Half Birthday Wish List

Here's a good idea for those of you shopping for my upcoming half birthday. Not much time left. Order now. (The money goes to the National Alliance on Mental Illness!)

Cthulu [sic]

Bullet Time Survey Answers

I just took part in a study on video games' effect on aggression. My observations:

• Max Payne is too complicated
  
• the X-Box's controller is too complicated
  
• the game's graphic novel-style cutscenes were my favorite part yet influenced the game little
  
• the questionaire did a poor job of analyzing aggression

For instance, we had to fill in the blanks of words to complete them.
"ki_ _" and "b_h_ _ _" became "kiss" and "behave." I wasn't sure which way I wanted to skew the statistics so I used those instead of "kill" and "behead." I did consider going the other way and taking something like "b_e" (which I filled in as "bee"), scratching it out and writing in blood (not mine) "I SHALL DEVOUR YOUR FIRSTBORN."

Some of the other questions seemed to be directed at how engrossed I was in the game / how aware I was of my surroundings. (For a while I was watching someone else play the game in the reflection on my screen. It was also interesting to listen to how quickly the others progressed based on the cutscenes' dialogue.)

The O'Reilly Delusion

Wonderful (but brief) interview with Dawkins on the Factor. O'Reilly admits that his reality is different from everyone else's. Otherwise, they were generally quite civil to each other. I also got the impression Dawkins is getting tired of the interviews. He seemed kind of out of it. I was surprised he didn't mention this in response to Bill's argument about Stalin. I'm pretty sure I've heard him use it before.

The Name's Bond

Daniel Craig as 007. Made "entirely in photoshop." I think I'll remove the black vignette when it's time to hand in the final. It looks awful.

For some reason when I first uploaded it, Bond was blue. Thought you'd enjoy the latest double agent in the Blue Man Group.

founded ur page

cheezsurver back online lol

Translucent Carbonite

I love these cool / creepy glass paitnings. See the full gallery here.

The OK Corral

Okay, kind of shooting a dead horse here, but this is quite important. I found a story about a Georgia city that actually mandated each house have a gun. People predicted "Wild Wild West" showdowns. Murder. Chaos. Anarchy. Etc.

Not one person in the town has been shot since the law was enacted. The population has exploded and crime has plummeted. Very important as most of the other statistics I mentioned earlier just show that banning guns does nothing to reduce crime. Evidently having guns does. I'm seriously done now. See the story here. Previous post here.

Stupid 101

"He will change his thinking so scripture fits perfectly."

- Dumb bitch at coffee shop on Augustine of Hippo

Why are these people allowed to teach? And why is the guy she's talking to hanging on her every word? Maybe he wants in her pants.

Middle East Park

I love that this show has the Cartman look-alike in the most ethnically Middle Eastern garb. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the newscaster is animated in the same style as Saddam. Oh what I'd do for some subtitles.

Dawkins Prepares for Bar Fight

O'Reilly will be interviewing Dawkins this Monday. I'm warming up the, uh, betamax VCR now.

No Guns. No Problem.

In light of the recent VT massacre and subsequent discussions of gun control (here and personally on various chat protocols), I thought I'd point out an article in the UK's Guardian which outlines some fo the problems of gun control laws. Here's a snippet:

Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town.

It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993.

[source]

Indeed, according to the BBC, the number of firearms deaths has doubled in spite of both the gun ban and increased police forces.

Closer to home, Morgan Reynolds found the following:

In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent. Defenders of the Washington law say it isn't working because criminals are getting guns in Virginia, where the laws are more relaxed. But just across the Potomac River, Arlington, Va., has a murder rate less than 10 percent of that of Washington (7.0 murders versus 77.8 per 100,000 population). Can the difference be explained by the fact that Washington is a large city? Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach, has a population of nearly 400,000, allows easy access to firearms - and has had one of the country's lowest murder rates for years (4.1 per 100,000 population in 1991).

[source]

That last statistic is key because it provides a wonderful contrast between two cities with nearly opposite gun control laws, fairly reasonably demonstrating that cities that restrict people's ability to acquire a firearm have higher rates of crime. It's well nigh criminal to suggest that America should further restrict access to firearms when all the data indicate this will increase violent crime.

The last bit of evidence I'll leave you with is a little easier to swallow than the statistics I've quoted so far. It's yet another episode of one of my all-time favorite shows, Bullshit! It's a pretty blatant emotional appeal, but it does a good job considering her story sounds nearly identical to the descriptions of Cho's mass execution at VT. And that the school just this year banned firearms.

