G3T M0NK3Y B@N@N@, HUM@N!

I know it's been a long time since I've posted, and you're probably expecting something worthwhile.

And HERE IT IS.

Monkeys controlling robot arms with their brains!!

 

If there has ever been more exciting news, I want a monkey to grab the article and show it to me with a brain-operated robot arm.

 

Seems a little rough on the monkeys, but I'm sure they'll let us know their displeasure in five years when they're tromping through the ruins of Manhattan in their giant robot exoskeletons.  Better have a piece of banana with you then or it's ... WHAM! Robot Arm in Face! time for you and the other human refugees.

Lock and Load, Arizona!

How much do we love guns?

So much that when we're afraid of gun violence, our solution is -- more guns!

Think I'll design a hipster derringer with an integrated MP3 player, cell phone and digital camera so people get used to having guns waved around and pointed at them.  Steve Jobs, are you reading this?

Check This Animation

Very cool.

Here is the guy's website.

Yub! Yub!

Today's NYT reports that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, threatened Israel and accused it of killing terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyeh.
He threatened to take the fight outside the "natural battlefield" of Israel and Lebanon.
Which would be a lot more of a threat of Hezbollah didn't already do things like blow up Jewish community centers in Argentina.
And if he didn't look so much like an Ewok:

Tram Hacker!

A 14-year-old kid in Lodz, Poland built a remote control device that he used to switch the city's trams to different tracks at junctions, causing several derailments and other accidents.

 

This is why I wear a tinfoil hat.  No genius teenager's gonna malfunction my junction!

Mission, Movie, Move?

Overcompensating inspired this inspired trivia quiz in which you guess whether a phrase is an operation in Iraq, an action movie, or a wrestling move.

Iron Fury II?  Three Swords?  Big Boot?

 

 

Watch Out Below

I work in the new New York Times building. On windy days, panes of plate glass occasionally snap off the skyscraper and shatter on the sidewalk below.
And hurt people.

Another one blew off today, on the 40th street side of the building.

I think that deep down the architect, Renzo Piano, believes he won't be respected as an artist until his work kills someone. Like Christo with that killer beach umbrella.

In apparently unrelated news, building management just announced that the birch and moss garden in the lobby will now house three live velociraptors behind new "unbreakable" glass.

Work Is Heck

Goats!

This comic is in no way reflective of my law firm experience.

1) We don't sit around getting to know each other.

2) We can't go shirtless in the office.

3) I think the demon on the right is smiling.

Also:
I love donuts.

I work right near a Dunkin' Donuts.

Their donuts are terrible.

Why did God create evil in the world?

Gorilla Inflation

Go ahead and Google "pound gorilla" -- as in "Microsoft is the 500 pound gorilla" -- and I think you'll see a trend of disturbing inflation in gorilla weight.

 

Used to be a silverback tipping the scales at a mere quarter ton was the metaphorical tough guy who everyone else had to respect.

 

Now I see mention of the 600-, 700-, 800-, 900-, and even thousand-pound gorilla.  I mean, big silverbacks weigh about 440 pounds, maybe 500, with obese captive gorillas reaching 600 lbs.  Do bananas now grow to five pounds each to feed these horse-sized gorillas? 

 

The idiom isn't about diabetic apes eating tourists' thrown Doritos.  Just because we've all seen 800 pound humans on Oprah doesn't mean a gorilla half that size couldn't beat the snot out of the five strongest humans at once. 

 

This is an animal that can punch you so hard your shoes will bruise and your 400-pound gorilla bodyguard will retire and teach middle-school P.E.

 

I am calling on the Federal Reserve to raise the interzoo rate on gorilla flesh half a point to bring the weight of the "X-pound gorilla" back down to a fighting trim 500 pounds.  You can do your part, too, by referring to "the 500 pound gorilla" in conversation and adding, "..that really is as big as a gorilla needs to be to really, you know, be as big and strong as any gorilla."  Catchy!

Tendency to Shade the Truth

NYT has a great headline for its article about Mitt Romney's habit of saying self-serving things that are not true: 

Romney Shows a Tendencey to Imprecision

The whole article reads like someone went through and replaced instances of "inaccurate" and "false" with "imprecise."

George Washington said, "I cannot tend to imprecision.  I chopped down the cherry tree."

 

In other news, I just got back from a lifetime of hunting with my good buddy, MLK.  We shot a fish this big.

Escape from New Jersey

These two sound like bad guys who belong in prison.

So why is it so cool that they escaped?

And aren't there any construction techniques that can keep someone from scraping a hole in a wall with a piece of wire?

Matadoritos!

Baby matadors killing baby bulls in Mexico!

Is there anything cuter?  If there is I don't wanna hear about it.

