The World Is Not Boring

True Statement (in lolspeak)

2010-04-11T22:57:00.000-04:00

New Zealand Tree Still Acts Like Moas Exist

2010-04-10T15:50:00.004-04:00

This article is melancholy. Scientists are trying to figure out if a tree evolved its distinct metamorphoses (stages of growth where the plant changes shape and color drastically) came about to avoid it being eaten by the Moa, a very large herbivorous bird that was hunted to extinction by humans.

"Many scientists think that the tree evolved these metamorphoses to avoid moas, the main herbivores on the islands and a relative of emus and ostriches that humans hunted to extinction.

To test the moa hypothesis, Kevin C. Burns, an evolutionary ecologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and colleagues compared lancewood leaves with those from the similar tree Pseudopanax chathamicus. This species, which scientists think evolved from lancewood, grows on the Chatham Islands 800 kilometers east of New Zealand, where moas didn't live.

To determine how the trees would appear to a moa, the team measured the wavelength and brightness of light reflected by the leaves. Light from the lancewood seedling foliage differed from that of the Chatham trees but matched the light from dead leaves on the forest floor, the researchers report online this month in New Phytologist. Because the seedlings stand only 10 centimeters tall, the scientists concluded that the leaves' color would help a young, tender plant blend in with leaf litter and hide it from a browsing moa."

If only we had moas around to ask. Ah well! But we didn't know any better. We (as a species) probably hunted them to death around 1400 AD.

Adorable Spider Babies Atop Their Mother

2010-03-02T01:06:00.001-05:00

I wonder what percentage of the population would react to the baby (wolf?) spiders shown here with, "Aaw!" noises. Count me among them.

Crossed Digits

2009-12-18T22:55:00.004-05:00

Really, this blog is for whatever I need at the moment, and right now I think I need it to help me network in the future. I am sick of being paid money for jobs I have zero interest in, so over this break I am making serious progress in finding opportunities to further infiltrate the career worlds of all three of my goals: library science, creative media, and academia. I need a web site to help me with this. I need this web site badly. So I am sketching out a plan for both a very simple and a very complex site, and I will put it all together over the break, using the fancy dancy computers at the school as I save up for the necessary software to rehabilitate my old beautiful Windows tower, who is currently frozen in carbonite. *sniff* Last time I ever play with illegitimate software, that's for sure.

ANYWAY it is going well.

I learned I can make good money making sculpture commissions, so I will continue to pursue that path over the break. I am also finding an internship in library science and of course forcing myself to crash-course learn CSS so that I can even *MAKE* this gosh darn networking web site of mine. Last step is making coolass business cards, which I will do.

I do kind of love this city. I will love it more if my good networking opportunities, that is, knowing hip media people, can pay off in landing me a gig that has SOMETHING to do with my varied interests. Crossing my fingers.

There is no "God Spot" in the human brain.

2009-08-12T00:58:00.008-04:00

Mix_lazy/overworked/undereducated science reporters with the sensationalism that keeps profit-driven publications alive and you're bound to get ridiculous reports on solve-all "science" that has "solved" humanity's greatest mysteries with a few well-designed double-blinds.

Recently, it's been reports that neuroscientists have found a spot in the human brain responsible for religious intensity. A God Spot, of course.

I declare, "bull," and so does the blogger at Reuters' "Faith World."

"There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot.

“There isn’t a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data,” said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. “It’s not like there’s a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God."

The blogger is finding out about this at Penn's "Neuroscience Bootcamp," a conference designed to explain neuroscience to people outside of the field- an effort that people in the media, ethicists, religious thinkers, and policy makers could/are benefit/ting from enormously. Science needs to remember how many important people would believe its case if it just spoke up in a more broadly thrown voice. This conference is awesome. Maybe I will go next year.

I Have to Post This: Unexplained Photo

2009-08-10T13:29:00.004-04:00

BoingBoing says this is "Unexplained space phenomena captured in Saturn's rings."

I don't believe in UFO's since there is no real evidence, but I love, love LOVE the unexplained, the new things that humans are still learning about.

If I had to guess, it's a comet, a beautifully weirdly-moving comet. But I do love not knowing some things, still having some mysteries to solve.

What's Holding Green Power Back?

2009-08-08T22:01:00.002-04:00

Money.

This Forbes article, explains.

I love Iceland. Not just because of Bjork, or a pity over how their country imploded with a cold "squish" sound. I really love their famous geothermal energy usage.

So why don't we do it here?

It's too expensive for a profit-based model, this article says.

Excerpt of Forbes article:

"Unlike with wind or solar, geothermal power developers have to raise money just to see if there's a power source to be exploited. According to Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst at New Energy Finance, it can cost $10 million to $15 million to drill two or three holes to prove there's enough heat there to spin a turbine. "You need resources just to prove your resources," he says."

