Ariston - Aqualtis

It is really awesome. It reminds me of an undersea world. - Connor

Creepy Mother's Day Gift

Incidentally this is from an advertising agency called Mother's.

from AdFreak

Groo is Coming, Groo is Coming

Groo has been in cut out limbo for a decade or so. Now on Groo Scribe Mark Evanier's Blog Groo is returning with a 25th anniversy, and a new collection of reprints.

Charlie Stross on Futurology

Here is talk that the sci fi author Charlie Stross gave recently on future trends.

from slashdot

Cats and War Toys

A guy came accross an infromation booth at a fair in Washington where he was able acquire a foam grenade. He took it home to use as a cat toy and to restage a Diane Arbus photo. Through the idea of handing out toy grenades to tourist does suggest to him that there could be problems. He "...wondered briefly what the TSA chaps at the airport would do when tourists started turning up at the airport with grenades in their luggage and carry-ons".

Treachery

No one's a traitor until they are.

-Titus Pullo

Silly Name for Dead Thug

I have not been closely following the Afghan Taliban War closely enough. Recently one of the Taliban top thugs, a religious leader, was wacked. His name was Mullah Dadullah easily trips off the tongue as Mullah the Dullard. HA HA.

Is Apple Good for Design

The Design Observer has an interesting view on Apple and its Cult of Design. The Mac/PC ads are also part of this. Mac is always presented as cooler than PC. Interestingly there was a Linux ad recently that showed Mac as unchangable and stodgy as PC.

The World is Huge and Rude

Rude place names of the world.

ha ha.

Leaping Shampoo

The Kaye Effect, a “strange property of complex fluids,” and its explanation:

from The Proceeding of the Athanasius Kircher Society.

Swinging in Tokyo

You can also download this ad for better resolution.

from Advertolog

The Queen visits a Chickenhawk

A great cartoon by John Cole. He describes the situation better:

Queen Elizabeth II arrives in the United States as one of her grandsons prepares for combat duty in Iraq.

A similar sense of sacrifice and noblesse oblige cannot be credited to certain of our leaders on this side of the pond.

Blow Up Real Good

NASA has discovered the loudest SuperNova ever. A commentator at NPR couldn't help but say that something that large and important makes our lives, our world feell very, very small. Nearly exactly like the Total Perspective Vortex.

Vulture Feeding Time

SAN MARCOS — Texas State University's plan to build the nation's largest "body farm" of cadavers is on hold after scrapping its proposed site amid concerns that buzzards could endanger nearby planes.

The university will now scout a new location for what will be only the third body farm in the nation. The school had hoped to begin burying bodies later this year.

By burying cadavers and studying human decomposition, researchers aim to help police better solve questions like time and manner of death at crime scenes.

Texas State's proposed 17-acre site was on Texas Highway 21 near the San Marcos Municipal Airport. But after meeting with the airport's commission Tuesday, the university quashed the plan out of concerns that buzzards would pose a risk to pilots.

"While the increased risk might be very small, it cannot be completely eliminated, and we cannot go forward with the Highway 21 site," Texas State provost Perry Moore said.

Plans for the site included a razor-wire fence around the property, vulture-proof cages to protect exposed bodies and a 70-foot grass buffer around the site to absorb rain runoff.

Residents near the proposed site complained about coyotes and diminished property values, but Texas State officials had been unmoved by those concerns.

The nation's two existing body farms are operated by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.

from the Houston Chronicle

Digital Rights Madness

On a slashdot there in a thread about HBO Exec Proposes DRM Name Change there are lots of insightful and amusing comments about the ham handed ways that media companies treat their customers.

Imidan has this comment on No-CD patches:

Yeah, what is the deal with that? Why do I have to have the CD in to play? Given the right software, which anyone can get, the CD is trivially easy to copy to my hard drive. Or I can download a no-CD crack off the Internet. Why do they make this little hoop for me to jump through? Look, I bought the game. I have the sales receipt and everything!

My theory is that the people who make DRM technologies are kind of like telephone sanitizers. We've just been paying them for so long that if we suddenly give up on this utterly wasteful technology, then we'll be stuck with a lot of out-of-work DRM people, and they'll be meddling in the kitchen cupboards, rearranging them so we can never find anything anymore.

Anonymous Coward hgives this comment on No-CD patches:

And I know this because I've often downloaded the "no-cd" patches for my legitimately-purchased and DRM-encumbered games in order to:
A) not have to dig out the CD every time I want to play,
B) not have to wait for the CD to spin up,
C) not have to worry about the DRM system becoming incompatible and breaking the game (e.g., for older games, the DRM is often incompatible with new OS versions before the game is, so stripping the DRM increases compatibility),
D) not have to worry about the CD getting scratched or otherwise damaged,
E) sometimes it improves the performance to remove certain (poorly-implemented) DRM
schemes, and
F) because I paid for the game and I'll play it any way I please, thank you very much.

Suv4x4 chimes in with the inability of new names to change old preceptions:

Those people will never get it. The name doesn't matter. What's so sinister about "Digital Rights Management"? It sounds pretty nice to me. The bad connotations aren't coming from the name, it's the essence of what DRM is.

People keep thinking that the order and choice of letters is all it takes to turn something bad into something great.

This has been happening also in the way people have called people with mental handicaps throughout the years, and the constant "reinvention" of the terms, to keep the names less insulting:

-----

Socially responsible guy: We shouldn't call them "idiots" anymore. That's insulting. We'll call it people with mental retardation: retards.
General public: Yea, that is a nice neutral name, no bad connotations.

One year later:

General public: My brother is a damn retard, I hate him.
Socially responsible guy: That's insulting. We shouldn't call them retards anymore. We'll call them people with "slow mental development". Slow people.
General public: Yea, that's neutral and nice. Cool.

