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Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Just 97% Of Scientists?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 9, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green

I’ve finally given up on being even slightly tolerant of climate change denial. Bring it. I will shred you. And toss you from the shores of Tuvalu.

Recently, I made a big mistake in how I framed some thoughts on the politics and terminology of “global warming”. I suggested there was some wiggle room regarding what the exact cause of ALL climate change over the last century might be. It seemed reasonable to accept the idea that we can’t know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY how important the impact of industry has been on climate change, and perhaps more importantly, that maybe we needed to stop calling it “global warming”, simply as a political strategy. There are, after all, a bunch of scientists who question man’s influence on climate change. But after a lot of dialogue (mostly with some otherwise intelligent friends who work in energy) and a little more light research, I now realize that there’s some truth to the old adage “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, and in this case, it’s more like “give them 3% and they’ll destroy all organic life on Earth”. There’s just no being reasonable with climate change deniers any more; virtually all of them need a good bitchslappin’ with the facts, and some duct tape applied to the mouths of those who won’t just shut up about it and face the unavoidable facts. And here’s where you can find them. The facts, I mean. Not the deniers. How about NASA? They don’t call them “rocket scientists” for nothing, you know. If you want to deny global warming, I’ll be glad to listen to you. As soon as you send a man to the Moon and back. Until then, please shut the fuck up. And how about the Union of Concerned Scientists? Their board is comprised of top scientists from academia, government, AND the private sector, many of them educated at schools like Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia University. So after you send that man to the moon and back, I wanna see at least three PhD’s too. Oh, and for those of you who are tired of listening to these weathertards, and need some simple retorts to their ignorant claims, try How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic or Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says, which between them list over 200 arguments, in language simple enough for even the most persistently ignorant to understand. And if that’s not enough, even Prince Charles is calling shenanigans, and he’s next in line for the bloody throne of England, for cryin’ out loud. Hardly what you’d call liberal treehugger material. We need to keep this idiotic tide at bay. I’d like to visit Tuvalu some day.

Would Somebody Please Bury Paul Already?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 8, 2011 by admin in Music

Although many would assert that Paul McCartney died the moment the Beatles broke up, and others would say it happened as he recorded “Ebony & Ivory”, still others believe it happened in 1966. The Winged Beatle is yet another look at the eerie connections between the Beatles, Aleister Crowley, and backwards speech. All wrapped up in compulsive fits of Pareidolia.

If nothing else, it inspired me to
snag a copy of the 2009 remaster
of Abbey Road. Incredible audio.

Did Paul McCartney die in 1966, to be replaced by a perfect double in order to keep intact the multi-million dollar empire that was The Beatles? Nah, probably not. And even if he did, they did such a good job of replacing him that ultimately it’s kind of irrelevant. But it’s a testament to the epic magnitude of the Beatles as a pop culture phenomena that anyone would still be talking about the idea today. Which they are. YouTube user iamaphoney has been uploading videos for several years exploring the legends and conspiracy theories surrounding the “Paul is dead” rumours that remained so pervasive in the late sixties and early seventies. In December, the material was released in a one-hour-and-four-minute compilation called The Winged Beatle (presumably a reference to the Aleister Crowley book). It’s available as a stream on both YouTube and Vimeo, and is downloadable in higher resolution video via that first link. I’m a little ashamed to admit I got sucked into watching the whole thing the other evening, not with rapt attention, but in a second browser window while I worked. But I have to say that – especially as “user generated content” – it’s an intriguing piece of work that’s well worth a look. Not because it brings to light any shocking revelations, or because it’s particularly compelling in production quality, but because it pursues the mythology of the story with such vigor, and with the same spirit of “Look at this seemingly unrelated piece of information! Coincidence? DANH-DANH-DANH! We think not!” that gave the whole conspiracy life back in the more naive 60′s in the first place. I can’t tell you how many LP’s I ruined as a kid, playing them backwards, thanks to the Beatles. At least until my folks bought me a reel-to-reel Teac A-1200. And there’s no shortage of backwards audio in this relentless, hour long conniption fit of audio-video Pareidolia. Fortunately, during the parts where the suggestion that there are any intelligible words being heard is total poppycock, subtitles are provided. But that’s part of the fun. Because even if you’re (ahem) dead certain that it’s all a fairy tale, the “true” story of how it all unfolded is actually as fascinating as the conspiracy version. And of course, being the googleholic wikiphiliac that I am, I had to learn more. If you’re interested, one of the best-documented sources I found was Who Buried Paul , a presentation assembled by Brian Moriarty. It follows the original media trail with rigorous detail, from the first rumour in 1966 through its revival in 1969. Which I had no idea, by the way, began in my hometown of Ann Arbor, MI. And I always thought that all we had brought the world of pop was Bob Seger. Good show, Ann Arbor. If you want to learn more about the creator of TheWingedBeatle, he has a Facebook page and a Twitter account with the name Billy Martin attached. And apparently has two more releases planned, TheRightAlbum later this year, and TheRevelAtion in 2012. Watch TheWingedBeatle below if you like. Read the rest of this entry »

