In an encouraging sign that science may yet survive vigorous efforts to replace it with “common sense,” Dan Brown novels and radio call-in shows, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the End of the World, should it occur, will likely be initiated by something other than CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
The Court rejected an appeal in the case of a woman who was seeking to halt operation of the LHC in order to avert the Earth’s destruction, possibly as a result of the accidental creation of a localized Black Hole, or some other damn thing that only happens in cartoons and Star Trek movies.
Yowsa, I didn’t have high hopes for Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller but even I didn’t expect it to be the pile of dated, uninspired mush that was unveiled this morning. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, so I don’t have time for a substantial critique of the content, but there are some immediately glaring issues with it that require little comment, so here goes…
First of all, the design of the site is absolutely dreadful. It’s so very awful that it actually made me mad when I first saw it. That dreadful. Did Tucker get a niece or nephew to come up with the design? I was going to write “wake up and smell the decade,” but I didn’t want people to think I meant the 00’s because I’m referring to the nineties. The drop-shadowed logos and icons, the beveled red header and navigation backgrounds, the gray-gradient news scroll at the top that looks like it was torn off of an old GeoCities page ... The Daily Caller is without a doubt one of the biggest design disasters in the history of “pro” web sites.
And their two current top featured pieces gives you a very clear indication of how groundbreaking and fresh The Daily Caller plans to be when it comes to content:
Breitbart and Huffington? Really? That’s what you roll out of the starting gate with? Why not just make your tagline “More of the Same Old Shit”? Can Roger L. Magoo be far behind?
Finally, getting back to the graphics, seriously, $3 million dollars and this is the best header graphic they could come up with for Jim Treacher’s new whatever-the-fuck-it-is?
Who designed/illustrated that header, No Quarter’s dismally untalented in-house illustrator Pat Racimora or did they hold a competition at local DC-area elementary schools (“Win school supplies for a year courtesy of Foster Friess!!!”)? What an embarrassment.
That’s all I’ve got for them moment. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.
Every now and then we get weird traffic surges via search engines here at Rumproast. One I see every now and then is image searches for—surprise!—Giada De Laurentiis. Today, though, wooooooaaaaaah, we’re getting slammed because of image searches for “puppy” via Bing (screen cap below). And this is what searchers are getting: Lipstick Puppy.
Co-bloggers, take the rest of the day off. Lipstick Puppy is running this joint now. It cannot be defeated. Bow down to the awesome power of Lipstick Puppy.
I don’t buy cool electronics anymore, so I’m guessing at the price. But this is definitely a game-changing piece of hardware, assuming it’s not all proprietary apps.
Looks like Microsoft may be trying to position Bing as the Conservapedia of search engines. Heard this on NPR’s Marketplace tonight:
Kai Ryssdal: If you have used the new search engine from Microsoft, Bing, you know it has something that Google doesn’t have: really pretty pictures on its home page. But Bing may soon have something else that Google doesn’t. Something a good deal more valuable, too—The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other content that’s owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
There are reports today that Microsoft’s trying to do a deal with News Corp. Nothing merger or acquisition-like. But quite possibly bigger. Microsoft would pay News Corp to keep its content on Bing and off Google.
Next up for Microsoft will be exclusive deals with WorldNetDaily, Pajamas Media, TownHall.com, RedState, and National Review Online. If the Mac folks are smart, they’ll replace John Hodgman with Jonah Goldberg or Erick Erickson in their next round of commercials.
I’m currently suffering from a debilitating migraine; I’ve been keeping the blinds drawn, rotating icepacks, and gobbling Excedrin for two days straight.
Swear to God, reading this is the only thing that’s helped so far.
Make sure you scroll down to see Elyse relitigate the primaries at 8:18 pm.
“It’s the triple-breasted Hindu goddess Meenashki!”
“It’s Steely Dan III from Yokohama!”
“No, it’s ZILF! Throw down your guns! Allah has deserted us! Aiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”
America’s end-game strategy for Afghanistan may be up in the air, but—fortunately—so is the Advanced Extreme Cultural Insensitivity weapons technology that will enable the US to needlessly prolong, if not outright win, this decade-long conflict.