I recommend watching the other clips from that episode you'll find strewn about YouTube and Google Video.

INVISIBLE EVERYTHING

If you share my particularly bizarre sense of humor, you are probably equally disappointed that lolcats wondersite, I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER is temporarily down as their digg-induced traffic is straining their servers. They're switching to wordpress which means I'm left lolcatless for days. Will no one fill the void? I need a cat of my own. Maybe next year.

Clean-Up, Aisle Five

Why couldn't Cho have been this smart? If he wanted to show disdain for materialistic consumption, what could have been more appropriate than self-immolation in a Wal-Mart? Stupid little twat.

EDIT: Also, as I'm sure you've heard or will hear, he released a video to NBC which has since been forwarded to the FBI. And in it, I am not in the least bit shocked to find that he "discussed his religion and his hatred of the wealthy." See more here

Pre-Junior Preparations

I can't believe I registered for Junior year classes already. Yikes! I hate that time seems to speed up as you age. I feel like I've been a Sophomore for a few months. It's been eight. Anyway, I finally had an uneventful course registration! I'm so excited. I have classes next semester. Three major requirements, one core, and one (potentially very interesting) elective.
I like that only one of my courses has a room scheduled. The rest are in limbo.

Just A Reminder

If you're not talking today, you're part of the problem.

Shit, They're Learning. We're Doomed.

I use adblockers on every browser but Camino. I don't see ads. I'm in fact continually shocked that I don't recognize familiar sites like facebook or even reddit any more when I see them on other people's browsers. Well today I was again shocked (and impressed) with Cingular's newest unblockable internet ad campaign. It's quite ingenious to tile your logo as a background image. It's unblockable! Well, not really, but it would be annoying to even have an extension on, say, Firefox to block all background images. You win, Cingular / at&t. You win this round.

I should mention that the only site I actually turn off my adblocker is Google whose wonderful, unobtrusive contextual ads I hope are the way of the future in online advertising. They don't scream, hiss, buzz, or talk to / at you.

Creeps Me Out / Year Zero

Jeez, I have no idea how I missed this one. Ima Robot is a great band out of LA. I think they sound a little like the Buzzcocks's early stuff. Anyway, they came out with an album last year which I somehow didn't hear about. I haven't downloaded the full album yet, but the lead single Creeps Me Out is really fun. Feel free to sample / purchase here.

Also, if you haven't heard Nine Inch Nails' new single on their forthcoming album, do so. Very different from their previous stuff. Very good. I do suggest, however, that you be careful how you get it, because apparently the RIAA has a problem with viral marketing campaigns they sign off on. If you'd like to legally purchase Survivalism, do so here.

EDIT:
Hah! What a coincidence. Boing Boing just posted Reznor's response to the RIAA's ridiculousness. Read Year Zero's other satirical warnings here.

Identity

I still remember seeing this episode of SVU. I think it was last summer when all USA network did was have marathons of SVU, Monk, and House. I was particularly impressed with how well the writers managed to come up with such a completely fucked up case with a villain so contemptable and vile that it could only exist in the realm of fiction. Unfortunately, however, I just discovered that it is, in fact, based entirely on the true story of David / Brenda / Bruce Reimer and his twin Brian. (My roommate is reading David's biography for his child development class.) They ended the episode rather apruptly as SVU usually does after unequivocatingly aprehending the culprit, but the real ending to the story is actually much more tragic. This is quite possibly the saddest story I've ever heard.

One If By Land

My brother was just asked to prom. His date's MO: throwing a (stolen) owl lawn ornament onto the roof outside my room. The owl was carrying a message a la the messenger owls of the Harry Potter universe. Crazy bitch couldn't even throw her invitation owl at the right room. At least she didn't throw an actual owl.

Must Have Bath Toy!

Buy them for your best friends / worst enemies!

The Glory of Mother America

My latest art and digital tech project was to create a 4 page spread of a book or magazine. I decided to go for an art book of sorts with constructivist style propaganda posters for the Bush administration. I decided this fairly recently, too. We were given the assignment two weeks ago and the one I worked on teh first week ended up reeking of poop, so I scrapped it and went with this one. Anyway here are a few of the images.



I wasn't a big fan of the font I ended up using (Braggadocio) and was very close to purchasing some of these fonts. I could see them being useful later so I may still get them.