Recently in Whats the world coming too? Category

This is a damn right wing conspiracy. You know the Bush cronies pressured the big wigs at Viacom to go after Google. Ok...maybe not, but it could be. Either way, I'm really disapointed. My budy the silentpatriot was my hook up for a quick fix of the best of the The Daily Show or the Colbert Report and now...its over. Whats the world coming too!!?!??!

YouTube Pulls Down Comedy Central Clips - Mashable!

In a move that’s deeply irritating some of the channel’s biggest fans, clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park have been removed from YouTube today following a DMCA from Viacom’s Comedy Central. Searching for the shows will still yield results, but clicking through to watch the clips results in the message “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation” or “This video has been removed due to copyright infringement”. The news first appeared on Newscloud. Comedy Central owns some of the most popular content on YouTube, and video sharing sites have driven a massive amount of interest in the shows. The hosts will most likely be unhappy about the move: Jon Stewart said in an interview in 2005: “Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it off TV”, while Colbert plays up to the YouTube audience, even demanding his cut of the money when the Google-YouTube acquisition occurred earlier this month. South Park’s recent World of Warcraft episode, meanwhile, felt like it had been produced with the online audience in mind.

If you're spouting any of the drivel here, you're wasting our oxygen...not to mention the hours of our lives that we'll never be able to reclaim.  Please cease and desist!  Immediately....IF NOT SOONER

"I'd like to respond to that, but taking into account your background,
education, and intelligence, I am quite sure that you would not be able
to understand."

Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to Talk!

Every day I open the paper or read an online news article about some other company offering Employee Discount incentives to customers to buy cars, wine (wine.com)and lord only knows what else.

So I have a question.

If every company starts offering "Employee Discount" incentives to customers...What's my incentive to have a job? ;)

Everyone hates car accidents, but one thing I hate more then car accidents are car accidents that I'm involved in, and the only thing I hate more then car accidents that I'm involved in are car accidents that I'm involved in that I DIDN'T CAUSE!!!!

RED LIGHT RUNNING BASTARD!!!!

So Steph and I are driving home from dropping off our UHaul this weekend. Of course we drove from Brooklyn, to Manhattan to New Jersey and back without getting into a problem. Yet we're crossing the intersection of Carroll and Court Streets in Brooklyn and this idiot blows the light (which was green in our direction) and is passing through the intersection at the precise moment in space/time that the front end of my car was passing through the exact same space/time.

Fortunately we weren't going too fast so the impact wasn't as bad as it could have been, but the damage to our car is pretty extensive. No estimate yet (tomorrow), but I'm guessing it's not going to be pretty.

The best part is that the guy who ran the light gets out of his car and immediately announces in the middle of the intersection that he realizes that he ran the red light, followed by informing the all the people standing watching at the intersection that he sped up when he realized that he ran the light in hopes that he would miss us....Ummmm...Yeah...have you ever heard of that wide rectangular pedal on the floor?

IT’S CALLED A BRAKE ASSHOLE!!!

If anyone reads this who witnessed this, please comment and let me know. I may need to talk to you in case this becomes complicated.

Well, in case you needed one more thing to worry about, MSNBC has an article today on Calendar reform.

Yes, thats right, replacing our beloved, by some and apparently hated by others, Gregorian calendar with a new C&T Calendar. I won't bother you with the details here, but if you're interested, then check out the link above or have a quick read of the material below (an excerpt from the main site).

Calendar Reform

1.) Why fool with the calendar?
There are enormous economic advantages to the proposed calendar. These benefits come because the new calendar is identical every year... except that, every five or six years, there is a one-week long "Mini-Month," called "Newton," between June and July. "Newton Week" brings the calendar into sync with the seasonal change as the Earth circles the Sun. How much needless work do institutions, such as companies and colleges, put into arranging their calendars for every coming year? From 2006 on, they do it once ... and it is done forevermore.
2.) Surely you're not fooling with the clocks, too? (And, do you have anything else up your sleeve?)
Yes, starting 2006 January 1, it is proposed that Universal Time, on a 24 hour scale, be used, everywhere on earth, and forevermore. As a result of this, beginning 2006 January 1, the date and time will always be the same, everywhere, greatly facilitating international understanding.
(And, yes! Whether you adopt C&T or not, PLEASE don't write dates as 01/02/03 any more! What the heck does that mean? Instead, on your check stubs, and everything else, from now on, ONLY use: 2003-01-02, if in fact you mean: 2003 January 2. This is the ISO standard! I didn't make it up!)
3.)

