Sunday, February 28, 2010

Toronto celebrates




For a gold in hockey.

Friday, February 26, 2010

John Lennon should rise up and smite Citroën



Another reason to hate marketers...and Yoko

Lasers lift dirt of ages from artworks

Physicists have applied the same laser techniques commonly used for tattoo removal to clean several famous works of art, including wall paintings.

Laser cleaning is well established for stone and metal artefacts already.

It has now been successfully applied to the wall paintings of the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Cappella del Manto in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, Italy.

The results are described in the journal of the American Chemical Society.


Read more here.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой



Оригинальный клип. Исполняет Эдуард Хиль.

This is your life transforming experience of the day

Men with tiny dicks everywhere lament: Hummer brand shutting down

It has achieved notoriety as the mother of all petrol-guzzlers, first developed for the US military, then taken up by celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger before he renounced it on environmental grounds. But the Hummer has run out of road.

General Motors, the struggling car company, announced that it will wind down production of its Hummer SUV line after a deal to sell the brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery fell through.


Read more here.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Scummy Bible thumbing "Miss Beverly Hills" exposed as fraud

Guess she thought the whole "Thou shalt not bare false witness" thing didn't apply to her.

Lauren Ashley, a Miss California USA contestant and outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, claims Beverly Hills as the city she represents. Beverly Hills lays no claim to her whatsoever.

Quite the opposite. In a statement Wednesday, the city said it was shocked by Ashley's description of herself as "Miss Beverly Hills." The city "does not sponsor a beauty pageant and has no association with Miss California USA," the statement said. "As such, there should be no individual claiming the title of Miss Beverly Hills."

The city's statement said Ashley lives in Pasadena and "does not represent Beverly Hills in any capacity."

Ashley, 23, has been quoted extensively as saying same-sex marriage goes against God. She recently told news organizations that "in Leviticus it says, 'If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.' The Bible is pretty black and white."


Read more here.

Prudish Apple shovels bullshit

Bullshit statement of the week: “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,”

Apple last week began banning iPhone apps containing “overtly sexual content.” But on Monday the company said it intends to leave apps from major publishers, such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated, untouched.


Read more here.

Hero: David Benke

Deer Creek Middle School math teacher David Benke was doing parking lot duty as school was letting out when he heard what he thought were firecrackers.

It was the sound of gunfire.

Benke, a 57-year-old teacher who has been at the school for a decade and whom students call "Dr. Benke," walked toward the sound and saw a man stooped over a rifle filling the chamber with another round.

"Unfortunately, I wasn't able to grab him before he got a second shot off," Benke said from his home in Littleton. "I grabbed him, and I think he dropped the gun. Basically we danced around."


Read more here.

Abbey Road studios given listed building status

London's Abbey Road studios, where The Beatles recorded many albums, has been made a listed building, protecting it from plans to radically alter it...

...It means any future owners must be careful to make sure the character of the property is treated with respect, but it does not prohibit internal changes.


Read more here.

The writing on the cave wall

Until now, the accepted view has been that our ancestors underwent a "creative explosion" around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they suddenly began to think abstractly and create rock art. This idea is supported by the plethora of stunning cave paintings, like those at Chauvet, which started to proliferate across Europe around this time. Writing, on the other hand, appeared to come much later, with the earliest records of a pictographic writing system dating back to just 5000 years ago.

Read more here.

Details Magazine: Attack of the Clones

Details has an article highlighting the "Next Generation of Hollywood's Leading Men"

You will never seen a more lily white collection. Bet you can't tell them apart...

Read more here.

Dumb Christians: Virginia

Monday, February 22, 2010

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 2

Saturday, February 20, 2010

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 1

U.S. Justice Department ok with torture

On Friday, the Justice Department released a long-awaited watchdog report on the Bush administration legal team that authorized the now-infamous torture memos. And in a move destined to anger critics of the past administration's conduct, the career official in charge of the investigation overruled a previous finding of misconduct -- exonerating the lawyers under examination.

Read more here.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Ryan Sorba: So vile even Republicans boo him

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Green Screen

Morally Bankrupt Americans: Mark Theissen



So torture is ok with Catholic doctorine now. These people really want to drag us back, don't they.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Cabiria



While researching silent film for a project I'm working on, I came across the Italian classic, 1914's Cabiria. I am embarrassed to admit I'd not heard of it let alone seen it.