Damn.

Cleaning Arteries, Oceans

2009-08-05T23:36:00.007-04:00

Probably the most notorious disease of affluence, other than simple obesity itself, is the epidemic of heart disease in the US. What the American white man needs is a way to reduce their risk that doesn't involve things like, you know, diet change, or vigorous and tedious exercise.

Enter: Fish Oil.

"There is mounting evidence that omega-3 fatty acids from fish or fish oil supplements not only help prevent cardiovascular diseases in healthy individuals, but also reduce the incidence of cardiac events and mortality in patients with existing heart disease. A new study, published in the August 11, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, extensively reviews data from a broad range of studies in tens of thousands of patients and sets forth suggested daily targets for omega-3 consumption.

"This isn't just hype; we now have tremendous and compelling evidence from very large studies, some dating back 20 and 30 years, that demonstrate the protective benefits of omega-3 fish oil in multiple aspects of preventive cardiology," said Carl Lavie, M.D., F.A.C.C., medical director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention, Ochsner Medical Center, New Orleans, LA, and lead author of the article. " From this new article.

So now all we need is to down a translucent flax-colored pill with every one of our Pepperoni Mozzarella Crispy Crust P'zones, to protect our critical little life-pump.

We must obviously see a huge fish oil extraction increase, if this health strategy catches on. But what about overfishing? Peru, for example, is one of the top fish oil producers in the world, and they've already overfished their anchovies to near-depletion. According to the documentary The End of the Line, all of the world's oceans are being overfished, and the problem is only going to become more severe as time goes on.

Fish is probably not going to go away, though. It will probably just become much more expensive. Perhaps too expensive to eat in a pill every day.

It's probably cheaper, for both you and the overused oceans, to just not eat that deep-fried twinky.

That sandwich is patented

2009-07-29T16:35:00.002-04:00

I just want you to know, before you bite into it, that that sandwich is patented.

A Repurposing: This Blog is now Sciencey

2009-07-29T13:41:00.003-04:00

If you love the word "kludge" as much as I do, then you can call this a "kludge."

A summer of researching what it would be like to do nonfiction film and how interesting other hobbies resulted in a re-realization that I really, really should stop this year-long (almost exactly) break from Journalism and go back to it, my money-free, difficult, addictive medium. I must continue writing real things about things that happen in the real world, again, since it needs to happen, and since I was actually good at it. Oh, it's fun, too.

But, since this is the 00's, and I can not count on being the next Mencken or Thompson, I must choose a specific subject and STICK WITH IT, and that specific subject, for THIS BLOG, for NOW, is SCIENCE.

I use that in the broadest term. I will basically write original articles on and link to readings about

Psychology
Sociology
Statistics in general (many news stories use them HORRIBLY, a pet peeve of mine.)
Environmental science
Technology
Gadgets
Zoology
A little bit of medicine but mostly COOL medicine like cybernetics and all the awesome things we are currently learning about the brain.

I might touch on economics, too, though that is the conservative, suit-wearing bastard of the generally humanitarian-minded social science family, and I often get into unpleasant arguments with its self-interested mouthpieces.

This blog will be a resource then, for people who like the interesting side of what is happening in a culture rife with conflict centered on science. Personally, it will be a collection of bookmarks found in the process of researching original stories and essays.

"Here we go." I hope it becomes enjoyable.

Slideshow of Disturbing Med Student Photos

2009-04-26T14:22:00.005-04:00

These photos are from medical students fooling around with cadavers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To modern people,they are downright wrong. But damn, they look cool. If anyone on here was looking for an album cover for their dark metal band's next album, your welcome.

GOGOL BORDELLO: Immigrant Rebels

2009-04-26T00:47:00.003-04:00

This is an excerpt from a paper I am writing now about immigration in American media. I chose to focus on the kickass gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello.

A Scene Witnessed by the Author

December 21, 2006, at the Irving Plaza in Manhattan, the lights flash and the music swells. A guitar lets out machine-gun riffs, a bearded fiddler summons screams from his strings. An acrobatic woman bangs on a giant drum, and an accordianist squelches belching notes from his squeezebox. The crowd is a pulsing mass that shakes the floor, bulging the ceiling of the lower level in. A skinny man takes the drum from the woman and gingerly places it on top of the crowd. He climbs onto it and kneels, and the crowd pushes the drum along, slowly, as if he were riding on a gentle sea. He reaches down and pulls a young woman up from the teeming masses, and holds her steadily on top of the drum. Her face is rapturous, and she is panting, exhilarated, riding with the man across the crowd and back onto the stage.
“Party!” the man screams into the microphone, with a thick Ukrainian accent.
What does this intense scene have to do with the experience of immigration? Everything, when it's created by the New York punk rock band Gogol Bordello, self-described “multi-kontra-culti” immigrant punks.

