| America's Doomed |
[15 Aug 2009|01:36pm] |
Half of the respondents to a recent poll conducted by real sociologists said that women who get married should be required by law to take on their husband's surname:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2009/08/12/2009-08-12_70_percent_of_americans_.html#ixzz0OD4vwBSt
When the respondents were asked why they felt women should change their name after the wedding, Hamilton says, “They told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family. This was a reason given by many.”
“They said the mailman would get confused and that society wouldn’t function as well if women did not change their name,” Hamilton says.
At last popular opinion has caught up to the truth that mailmen need the force of law to not be confused.
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| 80's Nostalgia: Pharmaceutical Murder Edition |
[14 Aug 2009|10:17pm] |
I've known about this for a while, but I just found a pretty good New York Times article that details how Bayer knowingly sold hemophilia medication that was contaminated with AIDS. That is, the people who make aspirin murdered hundreds of people. Oh sure, they didn't specifically test every batch of Factor VIII they made; they just separated the supplies that could have AIDS from the ones they knew didn't have AIDS and then sold those possibly contaminated drugs in countires where regulatory agencies were less likely to hold them accountable. Plus, AIDS testing was a new thing and everyone was used to not testing for AIDS, so it's almost not a big deal at all. The extra-awesome part is that they knew which supplies were safe because they had treated them with a sterilization process that kills HIV. Why didn't they just treat all the Factor VIII? It costs too much, you silly goose! Also, part of costing too much to be worth the trouble is applying for an import license. What a hassle! There's also some awesome FDA complicity, even though Bayer only dumped the contaminated drugs in Asia and South America because the FDA wouldn't let them sell it in the United States:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-drug-in-80-s-riskier-one-steered-overseas.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
Some highlights:
By continuing to sell the old version of the life-saving medicine, the records show, Cutter officials were trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of a product that was proving increasingly unmarketable in the United States and Europe.
Yet even after it began selling the new product, the company kept making the old medicine for several months more. A telex from Cutter to a distributor suggests one reason behind that decision, too: the company had several fixed-price contracts and believed that the old product would be cheaper to produce.
Whether Cutter was behaving ethically became an issue in internal company discussions. ''Can we in good faith continue to ship nonheat-treated coagulation products to Japan?'' a company task force asked in February 1985, fearing that some of its plasma donors might be H.I.V. positive. The decision, records show, was yes.
Taken together, the documents provide an inside view of Cutter's bottom-line strategizing and efforts to manage the flow of information amid growing public anxiety about the safety of its product.
When a Hong Kong distributor in late 1984 expressed an interest in the new product, the records show, Cutter asked the distributor to ''use up stocks'' of the old medicine before switching to its ''safer, better'' product. Several months later, as hemophiliacs in Hong Kong began testing positive for H.I.V., some local doctors questioned whether Cutter was dumping ''AIDS tainted'' medicine into less-developed countries.
Still, Cutter assured the distributor that the unheated product posed ''no severe hazard'' and was the ''same fine product we have supplied for years.''
By May 1985, as the AIDS scare reached hemophiliacs in Hong Kong, Cutter's distributor there placed an urgent call to Cutter headquarters, records show. Sounding distraught, he told of an impending medical emergency. Hemophiliacs were frightened. Children were being infected with H.I.V. Parents were hysterical. Couldn't the company send the new, safer product?
Cutter replied that most of the new medicine was going to the United States and Europe, and that there was not enough left for Hong Kong, though a small amount was available for the ''most vocal patients.''
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| Just a reminder |
[16 Jul 2009|07:25pm] |
If you don't read the daily Spider-Man comic strip, you're missing this:
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| Youtube Saturday: Michelle Bachman Edition |
[27 Jun 2009|07:05pm] |
My favorite insane member of the US House of Representatives is undoubtedly Minnesota's Michelle Bachman. You may have heard of her for suggesting that the House of Representatives establish a committee to investigate its membership for un-American activities--unironically--but that's just the tip of the black helicopter sundae. She's can take literally any news item and turn it into evidence for the same conspiracy theory:
AmeriCorps will set up reeducation camps that will turn your kids into Hitler Youth!
CO2 Is a natural product of nature! Reduction of CO2 is a conspiracy!
Public transportation is a conspiracy to make all Americans live in urban tenaments!
Census? More like prelude to interment camps for all Americans! They'll never get my telephone number!
Too crazy for Glenn Beck!