Most of it is up on Youtube, and it worth the watch, if only because this film invented the tracking shot (a sample of which can be seen beginning at about 1:40), and for a sequence that makes "Temple of Doom" look like a picnic (beginning at about 20:15).

Bronze Age shipwreck found off Devon coast

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank.

Experts say the "incredibly exciting" discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain's links with Europe in the Bronze Age as well as the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900BC, as being a "bulk carrier" of its age.


Read more here.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Australia the Net Nanny State under attack

An activist group that temporarily blocked access to key Australian government websites plans to continue its cyber attacks, the BBC has learned.

The group, known as Anonymous, was protesting against the Australian government's proposals to apply filters to the internet in the country...

...Anonymous is protesting against Australia's plan to apply a country-wide filter to block certain content in 2011.

The Australian government has said that trials have shown the filtering technology to be 100% effective in preventing access to designated sites.

The banned sites would be selected by an independent classifications body guided by public complaints, Senator Conroy has said.

He said the aim of the filter is to make the internet a safer place for Australian children.


For "children" here read "citizens"...

Friday, February 12, 2010

The Robin Hood Tax

Should We Clone Neanderthals?

Why not, we elect them.

If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Connecticut. Over the past 4 years those beads have been gathering tiny fragments of DNA from samples of dissolved organic materials, including pieces of Neanderthal bone. Genetic sequences have given paleoanthropologists a new line of evidence for testing ideas about the biology of our closest extinct relative.

Read more here.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Culturally blind advertisers: Diesel

Just when you though advertisers and marketers couldn't get any lower, Diesel comes along and pushes the bar way way down.

we're ssssoooo edgy

Of course, there are those out there (way out there) who will appreciate this:

if you look at the visuals, many of the set-ups aren’t stupid in the literal sense, they’re actually quite inventive and, yes, even inspiring

One dreads what said commenter will be inspired to try...

If anything, Diesel is living up to their new slogan: Be Stupid.

Oh and btw, I'm am not so stupid to know that even writing about this trash falls into the marketers plan: any publicity is good publicity, and for this I am deeply sorry.

Read more here.

The Munsters in colour



From the pilot.

Phoebe?

Lady Gaga falls face first into sugar bowl

wtf

Gee, hope she's ok.

Who the fuck is John Mayer anyway?

*Visits the iTunes Store*....John Mayer, John Mayer, seems to produce bland middle of the road pseudo rock. And he's famous because....?

The Cult of Celebrity lets these nobodies spout. If you met someone like this in real life, you'd run screaming from the room.

Singer John Mayer has apologised for his remarks in a magazine interview in which he called former girlfriend Jessica Simpson "sexual napalm".

Speaking to Playboy magazine Mayer, 32, also attracted widespread criticism for his use of an offensive racial term.

"I should have never said the word and I will never say it again, said Mayer, writing on micro-blogging site Twitter.

"It's time to stop trying to be so raw in interviews... I wanted to be a blues guitar player... not a shock jock.


Yes, Twitter, where the mental giants distil their wisdom.

Read more here.

Jocks are sooo gay

Our long national nightmare is over.

By “nightmare,” I mean the drumroll of breathless speculation, ESPN stat porn, and news-anchor joshing about who’s going to be whose daddy that culminates in that Great Event in the History of Our Times, the Super Bowl. By “our,” I mean those millions of Americans who would rather undergo a trans-orbital leucotomy with an icepick than the protracted brain death of pre-game hype, when our cultural conversation is pre-empted by a live feed from the jock unconscious of Team America.


Read more here.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Giggling girls expose full body-scan lies

As I suspected earlier, the PR behind full body-scan privacy is a lie.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan isn't intimidated by the full body-scan machines that have been recently installed at London's airports - in fact, he's been signing off printouts of his X-rays...

...I saw these girls - they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said 'give them to me' - and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.'


Read more here.

Prince Charles: Idiot of the Day

I thank the Enlightenment for being able to laugh at this bubblehead without being sent to the Tower.

The Prince of Wales has never been a man to suffer from a lack of enemies, from modern architecture to intensive farming. Yesterday, however, he declared war on a new — but also ancient — adversary: the Enlightenment.