An example of the incredible stage presence and crowd reactions:

Monster Logic

2009-03-03T19:44:00.002-05:00

Illustration Time: Punk Romance

2009-02-22T01:26:00.002-05:00

How to Not Be When Drunk

2009-02-20T22:39:00.001-05:00

Do not be a minister of finance for a powerful country at an international summit.

Happy Cheery News Times!!

2009-02-17T19:09:00.002-05:00

Comic Blog SKETCHBOOK Special! 1

2009-02-11T00:29:00.004-05:00

This is a woman who sells things on the subway platform. GUESS WHAT SHE SELLS!
Based on an amalgamation of at least 4 subway riders, since I need references, but people move too much, so each person can only give a part for this picture. Little imagination used.

Oh and I am supposed to be reading the New York Times. This is the coolest, about a newer, more natural-feeling cybernetic arm, and this is the scariest, about a town having trouble finding...food.

More in depth ...later. 10:10 class to attend to tomorrow. Sleep is good, for us still fully human humans.

What's going to happen! Agh! I don't know but I will definitely be on the front lines... drawing...comics. Ahem. I AM USEFUL DAMN IT.

NY Comic Con: Impressions

2009-02-10T00:41:00.003-05:00

ComicBlog: The Nifty Trinity

2009-02-08T21:41:00.001-05:00

Girls are Not for Sale

2009-01-31T01:31:00.004-05:00

This isn't necessarily a media post, but this isn't necessarily a media blog. Necessarily.

I just got done watching a sobering documentary on (child) prostitution in the states. I put (child) in parentheses because the truth is, most prostitutes fall into that position before they turn 18.

Very Young Girls-
Produced by Showtime, 2008

The filmakers didn't have to squeeze fake emotion into it, the subject matter itself is powerful enough. Watching these older men completely control these girls is gut wrenching, but even complaining about the effects a film had on me, feels privileged, and foolish, when just these several minutes of footage are not enough for me to even BEGIN to feel what these girls feel.

All I can say is,

This is one of the most disgusting things that happens, and unlike so many global humanitarian crises, this is just a subway stop or a freeway ride away from your seat.

The world is full of disgusting things. Some things just shouldn't happen, and exploring these subjects, one feels a deep well of injustice that goes on forever beneath your feet...piquing curiosity along with the outrage...

A Prayer for Forgiveness

2009-01-29T00:42:00.001-05:00

Lord of Journalism, Forgive me, for I have Sinned, in Not reading the New York Times today as I have promised myself I would, Every day, but let it be known, that if there were WiFi on the Subway, I would have Perused during my Insanely Long Commute, but that Alas! I am Broke as Shit today and do not want to spend the mere $1.25 (and More expensive Hassle of Carrying it around) on such a thing, and let my homework Sneak up and Bite my Timing in the Ass, and Lord,

Forgive me, do not curse me with

24 hours of being out

of
s
tep

with the fastpaced coolness of daily readings.

Amen.

(Normal nonfreak English version: I planned on updating this every day with some comment on something I read there, but will start that project TOMORROW. Promise, K? I PROMISE. PINKY SWEAR.)

Masturbating the Eye

2009-01-27T23:24:00.004-05:00

I am so psyched, my media class is taught by this dude Stuart Ewen who is using his own self-written textbook, but it's a great one so far, he's a total pattern-addict. Either that or all of media studies is that fun to read, McLuhan not being the last to think in such fun, crazy, airy ways.

In the introduction there is a quote, that makes me giggle and love this academic bullshit so much.

"In 1930, the French surrealist writer Georges Duhamel described the visual media of the United States as defined by 'flashes, repetitions, and explosions...conceived to excite the reflexes...a kind of masturbation of the eye.'"
-Ewen, "All Consuming Images"

Ahahah. Try to get that quote out of your head next time you watch Fox News or a music video. It makes my eye hurt, actually, imagining rubbing it so hard.

God Damn You, NYT.

2008-08-04T19:26:00.002-04:00

You get away with such snarky wordplay in serious news coverage.

Your headline writers are too damn talented. This is poetry, people, news-ish poetry that mocks the very idea of snappy headlines. Yes, I am jealous of their talent.

"Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan"

Snarky, clever, ironic, awesome bastards...

Single Global Currency?

2008-06-25T15:42:00.005-04:00

These guys are based on proving that it's a great idea. Creepiest web site I've read. Aum. Ever?

Excerpt:

"This is the home page of the Single Global Currency Association, which is dedicated to the goal of implementing a single global currency by 2025. We shall achieve this goal through education and persuasion.

We believe that once the peoples (including their corporations and labor and other organizations) of the world understand the benefits of a single global currency, they will demand it from their governments. The single global currency is what the peoples of the world need, and it is what they want."

Wow!