Informally dubbed ZILF (Zeppelin Intended for Longish Flights) by military planners, this “Naked Maja of the Skies” has been officially designated the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV).
Currently in final development by the US Army’s Space and Missile Defense command, the 250-foot-long, creepily-erotic hovering blasphemy will have the capability to vamp lasciviously at altitudes up to 20,000 feet for as much as three weeks at a stretch.
ZILF is scheduled for initial deployment in 2011. Based on the smaller and less satisfying Lockheed P-791 (video, below), ZILF promises a “longer, stronger” aerial lurking experience coupled with a repellent “ham-like” radar profile and a more ample, sculpted and impressively buoyant lifting body that, according to designers, “will evoke distracting impure thoughts even in highly Westernized minds, and of either sex.”
On routine tactical missions (e.g., disrupting daily prayer calls), ZILF will fly in languid, hypnotic arcs over the horizon-line opposite from Mecca. In “hot-war” zones, a flesh-colored “Aggressive Suggestion” version will posture lordotically at lower altitudes, while blaring ‘80s-era military trade-show music tracks incorporating subliminal readings from Fanny Hill in Arabic, Pashtun and Farsi. .
“There is something deeply depraved and repellent about obsessive fanboy one-upsmanship”
~words of the ne’er-truer variety spoken by StrangeAppar8us in comments to this post, apparently unaware that I’m founder of, and senior partner at, the offices of Deeply, Depraved, and Repellant
Welcome to round 2 of my (I guess) ongoing (sure why not) one-sided dorkfight with Mr. Durrr Hey Guys Maybe Zombies Are Metaphors For Stuff. I wasn’t looking to get back in the ring (I’m afraid I’ll get my fist caught in that chin-cleft), and this time was supposed to be spent more gainfully (in the caloric sense, beer and Wheat Thins mostly), but nooooooo, I had to follow the daisy-chain of links that led from here to here.
I’ve heard that Battlestar Galactica is a favorite of neoconservatives for its supposedly metaphorical allusions to Bush foreign policy. I’ve never seen that show, but I am planning to watch ABC’s remake of “V” - and by the looks of the preview, it’s possible that show may become conservatives’ new favorite TV show:
I always get a little sad when Halloween’s over. Y’know what helps me chase the blues away, though?
Halloween merchandise liquidation sales.
Any troll-ass motherfuckers wanna test me by saying Parker looks great in his “Jango Fett” helmet? Go on, hotshot, do it, I dare you.
Oh, don’t worry, you won’t get banned. Heck, I won’t even let my pit bull bite you!
I’ll just have him kill you in your sleep.
UPDATE: It has come to light that the fourth sentence in this post is easily misinterpreted. What I’m saying is, I would consider it trolling to act like the prequels are real Star Wars movies. Like if you put on your favorite jazz CD and I was all “turn it up, I love Kenny G!”
Maybe I’m supposed to apologize for my lack of clarity, but whatever, I always thought Eric Burdon made too big a deal out of it.
We live in an age where massive amounts of money are spent for research into the brain and almost nothing into researching the mind.
Oh, that was a rhetorical question. Shoulda known on account of all the text underneath it.
This represents a huge demotion. In prior centuries the mind was exalted.
Well, yeah, but in prior centuries we were hella ignorant, so you always want to factor that in before getting all nostalgic.
It was the mind that perceived beauty, experienced love, and reached for God. Can the brain really do all those things on its own?
Not if you take it out, no.
Neuroscience says yes, but that’s a leap of faith.
Deepak Chopra would like to caution against taking undue leaps of faith. His website offers a crystal pendant whose mystical properties will tamp down those pesky leap-of-faith-taking impulses for just $39.99.
And with this, Eek Week mercifully draws to a close. If anybody needs me, I’ll be out vacillating between decrying the proliferation of sexually provocative Halloween costumes and staring at women in sexually provocative Halloween costumes.
Rumproast Films presents:
THE HOWLING
(No, not that one. No, not the one with Sybil Danning. No, not the one where they’re part kangaroo—look, it’s got nothing to do with the werewolf movies, okay? Just… you’ll see)
