30 September 2009

Blasphemy Day is Today

Go on, say something. Make the clerics proud. Must stop with the Equilibrium references.



What about the 72 virgins or something like that? Although, when you think about it, makes you wonder if he was going to get a continuous supply for eternity or if it was a once-off deal of virgins who end up as his wives and then nag at him to take out the trash for the rest of eternity?

28 September 2009

Banned Books Week

Equilibrium

This is it, it's here. The Banned Books Week. So, what's everyone up to?

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I was planning to read a few banned books and talk about them this week. Turns out I didn't have time to finish reading any of it; in fact, I will start reading them this week.

Eeeyikes!

However, I will be planning to talk a bit about censorship, banned books and challenged books/videos/movies this week.

This particular article is not about a book but I am guessing if the movie is too controversial, any book by the good fellow is probably being handed to the clerics.

Check it out - US is shunning the new Darwin movie (Derren Brown's Blog)

24 September 2009

Did you jump straight into an activity?



This was a boring ad. Alright it was boring until they started out with their innuendos. If that was intentional, man, those were sad ... and creepy.

Or am I the only one picking up on that?

Oh man! Someone else was also thinking along those lines. In fact they built on the tension between the folks. Ai Ai. Check it out here!

Lily Allen infringes on copyright ... again!

Maybe Lily Allen must have a quiet chat with Lars about the follies of putting your foot in it.

After she became the poster child for anti-piracy tirade, it's no surprise that folks will start scrutinizing her life and seeing if Ms. Allen adheres to copyright law.

Apparently not, especially if this Techdirt article by Micheal Masnick is anything to go by.

Quote from Techdirt:

When Lily was first trying to get attention, she created a couple of mixtapes with a ton of songs from other artists... available as MP3 downloads, and mixing in her own tracks. This is a well-known tradition in some circles and a great way to get some attention. We're all for it. But... it seems quite hypocritical of Ms. Allen to claim that file sharing is somehow evil and destroying the industry when she appears to be an active participant and used it to promote herself (oh my goodness! free music working as promotion!). According to the tracklisting of the second mixtape, it included 19 tracks by artists other than Lily Allen. Both mixtapes (mixtape 1 and mixtape 2) are available directly off of Lily's website, LilyAllenMusic.com, which has a copyright notice at the bottom from EMI.

Check out the full article, the writer makes a good point about implications of 'three strikes' in Lily Allen's case.

Parody about American Insurance Folk



Hehe, nicely said!

16 September 2009

Lily Allen hates piracy?

Want to know what Lily Allen has to say about file sharing?

Seems like she is not in favor of p2p sharers.

Quote from Cyberlaw:

“Last week in an article in The Times these guys from huge bands said file-sharing music is fine. It probably is fine for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world.

For new talent, though, file-sharing is a disaster as it’s making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge..."

Charming.

Someone should tell the young one what happened to Lars when he last made a comment along those lines.

Moore talks about print media

Hmm, interesting.

This is Michael Moore's take on newspapers going down the privvy.

Quote from The Wrap:

It’s not the Internet that has killed newspapers, the gadfly documentarian said in a four-minute detour from talking about his film, which rejects capitalism as “undemocratic.”

Instead, he said, it’s corporate greed. “These newspapers have slit their own throats,” he said. “Good riddance.”

There's a video on the site too, go check it out!

Celebrate Banned Books Week

Alright, so Banned Books Week is coming up - Sept 26th to Oct 3rd. It is a day marked in US where folks note which books have been challenged or brushed aside in the past few years.

There is focus on banned and challenged books of the current year as well, acting as a platform for authors and works which have been shunned or silenced.

It is basically a tremendous effort to ensure freedom of speech and freedom of expression is kept alive.

So, to mark this week I have been looking over the Banned and Challenged Books of the past few years. You can find out more here and here.

I am hoping to read/re-read 3 or 5 from this list - depending on how much time I can free up from my schedule - and write about them in the Banned Books Weeks.

You don't have to be in US to be passionate about this cause. In fact, it's not necessarily about US alone but free speech all over the world.

Would be nice is folks from other parts of world talked about books that have been pushed aside in their countries. Well, if they can and if they don't get in trouble for it. :(

You know, I expected racy or in-your-face type of novels and stories to be on this list.

Far from it.

Some of the books listed on there are just harmless. Well, other than the power to change the way we think, I suppose.

