I'm posting this so that I'll always have a link to my favorite Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic, namely the one with the scroll over about engineers jumping into holes (It's a trap!) for free oscilloscopes.
It's a classic.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Friends don't let friends drive undead
There's a story on MSNBC about - get ready for this - a car full of zombies getting into an accident. Apparently, these people's zombie costumes were so good that police initially thought their injuries were more serious than they actually were.
Can you imagine driving by that crash scene in the middle of the night? Would you stop to help, or would you be afraid they'd try to eat your flesh and turn you into one of them? EXACTLY.
W
Can you imagine driving by that crash scene in the middle of the night? Would you stop to help, or would you be afraid they'd try to eat your flesh and turn you into one of them? EXACTLY.
W
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Unsolicited Opinions of the Week: 11 July
Here we go, some thoughts on things I saw/read/did this week.
WTF, Katy Perry?
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how inane the video for "California Gurls" is? Seriously, people, the song has some pretty freaking clear imagery about bikinis and booze and beaches, basically giving you everything you need for a cute, campy, happy little summer movie. No no, said Katy Perry. The video is set in a super-sketchy, sexed-up version of Candyland in which Katy Perry wanders around in this bizarre, infantile little outfit acting like an overgrown version of Alice in Wonderland. Oh wait, Alice was actually capable of stringing together rational thoughts and acting like she had a higher IQ than a 5 week old puppy. And her story made more sense. That's right, Katy Perry, Alice in Wonderland made more sense than your video. The only thing - and I mean the only thing - saving this from total fail is the fact that the other (equally stupid, apparently) girls aren't white. Still, I could have made a better video in my dorm room.
"California Gays" is infinitely better.
(More after the jump)
WTF, Katy Perry?
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how inane the video for "California Gurls" is? Seriously, people, the song has some pretty freaking clear imagery about bikinis and booze and beaches, basically giving you everything you need for a cute, campy, happy little summer movie. No no, said Katy Perry. The video is set in a super-sketchy, sexed-up version of Candyland in which Katy Perry wanders around in this bizarre, infantile little outfit acting like an overgrown version of Alice in Wonderland. Oh wait, Alice was actually capable of stringing together rational thoughts and acting like she had a higher IQ than a 5 week old puppy. And her story made more sense. That's right, Katy Perry, Alice in Wonderland made more sense than your video. The only thing - and I mean the only thing - saving this from total fail is the fact that the other (equally stupid, apparently) girls aren't white. Still, I could have made a better video in my dorm room.
"California Gays" is infinitely better.
(More after the jump)
New Lady Gaga song
With the glasses, the piano, and the song, I'm reminded of Elton John. I wonder what the studio version is going to sound like.
The rest of the concert is kinda meh, in my mind, but it was a performance for The Today Show in the middle of day during a ridiculously hot summer in NYC. I refuse to believe it's indicative of her "regular" concerts.
W
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Creeping on kids is not okay
(Image credit: NYT via Jezebel article)
In a Jezebel post yesterday I learned that the archives at NYU have paid for videos by Larry Rivers that include home movies he made of his daughters. That sounds adorable - who doesn't love videos of Christmas morning, right? - but he had his adolescent girls naked on the camera discussing the "very special changes" their bodies were going through. The artist - he did other, more artistic things that weren't this creepy - is dead now, and one of his daughters wants the videos back since she's had to go to years of therapy after all this nonsense. The NYU archives have said no, but apparently they won't let the videos be shown while she's alive.
You can read all the details in the Jezebel post and the NYT stories. Needless to say, the creeping is super, super sketch.
W
A video game even I like
(image credit: http://continuitygame.com/about.html)
I am a bad nerd for a variety of reasons: I like the sun, Lady Gaga is on my iPod, I don't love Star Wars, etc. I think my worst crime of nerdery, though, is that I just don't like video games. I get really bored really fast, and the only console game I've ever truly loved is Harvest Moon. (I'm still working on getting all the notes in Magical Melodies: I don't have it here with me at school.)
So, when I say that I like a video game, it's basically the equivalent of finding a unicorn. No, Continuity doesn't fart rainbows and shit sprinkles like a real unicorn, but it's a pretty sick strategy game. For spatially challenged folks like me, it's pretty tricky, but it's fun.
My biggest suggestion: listen to the soundtrack for a while, and then cut over to Robot Unicorn Attack and listen to that song for a while.
Credit for finding the game goes to my fellow Focus Monkey, aka Evan.
Credit for finding the game goes to my fellow Focus Monkey, aka Evan.
W
Wait, you mean kids get distracted by computers? WHAT?
I'm sure I know nothing of that. At all.
The NYT ran a story on bringing computers to middle schoolers in low income homes. Apparently, it lowers test scores (I was too lazy to read the actual paper, but the NYT didn't say by how much) because the kids are playing games instead of doing homework.
First of all, I still don't believe test scores are the end-all be-all of education. Quantifiable, yes, but not necessarily the best measure of anything. Secondly, how much "homework" do middle school kids have to do on a computer? I remember writing papers in MS word (or Open Office, in my case) and occasionally doing online research for said papers, but it's not like I was writing code or searching academic journals or anything else that I needed a computer for. Finally, the NYT at least didn't blame the computers for it: it is all about supervision and usage, etc. etc.
Interestingly, the end of the article points out that the kids did learn better computer skills (duh), but also that apparently a bunch of them managed to find work arounds or hacks to get beyond the restrictions put in place by the schools. That, my friends, is infinitely more valuable than test scores.
W
The NYT ran a story on bringing computers to middle schoolers in low income homes. Apparently, it lowers test scores (I was too lazy to read the actual paper, but the NYT didn't say by how much) because the kids are playing games instead of doing homework.
First of all, I still don't believe test scores are the end-all be-all of education. Quantifiable, yes, but not necessarily the best measure of anything. Secondly, how much "homework" do middle school kids have to do on a computer? I remember writing papers in MS word (or Open Office, in my case) and occasionally doing online research for said papers, but it's not like I was writing code or searching academic journals or anything else that I needed a computer for. Finally, the NYT at least didn't blame the computers for it: it is all about supervision and usage, etc. etc.
Interestingly, the end of the article points out that the kids did learn better computer skills (duh), but also that apparently a bunch of them managed to find work arounds or hacks to get beyond the restrictions put in place by the schools. That, my friends, is infinitely more valuable than test scores.
W
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