One year later:

General public: My neighbour is "slow" or something. Huhuhu.
Socially responsible guy: We shouldn't call them "slow", that's insulting. Well call them "people with special education needs". Special people.

One year later:

General public: My new coworker is "special". Huhuu, get it? "Special". Hehehe.

----------

Basically you can change a name any times you want. Bad fame will come to haunt you never mind how hard you try.

Superman & Spiderman as Mac & PC

There have been many parodies of the Mac & PC ads. Novell has put out its own version with Mac, PC & Linux. There was one that parody that had PC & Mac and Unix & BSD. In that ad Unix and BSD were dressed exactly alikeand kept insisting they were completely different. Here is a version that has Superman and Spiderman talking about DC and Marvell. You can find more videos at ItsJustSomeRandomGuy YouTube directory.

At Adfreak where I got this link they also reminded that Superman is a dick.

Official Tinfoil Hat Alert

American defense contractors thought this coin was implanted with nanotechnology as part cunning scheme of Canadian World Domination. Full story and comments at slashdot.

Update 05/11/2007
In Alternate History Alcuin brings notice of this book dedicated to Canadian World Domination.

Never written? Well not in this timeline.
Protocols of the Elders of Canada - being the secret plan for world domination proposed by the Cajuns after they were forcibly moved to Louisiana.

Christopher Hitchens on our Enemies

In a recent article for Vanity Fair Christopher Hitchens returns to his old neighbourhood and finds it filled with jihadists.

Army Group Ferret

In a thread on Alternate History about naming military units after geographic features somebody brings up The Army of the Don.

Wozza replies with:

How many Dons are there?


I see there is one in Yorkshire. Obviously when we come to crush you people and your ferret-down-the-trouser barbarisms we will need an Army Group Don to maintain control.

I imagine hypern is the ideal man for internal order operations.

Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes

A Dutch group has gone through the logs of dozens of 18th and 19th century ships. From this data set can determined historical climate conditions, temperature and wind speeds and direction. The image above is the

"Positions of the available observations in the CLIWOC database for the period 1750-1854. The markers in the image show the corrected (mainly for the correct zero-meridian) positions."

CLIWOC also has individual plots of dozens of ships like the Ajax, Captain Cook's Endeavour and Enterprise. Looking at the above you see the shipping lanes.

from the Trade Route Resources blog.

Afghan Army Exercises

Somebody in Afghanistan, probably Canadian has put edited together a video of Afghan soldiers doing the worst excuse of a work out since elementary school.

Ultra Catty View of Paris Hilton

HA HA

from Walt Handelsman, Long Island, NY, Newsday

Alarmforce Spokesman Pauly Walnuts

Whenever I see the TV ad for Alarmforce and its spokesman I cannot not be reminded of Pauly Walnuts. I am not convinced of Alarmforce's honesty after seeing their ads.

Cat Sitting Ad

John Hodgman: The Truth About Jonathan Coulton

All We Want to do is Eat Your Brains

Another great song from Jonathan Coulton on the merits of Zombie cuisine. Here is the same song set to anime rather than WoW. Here is A Hard Days' Night of the Living Dead.

Ah, Zombie humour.

Unemployment and Immigration

The problem that economists have in measuring inflation and costs is that that these vary based on where you are in the economy. If you are employer your costs are lower if there are many people who are unemployed or underemployed, see reserve army of the unemployed and other Marxist theory. This has meant that labour costs in argriculture and construction and meatpacking in the United States has declined with the availablity of easily exploited undocumented workers. That is one side of inflation for construction workers on the other hand inflation has increased for displaced construction workers as their wages decline.

Inflation is a value judgement.

Clash of the Car Titans

We all should have seen this coming. General Motors were successful for a long time because of the way that Alfred Sloan organized the disparate auto and auto part companies that made up GM. Because of the example of Sloan management ability and bureacratic skills was more important than engineering. In de Lorean's book, On a Clear Day you can See General Motors, he describes how he was an unusual GM executive because he was a car nut. In recent years GM has made more money out its loan division than by making or selling cars. American car companies need to focus on cars and automotive engineering.

Update 05/08/2007
Edwin Black who noted the IBM technology behind the Holocaust has come some new research that links GM and Panzers. He has documented some ways that GM helped the Nazi war effort. However whatever help GM was able to give to the Nazi war effort was insufficant in overcoming a persistent lack of petroleum resources. Although there were armoured divisions, Panzers, most German even SS divsions were not fully mechanized or even motorized. Trucks had not completely replaced horses and horse drawn artillery were used until the end of WWII.

Still, I like a good muck raking as much as the next schadenfreuden addict.

Hitler's Carmaker: The Inside Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich (Part 1)

Hitler's Carmaker: As the Nazis Amassed Power, What Did GM Know and When? (Part 2)

Hitler's Carmaker: From War Profiteering to Undermining Mass Transit (Part 3)

Wikisky

WikiSky is a combo GoogleEarth for the sky and a Wiki for the sky. It even has a section of many interesting and amusing images from faces in the sky to quasars to globular clusters. Doesn't that sound like a great snack food, mmmm globular clusters with peanuts, fudge and popcorn

Above is the big dipper.

From a link at Andart.

French Election News

I have been following the blog ¡No Pasarán! for French election news. At this point the coverage is focused on riots and car burnings. Riots and car burnings were threatened if didn't turn left. Sarkovy was castigated for famously called his political opponents who were expressing themselves by rioting and car burning last summer as "scum". It was considered a racial remark because of the identity of the rioters and carburners.

Update
The website Little Green Footballs actually had a poll on how many cars would be burned and answered it the next day with 367.

