July 26, 2015
Angry Birds Pansies
Pansies are supposed to look like thoughtful faces, right? That’s where the word comes from. But something seems to have pissed them off.
Or maybe their DNA somehow got mingled with Ed Asner’s.
July 26, 2015
Pansies are supposed to look like thoughtful faces, right? That’s where the word comes from. But something seems to have pissed them off.
Or maybe their DNA somehow got mingled with Ed Asner’s.
July 10, 2015
.@Apple has $200B in cash. #Greece asks for $55B. iGREECE, baby! pic.twitter.com/fARsoFblCs
— David Weinberger (@dweinberger) July 10, 2015
May 28, 2015
After many years of intermittent entries, I have at long last won the monthly mini-Annals of Improbable Research Limerick Competition. Woohoo! Ish.
AIR presents research that one might find celebrated at the Ig Nobels. In fact, AIR is the creator of the Ig Nobels. AIR’s monthly mini version is free and amusing.
The limerick had to be about: “Preoperative and postoperative gait analyses of patients undergoing great toe-to-thumb transfer,” from the Journal of Hand Surgery, vol. 12, no. 1, 1987, pp 66-69. Rich comic material, obviously.
“Your gait will be fine, understand,
If we sew a toe onto your hand.
If we did the reverse
It might be much worse,”
Said the doc in remarks made off hand.
This month’s article for your limericking is: “Improving Phrap-Based Assembly of the Rat Using ‘Reliable’ Overlaps.”
I shall see you on the five-line field of battle!
April 26, 2015
At our daughter’s baby shower — which was awesome — we played Baby Shower Bingo. You fill in a bingo card with items, and if during the opening of the gifts any of those items have been given, you mark it on your card. First with five in a row wins (In this case they won a Toblerone bar.)
Here’s my losing card:
March 22, 2015
The House Judiciary Committee has posted a page with ten gifs to explain to the nation’s youth the folly of President Obama’s immigration actions. (Hat tip to Peter Kaminski.)
February 25, 2015
In the booths there’s a small notice that the money will be donated to Children’s Miracle Network. But there’s nothing about that on the freestanding kiosk.
January 27, 2015
September 18, 2014
A few days ago, when Apple pushed the latest from U2 into everyone’s iTunes library, you could hear the Internet pause as it suddenly realized that Apple is its parents’ age.
Now in the ad-promotion succubus occupying the body of what used to be Time Magazine, you can see U2 desperate to do exactly the wrong thing: insisting that it wasn’t a gift at all. You can learn more about this in the hilariously titled cover article of Time: “The veteran rock band faces the future.” This a future in which tracks we don’t like are bundled with tracks we do (the return of the CD format) and people who share with their fans are ruining it for U2, boohoo.
Or, as Bono recently said, “We were paid” for the Apple downloads, adding, “I don’t believe in free music. Music is a sacrament.” And as everyone knows, sacraments need to be purchased at a fair market value, the results of which Bono, as a deeply spiritual artist, secures in sacred off-shore accounts.
In my head I hear Bono, enraged by the increasingly bad publicity, composing a message that he posts without first running it through his phalanx of PR folks:
Dear fans:
You have recently received a copy of our latest album, Songs of Innocence, in your iTunes library. U2 understands you may be confused or even upset by this. So, let me clarify once and for all the most important point about this — if I may humbly say so — eternal masterpiece. It was not our intention to cause you stress or to wonder if you have the musical sensitivity to full grasp (if I may, humbly say) the greatness of our work. But most important, it is essential above all that you understand that it was not our intention to give you a gift. No freaking way.
We understand your mistake. You are, after all, just fans, and you don’t play in the Jetstream world of global music. As I said to my dear friend Nelson Mandela (friend is too weak a word; I was his mentor) shortly before he passed, music is a sacrament, just like tickets to movies, especially ones with major stars working for scale, or like the bill at a restaurant where you and any two of the Clintons (Chelsea, you are a star! Give yourself that!) are plotting goodness.
To tell you the truth, I’m disappointed in you. No, worse. I’m hurt. Personally hurt. How dare you think this was a gift! After all these years, is that all U2 is worth to you? Nothing? Our music has all the value of a CrackerJacks trinket or a lower-end Rolex in an awards show gift bag? Do you not understand that Apple paid us for every copy they distributed? We were paid for it, sheeple! Massive numbers of dollars were transferred into our bank accounts! More dollars than you could count, you whiny little “Ooh look at me I’m sharing” wankers! We’re U2 dammit! We don’t need you! You need us! MONEY IS LOVE! EXTRA-ORDINARY LOVE!!!!!!
Have a beautiful day.
Meanwhile, as always, Amanda Palmer expresses the open-hearted truth about this issue. It almost makes me regret making fun of Bono. Almost.
August 12, 2014
Because it’s August and I’m at a lake:
The great blue is such an ungainly bird
that “heron” should be an explainly word.It flaps so slow as it takes to the air
I could beat it by climbing stairs.It’s great, it’s blue, it’s a little absurd.
A pile of sticks became a bird.
August 1, 2014
The Register just posted one of the most ridiculous pieces of clickbait trolling I’ve ever seen. They’re claiming that by posting the parody video below, the UK’s Open Rights Group is comparing people who defend their copyright to Hitler:
It helps to know a few things:
First, the movie the clip, taken from Downfall, has been used for this sort of re-titling parody well over a hundred times, with Hitler fulminating over everything from Miley Cyrus twerking to spam. (Here are seven recent parodies, and 25 from an article in 2009.) Note that the video above was created and posted by Brad Templeton in 2009.
Second, a few years ago, the producers of Downfall apparently got fed up with their movie becoming so well known and started issuing DMCA takedown notices for the parodies.
Third, two days ago the House of Lords protected parodies against copyright infringement suits — covered in the US by our policy of Fair Use. ORG linked to the Downfall parody to celebrate this victory for free speech.
So, it hurts my head how many ways The Register’s trolling gets things wrong. It’s as if someone were accused of violating Godwin’s Law because she invoked Godwin’s Law. [I am taking Godwin’s Law as normative. Sue me.]
Here is the link to The Register article but I encourage you not to go there, just so they won’t feel that this sort of ridiculous trolling is profitable. Instead, we could perhaps invoke a version of the Streisand Effect by posting the video widely.
[A few hours later:] The Register just appended the following to their post:
Since the publication of this story, the ORG has contacted The
Register with this comment: “Earlier this week, the Open Rights
Group tweeted a Downfall parody about copyright on the day that
parody exceptions for copyright were approved by the House of
Lords. Downfall parodies are widely recognised and have been used
to great satirical effect about a wide range of subjects. It is
wilful ignorance to portray a Downfall parody as a direct
comparison with Hitler and Nazism.”
Yup.