July 27, 2005

I've got links like whoa

Check out the Museum Of Food Anomalies. Lots of pictures of the kind of interesting food one occasionally sees being sold on eBay. You know... "I opened up a bag of potato chips and saw the face of Al Pacino staring back at me!" Or, "Upon biting into my steak, I realized that the grill marks had spelled out the true name of God."

If he wanted to kill himself, I know of easier ways. But this guy is trying to revive what is apparently an old Hawaiian tradition: lava sledding. Moron.

Blogger and combat correspondent Kevin Sites has been nominated for an Emmy for his war coverage on his blog. Yay blogging!

If you're dealing with unfriendly bosses or coworkers, you need turn no further than Office Guns. Teaching you how to arm yourself with ordinary office supplies such as pens, rubber bands, and mauly clips.

I can now add their numerous guns to my existing arsenal of rubber band shooting techniques. I picked up a lot of knowledge and experience shooting rubber bands last year at National Instruments. Don't test me, or you'll regret it. I've got deadly force and accuracy. #31s are my band of choice, for short to mid-range attacks. Anyway, check out the Office Guns website if you dare oppose me. And read the testimonials!
"I used to be fat and without friends at the office. In meetings, I was afraid to come forward with my opinions. Then a friend told me about OfficeGuns. Now when I sit in meetings and disagree, I just shoot the bastard. I've lost weight thanks to higher confidence and now Brady is the fat friendless one. Thank you OfficeGuns"
- Mike, Douglas, Georgia, USA

Another USPTO sucks alert: Dunkin Donuts has a patent on frosting one half of a donut. Via LawGeek. He got it from a site called IP Funny (which is a great name) that I'm gonna start reading. It's an entire site of intellectual property law humor. I'm such a nerd. Chicks dig law humor, right? Right?

In something straight out of Crime And Punishment, Russia's biggest spammer was found brutally murdered in his Moscow apartment, after suffering repeated blows to the head. The old man wasn't worth anything to anyone. The world is better off without him. Yeah, I'll just keep telling myself that. I got this tale of karmic retribution from Slashdot.

PETA kills animals! According to a billboard in Times Square. The NYT editorializes on the "Center For Consumer Freedom," an organization funded and founded by lobbyists for big corporations--corporations who stand to benefit from getting rid of pesky stick-in-the-muds like PETA and the Center For Science In The Public Interest.
"In addition to malicious animal-rights activists, we stand up to the 'food police,' environmental scaremongers, neo-prohibitionists, meddling bureaucrats and other self-anointed saints who claim to 'know what's best' for you."

This would be interesting enough, but the column goes on to speak about how disingenuously the Center For Consumer Freedom uses language in order to manipulate support for themselves. It ties into some things I've been writing recently about public manipulation through framing the language of debates.
"Activists and watchdog groups are trying to stop us from selling you anything we want to sell you." Much better to say, "These groups are trying to prevent you from buying anything you want to buy." Then it becomes a matter of sustaining freedom, protecting individual rights and keeping the prairie of consumer choices unfenced.

Speaking of shitty record companies and monopolies, Sony has admitted guilt and agreed to pay $10 million (basically nothing) after being implicated in the widespread modern payola scandal. I think I love NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He's all over shit that I suppor. Anyway, about the pay-for-play stuff, all the record companies do it, and it's the reason radio is so terrible. Though this is only a slap on the wrist, it establishes culpability and has confirmed what everyone knew to be true. Will this particular settlement make any difference? No. But now they've established that there has been criminal behavior, and when individuals start getting threatened, maybe things will improve.

For those of you with iPods, you're no longer at the height of gadget fashion. Check out the world's smallest mp3 player. The MobiBLU DAH-1500 is a 24x24x24 millimeter cube with OLED displays. Only $130. Pretty awesome. I'd get one if I was gonna start working out. So... I won't be getting one.

Check out the new hilariously unfunny comic strip from the right, Umbert the Unborn. In this insidious strip, the "world's most loveable unborn baby (next to yours)" says cute little things from the womb that are supposed to make people laugh and therefore not want to abort their own unwanted fetuses. The political message isn't really even disguised as regular humor. The strip on the front page has Umbert the umbilically connected saying:
Who says I'm not viable? What, because I'm dependent on my parents for everything? Because I can't live outside the womb on my own? By that standard, I won't be viable 'til after college!

Last but not least, I've got a new homepage! You too can now have your very own personalized Google homepage. Click "Add Content" in the upper-left corner, and you can add things like movie times, news stories, XML feeds, weather, Gmail messages, etc. It's like a highly customizable Yahoo, but with the significantly better searching capabilities of Google. I love Google!