Meanwhile, in outer space...

... a writer for the Internet gets to pretend to be Tiger Woods for a few minutes. A few, glorious, glorious minutes.

Obligatory Murray Head Reference

Topless Robot offers up a list of the “Most Majestic Chess Sets for Nerds”. I won’t spoil it for you—OH MY GOD, they forgot the world famous 25th anniversary commemorative Star Trek set from the Franklin Mint, the one where they would send you one piece every 4 to 6 weeks, assuming you kept up the payments! In pure pewter!

Stopping the insanity

Well, I was going to link to an article here, but since the site won’t show it to me unless I log in, fuck it.

ACTA leak: bye-bye safe harbors

What secret treaty? Oh, that secret treaty. From Techdirt:

Reports spread this weekend that the ACTA's all-important internet enforcement chapter had leaked. You can download the PDF from that link, or check it out below [...]

From here, you can see why this is still quite a dangerous document -- and why there's been so much misinformation from its supporters, insisting that it "can't change US law," or even (as stated by the USTR) that it won't include three strikes. It doesn't. Sort of. But it does make it very very difficult for any online service provider to get safe harbors without doing something along those lines. Let's explore deeper...

Why shouldn’t we trust an international agreement written by lobbyists and negotiated in secret?

Thank you for the useless advice!

From mental_floss:

Scientists found that a Spanish-style siesta after lunch does more than just refresh the body and mind, it also makes it easier for the brain to store and retrieve items of short-term information needed for working or studying.

Wow! I’m sure that will convince my boss to let me sleep at work. Unless he wants to give me an extra hour to drive home for my nap.

Hey, this is great!

Cynical love

From the folks at Cracked:

Will I ever be loved?

Don't be ridiculous. Only attractive people deserve love.

Who will come to my funeral when I die alone?

A raincloud, if you're lucky.

Love is chemicals in your brain that make you stupid, sometimes.

Thank you for coming...

... we’ll get to undermining American values abroad, and killing local civilians, in a little bit. But first the whores!

Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities.

Look, the entire theme of the Iraq War has been this: The people responsible for whatever crimes, mistakes, or unethical behavior that occurred under its shadow, will never, never, ever be called to account for the dirty things they’ve done. I don’t care how many prostitutes you bring up, nobody is going to do anything about it.

Where will the nerds hide now?

A roundtable discussion about school libraries at the NY Times begins thus:

Keeping traditional school libraries up to date is costly, with the constant need to acquire new books and to find space to store them.

Odd. At the schools I attended, neither of those things were a priority. Which is probably why I’m so dubm.

We don’t need no stinkin’ warrants, part 487

From CNET:

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Warrantless tracking of cell phones? There’s no way this could ever be abused. Nope, absolutely no way, no how. Oversight? Who needs oversight? I mean, if you can’t trust your friendly neighborhood government surveillance apparatus, who can you trust?

[Link via Slashdot]

Good job, Mayer

Now people are being asked to explain you:

Yesterday a friend of mine who is black said "So what do you have to say about your boy?" and at first I thought she was talking about a male acquaintance we have in common who I stick up for sometimes when she feels he's behaving foolishly. But no, in fact, she was talking about another male who was behaving foolishly, but the only connection I have to him is that we're both white: John Mayer. I explained quickly that we white people do not claim John Mayer in any way shape or form and I don't intend to explain him or stick up for him.

Jesus, Mayer—just, goddammit man. Get your head out of your ass.

If you’re a spy, please raise your hand

Well this will make things a whole lot easier. From Raw Story:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

[...]

There's even a $5 filing fee.

Sure, you might laugh—but this has got to be at least as effective as most of the stuff the TSA does.

[Link via Bruce Schneier]

Yawn –- ack!

From Yahoo News:

Boredom can actually kill you, a new study has revealed.

To reach the conclusion, researchers at University College London looked at data from 7524 civil servants, aged between 35 and 55, interviewed between 1985 and 1988 about their levels of boredom.

They then found out whether they had died by April last year.

Those who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study, the researchers found.

