Archive for July, 2009
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Take Us To The Moon Obama
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 16, 2009 by admin in Politics
Thursday, July 16th, 2009On the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11, I’m reminded of why I voted for Barack Obama.
72 Words That Changed The World |
Call me a naïve utopian, but I voted for our current president largely for one reason: the hope that he had the ability to deliver a message that would inspire and galvanize our country in the way that Kennedy did with one speech at Rice University, 30 seconds of which is featured in the clip at left. We rarely think about it, but few things have shaped modern life more profoundly than America’s space program. Computer technology, medical technology, agricultural studies from space, telecommunications, television, high-tech materials…the research and resulting technologies that were required to develop the US space program touch virtually every aspect of our life. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, resulting in two men walking on the moon four days later. And the entire decade devoted to the race to the moon might not have happened if Kennedy hadn’t said “we choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win“. Bring us a new challenge, Mr. Obama. We don’t seem to be pulling it together on our own. Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft & Music – A Remix We Don’t Need
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on July 15, 2009 by admin in Music
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Why is Microsoft the last thing I think of when I think of music?
You’re sitting at your computer listening to your favorite song, and suddenly your system freezes, an error box pops up saying that the “Bing Streaming Music Player” is not responding, and the music gets stuck in annoying loop. Which of course, you might not even notice, if you were playing Vanilla Ice’s ripoff of Under Pressure (we would’ve embedded those clips but ASSCAP is suing people for doing that lately). In any case, this is what I imagine happening regularly if Microsoft does in fact launch their streaming music service later this month. Remember how Microsoft’s first big media partner RealPlayer (which has actually won awards for how bad it is) used to not only try to spy on you obsessively, but would always crash while doing so? Remember the Zune launch and all its software problems? Personally, I don’t even use iTunes; I refuse to download a 72MB piece of software just so I can buy some music. I typically buy from Amazon
Google Maps: Turn Left At The Light And Kayak 3,879 Miles
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 14, 2009 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009We knew we’d have to get in a kayak at least ONCE if we drove from Detroit to Sydney, but this is RIDICULOUS.
Google has some serious quirks. We’ve written about the bizarre results of Google’s autocomplete function, and we were surprised to find that there really is a WTF, California. But when we decided to drive from Detroit, Michigan to Sydney, Australia, we were rather surprised to find some serious flaws in Google’s driving direction data. It wasn’t so much that Google was telling us to drive across the northern United States (see image at left), which – when factoring for the curvature of the Earth – probably added at least a thousand miles to the drive. And it wasn’t even when they said we’d have to kayak through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the Pacific Ocean. What really took the cake was when Google suggested we had to kayak first 2,756 miles to Hawaii: Read the rest of this entry »
Tired Of Video Games? Hack Your Brain With Ping Pong Balls Instead
[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 13, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, July 13th, 2009Worried that you have an Internet or video game addiction? Maybe you should try doing drugs or something.
Due to the recent discovery of the tragic and perhaps incurable First-Person Shooter Disease (see the clip at left), we’re taking a break from the mindless Flash games usually highlighted in our weekly Monday morning time-wasters to take a more serious look at the damaging effects of video games and the Internet. While in the west we’re still debating whether or not there’s some kind of addictive disorder related to surfing and gaming, the Chinese have not only decided there is, they’ve set up boot camps to deal with the problem. After doing a little informal research, it becomes clear that they’re on the right track. The three most noteworthy gaming-related deaths were all Asian*; a Chinese gamer who killed someone over an imaginary sword, a Korean man who died after a marathon gaming session at an Internet cafe, and a Vietnamese kid who killed a woman for video game money. So let’s look at alternatives to sitting at the computer. How about self-induced hallucinations without drugs? Or better yet, with drugs? If, like me, you don’t feel like actually doing drugs, the book The Beyond Within
How To Sell Your Soul (Or Put It In Cold Storage Until You’re Ready)
[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 12, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, July 12th, 2009A funny thing happened on the way to selling my soul. I found a trailer for the movie Cold Souls.
 Be careful in your dealings with Satan. He can be a real Dick sometimes. |
With the state of the economy recently, it may have occurred to you to sell your soul to put an end to your financial woes. We were doing a little research along these lines to help you out when we ran across an interesting company that made us ask ourselves the question: why not just put it in cold storage until you decide? Unfortunately, it turned out upon further perusal that in spite of the fact that the company even has a Facebook page – which of course always lends a great deal of credibility to an organization’s brand – it is in fact itself the worst form of selling your soul (at least if you’re on a team assigned to marketing a product), a slightly botched viral marketing campaign for the movie Cold Souls, due for release in August. Actually the film looks promising, see a trailer here. But if you came here more interested in selling your soul than storing it, here are some quick guides to help you get on that road to hell. This page looks credible; it gets right to the point with red text on a black background, a “666″ in the URL, and a form you can fill out right away. This rambling guide, presented by the a member of the British Church of Satan , also looks promising. After rambling on for awhile about how to do it, it then suggests Satan doesn’t exist. Which, as we all know, is exactly how Satan works. They also provide a handy Amazon link to the Satanic Bible