Thought Process of Conspiracy Theorist

1. Something horrible happens
2. It never happened
   
3. The Jews, CIA, Swiss Bankers, Masons, insert most hated group here, did it.

Real History in Song and Cartoons

In the past the the major cost of fighting a war was paying the war bonds. After the mass participation wars in the western world the major cost of a war was paid decades later in the form of pensions and health care. In earlier less financially stable times armies were laid off and the maimed were sent out to beg their own livings. While on active service armies were permenment host for a host of diseases like thyphoid, plague, cholera, and syphilis. Soldiers died from diseases more than bullets. If we look to Africa now we can see our own past. African armies have horrendus AIDS infection rates of 40-60%. There has been scholarship to suggest that the song St James Infirmary is about a soldier dying of VD in a poorhouse. Without a wealthy society that actually cares about its people that is the fate of ex-soldiers and many others to die in the gutter of some horrible disease while begging for crumbs.

These 2 editorial cartoons highlight the fate of soldiers to end up as diseased beggers.

Least Effective Forms of Political Activism

Ha Ha.
Blog Comment Warfare is what I recognize, coutesy of Slowpoke.

Action Hero Cats

Courtesy of Cool LOking ads.

Everything I know I Learned in History Class

On Morning Edition there is a story of about some basic training to recruits in the "intelligence community". What the apprentice spooks are taught are basic historiography pracrtices. On Wiki there is this description of historiography before it getsmired in ideological and religious motivations.

Some of the common questions of historiography are:

1. Reliability of the sources used, in terms of authorship, credibility of the author, and the authenticity or corruption of the text.

The weighing of sources and the provenance of sources and the intergration of all sources into coherent narrative is what history, reporting and intelligence analysis is. Provenance of sources is the sources of sources be it raw information, primary source in history, interpreted information, secondary source in history, or information interpreted from others' interpretations, tertiary sources. What it boils down to is the need to have many sources that are as primary and verifiable as possible for a history paper or intelligece briefing.

What surprises me is that they need to teach aspiring spooks such basic practices. The tyro spies and their instructors are not identified but probably have at least a liberal education. Just because a job is important dosen't mean it gets the best recruits. In the book Inside The Soviet Army thereis a description of the ease of doing secret research. For if did "secret research" in the old Soviet Union you may have less access to overseas trips but will be easier to get your thesis approved, easier to get hired and tenure and you have to produce less scientific papers than pursuing pure science. Additionally there are problems with intelligence agents or agencies in that rarely can loyalty and knowledge be combined. In the early Cold War the Brittish had very smart but treasous spies and the Americans had the opposite very loyal but stupid spies.

The Chinese Business Mirage

China has never been a very good market for foreign goods. Historically China was self sufficent in food and manufactured items. Their had little need or desire for foreign goods. There were the only source for silk, tea and porcelin. There were willing to take silver and gold. After the 19th century there were willing buy curiosities like clocks and bicycles. At one Lancastershire textile mill owners thought their prosperity would be assured if everyone in China wore a sightly longer shirt. It was a mirage. The only time when the rest of the world was able to reverse the currency drain built in to the China was to sell dope.

Over the last generation government and business leaders in the west have promoted trade with China. The net result of all this expansion of trade has been a permament Chinese trade surplus. China is willing to buy raw materials but not manufactured goods. The expansion of trade has been zero benefit to all but China. Instead we have business groups agitating for policies that promote a tyrannical communist regime. Here is the story of today of a fake Chinese Disneyland.

At Cartoon Brew where I got this link somebody pointed out the website for this pseudo amusement park is http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/.

Bill Gates, Bully in Chief

Tom Evslin who briefly worked at Microsoft has reported on Bill Gates management style. Bill Gates managed with rudeness and bullying. The culture at Microsoft modeled itself on Gates' rudeness and bullying.

At some point in your presentation billg will say “that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve heard since I’ve been at Microsoft.” He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can’t really let it faze you. Moreover, you can’t afford to look fazed; remember: he’s a bully.

In the comments a NonMSFTer gives his reaction to the Sleazeballs in Seattle:

Yes. I interviewed at Microsoft in about 1989, and it was VERY clear from the style of at least one interviewer that it was a confrontational, in-your-face kind of place, where rudeness seemed to be a kind of initial ante into being perceived there as being very bright and/or the kind of aggressiveness they were looking for. I called (quietly) bullshit and withdrew. But the author is right; it ripples down from the top. I won't forget the asshole I interviewed with (a 20-something Brit named Richard Tate), but the real blame goes with an environment that fosters that kind of hubris.

At slashdot where there is a link to this story there has been many interesting comments.

SheildWOlf has a parent take to dealing with bullies.

It was a test. And you failed. All of us.

Like I was telling my daughter yesterday, the appropriate thing to do when you meet such a person is to drill them in the nose with your knuckles as hard as you can, unless they outweigh you by a significant margin, in which case you should hit them with a chair until they crumple to the ground.

This is how you deal with bullies.

You certainly don't turn yourself one after another into his bitch and make him rich as reward for his antisocial behavior.

I bet Bill wears an "Everything I needed to take over the world, I learned from the bully in kindergarten" T-shirt to bed as a nightie.

Maestro4k has this reaction to MS Inhuman resources management and its costs.

There's a distinct difference between expecting someone to champion their project and being a bully and abusing them verbally. Telling every person that their project idea is "the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." is just being downright mean. Especially when you just glare at them coldly after they defend themselves (as the article points out).

And then you get people who'll imitate the behavior without the smarts to back it up, so it becomes nothing BUT abuse. (Middle management for example.) I think Bill's management technique explains a lot about Microsoft's behavior over the years and why they're so disliked in the technical community. In fact looking back at how MS acted during their two biggest trials (the US anti-trust and EU anti-trust) you can see this "bullying" all over the place. Acting like a bully when you're the defendant in court is not a good idea. It'll just piss the judge (and possibly the jury) off, and they're the ones passing judgment on you.