We've all seen this one anyway
I'm sorry for posting all of that at once, but the consistency of her delusion is the best part. Everything in the world is just more proof that the government wants to take away your freedom, brainwash you, and throw you into a prison camp/urban tenement (the same thing, really). Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that political discourse in American would become so debased that a lunatic believer in the New World Order could be elected to national office. At least the collapse of our society will be amusing, as Truther battles Ron Paul Revolutionary and the calls to see Obama's birth certificate are drowned out by Xenu's final approach.
I think I might post about conspiracy theories next.
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| Here's a fun story that no one will read |
[19 Jun 2009|12:06am] |
Today the United States Supreme Court ruled that people who have been convicted of a crime cannot access stored DNA evidence that could be tested and exonerate them.
To repeat, a 5-4 decision of our highest court has denied innocent people who have been wrongly convicted the ability to prove their innocence because, in the words of John Roberts, "To suddenly constitutionalize this area would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response."
I don't really know what that legislative response part means, exactly, other than that it makes people uncomfortable that the innocent are sometimes convicted.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/18/supremecourt/main5095537.shtml
The Supreme Court said Thursday that convicts have no constitutional right to test DNA evidence in hopes of proving their innocence long after they were found guilty of a crime.
The decision may have limited impact because the federal government and 47 states already have laws that allow convicts some access to genetic evidence. Testing has led to the exoneration of at least 232 people who had been found guilty of murder, rape and other violent crimes.
The court ruled 5-4, with its conservative justices in the majority, against an Alaska man who was convicted in a brutal attack on a prostitute 16 years ago.
"It's hard to know whether this ruling is going to speed up the national trend toward more DNA testing," writes CBS News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "Even many prosecutors are pushing for it, or at least allowing it, in certain cases where it would be relevant. In the meantime, 13 innocent defendants have been exonerated this year alone."
William Osborne won a federal appeals court ruling granting him access to a blue condom that was used during the attack. Osborne argued that testing its contents would firmly establish his innocence or guilt.
Separately, in parole proceedings, Osborne has admitted his guilt in a bid for release from prison.
The high court reversed the appellate ruling. States already are dealing with the challenges and opportunities presented by advances in genetic testing, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.
"To suddenly constitutionalize this area would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response," Roberts said.
But Justice John Paul Stevens said in dissent that a simple test would settle the matter. "The court today blesses the state's arbitrary denial of the evidence Osborne seeks," Stevens said
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| My Country Did This |
[09 Jun 2009|01:07pm] |
Here's an opinion piece from Salon.com that's not at all funny but pretty important for a few reasons:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/08/boumediene/index.html
Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.
In mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a case bearing his name -- ruled that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional because it denied Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus (i.e., to have the validity of the accusations against them reviewed by a court). When, pursuant to that decision, Boumediene finally had a U.S. court review the accusations against him in November, 2008, a federal judge -- the far right, Bush-43-appointed Richard Leon -- ruled there was no credible evidence to justify his detention (as well as the detention of four other Algerian-Bosnian detainees) and ordered them all released immediately. In other words, Boumediene spent almost 8 years in a Guantanamo cage, being brutally tortured, despite there being no evidence (as Bosnian courts had already found) that he had done anything wrong at all. I wrote about Boumediene's story in detail here.
Eight months after Judge Leon ordered him freed, Boumediene -- in May, 2009 -- was finally released from Guantanamo and went to France, which agreed to accept him because he has relatives there. At the time he was shipped to Guantanamo in 2002, he had two very young daughters. They are now 13 and 9 years old, and he obviously doesn't know them.
ABC News' Jake Tapper, as part of his traveling with President Obama this week, was in Paris and commendably took the opportunity to interview Boumediene about his ordeal, including the torture to which he was subjected at Guantanamo. Tapper has written a detailed account here. Here is the less detailed though still substantial video segment that appeared this morning on Good Morning America and presumably will appear on other ABC News shows, including World News Tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6vcsTyfqg
It would be nice if my country was willing to prosecute the American citizens who perpetrated these crimes, and it would also be nice if our president followed his campaign promises and not endorse expansions of policies he said he would discontinue.
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| Newspaper Comics Saturday |
[07 Feb 2009|05:09pm] |
The funniest comics in the newspaper these days are the dramatic ones. I defy you to read a random sampling of the soap opera strips and not want to read them tomorrow:
Did that guy just shoot a deer through the head? It seems newspapers are trying stay alive by importing a little of the old sex and violence that's all the rage on tv these days. I bet that makes Gary Larson extra angry about that time his editors wouldn't let him use the word "butt."
