Archive for January, 2011

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Unusual Valentine Gift Ideas For 2011

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 6, 2011 by admin in Holidays

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Didn’t I hear you cry this mornin’? Didn’t I feel you weep? I imagine it was because someone either made you listen to Firefall’s “That’s a Strange Way To Tell Me You Love Me”, or because that special someone in your life took our advice for Valentine gifts this year.

Just not feeling the magic about your romantic partner this year? Don’t feel like shopping for that special Valentine gift to show them how much you love them? Well, you could always move to Iran; apparently they’ve banned Valentine gifts this year. Or, you could rely on our trusty guides to unusual Valentine’s Day gifts that can help you show your love in ways you probably would have never thought of. And that your partner may wish you hadn’t. There are lots of creative things you can do for the one you love without buying them the classic heart-shaped box of chocolate and dozen roses. For example, nothing says “I love you” like a half-mile-wide heart made out of manure. But the fact is you don’t need a tractor and ten acres of poop to show someone you love them, you can just buy them weird crappy gifts on Amazon. And that’s where we come in. In previous years’  Valentine gift guides, we brought you the humorous, the expensive, and the slightly offbeat, but this year we’ve dug a little deeper into our heart – or at least the pages of Amazon, anyway – to bring you the truly peculiar. And this is just the teaser. We’ll have more unusual Valentine gift ideas in the weeks to come. Gift ideas below. Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook To Demand DNA Sample For Log In

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 5, 2011 by admin in Technology

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

In addition to the blood of your firstborn, a retinal scan, and other biometric methods. Do you trust Facebook to be the issuer of your “Internet Driver’s License”?

Sometimes I feel like I’m Charlton Heston’s character in Soylent Green, running around screaming “it’s made of people!” while the masses around me munch away muttering through full mouths “but it’s so yummy“. Recently I asked the opinion of friends on Facebook about which e-mail client I might switch to after having a nightmarish experience “upgrading” to Thunderbird 3 (an experience that many have shared, by the way). One thing that surprised me a little was that a few tech-savvy friends said “why not G-Mail?” to which I replied “because it’s a web service not an e-mail client” and added “besides, I don’t like all my messages eternally remaining in the hands of a company whose CEO has so much contempt for personal privacy“, to which one of these friends said “privacy is an illusion”. Which let me use one of my favorite ironic quotes, i.e., Obama’s Cynicism Is A Sorry Kind Of Wisdom. Because while it’s true that certain lifestyle choices insure that most of your life is an open book, that doesn’t mean we all have to roll over, shave our heads, get our citizen ID tattoo, and start living like we’re in the movie THX 1138 or something. Call me a Luddite, but in spite of the fact that I have nothing to hide, I’m not going to give all my trust to Google and Facebook when it comes to my personal communications, and I’m certainly not going to start “checking in” with services like Foursquare or Facebook Places. I feel like there are degrees of privacy, and that we’re all entitled to maintain as much as we like or are able. I was a little annoyed that Google captured me sitting on my porch a few years ago, but I’ve since moved, and clearly, I blew my own cover in that instance out of amusement. But how would you feel about Facebook being your Internet Driver’s License? That idea doesn’t appeal to me too much, for a few reasons. First, on top of the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has already declared privacy dead, ex-Googler and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg agrees, and is probably more eager to sell your data than Zuckerberg is. And since that’s a Gawker Media article I just linked to, let’s just take a moment to remember what can happen to millions of us at once when we entrust our personal information to a site that thrives on verified users but doesn’t care about their privacy. Facebook has done little to improve the security of your information as they’ve grown; anyone can still easily download this Firefox plugin and start hacking nearby users’ accounts with a method called sidejacking, and Facebook’s one time password solution for mobile users has a profound intrinsic flaw that I’m surprised hasn’t gotten more attention. My recent favorite was when I went to log in and Facebook put on a little Security Theater (see nice overview of the process here if you haven’t experinced it yet ) for me by asking for another e-mail, my mobile number, and then asked me to identify my friends in a lineup. Something that apparently has created real problems when people have been asked to identify friend’s dogs and Gummy Bears to get into their account. Becoming the sole single sign-on service provider so far remains the holy grail of huge tech companies like Google and Microsoft, but now it looks like Facebook has a chance of pulling it off. How would you feel about Facebook being the primary issuer of your internet traveling papers?