Good thing this web site is around to tell us, the world, what it is that we want! Thank goodness.

Here's the thing, though. Most of their "latest news" shows failure. Most of the news on there is just their own operatives talking about how awesome this idea is, to themselves, or on the internet.

They were rejected by the IMF, multiple times. The IMF is kinda important. Let's hope they continue to reject them.

The only recent, serious economic conference they seemed to be accepted at was the The Global Accounting and Organizational Change Conference in Australia. How important is it? Anyone out there know enough about economics to judge how big an accomplishment that is?

I've been hearing rumors that it's going to happen, but I wouldn't bet on it, judging by this site. Really sounds like an uphill battle. BUT, the main advantage to the plan is it being cheaper to do international business (converting between currencies is costly.) So it's an uphill battle, in the name of cheapness, amongst a bunch of economists and businessmen.

Well, economists and businessmen who may have strong senses of national identity.

The people on Longbets, an entertaining site for intelligent future-obsessees, would seem to agree with me.

2 Months After the Rest Discovered it..."Possess Your Heart"

2008-06-04T14:58:00.004-04:00

I finally gave in and took a listen. I am so stubborn with popular music. My indie complex usually keeps me from listening to bands that I have seen hundreds of teenagers wearing T-Shirts for. Really, I should stop that.

I don't even LIKE Death Cab that much. Always been sort of lukewarm in my eyes.

But...god. This is...great! I am listening to their newest, Narrow Stairs, over and over again. I am now a convert.

I am SO MAINSTREAM. Oh well. Some things, well, some things are popular for a reason.

Never heard a long-form song that kept me from getting bored, without relying on giant dance breaks in the middle. It smashes the 3:00 pop length requirement to pieces, but its style and words are still what Death Cab are good at: dark, beautiful, emotionally in-tune pop rock.

The first half is instrumental, but once you hear the lyrics, you understand what it was referencing with those four minutes of pained, desirous indie-rock-sounding build-up: unrequited love, natch. A typical subject- for good reason. Ever actually felt it? Yeah, it's the type of feeling one could write hundreds of songs about. Gibbard doesn't need to write any more, though, since he can't do another unrequited song as perfect as this one.

Is that me underestimating him? Hopefully, I will see in the coming years, as his band releases more and more music. I have such respect for them now.

Best Unintentionally Hilarious News Quote of the Week

2008-02-16T17:12:00.006-05:00

"The perception that he struggles to control his anger makes Mr. McCain angry."

-New York Times, today.

So will Hillary and Barack be running mates?

2008-02-16T16:00:00.003-05:00

I mean, just wondering. Wouldn't that make sense? Or am I an idiot for predicting that?

Obama Clinton 2008? Yes?

OMG Missile Defense System put to test...

2008-02-14T17:05:00.003-05:00

Finally, the 21st Century's crazy space-age ground-to-space-missile program will be used publically for a practical use: shooting down a giant 5000 lb broken-down spy satellite, so it doesn't harm people by coming down in one big, toxic-fuel-filled piece...

"If the satellite is not intercepted, it will tumble out of control into the atmosphere in early March, [Gen. James Cartwright, of the Marine Corps] said." -From the NYT article.

I wonder how many satellites are going to do this in the next 10 years. Will this be a new part of the weather forecast: % chance broken satellite will fall near or in your city today? Hah!

Unintentionally Hilarious News Photo Of The Day

2008-02-11T13:40:00.001-05:00

"HRRRAAAAAAAYH!!!! WE WANT TO EAT YOUUUUU!!!!!"
"Hmm.... NO."

This Yahoo! News story succeeds in giving me another news photo that is not supposed to be funny. No LOLcat text needed this time.

A Surprising Salve to Domestic Woes: Wal-Mart

2008-02-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

They keep on doing decently good things, and it kind of confuses me, because I am supposed to hate them. After decades of destroying the American economy, Wal-Mart has now started sorta saving the environment and- more recently- helping to fix one of the nation's most dire domestic issues: health insurance.

That's right: in-store clinics are popping up more and more, partially as a response to critics pointing out that (true) that their workers' health-care plans are cruddy.

Weird.

Wal Mart Clinics. For some reason this suprises me.

Like a big evil town-eating giant is starting to pretend to or actually feel empathy and begins to crush the buildings more gently, and tries to rebuild a couple of downed water towers and rethread some power lines it snagged while shuffling through them.

Now all we need is Wal-Mart Apartments, to combat the housing crises. Wal-Mart Defense Contractors, to help out our thinning troops in the Mid-East. Wal-Mart Schools to actually teach more kids how to do things like read and think.

*Shudder*

Look! Is Gud, Yes??

2008-02-04T14:09:00.001-05:00

From this slice of insanity.

"Told you so" Not So Much Fun as a Position.