Speaking of sex and violence, my response to Mary Worth's upcoming expression of erotic feeling is identical to my reaction to seeing a deer get shot. I actually screamed a little louder, now that I think about it. Also, note that her skating partner is apparently a DC comics villain from the 60's. I'd bet even money that he's called "The Harlequin" and his first appearance was an issue of the Atom entitled "Die, Pagliaicci!." Yes, I read Mary Worth, and it's more entertaining than Garfield. I'm not ashamed.
This last one is a spider-man comic by Stan Lee, if you can believe that. The current story is that Electro tried to rob an armored car but forgot to close the back of it, so the money fell out when he drove away. Spider-man tried to fight him, but got knocked out by the flow from a fire hydrant that Electro opened. Spider-Man's big crisis right now is that a pigeon knocked his camera off a ledge and ruined the photos of Electro beating him up. Electro's sad because he can't pay the bills now and the stress of being a single-father costumed supervillain is getting to him, plus he has a cd player on his crotch. Spider-Man is great because it's simultaneously an insane fever dream and the most mundane thing I can imagine, like Mary Worth where they dress up in their underwear and fight each other.
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| The Private War of Beetle Bailey |
[25 Oct 2008|12:38am] |
I've long given up on expecting newspaper comics to make me laugh, but I don't really expect them to make me cry, either:
Although I can't really think of a more exquisite hell than eternal life on the comics page, condemned to repeat bland, nonspecific jokes until the last newspaper subscriber dies of old age. Cheer up, Beetle. It can't be too much longer now.
I'm sorry this post is so bleak. I don't know what happened.
To change the mood: what's the least funny comic strip in the paper these days? It doesn't have to be from your local paper; just give an example of the worst newspaper comic you've ever seen. I'm working on a post with all of mine, since there are too many to name here. I'll just say that strangely enough, Mary Worth isn't as bad as you'd think, while Spider-Man is far, far worse.
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| The Olympics |
[13 Aug 2008|09:30pm] |
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So I'm watching Norway play volleyball, and it looks like whenever they score they play a snippet of a Peter, Bjorn, and John song. What's up with that?
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| Leaked Dark Knight Footage! |
[15 Feb 2008|09:43pm] |
The first 20 minutes of the new Batman movie is on youtube. At least, it seems like it's trying to be a sequel to Batman Begins. I do have some suspicions about its authenticity, though:
I know I shouldn't make fun of something somebody obviously worked very hard to make, but you can't get an A for effort. Highlights include:
-A cameo appearance from Mike D of the Beastie Boys as Commissioner Gordon
-The most awesome Two Face origin story ever
-Strong Bad cameo as the voice of Batman
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| Ethan Haas was right: it's a lion, and it's huge! |
[19 Jan 2008|03:39am] |
I saw Cloverfield today, and it was good. I'll review behind the cut--spoiler-free this time-- even though I can't find many relevant pictures to caption. In brief, the movie completely delivers for what it is; and what it is is a mopey relationship drama that gets attacked by monsters. It's great because the characters don't belong in the movie they're in and keep behaving like they're in some Noah Baumbach movie despite all the missiles and sci-fi nonsense. And actually, it might secretly be a really good relationship movie because of that. Also, the credits feature the best Michael Giacchino music I've ever heard; it's way better than the usual sad violins and surprised horns (and surprised violins and sad horns, to be fair) he does for Lost. So, check it out.
(
Plus, I understand that the only way to learn why they started the DHARMA Initiative and what the Numbers mean is to watch this movie. )
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| Good News, Everyone! |
[28 Nov 2007|10:31am] |
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The first direct-to-video Futurama movie is out and is amazing. The pacing is a little weird and I don't think all the jokes are quite up to what the series provided, but that's because a fair amount of the movie is a big celebration at the fact that they got to make a movie. There's a cameo from just about every character aside from (I think) whale biologist and Mom's three sons. Barbados Slim has a significant role, as does Al Gore. You won't be disappointed.