Besides, it's not like this technique has worked incredibly well for MS, especially in areas like security. MS has also put out some really lousy stuff over the years, like MS Bob, that were apparently "championed" all the way to release, then bombed. Maybe if Bill had developed a culture less focused on bullying they could have avoided some of those things, and saved money. When you force every one of your employees to defend their projects in such a manner then how many are going to be willing to listen when people point out problems with them? You can't have any second doubts if you have to defend your projects constantly, so people will stop listening to any criticism, leading to lower quality all around.

Quote

LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.
-Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

When Marilyn meets Einstein

It isn't often you see alternative history in a beverage ad. But this makes you wonder that Einstein and Marilyn could have married.

From a link in advertising goodness.

Degree Inflation Humour

In reaction to news that the Dean of Admissions at MIT lied about her degree there was much condemnation. However on slashdot DarkOx responded with:

As a Medical Doctor, Practicing Criminal Lawyer, Professor of Cosmology, Licensed Elevator Inspector Life Guard, and offical Breast Examiner; I am truely shocked that someone would misrepresent themselves in such a fashion.

Then StormX2 asked.

..Licensed Elevator Inspector Life Guard... You got screwed over too? onlinedegrees.com promised so many job openings with this license, and yet I've yet to save a single elevator inspector's life!

Hitler Joke

In a thread about Hitler's meddling on the Alternate History the commentator Major Major offers this german joke from WWII.

A man goes to the doctor and sees a map on the wall. “What is that enormous brown country?” he asks.

The doctor says, “That’s the Judeobolshevik Soviet Union.”

“And that great big green country?”

“That’s the judified and negrified United States.”

“And these red places all over?”

“That’s the effete and degenerate British Empire.”

“And this blue country, the not so big one in the middle?”

“Oh, that is Our Greater German Reich.”

The man had thought for a moment. Then, timidly, he had said, “Has the Führer seen this map?”

Shame or No Shame

In a annother follow up piece to the Virginia Tech shooting NPR had on Korean American who wrote about his feelings as shame in a recent oped. There was a feeling of guilt and shame among Korean Americans. On the discussion page for this item many wrote of guilt and shame they sometimes feel for misdeeds of people sharing the same race, religon, philosophy.

The converstaion was all about shame and guilt and responsibilty we all feel for each other. Then a muslim came on talking about 911, starting @ 5'50''. All he was worried was about a backlash.

"...understand that in each culture, each religon, in each tradition there are people who are extremists and they will commit some acts of violence. But the majority of people understand."

There are murdering maniacs "in each culture, each religon, in each tradition". We can feel ashamed and guilty by the actions of related madmen. That the moslem community couldn't be ashamed by by its non-insane murderers, the "extremists", is sign that they can never feel shame. Concern is expressed about a possible blacklash not about the wrongness of the crime.

War on Slacks

A war on slacks has been launched in Iran. This picture and others here were are about a current goovernment crackdown on "inappropiate dress".

Flash the Superhero, Origin Story

Not too ironically this litttle video about the history of Flash was found on Cold, Hard, Flash. The animation is called The Rather Amazing and Slightly Distorted History of Flash. Here is even more stuff about web development widgets made by the same studio as the Flash Story. Bad, funny and violent ads have been created to promote widgets like Cold Fusion. The Cold Fusion ad is in the form of a cleaning product that can make all your problems disappear.

Government against Foriegn Investment by Canadian Companies

In today's ROB about a European banking merger, Europe's Mega Banking Deal, in its implications for Canadian Bank ambitions there is this odd detail. It is now more expensive from a tax perspective for Canadian Companies to buy foreign companies than the other way around. Why?

A banking source complained that, even if BMO had the cash to do the deal, a new measure in the federal budget that removes a tax deduction for companies expanding abroad would make it less attractive.

The extra federal tax on a $21-billion deal would be hundreds of millions of dollars per year, said one accountant who asked not to be named.

Executioner Time

I have been reading a manga called Samurai Executioner lately. Through the series was published in the mid-7o's it was only recently released in English. It is the story of a executioner as a ronin with a middling to well paid government post. The crimes detailed and punished are recognizable as still being legitimate crimes such as murder, rape, grand theft.

When we look at famous executions down through history there are many bizarre and boroque crimes that demand death then show up in the samurai police procedural. Joan of Arc was condemned for witchcraft. Anne Boleyn was condemned for adultery and treason. Jesus was condemned heresy, a charge later inflated to sedition. Scorates was condemned for encouraging juvenile delinquency and impiety.

All these "crimes" are seen as something that belong in the colourful past. Except that people are still being executed for such nebulous and imaginary crimes as witchcraft, adultery, heresy and impiety. Here is a transcript of an interview with the official executioner of Mecca. In Saudi Arabia and other places people are condemned for witchcraft, adultery, heresy, impeity, apostasy and imaginary crimes.

Serious Game Design Traps

Tim Carter of Xfunc has come out with a new essay Serious Game Design Traps . He as a serious game designer has outlined and examined the many ways that games, especially serious games, can be badly designed. His perscription is to look at the game from a graphics, game and content perspective. The problem he outlines is that many people see games as just a collection of bell and wshes and cool graphics. To avoid that many think that a serious game has to be only the outline of thesis and a serious game must avoid the cool and sometimes mindless graphics that is apart of many games.

At the end of his essay he details some of his experiences in designing a serious game, Code Orange, and the effort he put in in avoiding all the traps he outlined.

Well worth a read.

Suicidal Food

Doesn't this sound just like Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of The Universe. When the hitchhikers get there an animal come out and offers itself as food. Here is a new blog called Suicide Food which has examples of animal mascots with the same desire to be eaten.