Even by the Prince’s standards, his opposition to the system of beliefs that came to dominate thinking in the 18th century and has held sway ever since is an ambitious one, if a little tardy.

Long regarded as the foundation of contemporary political and intellectual culture, by way of influences ranging from the American Declaration of Independence to the scientific method as embraced from Isaac Newton on, the Enlightenment was based on the belief that all society’s ills could be vanquished by the application of reason.

Its seminal figures included the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau. To Prince Charles, however, it is old hat. “I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment,” he told a conference at St James’s Palace. “I felt proud of that.”


Read more here.

Adam Giambrone: Youtube to you idiot in 2 weeks

...Simply, Giambrone is a fraud.

He was not "fully frank and transparent" as his chief spin doctor and campaign manager John Laschinger says. Not until late Tuesday when all cover was blown off his web of deception.

And he's not sorry, people, no way. If he were sorry – sorry for embarrassing that wonderful-looking McQuarrie – he'd drop out of the mayor's race immediately. Instead, it's "full steam ahead," Laschinger says. Politics trumps personal integrity. Again.


Read more here.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Comcast get pretentious new name: Xfinity

I used to work for a place that "rebranded" themselves "Persônus", (for which a company wide contest was held. Guess who won, the CEO did, that's who. Person & Us...the accent was included), so I have experience with the awfulness of corporate attempts at cool...

The Comcast cable guy and his truck are getting a new look.

The Philadelphia cable giant last week said it would rebrand its TV, Internet and telephone services as Xfinity on Friday to signal to customers that this isn't the same old company.

Comcast will remain as the corporate name, but the company will emphasize Xfinity in advertisements and on 24,000 service trucks and thousands of employee uniforms.


Read more here.

Sir Patrick Stewart is no twit

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Canadians, time to laugh at our American neighbours. It's just snow people

Scummy Corporations: NBC tries to make Conan a nonperson

Remember the whole Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno imbroglio from last month? Perhaps NBC wishes you didn’t. The GE (GE) unit has removed every episode of the show’s seven-month run from its NBC.com site, as well as Hulu, the site NBC owns with News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC.

Read more here.

"No one in his right mind should wish Microsoft failure"

Then I'm bat shit crazy.

Guess women's opinions on Microsoft future don't count...

As they marvel at Apple’s new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon’s popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future

Maybe because it's easier now to spot when Microsoft steals from others and calls it their own...

Read more here, though be prepared for more than a little sour grapes.

Stonehedge

The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge.

Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle.


Read more here.

Michael Steele: Idiot of the Day

Steele panned President Barack Obama's long-stated plan to let income tax rates return to higher levels for families making more than $250,000 a year.

"Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money," Steele said.


Oh boohoohoo, you poor thing.

Read more here.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Second Life Digital Suicide?

Group message from within Second Life...

2day a well known x tribe boy and jungleboy DARRENJAMES has faked his own death to watch his friends and SL family suffer and to watch his own funeral. he posted in group his death details typed by his wife. Its a real shame that the only hospital in his RL area and police department have 0 records of any deaths today or road accidents, furthermore his wife login onto Second life to report his death hours later. My offical comment ; invite my [sic] to your RL funeral and i will piss on your grave u selfish tick

Update;

DarrenJames Whitfield: What a NUTJOB. My husband died. Too bad this lunatic doesn't know that hopitals and police DO NOT release details of death to anyone but family. Really mature to not show respect to someone who has passed.

[21:42] jenner Mistwalker: Taylor some advice ???
[21:42] jenner Mistwalker: Youre known for your good tolerance ?
[21:42] Garrett Ceriano: tolerance only goes so far jenner
[21:42] Garrett Ceriano: :)
[21:42] Taylor2 Spyker: well while darren is back creating more drama
[21:42] Taylor2 Spyker: sure
[21:43] Taylor2 Spyker: im trying but this fuck keeps posting in group
[21:43] jenner Mistwalker: Let this shit walk away from you dude
[21:43] Taylor2 Spyker: its anonying and it pisses me off that he can do this to his friends
[21:43] jenner Mistwalker: ban him
[21:43] Taylor2 Spyker: i have he keeps rejoining group
[21:43] Garrett Ceriano: can you permaban someone from and open group?
[21:43] Garrett Ceriano: nope
[21:43] Taylor2 Spyker: no
[21:43] jenner Mistwalker: what a cracking bore


Such is Second Life...