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| I Just Saw Beowulf |
[16 Nov 2007|05:34pm] |
And I don't feel up to doing a stupid review with ironic pictures and all that tonight. In fact, I don't really have any amusing phony complaints anyway, so I'll just say that it's good and that you should go see it. It's in 3-D and requires those Captain EO polarized light 3-D glasses to watch, which I didn't know until I got to the theater. I don't know if every showing is doing this, or just some theaters. There are a lot of moments that feature pretty gratuitously showy, Count Floyd-style 3-D effects, though, so it's probably 3-D wherever you go. At first they kind of turned me off, along with everything being CG and slightly cartoony, but then I realized that both of those things were thematically relevant and actually serve the story. Epics are outragously cartoony and unbelievable to modern audiences, so it kind of fits the movie. Then in the second half things change and the movie becomes all about loss and redemption and mortality and the end of the pagan era and I realized that the movie was actually pretty smart. I think it's also all about the power of storytelling, which is the only kind of story Neil Gaiman is able to write anyway. Two people in the theater had an argument while that part of the movie was playing, so I can't be entirely sure. I am sure that Crispin Glover is the world's most perfect Grendel, though, and that it's clearly the most perfect role he's ever had.
Also, there are no ads before the movie at all. Just trailers for other movies, one of which is also in 3-D. There aren't any car commercials or Army ads where a guy fights a dragon or any other kind of noxious garbage that normally gets run before the movie starts. I asked one the theater employees whether that was something the theater decided to do, and she said that the studio distributed the movie without ads. So, if you go see Beowulf, there will be no ads. That easily made it the best moviegoing experience I've had in a while.
And for any students of Anglo-Saxon literature out there, be warned that the movie isn't perfectly faithful to the poem, in that it finds ways of linking the first and second half of the story to give it some thematic depth. So, it's kind of an original story that uses the events of the poem Beowulf in order to say something new, if that makes any sense. It's not like the just switched things around to get more action sequences or car chases or something. It's different, but I liked it. I say check it out.
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| I Saw Razor last Night |
[13 Nov 2007|08:42pm] |
So, because I'm biggest nerd of nerd town, I went to a preview showing of the new Battlestar Galactica movie that's airing next Saturday (or maybe the Saturday after that) at a local movie theater. As per usual, my spoilery review lurks on the other side of the cut, but I'll sandwich the real spoilers between pictures of Edward James Olmos riding the Galactica like Slim Pickins rode the atomic bomb in Dr. Strangelove, so you'll be pretty safe. Overall, I liked it pretty well. There are some kind-of tv cliche moments to get through, but it's a pretty solid story. More follows behind the cut.
( It's the Only Battlestar Galactica we get until April, It had damn well better be good )
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| Awesome |
[29 Oct 2007|09:00pm] |
Is fake young Edward James Olmos as awesome as regular Edward James Olmos?
Emphatically yes, although I hope they redo this scene with regular Edward James Olmos in the new season. Actually, I hope that every episode is only permutations of this scene.
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| The End of Saturday Morning |
[09 Oct 2007|11:14pm] |
Well, it looks like there won't be cartoons on Saturday mornings any more:
http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=19175
I can't say that I've enjoyed watching cartoons on Saturday mornings for quite some time, but this makes me damn sad all the same. I understand that we live in a strange, terrifying world of tomorrow where all kids have cable and strange internet things that feed them infantile garbage 24/7, so there's no need for actual entertainment that can entertain children and adults at once that could appear on network television, but it makes me feel old all the same. So very old.
My question to you: what was the last time you can remember really enjoying watching cartoons on Saturday morning? wikipedia has a programming archive that stretches back forty years
I think mine was 1997. You can't beat, the Tick, Earthworm Jim, Superman, and Freakazoid. In fact, I wish I were watching all those cartoons right now.
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| I hope Peter's dad is inside, and that he's also the original Sawyer |
[01 Oct 2007|11:22pm] |
You know, I do love Heroes, but I'm sick of their terrible promos:
Save the box, save the world.
Are you in the box?
Although I'm fairly certain that there's an all-new Nissan Versa inside the box. After all, they're so affordable and efficient that Bennett bought one for everyone on the show.
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| Superman is a Dick |
[21 Sep 2007|07:20pm] |
I just watched the new direct-to-video animated Superman movie, because I am an adult who likes cartoons, I guess. It's really not that bad, and makes a good story out of pretty terrible source material. It looks pretty similar to the Superman cartoon from last decade, except for some pretty needless tinkering with the models that makes Superman look like Dick Tracy and Lex Luthor look like some kind of disco hipster-themed villain who hasn't been eating regularly or has tuberculosis or something. The voice acting isn't as perfect as the Bruce Timm Superman cartoon, but I'm willing to excuse it because Adam Baldwin plays Superman, which is pretty awesome. Anyway, a spoilerly stream-of-consciousness review with out-of-context photos lurks below the cut. Do you dare to learn the terrible truth?
( It's better than Superman Returns )
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