From a link from Adfreak.

Stoned Drive Through Window

From a mention on Adfreak comes this amusing ad about ordering food while stoned at Jack in the Box. Some antifun/antidrug group have objected to light hearted way driving while stoned is depicted. Althorough stoned drivers have a tendency to drive slower. There are other impairments beside chemical that can distract driver. Talking on a cell phone or being overly tired can equaling impairing as drunk driving. One time Homer Simpson installed so many gadgets that he could send faxes, bake and watch movies while driving. The problem with these other impairments is that it is harder to test for. Second there is a moralistic objection to drug and alcohol use. MADD has produced ads about drunk driving and ads about drinking but never ads about dangers of driving. For me the most negative aspect of this ad is the endorsement of drive through lanes . In a drive through lane cars are mainly idling. Drive throughs need to be banned

Beautiful Steel Plants

The Germans seem to really like industrial photography. This image is from Stahlseite. As well as categorizing its pictures by country it also groups them by type; Blast Furnace, Steel Works, Foundry, Forge, Rolling Mill, Coke Plant and Mine. I used to know of another German website devoted to industrial photography. Unfortunately I have lost its address.

Above is the Stelco plant in Hamilton

Cats as Nerds

In this thread on slashdot about the new Freakonomics book there is a discusion about observed economics in the animal world. aIn particularly Rheasus monkeys and washers. Moraelin responded with this "thoroughly silly illustration of anthropomorphising animals", his words not mine, comparing nerds to cats. See the highlights below.

- have a problem with authority and obeying orders. (See, "herding cats.")
- have unbalanced diets, by human standard, and would rather not eat their veggies
- have weird sleep schedules, by human standards.
- play (with) all sorts of stuff that makes no sense for a normal human.
- never discovered complex courting rituals.

Quote of the Day

Sgt Harper

Dead men gather no loot

On the Decline of the Music Industry

In a response to a newsreport on slashdot about the attempts by the Aussie music cartel/lobby group ARIA there is this interesting comment about the drop in music sales in general and to teenagers in particular. The newsreport is about some thuggish practices of getting ISP to deny service to users of bittorrent. A favorite sigquote that I have seen is: "More people surport the KKK than the RIAA".

The portrayal of women in music videos
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Scrameustache (459504) on Saturday April 14, @01:51PM (#18733025)

I think that the decline of music sales coincides with the rise in internet usage not because of the terrible pirates of music, but because of porn. Bear with me, it makes sense if you think about it:

I used to watch videos for very mediocre music, because the chicks were hot, scantily dressed, and fed this former teenager's fantasies. But today's kids don't need to buy a CD to have fap-fudder, they can get free porn with ease.

I theorize that the so-called decline of the music industry isn't because of music pirates, as they claim, or because their music suddenly sucks (the monkeys sucked, sucking isn't new), but because they were NOT in the music of selling music, but in the business of selling sexually suggestive material.

A yagu commented that the music is selling less because the retail stores/channel are offering smaller selection of music.

I'm not buying the "pirates decrease sales" spiel. My cause and effect for buying fewer cds is strictly the continued unavailability of cds on display. It used to be a smörgåsbord, now the stores look like the cutout bins of years past. This (the RIAA, and others) is an industry that rather than weather a business model storm and changing business dynamics to adapt continues to insist on taking their ball home with them (hey, it isn't even their ball!) so we can't play. And somehow, they still want to demand we pay them. Please, please, please!, just let them become irrelevant quickly so we can get on with our music!

American Foriegn Legion

According to a story by the Boston Globe reporter Bender, not that Bender, 5 months ago the Pentagon considered 0pening up army recruiting centres overseas. I am stunned, but are surprised. I thought I was well informed but I only heard of this story from reference by Mark Shields on PBS Newshour.

There are 2 things a nearly every country needs to do to fight a war. They need to raise money by raising taxes and/or borrow money. To increase the military they need massively recruit and/or draft. The times when countries at war find the men and monies quickly and easily are rare and extraordinary. The first Gulf War was paid by the Saudis and friends. In WWI Canada and Austrailiaeasily recruited because a demographic fluke. Because high immigration in both countries had a large number young, unattached and unsettled young men.

Hammer Sig

When you have a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. However, when you don't have a hammer, you may begin to ignore anything that looks like a nail.

- sig of Shadow Knight

I Just Bought Jon Voight's Car

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story ripped from an episode of Seinfeld. George Costanza is connived to buy a Buick LeSabre because it was owned by Jon Voight. Today's article highlights a case where the celebrity connection lowers the value. Nobody wants to act like George.

Cats do Shakespear, Badly

Code Monkey

Have we not all been all a Code Monkey at some point in our lives.

Separtists Against Separtism

In today's Globe there is a story of how Quebec "nationalists", the provincial separtists, are up in arms over an old comment from Charest. Charest suggested during the last mass outbreak of treason during a referendum campaign that if Quebec leaves there will be regions of Quebec that will prefer to stay with Canada. Many Quebecer consider that Quebec is unbreakable in the way that Canada is not. They don't look kindly on Quebec regional separtism. Quebec separtism has been coddled and fawned over by Canada as a whole. Seems a little hypocritical.

Nazi Fighting Superhero ... GOD

Superdickery is a website that was started to showcase all the ways that Superman is a dick. The cover above is in the section about propaganda comics. I had trouble breathing after seeing this cover.

Joke about Tsarist Propaganda

A Telegragh reporter went to Islamic book stores to get weird conspiracy books. Many of the books blames evolution as a vile conspiracy involving drug barons and Freemasons. He was also after a little while got The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was not on display but available under the counter. One of comments has this funny take on that piece of Tsarist propaganda.

The Protocols make me feel good....

