Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Faux News - License to Lie?

Apparently the courts have ruled in favor of Faux News that freedom of speech protects the right of news media to lie. I guess it's time to try to make their name officially "Faux News."

Friday, June 26, 2009

Michael Jackson

I can't say I worshipped Michael Jackson's music or anything, but I did like a lot of his popular songs. The latter part of his life was plagued with scandals about his behavior in his personal life.

I really feel bad for the guy. He led a very difficult life. He did not have a normal childhood, and he developed numerous problems in his personal life. Most child celebrities turn out messed up in some way.

I believe that we should forgive him for anything he may have done wrong at this point. He's suffered enough. We should remember him for his legendary music.

The legendary "Billie Jean" performance that introduced the world to his "Moonwalk" and his single glove look.


The legendary "Thriller" video that brought us the oft parodied "Thriller dance."

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Tomoko Kawase

I stumbled across this pretty epic song by a Japanese singer named Tomoko Kawase. Apparently it was released under the name Tommy Heavenly6 - Lollipop Candy Bad Girl:

The video is pretty corny and wacky, but the music itself is worth it.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

This Sounds Familiar...

Every "nice guy" like me has heard this "I can't date you because it would ruin our friendship" crap from at least one girl we know. Sure, it's "The Onion," so it's meant to be funny, but it's also pretty true.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Give Women Guns!

I came across this awesome column entitled "Give Women Guns." Obviously, it's meant to be read with a bit of a sense of humor, but Randy "The Ethicist" Cohen brings up a bunch of interesting points. I've since then read a bunch of his other columns, and I really enjoyed them. He writes with a very nice balance of humor and actual points.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Broken Picture Telephone

Do you remember playing that game "telephone" as a kid where people relay a message to each other and along the way, the message mutates in funny ways? Well, some folks came up with a nice internet version called "Broken Picture Telephone" where one person writes an initial message, the next person draws it, then the next person tries to figure out the message, then the next person draws what he wrote, etc.

It's definitely worth a few laughs how some of the messages mutate. Sometimes people do a really good job of figuring out the message (like http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/view?id=52307) but usually the message goes on a completely weird tangent (like http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/view?id=61486).

I've been having some fun participating.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Government Spending

It's very hard to visualize quantities of money on the order of magnitude that our government spends it. Our brains have a hard time visualizing the difference between $50 billion and $500 billion.

Someone decided to make a nice image that puts the budget in relative scale so you can see how much we spend on different things.

As much as folks (especially Republicans) insist on cutting government spending to shrink government, I hope they notice that over 2/3 of our government spending is on military / national security. Yet, our military spending is increasing while we're running a ridiculously big deficit?

Eisenhower (a Republican, if you'll note) warned us of the military-industrial complex. I wish the Republican Party would look to guys like him for some advice.