Just when you thought the final frontier had been reached with people suing for every gosh darn thing under the sun, comes this story out of Schwab.

And what about the former Charles Schwab employee who thought she got a rough deal from her firm as it wasn't quick enough to sort out the problems she was having with her computer ? Well, Rose Mary Finocchi got $15,000 after a New York arbitration panel found that she had suffered 'emotional distress caused by Schwab's careless behaviour in handling (her) inquiries about on-the-job computer problems' and subsequent events. She was also awarded $106,500 in lost wages $20,000 to cover her arbitration panel costs and another $150,000 for related legal fees.

Ms Finocchi's PC went on the blink in 2000 and she reported the fact to her boss, who, it was claimed, did nothing save issue her with a warning. She was later fired and ended up having to get a job outside the financial services industry.

Schwab said that it was disappointed with the arbitration panel's decision, as it still believes Ms Finocchi's 'claims were groundless'.

The moral of the story here is that you'd better be on top of those help desk folk or they could cost you a ton of money.

I love it when our next door neighbors get into squabbles over such nonsensical...err..nonsense. It makes me feel so superior as a New Yawker ;). Ok..maybe not, I mean they do have the Stanley Cup Champion Devils after all...and that's hard for me to say since I'm a NY Rangers fan, but I digress.

Gothamist has a piece today on a ridiculous Sciene vs. State debate today. Ok...maybe it's not that important, but the fact is that Science says its a fruit and the State says it's a vegetable.

Oh...forget it...let's call the whole thing off.

The Garden State makes national headlines today not because of an outed governor, but because NJ is considering naming the tomato the official state vegetable. The bill's co-sponsor, State Senator Ellen Karcher, says, "Botanically, it's a fruit; legally, it's a vegetable," due to an old U.S. Supreme Court ruling that tariffed vegetables, including tomatoes, since tomatoes are usually served during dinner, not as a dessert. Gothamist would shake our head at what the NJ government will do next, but at least the NJ State Legislature is getting stuff done; NY State's is most the dysfunctional in the country. For the record, NJ does has a state fruit: The blueberry. Here are pictures from the 2004 NJ Tomato Festival, and it's never too early to think about summer weekend trips to the Jersey shore. Finally, here are NY State's various state emblems (our state beverage is milk - take that, Dobkin). Gothamist: NJ Looks For Vegetable In Fruit

Is it me, or does Michael Jackson (seen below)...

look more and more like the Joker (seen below), everytime he appears in public?

Looks like the NFL became a bit pissed off at GoDaddy.com for their somewhat promiscious Super Bowl ad yesterday. The CEO of GoDaddy.com, Bob parsons blogs at BobParsons.com about the event and some of the fall out.

As you may have noticed our Super Bowl ad only appeared during the scheduled first quarter spot. It was scheduled to run also in the second ad position during the final two minute warning. Our ad never ran a second time. Instead, in its place, we saw an advertisement promoting "The Simpsons."

The NFL persuaded FOX to pull our ad.
We immediately contacted Fox to find out what happened. Here's what we were told: After our first ad was aired, the NFL became upset and they, together with Fox, decided to pull the ad from running a second time. Because we purchased two spots, we were also entitled to a "Brought to you by GoDaddy.com" 5 second marquis spot. They also chose to pull the marquis spot.

Our ad is finishing high in opinion polls.
So far in early opinion polls, our ad seems to be finishing fairly high. In fact, in checking the one on the Fox site, it is in the number two position. Not bad for an ad that could only be aired once.

Stay tuned for more news as it develops.
I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this over the next few days. I believe that it's the first time ever a decision was made to pull an ad after it had already been run once during the same broadcast.

If you haven't seen our Super Bowl ad, or want to see it again, there's a link provided in the previous Blog entry "Pre-Super Bowl coverage" that will take you to it.
What happened to Go Daddy's second Super Bowl ad spot? - Hot Points

Talk about gaming the system.  Nice job David Phillips.