2008-02-02T15:48:00.000-05:00

It's be better if we COULDN'T say that in this situation...but we can, unfortunately.

(Image from pictosribe's photostream.)

Why, Exactly, Many Smart People Avoid News

2008-01-03T00:41:00.000-05:00

Smart people are important. And they like to think, they like to be challenged, they like to learn new things.

This article explains perfectly why modern news bores the heck out of them, and, sometimes, gets them interested in following, oh, RPGs and other challenging forms of media stimulation instead.

A quote, put perfectly, what a great writer, what great observations:

"...Television news had lost its most basic journalistic instincts in its search for the audience-driven sweet spot, the "emotional center" of the American people. Gone was the mission of using technology to veer out onto the edge of American understanding in order to introduce something fundamentally new into the national debate. The informational edge was perilous, it was unpredictable, and it required the news audience to be willing to learn something it did not already know. Stories from the edge were not typically reassuring about the future. In this sense they were like actual news, unpredictable flashes from the unknown. On the other hand, the coveted emotional center was reliable, it was predictable, and its story lines could be duplicated over and over. It reassured the audience by telling it what it already knew rather than challenging it to learn."

Too bad this is the case, because, logically, the smarties are often bored, and tune out. Bad for democracy, if you ask me, I mean, shouldn't a nation's intelligent people be the ones really working for change? Not if they never get interested in change, because they never get interested in politics, because their sources for current events bore them by talking down to them in a tone normally reserved for 6th graders.

(Personally, I know many very intelligent people who do not pay attention to news, or at least not very much, for various reasons. This would explain why. Too damn boringly delivered, it teaches them nothing. I avoid most TV news and read basically nothing but the New York Times, news magazines and many, many online sources- for this reason.)

I Want THIS New Years Resolution: More Simple Reasoning and Concern For Human Rights

2007-12-30T17:28:00.000-05:00

God, this has been a horrible year for keeping track of the news for logical people who believe in human rights. The war never ends, and this year was the worst of all (so far.)

How can some people still think that wars like these are good ideas? How? Have they no perspective? Have they no understanding of the existence of diplomacy, or the dangers of ethnocentrism?

How could our federal elected officials fail in opposing this obviously horribly-run, nonsensical conflict, from the beginning to the end? It defies the perhaps idealistic image I have in my head of politicians as people who truly think decisions through and try to apply intelligence to deciding what to do.

What country do I live in, I wonder? How can I find a job in another English-speaking (Or Spanish, I know that well enough) country that would let me get a Visa, and, eventually, a citizenship? This decade so far has tested the wills of many Americans who consider running away in a similar vein.

This was also a landmark year for ashamed politicians resigning, but that's not enough for it to be a positive year all-in-all. I don't think I'm a pessimist to say that this year was awful regarding the clueless cacistocracy bungling around in the dark, their each tiny mistake a couple of hundred more overseas brown people dead, a couple dozen more Americans brain-damaged. It made me actually give value, for some time, to some crazy conspiracy theories. (Thankfully I only believed in those for about a month before getting over it and calming down...)

Maybe this year wasn't particularly bad. Maybe it just seems so awful because it's the first year I started obsessively keeping track of news. (Before 2007, I ignored news except for the occasional TV broadcast because it was all too depressing. Now I see that all important things are depressing, in some ways, and it is valuable to keep track of all the exact details this dreary, complex, confusing and beautiful world.)

I will end this, the last post of 2007, with a hope for a better 2008 (I will here show my possibly foolish colors: GO OBAMA! And human rights and diplomacy and logical policies) and a quote from Vonnegut.

And I remembered the Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"
It doesn't take long to read the Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it:
"Nothing."

Baby Cakes: Accidental Poetry From Comedy

2007-11-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

SuperDeluxe.com, in case you have not yet seen it, is a pretty great new-ish comedy web-site, full of animated and live-action skits along the awkward, ironic lines of Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

The best series is "I Am Baby Cakes" by comic artist Brad Neely.

Presented below: the best of that series: Diary #3. In it, an ogre-looking man-child named Mark, or, Baby Cakes, who is "not ashamed to get excited" reflects on his walk in the park.

It's supposed to be comedy. But it comes across as spoken-word poetry aided by pictures, about a naive narrator looking for meaning in all the oddest places. He is not wise, but some of the sentences he produces are accidentally illuminating. You feel pity for his stupidity and his willingness to believe in things that only exist in role playing games, and a faint jealousy that you wish you could believe in a tenth as much wonderfulness as he sees every day in the world around him.

They are very funny, but the humor conflicts with how sad the main character is. Most viewers probably just focus on the humor of what he says instead of him as a character, which is all well and good. They would probably say that I am taking this too seriously. Perhaps.

Just Give Up and Eat Crap.