Greeeeaaaaat.

[Link via Slashdot]

Torture comes home

From the Daily Mail:

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

This is from the Daily Mail, so I have no idea whether or not this story is entirely accurate or unbiased, but goddamn, if it’s true --- that’s really messed up.

Statistical graffiti

From Inkling magazine (heard of it?), a “statistical analysis of graffiti found at the University of Chicago Library”:

The graffiti preserved in Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius provided unique insights into Roman street life. The Mayan graffiti found in Tekal and the graffiti left by Vikings also give us small glimpses into the past. What kind of insight might a longitudinal study of the graffiti on the walls at the University of Chicago’s main library provide into the lives and minds of this community of college students?

Since September 27, 2007, I have been documenting the graffiti left in public study areas in the Joseph Regenstein Library ("the Reg")[...]

Link via Slashdot

The Manchurian thumb-drive

Can you trust computer equipment that was manufactured in China? From Slashdot:

"Suspicions about China slipping eavesdropping technology into computer exports have been around for years. But the recent spying attacks, attributed to China, on Google and other Internet companies have revived the hardware spying concerns. An IT World blogger suggests the gear can't be trusted, noting that it wouldn't be hard to add security holes to the firmware of Chinese-made USB memory sticks, computers, hard drives, and cameras.”

Oh, c’mon. My entire computer was built in China, and I’ve never had a 问题.

Now that’s progress

From the Consumerist:

Your suffering may finally be over, fast food fiends. No more awkwardly torn ketchup packets and tomato-soaked fingers. No more dipping your fries into a dollop of ketchup on a napkin or burger wrapper. NO. Heinz has introduced the ketchup packet 2.0, and the future looks...well, remarkably like the containers of McNugget dipping sauces McDonald's has been using since the '80s.

Now that’s fancy ketchup.

I disagree

From this otherwise excellent review by Jessa Crispin: “After all, no one wants to live a life without love.”

No one?

Well, no one who matters, I suppose.

Cutting edge technology?

A Lenovo customer gets shanked by their packaging.

When he called customer service to complain, they put him on hold for 10 minutes before coming back to say that they would make sure it never happened again, and was there anything else they could help him with today? Christian was hoping for something more heartfelt. His email to the Lenovo COO also went unanswered. C'mon, the guy deserves a price cut on his next purchase. Or maybe at least a coupon for some bandaids.

As stupid and dangerous as it is to leave a knife in a box that’s being shipped to a customer, there’s not much you can really expect to prevent it. What, don’t they already have a rule at the factory that says, “Don’t leave knives in boxes?”

What I’m saying is that anything you receive might have knives, poison, or gross creatures lurking about in the packaging, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

As a Valentine’s day gift to the world...

... please stop making everything heart-shaped. Thank you.

Geek? Not so fast...

From Heartless Doll:

Michael Cera is a fucking movie star who dicks around with the guys from Jersey Shore for fun. Yes, he may play an awkward, pseudo-adorable dork in every last one of his pictures, and he may even act like one in "real life" when he is being interviewed on television and on the internet. But I am here to tell you that Michael Fucking Cera is a Fucking Movie Star, and there is nothing geeky about being a fucking movie star, so quit acting like Michael Fucking Cera is geeky, and that goes for the shit he does, too.

[10 "Geeky" Things That Are Not Geeky, So Quit Acting Like They're Geeky]

No more good food

Avoid meat and processed food all you want --- your salad is still covered in pig shit.

Bill Watterson interview

The first since 1989, probably:

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

(Link via the Awl – again!)

Backfatlash

From the Awl: “’I am completely and utterly frustrated with rising healthcare costs due to the deluge of fat Americans taxing the healthcare system. I’m in shape and have been all my life because I don’t soothe myself with food all day,’ says one angry thinnie [...]”

Also: “What was Ethan Hawke’s problem with the way society was organized in Gattaca? It seemed fine to me. You know what kind of people are against eugenics? Weak people, that’s who.”

Avatar reviewed again

From those guys who brought you that 70 minute Phantom Menace review: A review of Avatar.