Unless it's baby gladiators.  Someone?  North Korea?

Superhell. It totally sucks there.

I love Goats.

Fee? Fie!

I love the headline:  Judge Reverses $457 Million Ruling Against Forestry Giant

 

Forestry Giant no like adverse judgment!!  Forestry Giant smash!!

Ecce Ahmadinejad

NYT reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University today.

 

I know exactly how this happened.  Columbia President Lee Bollinger had to weigh the pros and cons...

Cons:  Ahmadinejad's country has recently imprisoned and tortured Americans; has likely armed Shia militias in Iraq with armor-piercing bombs; Admadinejad denies that the Holocaust happened; he wants to destroy the state of Israel; Iran is developing nuclear weapons; and giving Ahmadinejad even a hostile reception at a prestigious American university appears to legitimize his wicked nonsense.

Pros: Bollinger vs. World Famous Villain will be TELEVISED.  The Fight's in Morningside Heights.  One ticket buys the whole seat ... BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!

Cons never had a chance.

 

Ahmadinejad got to complaint that Bollinger wasn't a very hospitable host.  If he'd really wanted to warm up the crowd he should've said, "I just flew in from Tehran.  Boy are my arms tired!"

Anyway. 

 

As the NYT noted, a flier at the event read: "Bollinger, too bad Bin Laden is not available. You could have presented him with some tough questions too."

In-deed.

 

Oh! Oh!  And he said there are no gays in Iran!! 

I had a friend in college who was born in Iran (although he was ethnically Armenian) and told us a fantastic story about his grandmother.  The grandmother told her grandsons (all then living in Los Angeles) that there were no gays in Armenia.

They said to her, "Oh, come on, grandma.  Of course there are gays in Armenia."

But she was adamant.  She said, "No!  There was one gay in Armenia once.  His name was [Armenian name I can't recall].  But they killed him!"

I think what I like about the story is that she claimed to know the name of the one guy who'd been gay and Armenian.  But died.  Presumably, leaving no offspring.

 

Ahmadinejad, you should totally have adapted that story for your speech!  Maybe next time, when you speak at NYU?

Germany: 1 Terrorists: 0

The Associated Press reports that German police arrested three guys who were planning to use 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives (sounds like a lot of TATP) for blowing up Americans there.

At the risk of offending the various terrorist sleeper cells, these guys generally don't seem very competent. 

 

Pb

Sorry about the light posting lately, loyal readers.

 

Newsflash!

Everything from China contains lead.  Or other poison.

No doubt we'll see more factory heads "committing suicide" soon.

What I Said

Today's Memailed NYT Editorial is so copying my post from yesterday about Bush commuting Scooter Libby's prison term:

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

I almost feel... <sniff> like my post was memailed!

Scooter Escapes Justice

So it looks like President Bush has finally fulfilled his promise to be a "compassionate conservative" by commuting the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, convicted of obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury.

 

According to the President's statement:

I respect the jury's verdict.  But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

What's less excessive than 30 months?  No months!

 

Honestly, I don't understand why Bush didn't just pardon Libby. 

This halfway measure will leave his supporters grumpy, knowing Bush "respect[s] the ... verdict" that says Libby lied to keep secret the President's wrongdoing. 

And it won't fool the people who know Libby should go to jail for his crimes.

 

More important, all the other people in the administration who are lying and breaking the law for the President are now thinking, "Is that all the support I can expect from the President?  I sacrifice my integrity and subvert the government to his whim and in return he reduces my sentence?  Where'd I put the number for my old classmate at the Times?"

The Scarlet Blog

Thomas Friedman has a column in today's NYT (sorry, it's Times Select -- fancy!) with more about how the young'uns and how the whole world is diff'rent now, man.

The world is flat!  This time, it's because of blogs and MySpace and Facebook and JDate.

Friedman's theory this time is that if you act stupid or nasty on the Internet as a wee nerdling, your stupidity or nastiness could make you famous for stupidity and nastiness.  Forevah! -- on account of the bits and bytes persist on the Internet for all time and are available as cached Google pages to any potential date, employer, in-law, landlord, friend, prosecutor, persecutor, or stalker.

According to the fad book he quotes today ("How," by Dov Seidman), "The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition." (emphasis Friedman's)

Ah, what a rare opportunity the Internet has given us.  I can hardly wait to see everyone competing to outbehave me on the Internet.

PWNED, n00b!  U call that b3h@vng?!

Now, to be fair, the Friedman article kinda mushes together the effect on businesses (who may in fact be shamed into behaving) with the effect on individuals, but...

...anyone who looks at the Internet, which basically enables numberless opportunities for anonymously acting like a complete jerk, and sees it as an opportunity for outbehaving... hasn't really looked at the Internet.