2007-11-28T14:05:00.000-05:00

Apparently The International House of Pancakes has had enough of your refusal to eat their high-calorie flapjacks. They are now taking the militant route to forcing these thick cakes down your gullet by reminding you in a glossy campaign to SURRENDER to their syrupy-sweet will.

In a series of on-site posters, television commercials and web ads, a trio of new dessert-themed pancakes are photographed in sensual, erotica-style lighting, with feminine font telling you that "To surrender is the only option."

It's called "Pancake Surrender."

IHOP seems to be telling its potential customers to give up on any notions of healthy eating. It's as though they're saying, "Fuck your diet. Your fat ass is going to win anyway."

Resistance is Futile, friends. Give up. You're all going to die of heart attacks at 50 anyway, hardened arteries clogged with years of roadside-chain-restaurant grease, keeping your saccharine blood from reaching your overworked lungs till a whole team of medics comes and hauls your 400-pound body away...

I wish I was making this up, guys. We apparently are in a war with the forces of junk food, and its peddlers have the gall to tell us to put up the white flag.

VIDEO: Man Tasered To Death Due Partially to Language Barrier

2007-11-16T00:16:00.000-05:00

Boingboing.net, my favorite website, ever, posted something that definitely doesn't fit their tag-line of "A Directory of Wonderful Things."

Remember in the taser post I mentioned a foreign man killed in a Canadian airport by taser-happy cops? Well, this video provides better context.

It is causing an uproar on that blog, with many people saying that boingboingwent too far - claiming it's a "snuff film."

But according to police reports, he didn't die until after the incident- so you might not actually be watching him die. You might just be watching him lose consciousness in a short journey to a place that he goes through quickly to get to death.

I can barely watch it. But it's important to, as an impartial observer, it is a valuable piece of footage.

But it brings up a good point that I didn't know before- he DOES look threatening with that chair, there. Maybe the taser was the best choice?

Regardless of the police's decision making, which is incredibly difficult to judge, it's a tragedy he had to die.

Tragic core hit: AGAIN! Yes. Ow.

Finally, Spam is Art

2007-11-15T23:55:00.000-05:00

(Picture from here.)

The lead singer of Sonic Youth stole this blogger's secret idea and made poetry using the subject lines of spam emails that he unintentionally collected over the years.

A whole book of it.

Well, he didn't exactly steal this blogger's idea, it's a pretty obvious one. Anyone who has received enough unsolicited email can attest to its occasional, accidental brilliance.

Ahem. In the spirit of this new release, here is some brilliant poetry concocted by whoever the hell it is who makes spam.

These are real spam subjects. I only changed the punctuation a bit.

I need your urgent assistance.
Check out the best cardboard curlicue silicon,
Discount domain registration, Thompson.
Read this and choose your new reality-
Our sexual life maybe incredible and exciting.

This wine has been drunk before.
Explain my satiable swizzle,
Bufflehead!

Nice or naughty?
How do you turn it on?
Find what you need,
Naughty cam girls,
Looking for Zor!

Kind Of Forgot About That Whole Wet Thing Over There

2007-11-12T23:00:00.000-05:00

(Image from here)

Eh, the ocean. Who cares?

Bizarre coincidence: two oil tankers spilled their toxic guts all over the place in a matter of less than a week: one near San Fransisco on Wednesday, and then one split up in a storm in the Black Sea on Sunday.

How often does this happen, anyway? What are the odds of it happening so close together? The devastation for each of these is tremendous, though it is a little heartening to think that at least in San Francisco there are volunteers trying to help the wildlife recover.

Alright, so now that the world is falling apart and everyone knows it, how is it being covered in the press?

With so many dozens of ecosystems collapsing all around us, which ones receive the blessing of media coverage affects which ones people work to preserve, rescue, or at the very least care about.

And I'd like to propose that these news stories about the spills are going to go off the news' radar very soon. That TV, the internet, and newspapers will treat these two examples of the ocean being completely screwed over with minimal coverage of the environmental effects. That these will be a blip on the radar screen.

And then compare the coverage to the extensive, continuous stories about the melting ice caps right now, from businessmen hoping for a new trade route to everyday people sad about the fate of the polar bears that now live on a sheet of ice fast becoming slush.

Why will we focus so little on the tarnished oceans, comparatively? It's because we are shockingly disconnected from our seas. We just don't tend to pay attention to them.

They take up 71% of our planet's surface and yet we know so little about their biology still- as proved by the new species of whale apparently discovered earlier this year.

We worry about organically grown produce, meat, and milk, but how many times have you heard these concerns raised about seafood? How many times have you heard about the environmental problems caused by pesticides on plants vs. how many times have you heard about overfishing and deforestation issues associated with wild-caught and, respectively, farm-raised fish? Did you know that fish farms have a tendency of destroying tropical mangrove forests? Depressing but true.

