Back in 2006 we all had fun playing around with the "celebrity match" program that compared your own photo to a database of celebrities and through some arcane (and apparently ineffective) algorithm told you what celebrity you most resembled. Coco-Cola is currently running a similar site (albeit one where it matches you to other users, supposedly finding your "doubles" in the world), and after having it match three of my photos to "doubles" of me conspicuously lacking a Y-chromosome, I decided to return to the old celebrity-matching site and upload a few newer photos. Lo and behold, after matching two of my photos to two different photos of a 14-year-old Emma Watson in 2006, guess who my first match was this time? (And Hayden Panettiere? Really?)
Just in case you needed something to make you feel smart today:
I don't necessarily disagree with her point (that we've polluted our environment to the point that the effects are noticeable), but perhaps the specific details of the pollution should be left to people with slightly more training in the scientific fields.
Posted at 12:48:00 PM. |
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Friday, August 15
A Mother's Roles: Teacher, Protector, Chauffeur . . . Pimp?
The time difference between the U.S. and China means that my nocturnal schedule affords me access to live Olympic feeds (including the all-around gymnastics competitions last night, which were interesting but not as impressive as previous years). NBC has spread coverage around its family of channels, meaning NBC may be carrying gymnastics while USA has boxing and MSNBC has swimming. This also means channel flipping.
Which unfortunately subjected me last night to a precious gem of television history called "Date My Mom," an MTV production in which an extremely overconfident young man in the range of 18-22 years old decides which of three unseen girls of similar age to date . . . by first dating all three of their mothers. During these dates the mothers essentially pimp their daughters in horrifying language, making pitches at length on their progeny's body dimensions and sexual prowess. The numerous retakes are obvious as disproportional amounts of language are rehearsed, "sound byte"-style, attitude-filled phrases like "If you wanna date my daughter, you better respect the boo-TAY!", "My daughter may be more bitch than you can handle!" and "My daughter and I tend to date the same sort of wild guys" (whose mothers actually talk like that?). Perhaps more disturbing is the creepy innuendo between the young man and the mothers (because 45-year-old women should really be hitting on 19-year-olds while their daughters watch on camera). And during the brief, "what the hell?" five minutes I watched, one mother showed up in an open-backed (and front) shirt that looked like a curtain hanging around her neck and draped down her chest and convinced the obnoxious main character to pick her daughter by . . . *drumroll* . . . flashing him. There's stellar parenting.
"Gather around, grandkids! Did I ever tell you how your grandmother and I met? Well, it all started when your great-grandmother flashed me while we were on a date . . ."
Posted at 11:25:00 AM. |
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Wednesday, May 21
"We Need Bigger Special Effects"
I've come to expect very little from science reporting in mainstream news, but occasionally I'm particularly repulsed. This little tidbit of front-page Yahoo! information, complete with standard-fare kitschy 1960s Star Trek puns that scientifically illiterate journalists still think are creative, induced waves of bile-tainted frustration. "Distant galaxies"? Please. Just because it has the cool word "antimatter" in the article? Did we bother to do any research at all? A matter-antimatter engine (no, not science fiction) is extremely efficient and far, far faster than our chemical-based rockets. It is *not*, however, capable of anything even remotely close to the speed of light. So we can slash the time it takes to reach Mars from a year to a month. That's hardly "distant galaxies" material. Our own galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter. At the speed of light (something this engine can't even come anywhere near), it would take, yes, 100,000 years to travel across it. It would take another 2.5 million years to reach the nearest major galaxy (the Andromeda Galaxy), again, at the speed of light, and the trip to the most distant galaxies we've detected? Thirteen billion light years.
Science reporters should be required to take some science classes. My god.
Holy cow. What was she using as an implement? A chainsaw? Pneumatic cutting shears? The heart is located behind the ribcage; one does not just casually nick through that by pushing too hard . . .
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Tuesday, May 6
You'd Be Better Off Drinking Pork Lard (maybe with some cocoa and mint)
I saw an article today on a monstrosity being promoted by Baskin-Robbins this month. The description in the article was frightening, but determined to see the real horror unmasked, as it were, I tracked down the actual nutritional page on Baskin-Robbins' Web site (click the image to enlarge).
Behold! A single shake with 2,300 calories! Marvel in your seats as it provides you with 320% of your saturated fat! Gasp in awe as it dares to dole out 98% of your cholesterol and 100% of your carbohydrates! Shake your head in amazement at an ingredients list longer than the Democratic primary!
I don't swear much, but I'm pretty sure this deserves a "holy fuck."
My basement apparently harbors fantasies of being a swimming pool. I stepped in yet another puddle this morning, this time from leaks from the torrential rains and not the broken water pipe. Yay!
Also, I'm dearly hoping this is a hoax. 'Cause, really, parents shouldn't be that dumb.
Rarely is that view expressed openly. "There's just something about Obama that makes me uncomfortable," said one woman at a Clinton event in Hanging Rock, Ohio, last week.
What the hell? Concerns that Democrats wouldn't vote for an African-American? In 2008? Seriously? Is that "something about Obama" that makes the woman nervous the fact that he's black? Or is it something else and the writer cherry-picked the quote? Am I so incredulous that I can only end sentences with question marks?
An under-the-radar (to everyone but a handful of Georgia evangelical conservatives) news item I stumbled across today:
Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is lending his support to a proposed amendment to the Georgia Constitution (HR 536) that would, no joke, reclassify all forms of birth control as abortion by defining "personhood" as beginning at fertilization. A legal analysis by one anti-abortion attorney suggests that practical results of the amendment could be "enforcement of homicide laws against pregnant women [and] restricting the activities of pregnant women," and raises the scary specter that the ambiguity in the amendment will mean contraception choices and enforcement will be left up to local laws ('cause, you know, *that* would never be used unscrupulously by district attorneys and local law enforcement). What a bad idea.
I'm not sure the English language is varied enough to convey just what a bad idea this was. We may have to create a new 27-syllable German compound-noun or something. I'm not familiar with the power strip configuration, so I'm guessing these soon-to-be-medium-rare specimens of brilliance are somewhere in Europe (unless Harley speaks up and claims them as Australian brain trusts).
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Tuesday, September 18
It's the End of the World As We Know It
Well, that's it. It's all over, except for maybe the high-octane movie plot aimed at saving the world (preferably with Kate Beckinsale in black latex), followed by the inevitable collapse of society and the extinction of the planet due to an alien virus. I'd just like to say I loved you guys.
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Saturday, July 14
Fashion Sense
I saw a teenager walking down the street today with what I thought was a chunk of yellow fiberglass insulation taped to the side of his head. As he walked by I realized it was his hair. He'd grown it to his shoulder on the left side and cut it short on the back and right sides, and then he'd dyed just the long part a fluorescent yellow (not even bleached blond, but actually colored highlighter yellow), which contrasted with the rest of his light brown hair. I realize I'm too old to be in the "hip" crowd, but come on, that's not even "making a statement." That's just "attention whore" (help me out here, kids; can you apply that slang term to a guy?).