Cory Doctorow: The pool of unredeemed frequent-flier miles is the most voluminous currency in the world, worth more than the cash supply of dollars and pounds combined.

According to a new analysis by The Economist magazine, the global stock is worth more than $700bn (£370bn), more than all the US dollar bills in circulation, and streets ahead of Britain's £42bn of notes and coins...

A close look at the rules can expose unbeatable deals. A civil engineer from California, David Phillips, became known as the "pudding guy" after calculating that an offer of frequent flyer miles with food at his local supermarket yielded a remarkable return. He spent $3,000 on 12,000 Healthy Choice chocolate desserts and earned $25,000 worth of free flights, enough to pay for travel for the rest of his life.

And...to lighten things up a bit. There's this wacky piece from a little city in Mexico. I wonder how long before this reaches one of those red states?

CBS News | Mexican City Bans Indoor Nudity | December 22, 2004?18:00:19

I don't understand how this is possible. You can read the gruesome story of how the Russian military has massacared more civilians including hundreds of children in their "counterterrorism" efforts.

Naked and screaming children ran for safety amid machinegun fire and explosions while attack helicopters clattered overhead. The Tass and Interfax news agencies spoke of over 300 wounded, mostly children. Rebels fled with soldiers in pursuit.

Witnesses at the scene in Beslan, in the North Ossetia region near Chechnya, saw several bodies on stretchers.

Half or fully naked children gulped from bottles of water after two days without drink in a stiflingly hot and crowded school. Some lay on stretchers.

Up to 100 bodies were seen lying in the school gymnasium. Julian Manyon of ITV news said his cameraman got into the gym briefly and saw up to a hundred bodies.

Manyon said: "There were a large number of corpses lying on the smouldering floor."

He said it appeared explosive charges laid by the attackers had been detonated.

I wish this would have worked when I was a kid, because there where a few kids that I would have liked to see tossed out windows. I digres....Holy crap...what was this teacher thinking? I'm just imagining the scene where the teacher says this and then the two boys start to do it and she just stands around watching them do it.

I just don't get people. Am I missing something?

According to an incident report by resource officer Brian Chiappetta, the incident took place in the morning during second period. The students were in class when the teacher took a photograph of some of the students, the report said.

When the girl asked why the teacher had taken her picture, the teacher allegedly responded with a disparaging remark about the girl's appearance.

The girl became upset and began to use profanity and hit the office assist button on the classroom wall, the incident report said. The teacher then allegedly told two 14-year-old boys to pick up the girl and throw her out the window.

The two boys later told principal Kenneth Daniels that they threw the girl out the window because they did not want to be written up for disobeying a teacher.

Link

In what amounts to the implication of the internet in a Kentucky hate crime in which three 17 year old boys have been charged with arson, their lawyer claims...

But Michael D. Osborne, a Paintsville attorney who represents one of the juveniles, blamed the episode on unregulated Internet access, not hate or Satan.

"They're not devil worshipers or bad kids," Osborne said. "None of these children had been in any trouble."

All of the defendants are good students from good families, he said.

"There was no reason for this," he said. "One or both parents of each child is a Christian. The only common threat between them is that they spent lots of time on the Internet and had computer linkups between their computers."

What happened, Osborne said, is that "these juveniles will get on the Internet and it's almost like brainwashing them."

Osborne would not discuss what Internet content the four teens were reading. But he said of the dangers parents face in watching out for their children, unregulated access to the Internet is the most dangerous.

"They have to do something with the Internet. I mean, how can you take a kid and give him access to every evil in the world without any regulation," he said. "It's where they can go to learn how to make crystal meth, make pipe bombs -- they get into these chat rooms with God knows who ... and when you spend most of your free time exploring the taboo, things don't seem as bad."

I'm sorry...what?!?!?!?! Well, naturally the Internet is to blame because...
a) the boys didn't already have hate in their hearts for the people who attended the churches?
b) the parents of these boys shouldn't have been monitoring their children?s activities?
c) the boys weren't already looking to get into trouble and if it hadn't been fires that they learned about online, maybe it would have been painting swastikas on the churches...would they have needed the internet for that?
d) all of the above.