Check out some of the frequently challenged classics:

1984 (Hmm, no surprise there. Let's pause and ponder about the Kindle incident)
The Lord of the Rings (Wait ... what?)
The Maltese Falcon (Can't find why this is on the list)
Winnie-the-Pooh (Are you kidding me?)
The Wind in the Willows (Again with the wtf?)

15 September 2009

Oh, a wifman!

This was interesting.

It's one of the posts from Grammarphobia - absolutely fantastic source of language info - and the post in question talks about the use of singular and plural forms for the word 'woman'.

What was fascinating was the writer's account of the etymological background of the word 'man' and 'woman'.

Go on, read the post already.

10 September 2009

Derren Brown guesses lotto numbers

Oooh, everyone is talking about Derren Brown guessing the lotto numbers.

That was pretty mind-blowing.

Wonder how he did.

Took him a while to get this right so am guessing this is like the supermarket trick?

Or maybe not. He does say it is not a trick.

Well, they will air his explanation tomorrow on channel 4 - dammit, I don't have that on cable - but hopefully, Brown will upload/link to video for online viewing soon.

Man, you can't say Brown to refer to anyone else anymore, not after watching so much Mock the Week!

Darwin's cocoon

Awwh, this was so cool.

Quote from News24:

London's Natural History Museum on Tuesday unveiled an eight-storey extension in the shape of a cocoon to house the collections of Charles Darwin ...

The $129m building houses 17 million insect specimens and three million plant specimens as well as a Climate Change Wall of screens showing the impact of global warming.

I am glad UK is a bit more sensible about science and topics related to evolution than its other friends.

Hitler finds out about another Downfall parody



Must .... stop ... laughing!

This was one of the best parodies of Der Untergang I have seen.

07 September 2009

Leslie: My Name is Evil



This movie looks interesting.

Found it via Horror Movies

04 September 2009

Friday Links

Alright, so after a looooooong break in blogging I am back. And looking around to see what I missed.
fail owned pwned pictures
see more Fail Blog
Stargate Universe

Yea yea, I know I said I would probably shun this .... and I will too, just you wait ... but I have to admit, Robert Carlyle adds a certain amount of dignity to that show.

Apparently this show is darker than the other two. Will see.

Check out trailer here.


Dead Men Walk

Ooh and there is the review for Dead Men Walk. That was an enjoyable movie with just a bit of cheesiness here and there.

I don't think it helped that the vampire looked like an evil butler.

Even so, he pulled off the fang-boy moves better than the modern vegan vamps.

By the way, this movie is in the public domain.

Swear to God

And I came across this tidbit whilst browsing Reddit.

Apparently kids had to pledge allegiance to God in order to obtain a US citizenship.

Wait, I thought you didn't have to, that allegiance to God was specifically left out by the forefathers. After all, people did move to New World to escape religious persecution.


She has plans

I read this story about a wee little lassie in China who wanted to be a corrupt official when she grew up.

Now, did she pick up that idea from the movies? Or did she watch a lot of news?

Or is this a glimpse of what the parents talk about at home?

Here's a good TGIF moment

I got this in my email today (thanks Ferradine). It's a few random thoughts of 25 -35 years old and I must say, this made my day.

Wonder where these sayings came from? The way emailing works, I bet it's pretty popular on net and everyone has a copy so ... we'll find out soon I guess.

Random thoughts of 25 -35 years old: Favourites -

- Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning that just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

- I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

- I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?

- Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realise I had no idea what the f*** was going on when I first saw it.

- Have you ever been walking down the street and realised that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going?
But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

- I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

- Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realise you're wrong.

- Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

- There is a great need for sarcasm font.

- I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

- How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

- I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

- LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

- How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies".

- What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

- Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

- I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

- Bad decisions make good stories.

- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

- Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem …

- You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

- Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

- There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

- I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.

- I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV.. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'


- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

- When I meet a new guy, I'm terrified of mentioning something he hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

- I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

- Why is a school zone 25 km/h? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for paedophiles...

- As a driver I hate pedestrians and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

- Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

- I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

- Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

- I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

- The other night I ordered take away and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic cutlery. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

02 September 2009

Women and Wikipedia

I hate generalisations - women only play Sims, they are finicky, they love Ogres ... wait, what?

Anyway, I also hate to admit it, but a large percentage of women follow the socially determined gender norms and thus, contribute to dumb ass results ... like this one.

Quote from Mashable:

According to the The Wall Street Journal, the survey took place in November of last year, with results being presented last week at a conference in Buenos Aires. A total of 53,888 respondents indicated that they were Wikipedia contributors, but only 6,814 of them were women.

Meh!