Barack Obama Interviews President Bill O’Reilly

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 7, 2011 by admin in Politics

Just who WAS that black man, and why did he keep interrupting Bill O’Reilly, anyway? A look at Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and Bill O’Reilly’s pre-Super Bowl interviews with President Obama

We do a fair amount of Obama bashing around here; it’s probably safe to say that many of us who voted for him feel a bit short-changed-and-hoped on occasion. But in spite of whatever you or I think about Barack Obama, I would hope that given the chance to actually speak to the man, we would maintain a little class and basic manners and remember that we’re talking to the president of the world’s most powerful democracy. I’d like to be able to say I was appalled at Bill O’Reilly’s demeanor while interviewing the president before the Super Bowl yesterday, with his constant interruptions and muttered asides, but I’m not. Although I’m rather fond of old-school manners and the concept of dignified statesmanship, I was just sort of detachedly disappointed by it all. For one thing, I’ve shared my thoughts before about how I find it ironic that Fox – an entertainment company owned by a foreigner – has become the main source of news for the most xenophobic of Americans. So the fact that Fox sent a ranting loon like O’Reilly try to stir up some paranoia about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt rather than asking some insightful questions was no surprise. And it’s just some darn pre-Super Bowl filler, right? I mean, while millions of people actually care about the game, it’s safe to say that many, many more people are interested in the commercial spots. So at the end of the day, a short chat with the president is just a minor distraction. Which is why it’s a little disappointing that O’Reilly couldn’t just leave it at that, and instead tried to turn it into a Fox opinion piece. Although I have to add – as someone who enjoys observing people’s body language and vocal expression – it was kind of entertaining to see O’Reilly look so awkward and hear his voice tweaked up nearly a half-octave with discomfort. But I think my biggest disappointment was that Obama didn’t get a bit tougher and just tell his heckler to shut up like Reagan might have. Unfortunately, this is where – in a weird turnabout – the white man was carrying the race card. The difference in America between Barack Obama telling someone to shut up and Ronald Reagan telling someone to shut up is, sorry to say, like night and day. Below is O’Reilly’s interview yesterday, and the last two pre-Super Bowl interviews with Katie Couric on CBS, and Matt Lauer on NBC, respectively. Read the rest of this entry »

Thousands Of Dictionaries Die In Tragic Vocabulary Explosion

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 6, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

I went to the word doctor and he told me I needed a new Linguistic prescription, so I decided to stop procrasturbating and buy a new wiener filter.

What word lover wouldn’t LOVE a copy of
the OED? Well, me I guess. If it costs 1300
bucks and is obsolete by the time it ships.