Two old Jews are sitting on a bench in Central Park. One is reading the NY times while the other reads a copy of the Protocols. The one who reads the times asks his friend:
"Moishe.. what are you reading? Are you Meshugana (crazy)?"
So Moishe answers:
"Look, You read the Times and what do you see? The stock market is down, factories are closing, crime rate is going through the roof, another suicide bomber - All these troubles - The world is going to hell. While I? I read the Protocols and what do I see? I rule the world, I have all this money, I control all the governments - life is good....."

Power Max Characters in Real Life

On RPG bulletin board I never heard of there is a discussion of too powerful real life characters. A role playing game is balanced by not letting characters become too powereful and flexible. Here are 2 character descriptions.

GM: "This is getting a little ridiculous. You maxed out your skill in Bluff, Oratory, Instruction, Drawing, Musical Instrument: Drums, Nuclear Physics, Quantum Theory ... and Lockpicking? I like your character concept, but they don't give a Nobel Prize in lockpicking."

Richard Feyman

Okay, so I decided you guys could all be really high-point characters and all for this player vs. player game, and even powergame and min-max, but you really screwed it up. I didn't expect you to put 99% of your points in Henchmen. How the hell did this guy survive until this point? He has no Wealth score, no skills, etc. Even the skills your background mentions have ranks of zero. How does a character with an "Uncreative" disadvantage and no skill ranks in Art or Writing make a living like that? I'm also pretty sure it's unrealistic to have that many ranks in Oration with negative ranks in every other social skill. All those psychological disadvantages you're stacking are a little powergamerish, but they'll cripple you as being a threat to the other three players. What, you're banking on lots of lucky rolls and being underestimated? Yeah, right.

If Writers were Recognized

Piano Playing Cat

There is another video of a cat watching Nora the piano playing cat. Sylar left a comment on cats playing the piano.

So this is what it's come to, these millions of years of evolution, warfare, community-building, women dying in childbirth with hope because their children might achieve more.

A video on the Internet of a cat watching a video of a cat on the Internet.

This is the pinnacle of human achievement. And, truth be told, I'm okay with that. Because these cats are SO CUTE.

Edward Burtynsky Photography

Here is a slide show of Edward Burtynsky's photography. The slideshow comes from a Slate article on him. I previously discussed his work as it was depicted in the movie Manufactured Landscapes on my film blog.

Odd Ad

The problem with this car ad is that any one who has played slot racers knows that mere act of cornnering too fast can cause a slot car to spin off the track.

Beer Tent Radio

I was having a hanking for bagpipe music and so I came across a radio station on ShoutCast called Beer Tent Radio. It is a station for unhypenated canadians otherwise known as Scottish Canadians. Look the photo on their site. In Shoutcast stations list all their various genres, this stations lists it genres as "Celtic Music - Scottish, Irish, traditional, folk, rock, punk, military - lots of bagpipes".

FU in the Present Day

Who could forget Francis Urquhart the murderous Thatherite of page and screen. Recently on the Alternative History board there has been a thread that imagines FU after 9/11.

But by the autumn, things we starting to drag on. True, a truck convoy filled with chemical and biological weapons had been intercepted headed for Iran during the first days of the war, so no one could argue that the invasion was not justified on those grounds. And Urquhart’s people had been able to plant evidence of Saddam’s compliancy in the death of Diana in Iraqi Intelligence archives. But questions were starting to be raised, in Parliament, and elsewhere. When will the insurgency be brought to an end.

National Gorilla Suit day

Long Haul Trucker Calls for Railroads

On a discussion about US Energy Independence, on NPR a caller advocated a policy against his own economic interest. Mark a conservative Republican long haul trucker is appalled that he is hauling around raw and semi fininshed materials like steel and aluminum. Mike the trucker also thinks global warming is farce then he says he burns 600 american gallons of fuel per week, or about 2300 litres. He wonders why so much shipping is done by truck not railroad. The change from road to rail would happen naturally if the subsidy on trucks were removed.

His comment is here starting at the 19:30 mark.

The Rockets Red Glare

There isn't alot of commerce in most of the Star Trek series. That is understandable when most of the characters are career millitary who spend most of their time in space. Sailors have gotten a rep for being free spenders because they don't spend money afloat. They spend some time and most of their money ashore and most of their time and ony some of their money at sea. Other people have seen the lack of economic activity in Star Trek as omniously encouraging communism.

A Star Wars fan Michael Wong created a site, StarDestroyer, to argue up Star Wars and down Star Trek. He thinks that the Federation's industrial capacity is limited compared to Imperial industrial capacity. He calls fans of Star Trek "Federation Cultists". Another essay, The Economics of Star Trek, of his slams Star Trek for being a communist state ruled with tyranny. Many of Michael Wong's argruements are interesting and well argrued, he also has a special section devoted to hate mail. In a contest between Star Wars tech and Star Trek tech, Star Wars is going to win. In Star Trek humanity has been in space for less than 500 years. In Star Wars space was explored in prehistory. That said all of the essays and analyses are interesting and amusing.

T-Shirt from Rome

In the TV series Rome there is a herald who announces the news from atop a stone soap box in the market place. At the end of every report/news/government press release the herald goes does a short ad for "the Brotherhood of Capitoline Bakers, True Roman bread for true Romans". In the same way that Dave Devall the weatherman always gives a short spiel for Carrier Heating & Air Conditioning. Now a fansite for TV has created a T-Shirt design for all the friends of Rome.

Cats with a MySpace page

When cats are using MySpace does that mean MySpace has peaked or that it is time to get on the band wagon. The image above is from the profile page. The motto for the cats is "we sleep a lot". I got this link from the profile page for a character from Heroes.

