying of liver disease and I was going to San Francisco to hopefully see and communicate with her while it was still possible. She was a friend from my Adobe days and was very much into technology. I thought it would be a treat for her to see an iPad. And I had one. But until the product was officially released I could not show it to anyone without permission from Apple management.
There was no way I was going to take the iPad with me unless Steve personally approved it.
One of the hardest arguments to get across in the surveillance debate is the issue of harm from too much extraneous data. The solution to finding a needle in a haystack is not to add more hay. This article came through this morning as NPR reported that Bloomberg is calling for more surveillance cameras in NYC—which might work for catching non-suicide bombers, but does nothing preventive, and nothing reactionary for suicide bombers or larger groups of attackers.
Arguably, the best reason not to radically expand government surveillance is Boston’s example that crowdsourcing individual video and photos works better and faster.
Anti-terror task force was warned of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s long trip to Russia
The warning was delivered to a single U.S. Customs and Border Protection official assigned to Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a cell of specialists from federal and local law enforcement agencies. The task force was part of a network of multi-agency organizations set up across the country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to make sure that clues and tips were shared.
But officials said there is no indication that the unidentified customs officer provided the information to any other members of the task force, including FBI agents who had previously interviewed the militant.
It seem to me that an evidence-based and history-based approach to fiscal and economic policy should lead to Keynesianism, probably on a scale that’s never been attempted. How am I wrong?
Reinhart & Rogoff call backsies
Controversial economists Carmen Reinhart and Vincent Rogoff have a response to their critics in today’s New York Times that ought to persuade nobody. The crucial move in this op-ed, as in other defenses of their “Growth in a Time of Debt” piece, is to obscure what it was that was allegedly interesting and allegedly important about the paper.
Drowning is the cause of a quarter of a million child fatalities every year. Mark Whitaker reports from Bangladesh and Vietnam.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20130212-0905a.mp3 (11 MB MP3 download)
Well, now we know what Brian Greenberg will do if he ever quits his day job. An entire RPG written in Excel:
While the game isn’t a beauty to look at—the hero is represented by a smiley face and all enemies are all bracket-parenthesis pairs—it’s fairly complex for, well, a spreadsheet. Attacks include a range of damage-inducing and healing spells that players buy and use with “blood,” which regenerates with each turn. Players also find and can equip a range of weapons, including rocks, slingshots, bowling balls, rifles, ninja stars, and brass knuckles.
