Not real cheese, but the cheese of amazing overacting. I got this from my friend John Summerlot, and had to share it due to the sick fascination it engendered. It’s a compilation of David Caruso’s one-liners from the beginning of CSI: Miami episodes. (Note: I can’t stand CSI, or CSI: Miami, or the other offshoots, but that didn’t seem to impede the pull of this particular set of clips.)
The NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletics Assocation, the governing body for American college sports. One of the responsibilities it has taken upon itself is the policing of student amateur status, to make sure that colleges do not entice star athletes to join their progams with money or other bribes. I already considered this a ridiculous situation, but realized today that I underestimated just how ridiculous it was. [more...]
Via Bruce Schneier comes news that four American states have banned smiling while having your driver’s license photograph taken. Yes, really. Because facial recognition software that they’re apparently using to try to cut down on fraud doesn’t like it:
Dull expressions “make the comparison process more accurate,” says Karen Chappell, deputy commissioner of the Virginia DMV, whose no-smile policy took effect in March.
—“Four states adopt ‘no-smiles’ policy for driver’s licenses”, Thomas Frank, USA Today, 25 May 2009
Sure, the explanation that they need to do this to prevent fraud sounds rational, but really, preventing people from smiling? I think it’s hard to find a better metaphor for “soulless bureaucracy”.
I support not bailing out the banks, and I’d love to see more transparency around the Federal Reserve, but I still think the recent “Tea Party protests” are primarily astroturf campaigns, are hypocritical insofar as their participants mostly don’t seem to have protested massive spending under the last eight years of Republican government, and are primarily an attempt to generate “right-wing” publicity. [more...]
The following video, put out by some bunch calling themselves “The National Organization for Marriage” (a name that really makes no sense given their aims, as they appear to be trying to prevent a lot of people from getting married), is an awful and misleading hodgepodge of fearmongering and bullshit, combined with plerny of earnest faux-martyrdom. I love how they convince themselves that not being allowed to practice bigotry in the public sphere is an infringement on their religious freedom—and maybe it is, but then so are the laws that get in the way of religious practices of human sacrifice.
Anyway, that’s all pretty obvious… what I can’t quite get over is how, in this video attempting to unite the forces of anti-gay prejudice, they end by touting “a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and color coming together in love”. I swear the the rider “to protect marriage” is spoken faster and more quietly than the rest. It’s both funny (in a wrong way) and appalling because it’s always appalling to see bigots attempting to appropriate the language and symbols of tolerance. I have to say, though, that as appalling as the message is, these jokers strike me as mostly laughable.
I don’t remember seeing this xkcd before. I like it.
(In my current mental state, however, I’m unable to not note that the message of the comic is a hell of a lot easier to act on when your status or privilege is above a certain level, and that horrifically, there are still lots of people on this planet for whom the first panel’s advice actually makes a great deal of sense if you replace “when a future employer” with “who”. For the majority of people who are likely to read this, though, the overall message likely holds.)
Apparently the modern-day version of outlaw living includes stealing a country singer‘s tour bus while on the run… and escaping from custody repeatedly. Maybe he deserves punishment for fraud, but I hope a) that he doesn’t get killed (he’s been designated “armed and dangerous” despite there being no evidence he has weapons) and b) that he makes a boatload of cash from the movie apparently being made about his exploits.
My favorite part of the article:
After being nabbed for stealing an RV in Alabama, Gay was being extradited to Tennessee to face the bulldozer charge when he escaped the first time, using a paper clip hidden in his mouth to unshackle himself from both handcuffs and leg irons.
During his 2007 run, he stole Gayle’s tour bus not by hotwiring it, but by walking into the management company’s office and asking for the keys. “He hasn’t gotten through life killing people, but outwitting them,” says Prof. Mihm.
—Patrik Jonsson, Tennessee’s ‘Little Houdini’ revives the outlaw legend, Christian Science Monitor, 9 Mar 2009
This is another one of those occasions where I can’t believe it’s not parody. But, no.
There really is a “Passion for Christ Movement” (not so surprising), and they really do have these T-shirts, with the following launch headline: P4CM PRESENTS “EX-MASTURBATOR” CAMPAIGN.
It’s funny, of course, but underneath it all there’s a real and disgusting message, a message that aims to make sexuality shameful, and to control people via that shame and repression. Still, at least in this instance the believers look like complete idiots.
Regardless of the answer, I’m not sure that this product is for you. It’s from a major technology company, which makes it scarier. I’m not convinced that either the product or the ad are real, actually. Maybe that’s part of the genius of it.
Because I didn’t think it would be fair to inflict it on others without watching it myself, I forced myself to get through it (it took three tries) and I think enduring that might be worsethan being RickRolled.