The Dark Ages at Yale

At The History Network there is a report from Yale's dark ages. The historian Jesse Lemisch catalogues horror stories from his time at Yale during the cold war. Look below for an amusing ancedote of expensive learning. Here is a previous unflattering story about Yale also from the The History Network.

The barbarities of undergraduate culture at the time helped to prepare these people to commit barbaric acts on a world scale later on in adult (?) life. The culture honored heavy drinking and public vomiting and urinating – long before the homeless picked up these virtuous behaviors from Yalies.

Those NeoCons

Cool New Weapon with Cool Old Weapon

On CSI: Miami I learned of this cool new weapon, the Corner Shot. It is an Israeli weapon designed for urban warfare. The Isrealis have to deal with not just the organized armies of enemy states but also random gangs of murders. The image above comes from a clip of the product use in training.
On the www.Israel-Weapons.com page for Corner Shot there is details about Corner Shot adaptation for an infantry anti-tank weapon. The anti-tank weapon is the Corner Shot Panzerfaust. Yes, that Panzerfaust. It is German-Israeli weapon. WWII is over.

Insect Tales

From Cartoonbrew there is a report of some amusing new insest animations. In these shorts the characters are animated while been set in a real meadow. Follow this link to Cartoonbrew and the 3 completed shorts.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

Burping In Tune

Plow Train

Venture Communists

In the future we will all become like China, as their living standards rise ours will drop. Not as consequence of mercantilism but as human powered manufacturing drives out machanized manufacturing, see Manufactured Landscapes. In Boingboing there was excepts of a report of venture capitalist who just toured China. He was in China to scope out custom manufacturing, in his case hand assembly that is cheaper the machine assembly.I used to joke about Dot Communists during the dot com boom. It is no longer a joke when venture capitalists ally with communists with the same goal of cheap manufacting, cheap life. When a post called Venture Communist is writen the joke becomes a sick one.

Once I came a magazine piece that consisted of predictions by famous writers. Paul Theroux's vision was the bleakest in seeing the future in the worst of China. Here is, if the exact quote, Paul Theroux's dire futurism, (thanks Ambivalence.)

from Down The Yangtze in Fresh Air Fiend]

In a hundred years or so, under a cold uncolonized moon, what we call the civilized world will all look like China, muddy and senile and oldfangled: no trees, no birds, and shortages of fuel and metal and meat, but plenty of pushcarts, cobblestones, ditch diggers, and wooden inventions. Nine hundred million farmers splashing through puddles and the rest of the population growing weak and blind working the crashing looms in black factories.

Forget rocket ships, supertechnology, moving sidewalks, and all the rubbishy hope in science fiction. No one will ever go to Mars and live. A religion has evolved from the belief that we have a future in outer space, but it is a half-baked religion, a little like Moromonism or the cargo cult. Our future is the mildly poisoned earth and its smoky air. We are in for hunger and hard work, the highest stage of poverty -- no starvation, but crudeness everywhere, political art, simple language, bad books, brutal laws, plain vegetables, and clothes of one color. It will be damp and dull, monochrome and crowded -- how could it be different? There will be no star wars or galactic empires and no more money to waste on the loony nationalism in space programs. Our grandchildren will probably live in a version of China. On the brown banks of the Yangtse the future has already arrived.

A Dalek Chorus for the Season

Listen to heart warming sound of a chorus of Daleks yelling EXTREMINATE. Listen to other happy sounds from Dr. Who here.

Rudolph the Paranoid Reindeer

An album of Christmas song mashups, Santastic II has been released online. My favorite cut has mixed Paranoid by Black Sabbath with Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. The resulting Rudolph the Paranoid Reindeer feels more like a stampede of reindeer rather than the gentle canter of the original Xmas song.

The Xmas song, not Christmas carol, occupies a place in our culture that is at once well loved and hated. There are true postive feelings about the "holidays" that a commercial Xmas song evokes. At the same time the Xmas song with it little or no connection to any particular religion or faith is (over)used as aural wallpaper between Halloween and New Years. Thus through annoyance earning out hatred.

Back Seats Are Evil

(thanks AdFreak)

Where Advertisers get their Bad Taste

(thanks Adfreak)

Premier Isaac Asimov

On AlternativeHistory.com there is discussion of Isaac Asimov, or Исаак Озимов, who stays in the Soviet Union as a child eventually raising to be Premier of the Soviet Union. HA HA.

Scary Scopes

Photo: David Guttenfelder/AP

A Canadian soldier looks through the scope of his rifle as he guards a road construction project near the Mas'um Ghar base in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan.

I remember seeing a documentry about Canadian troops in the Balkans. The soldiers were not routinely issued with binoculars. They would use their scopes on their rifles as monoculars. This would freak people out who would see guns pointing at them. Afghanistan is a more dangerous mission then the peace keeping / peace enforcement in the Balkans. But I wonder if scopes are ever issued that are not attached to rifles.

Database of Slavery Images

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas is a database of images that has been collected and put online by a two University of Virginia profs. The database has a lot disturbing and upseting images. The drawing above is of Arab slavers and their prey. We forget, with our underatandable guilt and shame clouding our memory, that the Arab slave trade in West Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Southern Europe, the Balkans, and the Caucasuses was started before the Atlantic slave trade and continued long afterward. Saudi Arabia agreed to abolish slavery, officially, only after much pressure by President Kennedy.

Total Perspective Vortex

There are times in our life when we feeel we matter, we are important to the our universe of personal experience. Then there are times when realize how meaniless we are to the cosmos. Here is a video of the HubbleDeep Field, thanks RG. Douglas Adams realized how unnerving the immsensity of the universe is so he wrote about the Total Perspective Vortex. It is a device that will drive you mad with the meaniless of you own existence.