Why this disconnect? A lack of empathy. It's tough to feel sad about algae, squids, or fish dying, they're so weird-looking they just confuse us when we try to think about whether or not we care about them dying in mass numbers.

Polar bears on the other hand are rock stars of the environmental conservation world. One news report I watched recently included an interview with someone who said they wanted to reach out and hug one (let's ignore the fact that in reality the bear would eat her face off, just for the moment.) Everybody wants to save them because they have two cute little eyes, an adorable black-button nose and fluffy soft fur. Aaaw!

I mean, look, he's even on two legs- how cute, he thinks he's people! Once people start anthropomorphizing a specie, they care about its fate.

But poor ocean critters. Covered in oil, suffocated by plastic, and no end in sight, no campaigns reaching out to protect plankton, where most of the world's oxygen comes from.

Maybe our species should learn to respect our mother more. She gets mad sometimes and throws angry clouds around.

Award For Awesomest First Paragraph

2007-11-09T23:15:00.001-05:00

Maybe I will do this every Friday. I will show an example of the best first paragraph (known as "leads" to journalism people) from a news story.

This week it comes from, of all places, Fox News.

"The most energetic particles in the universe — high-energy cosmic rays — likely come from enormous black holes nestled in the restless hearts of traumatized galaxies, scientists say."

RESTLESS HEARTS OF TRAUMATIZED GALAXIES! How gripping! I feel for those cosmic entities, somehow, while simultaneously being terrified of their might.

This journalist was probably a creative writing major who wants to write a novel someday. And I hope they do. Because I will buy that novel, if they can make something as dry and clean-cut as a news story sound like a heavily symbolic love poem written by Spock himself, then they could do great things in the wide-open world of fiction.

MMMMM science journalism! Beautiful!

Not A Terrorist, Just Emotional. Drunk. And Self-Strangled.

2007-11-09T22:28:00.000-05:00

Thank gosh for private investigators. The death of Carol Gotbaum, a 45-year-old Manhattan woman related to some New York politicians, was figured out, thanks to them. Part of my mind has been waiting with baited breath since I heard of the death, simply because of how hard it was for a layman to guess what killed her.

No bullets. No obvious physical acts in the video that should have lead to death. No medical conditions mentioned, or tasers, or jumps out of windows. But a death? How?

After making an overly-emotional scene after missing a flight in a Phoenix airport, police arrested her, cuffed her and took her into custody. (One thing that sticks out , though, is that they didn't try to talk her down, just calm her first, before arresting her. Just went in and forced her to the ground in a matter of seconds. Add this to the "police are too impatient" file.)

She was left in a waiting room in the security section of the airport for a matter of minutes by herself. In that span of time she died. She was found with her handcuffs in an odd position around her body.

Was it police brutality, I wondered?

The coroner now says that it was strangulation, that was probably only possible because of how drunk she was. Apparently drunkenness, prescription drug abuse, handcuffs, and odd positions don't mix.

The odd thing is: she was on her way to rehab when this whole thing happened.

It's a real tragedy. But it reminds me of a very important fact that has been drilled into me these past 6 years: AIRPORTS are a FREEDOM-FREE ZONE. Don't to anything suspicious. Anything. Weird, emotional, creative, intellectual and, oh yeah, Middle-Eastern people, try as hard as possible to look as normal, whitebread, calm and average as you can.

Do it wrong and you might get unlucky. You might get arrested. And, well, if you are really really unlucky and also drunk, you might just die.

Emotional bit: knowing that she was screaming "I'm not a terrorist" as she was arrested and accidentally taken to her death just hits my tragic core. Ow.

Treehuggers Looking More And More Normal As Each Day Passes

2007-11-08T21:43:00.000-05:00

The New York Times print edition had an entire section called "Business Of Green" today all about how the market is now driving corporations to start acting more green. This must have made environmentalists rejoice, since after 40 years of claiming that business is going to have to comply to their demands for efficiency and lower pollution sooner or later, the fringes and some main parts of corporate culture are starting to actually agree.

The zeitgeist is catching up four decades after the radicals and weirdos started the discussion. Better late than never? Let's hope.

The most exciting part is the head article all about a proposal in Congress that could actually do good by making carbon-heavy fuels more expensive than more environmentally-friendly ones.

This idea has been around for a little while. Federal politicians are just now starting to play with it.

Now, let's see what will happen when the oil executives open up their NYT to see the words "A proposal in Congress to put a charge on greenhouse gases could overturn the economics of energy." If my money was made based on the oil, coal, or wood market, I would start shaking in my boots and calling up the lobbyists.

I foresee a coming war in Congress between terrified old-energy lobbyists and forward-thinking, green-publicity-craving politicians. Or will those companies find a way to capitalize on the changing needs of an increasingly self-aware country, and be totally okay with moving away from those old-fashioned fuel types?

