Paris Hilton totally owns McCain.

So this is basically the scariest thing i’ve ever seen relating to copyright laws and their abuse.

Happy Monday!

http://www.bestofartists.com/creative-sculpture/2008/7/7/you-could-lose-your-rights.html

America’s largest brewery sold to a Belgium company, that is really controlled by Brazillians, the third world.

Gov’t bailing the largest lenders in the nation.

Markets in trouble today after an overnight correction in the Asian Markets.

The dollar the weakest it has ever been agains the Euro

The upcoming Olympics are in Beijing.

Ford and GM cutting more jobs.

And in case you missed it, there was a run on a bank.  An honest-to-god line to get money out of IndyMac.

Strap in, it’s going to get interesting.

To wit: kind of.

“Walking as bad as driving for global warming” was the headline on Glenn Beck’s show.  This ‘news’ was based off this article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” a calculation based on the UK Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Ok, sure let’s not bring transport into the equation for gasoline, but just for food.  That makes sense.  Secondly, beef, milk?  Both inefficient ways to get calories.  What about the energy use of the treadmill that wouldn’t get used that day?

Point is, this article uses terrible ’science’ - an actual, thorough comparison was not done.  And Glenn Beck just reported it that way without actually doing any journalistic research.  Brilliant.  The message was “Why do anything?  Everything causes global warming.  Don’t let those liberals fool you that we can make any difference.”  Frankly, the reporting was so irresponsible I was disgusted.

So currently in Dubai there is dwindling of oil reserves, a huge upsurge in international (US) investment, key members of staff who are receiving huge benefits from their positions in office via their deferred multi-million dollar stock option plans, and well, michael jackson.

Tourism in Dubai

About Dubai - Wikipedia Specifically read the Economy and Human Right and Labor sections.

Halliburton in Dubai

Halliburtion quarterly report has some kinks

Could someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on? I mean, you know, besides the obvious.

And, as a payoff for all of this noise, here’s Michael.

and i’ll add one more since i fucked up. (good call liz. way to keep me honest)

Michael is now normal?

I no longer have to steal, ahem, borrow a premium membership to nytimes. You can read all the articles for free now!

Thomas Friedman kicks ass…

Article

this is awesome

video

for brett

Silly Chinese

OK, I know that most of us in the blog are all crazy NPR listening people, many dislike TV. But those who do might really be missing out on Public Television. For example this week’s NOVA episode spoke about the science of sleep and memory, the new supercollider in Europe, and the lost histories of the Asian immigrants who built this countries transportation infrastructure. The episode was just so well presented and made me feel like I had learned so much about the world, and it only took up an hour of my life (commercial free btw).

I know that much of this can be read in scientific journals, but how many of us actually read every scientific journal we can find. This series alone is worth the cost of a TV set. Not to mention the shows Nature, American Crossroads, and Austin City Limits…

The interesting thing is, this is much like paying for HBO, a few of your tax pennies get tossed to The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which creates PBS programming. You are paying for these shows and I am saddened that so many of my very intelligent friends seem to miss all of this. So, this week while the Daily Show is on vacation, pick up the TV Guide or goto PBS and check out PBS. You might find that you love it!

Ok, so for all of the enginerds out there, I need someone to look at this and call shenanigans. It is yet another supposed perpetual motion device, better known as a free-energy device, since its goal is to provide energy with NO inputs or outputs other than clean free energy.

Mythbusters dedicated an entire show to debunking these things, showing that not a single existing device actually yielded more energy then was put into the device.

Now the crazy thing here is that a company (Steorn) has been talking for months that it was creating such a device. People have been saying to put up or shut up, and they have now put up (almost). They are installing the device into a museum of motion in London (Kinetica Museum) for a public review of the device. According to the interweb, the live demo will be available via video on the Steorn website at 6PM EDT. They claim the technology utilizes “time variant magneto-mechanical interactions”. Anyone care to comment? I am VERY skeptical.

http://www.steorn.com

I know its silly, but for many of us TV watchers today marked the end of something special. Bob Barker has officially retired.

When I was very young I remember going to my grandparents house and watching the game show “The Price is Right”. Now both of my grandparents have now passed, but the Price is Right has continued on. Now I am too young to have seen the first season fifty years ago, but this game show has been a part of my tv watching life for as long as I can really remember. It still connects me to the days when my life seemed so much easier. (Before I knew that the winners still had to pay taxes on all of the prizes they had won)

Now, I loved this show, I watched it every day I was home sick from school as a child. It became a real comfort for me. I had even made it a point in my rather uncomfortable freshmen year of college to get back to my dorm room in time to at least catch the showcase showdown. This could also be an indicator of how good of a student I was, but I like to think that it was just a way to get some stability in a rather rocky first year away from home.

Well today (as I type this) the final episode of The Price is Right will air. Now the show will continue, in re-run, through the summer, but when it returns next year, it will do so without Bob Barker. (The final episode will re-air tonight at 7:00PM CDT)
Bob Barker has made his way into the hearts of so many and has a wonderful sense of humor. I cant tell you how much I love the Happy Gilmore scene (The price is wrong bitch!). He even has made a guest appearance on my current favorite sitcom (How I met your mother). So now Bob is gone, and I really think it is the end of something truly great. I do not know of anyone who will be able to take his place, and I will never watch the show again if they rename the studio that Price is shot in to anything from the current “Bob Barker Studio”.

I think in his honor people should join me in going out and donating to the local humane society in an effort to help control the pet population!
Lawrence KS Humane Society