Quote about Bob Rae

He has a lethargic fluency that can be appealing.
- Quote about Bob Rae

Phrase of the Day: Lathargic Fluency

Political Humor

At On Point there is a discussion of political humor in the US today. Many outtakes and excepts of what could be considered humor in bad taste. Later one caller gives a reason for this increase in political themed humor and why in the States it is mainly from the left.

Humor is anger, drama is fear.

Things you CAN'T do when you're NOT in a pool

Don't be That Guy

Open Source D&D

Open Source D&D. And it is has GNU license.

My Defense of the Term Barbarian or Barb

Because of the recent post about Small Wars I have got flack for using the term "barb" short for barbarian. Some consider it a pejorative term that is dismissive and insulting of the people of less developed civilizations. It is that but it is also a legitimate term for relationship that develops between civilization and less developed peoples. It is not a racial insult. The Vikings were barbarians, the Japanese were pirates but their descendants are not. It is merely stage of development that many societies and peoples have passed through.

Civilization is not a term of endearment that is meant to honor favorite countries and societies. It is term to describe societies that have grown to be centralized states with specialists and recordkeeping. A civilization has to grow beyond the tribal level, when their entire society can be connected with kinship ties. It has to discover a way that unrelated people can live together. A civilization has standing armies with soldiers and has the monopoly force. In a barbarian society everyone is a warrior.

Barbarism develops at the border between civilization and less developed societies. A barbarian living in hut looks across to the civilization and wants the benefits of civilization he just doesn't want to join it. The civilization has more and better stuff than the barbarian society because it has the higher social organization and specialization. The rational solution for the barbarian societies, from their standpoint, is banditry. This is a problem for any neighboring civilization. Barbarians are not ignorant of civilization its tools and techniques. They can at times be almost assimilated into their neighboring civilization but until they are completely assimilated they remain a threat. Herman was a Roman officer who grew up in Rome before he ambushed 3 Roman legions in the Teutoburg forest. Acculturation doesn't automatically lead to allegiance.

On The Oceans of Eternity there is a passage that illuminates anti-civilization mindset of barbarians. One of the rebels, to Nantucket, goes to Egypt to help Africa. There George McAndrews schemes to aid the Nubians and Kushites, barbarians to the south of ancient Egypt.

McAndrews had picked up alot of experience with barbarians over the past ten years. Most of them weren't moved by the prospect of being civilized; civilization meant someone like Ramses hitting you up with the bill for his palaces and wars and forty-foot gold statues. He had found that barbarians were just as enchanted as anyone else in the prospect of wealth, and their chiefs were as greedy for power as any Pharaoh.

Moslem Politics

In a thread on Little Green Footballs about Pope Benedict traveling to occupied Anatolia and rabid angry of some the local barbs a Mike in MI has this breakdown of Moslems.

This is how I see the Muslim community of the world:

(1) Peaceful Muslims (small minority - denounce terrorism and just want to be left alone to worship peaceful Islam)

(2) Appeasement Muslims (vast majority - do not denounce terrorism, but do not wish to participate in active jihad. However, they will aid and give comfort to the active jihadists and work in other ways to promote victimhood of Muslims)

(3) Jihadist Musllims (small minority, however larger in number than the Peaceful Muslims - actively participate in jihad against non-Muslims and Peaceful Muslims to restore the Islamic Caliphate)

The GOP SUV

Odd and Beautiful Planes

Flitzerart is a site for an artist who concentrates on machinery. The plane above is the BV194, an asymetrical design that looks a little too lopsided. The way these planes are illustrated is remeniscent of the spaceship art from the 70's.

Kissinger Finally Concedes that Victory Not Possible: In Vietnam

Kissinger Finally Concedes that Victory Not Possible: In Vietnam. There have been much chortling at how the Iraq War/Occupation was doomed from the start. The problem in both wars is that if you you not serious in fighting a war, you lose. You have to raise taxes, recruit, draft and train more troops. You have to focus on the guns not tax cuts. If you are not going to fight a war with all of your resources maybe you shouldn't start one. This is not to play into the mythology of "one hand tied behind the back" reason behind the loss to the Commies. The Americans expended enough resources but were not focusing on Vietnam over the expected tank battles in the North European Plains. It is distraction not impotence that doomed the Americans effort in Vietnam and Iraq.

Yale/Shmale: The Reality

At the History News Network there is link to a study about civics, historical knowledge and politics. The study is omniously titled The Coming Crisis in Citizenship. There is one item in the executive summary that reminds one of the recent ad campaign from Lakehead.

At many colleges, including Brown, Georgetown, and Yale, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. We characterize this phenomenon as "negative learning." A majority of the 16 schools where senior scores were actually lower than freshman scores are considered to be among the most prestigious colleges in the United States.

Hurt

It was a Nike Ad that brought this Johnny Cash cover to my attention because it was so unNike. Nike normally tries to surport the jock ethos. This ad, and its various versions focuses on the downsides of atlethtics and of life. The video of this cover has lot of Christian iconography especially the Passion, the tragedy of a man tortured to death. It is also Johnny Cash's epigraph.

Winning "Small Wars"

At the History News Network there is a discussion of small wars and ways to win them. There is also discussion of a treatise written by an Indian Army Officer Col CE Callwell, Small Wars. His solution for winning such conflicts is to use the same tactics of the barbs, in the words of the article " to win small wars, mere victory isn’t enough, the enemy must be thoroughly and utterly destroyed to the last man, woman, and child – which means enormous civilian casualties." If the tactics sound familar it is because there are what Julius Caesar did. Recent news reports tell of Americans fighting jihadis being unable to pursue gunman back into their armories/garrisons/mosques. Treating barbs in a civilized manner doesn't civilize them or reduce the numbers of barbs. Only after their culture is beaten out of them can barbs become cilvilized.

On a related note there was ad next to this article advertising a new book on the AK-47.