I am actually going to put my energy into hoping that the green imperative will win, for no other reason than a blossoming awareness of the finite nature of many traditional energy sources is starting to seep into the business world.

It only took a few decades for the rest of the world to stop calling environmentalists- also known as "people capable of looking at patterns and thinking way ahead"- crazy hippies. But Thank Gaia it's at least happening now.

To celebrate, wanna go smoke a joint and take LSD? I mean, go to a board meeting and watch the OC! Damn it! Board meeting and OC, really!

The Invisible Hand That Feeds

2007-11-07T21:14:00.000-05:00

Hahahahah!

Conservative authors, some of whom have been on the bestsellers lists in recent years (including a Swift Boat writer-guy!), have gathered together to sue the parent company of the imprint that published them, Regnery publishing. They claim they are not being paid enough in royalties.

Apparently this company that has a habit of publishing books critical of things like government regulation of business now has its authors complaining about being ripped off by profit-margin-above-all-else, big-business tactics.

Best quote- Richard Miniter, author of Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror, in the New York Times today: "Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?" Of course, "Marxist" is neo-con speak for "further to the left than me."

Open Letter to Miniter: Maybe, sir, because "Marxist" cartoons are accurate in their depiction of businesses: they are simply profit-making machines with little to no regard for worker or human rights or privileges, unless they are forced into considering these factors by strict laws. Ooh, shudder, sir, for I am telling you that a law pertaining to business tactics- one of your mortal enemies- could have prevented this situation from happening to you. Would you support that law now that you are furious at the big company that ripped you- a worker, of sorts- off? Maybe you guys should have formed a union, like those writers who are on strike did. That would have really helped you out.

This is a bit like if women critical of giving the HPV vaccination shot to female children in school, by coincidence, contracted cervical cancer themselves, and then, in their hospital beds, argued that someone should have given them a shot to prevent the cancer. It would have had to have been given before they had sex, maybe in, say, middle school? Huh.

Watch the logical loops spin in on themselves. Irony is everywhere, and it's hilarious.

Taser-Pa-Looza!!

2007-11-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

Why are police so obsessed with using tasers inappropriately right now?

An 82-year-old woman was tasered last week by the Chicago police. She was schizophrenic, and wielding a hammer threateningly. But still, she was 5'1'' 160 lbs, and 82. I think that a police officer could have taken her down without the use of something as dangerous as a taser. Yet they did. She had to go to the hospital.

This brings back recent memories of the foreign man tasered to death for the crime of not speaking English in a Vancouver airport in late October. The security forces were confused, and tasered him out of sheer befuddlement, perhaps feeling threatened by his foreign language?

And don't forget the famous case of Andrew "Don't Tase Me, Bro" Meyer whose begging for mercy while being tasered at a John Kerry speech created an internet in-joke, and the strangely underreported story of the UCLA student who was tasered for not showing his ID at a school library.

Since they are so dangerous, tasers are supposed to be used only for situations where near-deadly force is needed.

Ask yourself: Were the police in any of these situations really in need of near-deadly force? A tiny old lady with a hammer? A man who simply did not speak English? A disobedient political zealot whose greatest threat was his immature handling of public speaking? A student who left his ID elsewhere?

IF arresting these people was neccessary, which is more than dubious in some cases, couldn't they have used the old-fashioned "get them to the ground and put handcuffs on them" method? Are modern police officers getting too out of shape to do that? Too overzealous in their use of power?

It seems they may just be impatient. Impatient at the refusal of a person to immediately subordinate themselves to the officer, to immediately and flawlessly give up. Don't have time to talk to them, or just don't feel like them giving you lip? Just zap the f*ckers. That'll teach those squirming things called "citizens" a real lesson.

Police: Please only use tasers if deadly force is really needed. Not when you get lazy or fed up with people resisting you.

And anyway, tasers have been around for something like a decade now. Why the sudden obsession with them?

Introductions

2007-11-06T19:05:00.001-05:00

Everybody and their dog blogs.

Then why even start? Why even presume that what one person has to add to this massive clusterf*ck of opinions and linkage even matters (Hey, maybe even the blogosphere itself doesn't matter! How overwhelming!)

What I have to say doesn't 'matter' like literature or what the president has to say 'matters'. But it may just amuse, inform, or provoke someone out there, so here I go, hoping one person out there is affected.

Here I go, saying that this is worth doing, presuming that the fact that I am an educated young human in the Western Hemisphere with access to (and a near-obsessive interest in) the media and an ability to write coherently entitles me to an opinion.

Here I go into the wild, disrespected world of internet journalism.

If you agree with me that the news matters, that music matters, that science and the environment and high and low culture and politics all matter, then you are cordially invited to join me.

We're on a road to nowhwere, come take that ride.

I promise it will not be boring.