Thursday, August 30, 2012

Our Wacky World—8/30/2012

Neil Young, er, Armstrong died. Did you know that he became a Muslim in 1969?
"When Louis [sic] Armstrong and co. walked on the moon, they heard sounds in a strange language they did not understand. Only later, after returning to earth, did they realize that it was actually the azaan!
"I have seen a few mosques with powerful speaker systems, but wow, somebody down here certainly turned on the power on that day!"
Answering Islam

Branding is crucial to success
"The makers of 18 Again...say it is the first of its kind in India...and fills a gap in the market. Ultratech's owner...says the cream...contains natural ingredients including gold dust, aloe vera, almond and pomegranate, and has been clinically tested. 
"It's a unique and revolutionary product which also works towards building inner confidence in a woman and boosting her self esteem," says Mr Bhatia, adding that the goal of the product is to "empower women". Mr Bhatia says the product is not claiming to restore a woman's virginity, but to restore the emotions of being a virgin. "We are only saying, 'feel like a virgin' - it's a metaphor. It tries to bring back that feeling when a person is 18."
BBC (Great TV commercial here)

"A lot of people I know are ex-Google and they have the same story. Three people here were on the midnight shift for YouTube and they were given the promise that if they were going to see beheadings and child porn and all this shit all the time, they'd get hired. YouTube’s review process is proactive — they have to sit there and look at all of it, from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., for a year. One of my really good friends lost her life for a year doing that."
Buzzfeed

"But the best explanation for Fox glam may be the channel’s largely conservative audience. An argument can be made that conservative women are typically less squeamish than progressive ones about embracing what the sociologist Catherine Hakim calls 'erotic capital,' otherwise known as using your looks to get ahead. See the gleeful Laura Ingraham/­Ann Coulter school of beauty­ology, which holds that the angrier and better-­coiffed you are, the more attention you will receive. The Republican Party welcomes looks in a woman—Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley—and so does Fox."
The Atlantic

"The past week or so has seen yet another wave of terrible, terrible reporting in the science media about the Amelia Earhart non-story... So now TIGHAR has released a frame of the underwater video they took of the sea floor off Nikumaroro... The picture shows nothing remotely identifiable...
Click to enlarge
"Yet TIGHAR has placed yellow arrows on the image pointing to… well, to nothing, really; though they authoritatively state that it shows manmade objects. This is the type of image that we call a “blobsquatch”. That word comes from the evidence presented by delusional Bigfoot hunters who post photographs that show nothing clear at all, but that they interpret as Bigfoot."
Skeptic Blog

"Pope also warned that 'The government must - and has planned - for the worst-case scenario: alien attack and alien invasion. Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit,' he said, apparently unaware that America's Space Shuttle orbiters have been dispersed to various museums, and the rest of the system scrapped."
Bad UFOs

"Three-and-a-half year old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, signs his name by crossing his forefinger and index finger and moving his hand up and down... But to Hunter's school district, it might mean something else. The district claims that it violates a rule that forbids anything in the school that looks like a weapon"
Yahoo  (Surprise, they backed off)


Great headline:
"San Francisco archbishop-elect apologizes for drunken driving"

But this story is even better:
"Bishop Tebartz-van Elst, 52, doesn't only embrace luxury when he travels to India to visit poor children and nuns. He also puts a premium on a pleasant standard of living back home in Limburg, one that befits his status. His new, multi-million-euro bishop's residence right next to the city's cathedral is about to be finished. But the complex has sparked a mix of amazement, rage and resignation among the 600,000 Catholics in the diocese. Many cannot comprehend how they are supposed to live in want while their bishop splurges."

Got wood?
Chiropractic in its own words:
"Moviegoers beware, the person sitting next to you could be subluxated. Cutting them off from the ability to feel pain, feel happiness, feel anything. The same peson [sic] is sitting next to your child on the schoolbus. The same person is working next to you at the office. He is on your son's baseball team. He is driving the car on your bumper. He is most assuredly the person in the waiting room at your doctor's office. He is the same person who drove a plane into the Tower in New York. It's worse than a flu epidemic. Subluxated, messed up nervous systems are everywhere. Your nervous system 'connects' you to the world around you."
Gawker

Then there's the tobacco tanning bed industry:
"Central to the industry’s message is the idea that tanning’s critics -- such as dermatologists, sunscreen manufacturers and even charities like the American Cancer Society -- are part of a profit-driven conspiracy. These critics are described as a “Sun Scare industry” that aims to frighten the public into avoiding all exposure to ultraviolet light. The tanning industry blames this group for causing what it calls a deadly epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, and tries to position itself as a more trustworthy source of information on tanning’s health effects."
NBC

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community... It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.”
Raw Story

Yet the jury clearly said: "You're not getting everything you want, Apple, and some of your damages are worth nothing. But Samsung, you copied when you didn't have to. Now bugger off."
The Register

"an endearing and loving act, a clever reflection of
the political and social situation of our time."