Thursday, February 04, 2010

US teenagers find typing whole paragraphs exhausting

A US study has indicated that younger internet users are losing interest in blogging and switching to shorter and more mobile forms of communication.

The number of 12 to 17-year-olds in the US who blog has halved to 14% since 2006, according to a survey for the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

It suggests they prefer making short postings on social networking sites, and going online on mobile phones.


Read more here.

Australia the Net Nanny State does something right

In the first case of its kind, an Australian court has ruled that an internet service provider cannot be responsible for illegal downloading.

Read more here.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Pope Ben turns up the nasty

What would churches do if they didn't have some group to demonize?

The Pope has faced a backlash after urging Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal".

Pope Benedict XVI said the bill - which could end the right of the Church to ban gay people from senior positions - "violates natural law".

But gay and human rights campaigners condemned his comments, and Labour MEP Stephen Hughes said he was "appalled".
Gordon Brown said he respected the Pope but commenting would be inappropriate...

...the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.


Translation: we reserve the right to continue acting like total pricks.

Read more here.

Bloor 1 take 2

Tocondo's condo sheep are all agog with news that the Bloor 1 project may be a go...again.

A curvy 65-storey condominium could be coming to 1 Bloor East, site of a much-hyped hotel-condo project that fell apart when a Kazakhstan-based developer lost financing.

The new plan envisions a tower with 687 units atop a two-storey, 104,000-square-foot retail podium, according to a site plan application submitted to the city's planning department Friday. It also includes four floors of amenities for residents – possibly including a spa – on top of the stores.

The luxury hotel envisioned by the site's former owner, Bazis International Inc., is no longer part of the plan.


Read more here.

DNA Testing on 2,000-Year-Old Bones in Italy Reveal East Asian Ancestry

Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery made a surprising discovery when they extracted ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the skeletons buried at the site: the 2,000-year-old bones revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry.

Read more here.

Now you too can smell like the Jersey Shore

smells like arrogance

Mike Sorrentino has a sweet smelling new “Situation.”

The “Jersey Shore” star will be launching his own fragrance, he confirmed to Access Hollywood on the Grammy Awards red carpet, where he’s serving as Access’ guest correspondent.

The cologne will be called “Sitch.”

“The name is just, it’s pretty cool. Who wouldn’t buy a cologne called Sitch by Situation?” The Situation told Access. “It’s in the beginnings right now, but it should be coming out hopefully in the next couple months.”


Read more here.

China pulls the same crap they tried in Canada

Any meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama would harm bilateral relations, China warned Tuesday while repeating Beijing's refusal to discuss Tibet's status with the spiritual leader's envoys.

An Obama meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader would "seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations," said Zhu Weiqun, the executive deputy head of the Communist Party's United Front Work Department who was in charge recent talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives.


Read more here.

Australia the Net Nanny State lets one slip thru the cracks



Watch after 1:05, the monitor in the background on the left...

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Dumb Christians: Xtreme Ministries

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Holy Water...

In the back room of a theater on Beale Street, John Renken, 42, a pastor, recently led a group of young men in prayer.

“Father, we thank you for tonight,” he said. “We pray that we will be a representation of you.”

An hour later, a member of his flock who had bowed his head was now unleashing a torrent of blows on an opponent, and Mr. Renken was offering guidance that was not exactly prayerful.

“Hard punches!” he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!”


Read more here.

Spartacus Blood and Sand, Nipples and Dicks

42

The soft core trashing of history continues on Spartacus Blood and Sand...

I am embarrassed for John Hannah and Lucy Lawless.

Montreal's CHOM FM's hideous new logo

The Spirit is Dead

"A logo that represents the strength of the CHOM 977 brand. It is strong. It is bold. It is rock".

It is Awful.

Read more here.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Dangerous Christians: Bryan Fischer

A little cherry picked Bible inspired intolerance to make your Monday complete.

American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer has called for sending homosexuals to prison for forced reparative therapy, a move he says is sanctioned by the Bible. Below, he responds to an email from a complaining listener.

Thank God there's no gay sex in prison....

Read more here.

Why voters can be really really stupid

Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why there is often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.

Read more here.