Uncanny Dolly: Anatomically Correct Barbie

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 4, 2011 by admin in Popular Media

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Have you ever wanted your very own anatomically correct Barbie or Ken doll? Me neither. But there are plenty out there if you change your mind.


I imagine this is what humans would look like,
if Barbie and Ken designed them. Source

[Please note: the following may be NSFW, if naked, anatomically correct Barbies are not safe where you work] This probably belongs somewhere in the realm of the uncanny valley, but I’m not sure where. Do you remember when you were a kid and you stole your sister’s Barbie doll so you could sneak a peek and get an idea of what a girl looked like naked? Okay, maybe you were more sexually repressed, and never did this, or still are more sexually repressed, and don’t remember doing it. I don’t know if this was so common with the girls, but I know that most relatively well-adjusted guys that I know did it, myself included. As someone who grew up in a weepy liberal and often too progressive college town, I was exposed to explicit sex education in the first grade (thanks mom, for signing the permission slip), so I was a little disappointed by the whole Barbie heist-and-strip-search adventure, and the underwhelming basic biological accuracy of it all. But I’ve always wondered about the trauma other boys must have experienced the first time they were naked with a girl and they suddenly discovered they were soft, had little protuberances here and there, and (gasp) *hair on their body. So have you ever wondered what an anatomically correct Barbie would look like? Yeah, me neither, but I found out today, when I ran across an AOL “Weird News” piece called Artist Gives Barbie Nipples … and a Bad Reputation, about how San Francisco-area artist LaVonne Sallee eeks out an income “re-purposing” Barbies. This opened my eyes to the strange (and disturbingly large) world of Barbie cosmetic surgeons, whose work ranges from the ghastly results of the prankster site Zug.com to the hard-working professional over at BatKatCreations.com, who offers both Barbie and Ken models. Yes, you too can have your very own (more or less) anatomically correct doll for as little as a eighty bucks. Or if you’re more of a do-it-yourself type, Lavonne Sallee offers the tutorial How to Create One of a Kind Barbie Nipples in a Few Simple Steps! I don’t know if the world really needs any Barbie nipples, so “one of a kind” should be plenty. If you’re really into this sort of thing, also be sure to check out Barbie’s Sex Tape. Be warned, although all the “nasty bits” have been censored with little black rectangles, that last link contains explicit doll sex. I’m just gonna go back to playing with my Internet now. There has to be some eye-bleach out there to make this all go away. Read the rest of this entry »

Joan As Policewoman – The Deep Field

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 3, 2011 by admin in Music

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

I think I’ve picked my favorite album of the year. Now I just have to wait for it to be released so I can hear what it sounds like.

With the incredible wealth of quality indy music available the last few years, I rarely find myself panting with anticipation over a new release. In fact, I often lament the lack of hours in the day to enjoy the music I already have. I’m making an exception in the case of Joan As Policewoman’s new release The Deep Field though, scheduled for a January 24 release date. I was a little late myself to the Joan Wasser party; as I mentioned last month, I only just discovered her solo albums Real Life and To Survive, and I have yet to listen to her previous work with the Dambuilders, Black Beetle, or Antony and the Johnsons. But I’m not too worried about playing catch-up. Given the soulful wandering of her voice, richness of composition, amazing musicianship, and subtle production of her previous two releases, her music will be in heavy rotation on my personal playlists for a while. If you haven’t heard Joan Wasser’s band Joan As Policewoman, don’t look to me for categorization. Beyond saying that she’s one of the most skilled singer-songwriters I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a long time, I can only say that I find myself repeatedly mesmerized by her intricate songcraft and soulful vocal explorations, which convey an emotional insight and vulnerable toughness that runs deep. If you really need some kind of reference point, you might resort to the jazzier of Joni Mitchell’s work, but only because of the maturity of arrangements and the musicianship, not because of any similarity in mood or style. But there’s no need to take my word for what Joan Wasser’s music is about; she’s offering three free tunes on her site in exchange for your e-mail prior to the new release. Included are Magpies (from To Survive), The Ride (from Real Life) and “The Magic” from her upcoming release. The video for the new tune “The Magic” is on YouTube (also below) as are a few other tunes, which we’ve also included below, along with a clip of Wasser talking about how grateful she is to be working with such great musicians. I imagine they’re as grateful in return; it’s clear her soul knows a little something about the actual Deep Field the new release is named after. I think the videos highlight the fact that it’s difficult to find the right packaging for Wasser’s complex combination of drive, smarts, beauty, and vulnerable toughness. But her music does the job just fine. Read the rest of this entry »

