Broad of the Year…For Sure…
I mean, she might have been executed for this…
Mar
17
Feb
8
Jan
23
Daft Punk Update
It appears that “Fragile,” a track from the upcoming Tron Legacy soundtrack, has leaked. It isn’t 100% confirmed that this is Daft Punk, but here it is regardless
Oct
14
Stephen Lynch
I went on a date with this girl who had Mein Kampf listed in her profile under favorite books. So when I told a friend about her, he played this for me and it could not be more perfect. A must listen.
Jun
9
The PEPSI Conspiracy
And they wonder why we think they’re fucking crazy. Also, if i’m not mistaken a penny is 1/100th of a dollar you fucking retard.
May
11
Facebook the Anti-Semite
This was taken from Tech Crunch and I would like to salute their rational response and great journalism. Also, isn’t Zuckerberg Jewish? There is nothing worse than a self-hating individual.
Way more countries have laws against holocaust denial (11 or so ) than breast feeding (0), but guess which one is banned on Facebook? That’s right. Pictures of breast feeding babies are indecent, so they’re a no go. But Holocaust denial is totally cool because it fosters open discussion. Facebook wants to “be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.”
Controversial indeed, based on the messages I found written on some of the many Holocaust denial sites on Facebook.
Brian Cuban is making the removal of these sites a personal mission . He’s arguing the law. He’s arguing terms of service. He’s arguing common sense and decency. These groups are clearly little more than excuses to spew hatred towards Jews, and Facebook is too timid to do anything about it. The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. So why is Facebook so willing to take a stand when it comes to hungry babies, but won’t do a damn thing when it comes to the Holocaust.
Because they’re cowards.
If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the TOS , particularly Section 3. There’s an easy way out of this for Facebook, and it also happens to be the right thing to do. Why in the world must they draw a line in the sand and then stand on the same side as Holocaust deniers is beyond me.
Apr
30
Swine Flu: An Excuse to Kill 300,000 Pigs
According to an AP Report, the Egyptian Health Ministry was ordered to slaughter all of the roughly 300,000 pigs in their country.
From Adam Radwanski at globeandmail.com:
In the race to the dumbest overreaction to the swine flu, Egypt jumps out to an early lead.
Or if not the dumbest, then perhaps the most offensive.
As just about anyone who’s watched four minutes of TV coverage or picked up a newspaper has been informed, you can’t get swine flu from eating pork. Nor is there any reason whatsoever why Egyptian pigs would be even fractionally more likely to be carrying the virus today than they were a week or a month or a year ago. The risk of the virus spreading across the globe comes solely from human-to-human contact.
So why is Egypt culling all of the more than 300,000 pigs in the country? Probably because it can.
When 90% of your population doesn’t eat pork, and there’s a virus named after pigs that’s causing worldwide panic, the political benefits of screwing over the 10 per cent who do eat it probably outweigh the negatives.
If that just meant that Egypt’s Christian population had to eat more chicken for a while, it would be hard to get worked up. But those Egyptians who raise pork - of whom there must be a significant number, if there are more than 300,000 pigs in the country - just had their livelihoods yanked out from under them.
If they weren’t part of a minority group, you have to figure they’d at least get compensation. Instead, Egypt’s health minister has informed them that no compensation is needed, because they can still sell the meat from the pigs being killed off.
That would be a great plan, except that it’s highly unlikely that the roughly 8 million pork eaters in the country would be up for consuming 300,000 pigs all at once at the best of times - let alone when the government has basically just finished linking pork to a potentially deadly virus, which has to at least subconsciously dull one’s appetite a bit.
On the list of the world’s great injustices, this little saga isn’t at or even near the top. But it does demonstrate that - outside of Mexico, obviously - overreaction to the swine flu has so far done more damage than the virus itself.
Apr
24
Apr
1
Facebook Users Wage Condom Campaign Against Pope
This was taken from CNN:
Critics took to the social networking site Facebook to voice their fury over Pope Benedict’s remark that condoms do not prevent HIV.