People like this lawyer, who believe that individuals need not take responsibility for their actions and further, look to place responsibility on others are the same ones who claim that people don't kill people, guns do. Ridiculous!!!

Link Source: Drudgereport

You have to check out this link from Engadget. Pete found it on Metafilter via Reuters. I just had to see it to believe it...and sure enough...

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again ? even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled ?ghostbusters? have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

Source: Engadget - www.engadget.com

Check out this somewhat overly critical yet very funny post on the new Pentax *ist D on a site that I found a few weeks ago called digitalslr.org. I really like this site because I'm a blossoming camera buff myself and Mike's always got some good info on the latest digital gear.

Kudos Mike.

Seriously...how can a company claim to be ?THE OFFICIAL DIGITAL CAMERA OF THE INTERNET?? when no one owns the Internet? Can someone even legally make such a stupid claim?
Even if it's legal, they should be fined for stupidty. But thats just my opinion which is why I love blogging ;)

Let me preface by saying that although I am Jewish, I'm not a proponent of one organized religion or another. Live and let live. In fact, I redefine the term "reformed Jew" to border on agnosticism, but since when did air travel come with the added benefit of completely inappropriate comments from the PILOT of all people on what religions are "crazy" and which ones aren't? If this guy wants to preach, let him do it on his own time...as it appears that he does. Turns out he just got back from a mission in Costa Rica...I digress...

A pilot asked passengers on an American Airlines flight to identify themselves as Christians, calling those who aren't "crazy," some of the passengers said Monday.

I'm all for freedom of speech but since when does American Airlines think that it's ok for their pilots to preach religion to their customers. This...

Airline spokesman Tim Kincaid said Sunday the pilot recently had returned from a mission trip to Costa Rica. If an investigation proves the allegations true, the incident "would be against our policy," the spokesman said.

Doesn't cut it. They need to do something about this immediately.

Source: CNN.com

Thieved used to steal everything *but* the kitchen sink. So what happened!?!? today.
Source: Yahoo! News

I got dibs on *69

The eccentric Calcutta-born yogi who popularized the form of yoga known as "Bikram" is being sued over his claims that he owns the copyright to a 26-posture series used in the practice, which is done in a heated room.

Source:Yahoo! News

According to the AP, a 7 year old was suspended on Monday for invoking images of Satan, fire and brimstone right in the middle of her Pittsburgh classroom by telling a little boy that he would be going to HELL. Geez...you'd think the walls started burning or something.

Guess we know who's not a Janet Jackson fan now don't we?

I swear I just love this stuff....read on.

a second-grader was suspended for a day for telling a classmate he would go to hell for saying, "I swear to God."

Brandy McKenith, 7, was suspended for swearing for saying the word "hell," but her family says she was referring to the biblical location of fire and brimstone.

Source: Yahoo! News - Girl Says 'Hell' in School, Suspended

I'm glad to see that while we were wandering around Washington, D.C. this weekend (more on that later) our government was hard at work dealing with the threat of terrorism and the spector of illegible of diplomatic documents...???

Source: US bans timed-honoured typeface.

I just have to say that I love the British with their ever so polite, RIGHT BACK YA...humor. Case and point, this piece from the Guardian.

Here's a quick excerpt to wet your palette.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer, I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers" might indicate that your decision to "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies" is at best a little ill-advised.

oh..and this little bit was quite a hoot also...

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries: 1. The reason we don't simply write "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system; 2. You can rest assured that "sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give" has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

Source: Guardian Unlimited Money | Tax | Funny money via ...Pickhits...

A bit odd and rather morbid, but yet intriguing application of a google search. On the other hand...I would hope they back check the facts because I'm sure there could be some libel in there somewhere.

Source: GoogObits: Obituaries and essays augmented by Google searches. There is a lot to learn from the dead.

Apparently some people can sleep through anything at all....

Augustus Agapinan, 29, says he woke up after falling asleep on the E train to find a steak knife sticking out of his chest.

The wound did not require surgery, but Agapinan says it may speed up his plans to move out of the city.

Source: MSNBC - Man Wakes Up On Subway With Steak Knife In Chest via Pick A Bar