Global Warming And Ebola Economics

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 2, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

I don’t mind all this global warming stuff as long as the air doesn’t stink. I just don’t understand why Democrats hate science and Republicans love filthy air so much

Some of my views on environmental issues tend to vex my liberal treehugger friends, and cause my more conservative friends to chuckle, thinking that I’m somehow “on their side”. At the heart of this occasional confusion between me and my friends is the issue of the nearly-useless term “global warming”. I say “nearly-useless” because the term has become so politicized as to be rendered devoid of any clear meaning. This little rift became apparent recently when a liberal friend shared the startling image at left, which shows the arctic sea ice at the north pole over nearly thirty years, from September 1979 to September 2007. As you can see, there’s been a rather shocking loss of arctic sea ice! Things like this are the most obvious irrefutable evidence that the Earth is getting warmer, and one can only conclude that someone who claims otherwise has either not done their research, or is an utter moron. Or of course, a liar with vested interests. What got my friends going recently was the fact that I said I wouldn’t mind some global warming if it ended winters in Michigan, because then I would not only not have to move, but Michigan’s sputtering economy could enjoy explosive revenue growth from its hundreds of miles of suddenly-warm-enough beaches. Adding that the Earth is going to warm up someday anyway, so it might as well be now. This little bit of semi-serious humor started a debate that went on for some time, mostly because someone used the term “global warming”. Someone whom I must hasten to remind you was not me. You see, I’m not convinced that the industrial revolution and the last century’s air pollution are the only cause of the Earth warming up. We had an ice age without man-made pollution, and the planet has gone through plenty of other dramatic changes without the help of the combustion engine and coal-generated electricity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think that the energy or motor industries shouldn’t be heavily regulated to control emissions. In my opinion the big mistake on this topic was a political one, when Democrats made this a key issue, and branded  it as “global warming”. Which then gave industry a handy language mechanism to fight being regulated. As in this New American piece that references a lot of honest science but then crumbles through logical fallacy to conclude with the bizarre statement that the “intent of global-warming alarmists is to set up an energy-regulating global government and an international carbon-trading market worth billions”. Absolute facts on the broader topic of what’s causing the recent rise in temperature are not likely to be obtainable; even many scientists will admit this. In spite of the Union of Concerned Scientists solid stance that man is directly responsible for current global climate trends, the fact is that when you ask a larger group of scientists, their answers – although in agreement that man has some influence – will depend on whether they’re meteorologists, climatologists, or geologists, and so on.  But when you say “greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming so we should regulate them”, you’re sunk. Because then the argument is no longer about whether industry should stop dumping pollutants into our air because it’s just plain stupid, and bad for our air, it becomes about whether or not it causes “global warming”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the “survival of the fittest” underpinnings of capitalism, until “the fittest” becomes an absolute monopoly, as in the case of energy companies and oil cartels. Because organisms as large as BP – or even Microsoft, Google, or NewsCorp – become less like a healthy part of an economic ecosystem and more like an Ebola virus that doesn’t care if it kills its host. And in this case, the host is you and me, and the air we breathe. Maybe we should stop trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they cause global warming and start regulating them simply because cleaner industry simply makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

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