Thousands have pledged to send the pontiff millions of condoms to protest the controversial comment he made to journalists as he flew to Cameroon last week.
Mar
30
Wisdom from the Weekend (3/30/2009)
On Sunday night while I was thinking about what to write, Marty sent me a text message asking me a question about the new TV show Kings. His question is irrelevant to this passage, but it made me think about the story of the Kings of Israel. Here is a cliff notes version:
In the Judeo-Christian religions, King Saul is a tremendous figure. After being anointed by God, Saul unites the tribes of Israel. Although Saul assumes the role as King and we refer to him now as the first King of Israel, in the Book of Samuel, he is referred to as the Leader. King Saul ultimately defies the profit Samuel and falls out of favor with God.
God then commands Samuel, the Judge, to find another Leader. Samuel goes to the seven sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. When Samuel meets David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, he is told to anoint him the new King of Israel.
Saul commits suicide during the battle with the Philistines. David mourns his death, then goes up to Hebron, where he is anointed King over Judah; in the north, Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth is king over the tribes of Israel. War ensues between Ish-Bosheth and David, until Ish-Bosheth is assassinated. The assassins bring forward the head of Ish-Bosheth to David hoping for a reward, but David executes them for their crime against the Lord’s anointed. Yet with the death of the son of Saul, the elders of Israel come to Hebron, and David, 30 years old, is anointed King over Israel and Judah.
David reigns for many years and leaves the Kingdom to his son Solomon. Solomon’s son Rehoboam succeeded Solomon as king, but the kingdom split under his reign into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Rehoboam reigned over the southern kingdom.
This story makes me think about what it means to fall in and out of God’s favor. Is it not similar to falling in and out of favor with our friends or lovers? Since I am not particularly religious, I look at Saul as having lost the love of his subjects instead of the true favor of God.
We use the term ‘fall’ to represent the instantaneous nature of such a transition. We fall in and out of love or we fall ill. These are things we can’t control. It is strange to think of love, sickness, and God’s favor as situational or subjective. However, often small problems grow into large schisms in a relationship.
The fun-filled romantic beginnings of all relationships eventually give way to the realities of daily life. Often instead of dealing with our relationship problems we hope and wait for the storm to pass. Which brings me to my advice: When something is not going properly in either a friendship or a relationship it is important to confront the problem head-on. Both parties likely see a problem differently. When we fall out of favor with are friends or lovers it often happens without one person’s full awareness.
So when you have a problem with a friend or lover grow some balls and put it out there. Nothing can be more damaging to a relationship than keeping an internal grudge.
Mar
28
Facebook Group Name Change Outrage
This was taken from Fox News:
Some Facebook members are upset because they say one of the groups they were members of online changed from “I Heart Jews” to “Hitler: Great Modern Man of History” without them knowing. The almost 2,000 members are upset and do not want to be part of the group.
Fox 5’s Lisa Evers reports on this controversy; watch her video (left).
Also, watch Brett Larson’s demonstration video that shows you how to set your alerts in Facebook so that you get an e-mail if a group you are a member of changes its name:
Mar
9
No Tech During Lent
Some Roman Catholic bishops in Italy have called for Catholics to give up technology, notably text messaging and Twitter, for Lent. Possible sacrifices they also considered include “all fun” and “things people like.”
These bishops apparently issued a blanket suggestion against all technology, including iPods, Facebook, television, text messaging, and Twitter. While I understand the impulse to ban the latter, the bishops stated that they hoped a ban on text messaging would “draw attention to the conflict in Congo, which it says is fueled by a struggle over mines that supply minerals used to make cellphones.” That’s sort of reasonable and at the same time also totally unreasonable, in that nobody is going to make that connection unless their phones are inscribed with “MADE WITH THE BLOOD OF CONGOLESE MINERS” on the front.
The Pope, apparently, is still out there YouTubing, which kind of takes the sting out of the bishops’ words. Is anybody out there giving up any sort of technology for lent? And if not, may I suggest Twitter?