Today I got an e-mail from a friend in which the word “empath” was used. The particular usage of the word in the e-mail highlighted something that I think about quite a bit, which is that the English language is probably more fun now than it’s ever been, even if we don’t know what we’re saying to each other. I’m referring of course to the fact that as the venerated Oxford English Dictonary dies slowly from self-inflicted wounds like including Homer Simpson’s DOH! in its pages, new words and axioms are appearing and disappearing so fast that on a regular basis, it can be hard to tell what someone is talking about. There have long been two basic schools of thought regarding how to go about defining words – in a nutshell, prescriptivists want to tell you how to use words, and descriptivists want to tell you how you are using words. It’s sort of like the difference between always adhering to the dictionary, versus being more willing to accept common usage. Which is why I’ve always found the existence of Common Usage Dictionaries to be a little problematic. In any case, neither of these schools of thought were of much use in addressing the word I mentioned at the outset. i.e.: empath. It presumably means someone who is empathic (or empathetic, if you prefer). But what does that really mean? If you take the word “empathetic” and its little friend “sympathetic”, you’ll find that the people who are most likely to be confident in their understanding of the two words’ meanings will in fact have the definitions reversed. Most educated people will say that empathy means that you can actually feel someone else’s feelings, while sympathy means that you can imagine how they feel. What do you think they mean? In point of fact, the word empathy was brought into usage in English in the 1880′s specifically to provide a word that describes a professional clinician’s need to maintain detachment while still truly understanding how a patient feels. See the yellow highlighted summary at the bottom of this page for further explanation. But that’s just two of probably hundreds (if not thousands) of commonly used words that are prone to misuse or open to debate. I’m surprised that they’re not on this Wikipedia List of English words with disputed usage. But those are slow-moving targets, much like the already-archaic term “politically correct” which enjoyed a mini-revival recently when hurled at Barack Obama by the Israeli press. But the real fun with the rapid evolution of our language is being driven by the internet, technology, and politics. In the case of the latter, GOP strategist Frank Luntz has brilliantly blazed new trails by understanding that it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. His book Words That Work outlines how he helped the Republican party win repeatedly simply by, for instance, telling you to think about “personalizing your retirement plans” instead of “worrying about Social Security” . And regarding the former two influences – the internet and technology – we not only have a complex new world of devices and the behaviors that they drive, we have an incredibly rapid way to share the words being created to describe them. There simply is no way that a team of academics arguing about what to include in the next Oxford English Dictionary (only $1300!) can remain useful to us; probably the closest thing we have to a useful dictionary are sites like Urban Dictionary. Which is both scary AND fun, in my opinion. I mean, while we may not need words like procrasturbation, we may need words like Dykeadelic, because who doesn’t know someone who isn’t? And futronym will come in handy when we need to manage all the retronyms we haven’t created yet. Below are a few of my favorite recent words. Feel free to share any good ones of your own. And if everything I’ve said here just sounds like noise to you, maybe you should run it through your Wiener filter. You should have no trouble finding one; they’ve been around since 1949.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Minute Valentine Gifts For Romance Impaired Misogynists

[ 21 Comments ]Posted on February 5, 2011 by admin in Holidays

The very words “Last Minute Valentine Gifts” kind of suggest a problem. Why not just own up to your misogyny and buy a copy of Marc Rudov’s “Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze or Jumper Cables”

We’ve already shared a lot of other Valentine Gift Ideas, but are you a man who is sick and tired of these sexist, gender-lopsided traditions of Valentine’s Day? Or perhaps a woman who is sick and tired of the man in your life, who claims he’s sick and tired of the sexist, gender-lopsided traditions of Valentine’s Day, so he can get out of buying you Valentine’s gifts? Well, I think we’ve found the perfect gift for both of you. If you’re the woman in this scenario, you can buy it for the man, to help make him go away. And if you’re the man, you can maintain your thinly-veiled misogynistic pride by buying yourself a copy. And after you’ve validated all your bogus values of equality based on anti-feminism, you can start a bromance with Marc Rudov, and enjoy an endless string of chick-bashing man dates together. I’m referring, of course, to any of the “books” by Mark Rudov, including The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth or Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze or Jumper Cables. We put the word “books” in quotes, because The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women appears to be the only one that made it into actual book form. The rest are just over-priced eBooks. We were going to pick up a copy of “Under the Clitoral Hood” so we could review it, until we realized it was a 55 PAGE EBOOK FOR $9.95 and decided to pass. Besides, Rudov’s message can easily be overheard any night of the week at a sports bar or strip club for free. And his personality type isn’t hard to suss out either; with free teaser downloads like Her Double-D’s Can Bankrupt You (PDF) and the admonishment on the “buy” page that “You can open and print this document as many times as you wish on the computer in which you installed and unlocked it. I can monitor this usage and deactivate your key if you abuse this privilege“, it’s clear that Rudov is a self-righteous, homophobic, breast-fearing, love-damaged control freak. An assumption we think is probably validated by the warm welcome he seems to receive on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox TV program. So. All you latently homosexual men who hate Valentine’s Day, rejoice! You finally have someone to share bro jobs with. And you can do it on Rudov’s Nomance Day . Oh. And if for some reason you need an image of the cover of one of Rudov’s books, brace yourself if you do a Google Image Search for “Under the Clitoral Hood”.