Can you hear me now?

Don't tell me I can actually post on here from my new blackberry! I'm not quick enough with the key board to do much damage, but this could funky...

In the meantime, I'll probably have to commit an illegal act (or more likely resort to a life of illegal activities) but dammit I will own a pool. That doubles as a floor.

http://www.hydrofloors.be

Nick

You don't like zebras?

Clearly I have way too much to talk about, what, with the Tiger episode today, our trip to Minnesota this weekend, etc, etc, etc.  But I cannot resist this.  Let me break it down for you...

A school in Pennsylvania gives thousands of it's students free laptops.  With webcams.  That can be remotely activated so that the school can see what is in front of the laptop.  Wait...  What?

WHAT?

I know... schools... giving students laptops.  If you're like me, your school didn't give you shit when you were a kid.  Because, you know, they had budgets and what not... consisting of real money.   And, well, we didn't have laptops.  With webcams.  There was basically no web for their to be a cam for until I was probably 13 anyways, and even then, if you were there back then... you know the web just sucked.

But imagine being a teacher today, and you're sitting in your teacher lounge with other teachers, probably sniffing dry erase markers (do they even still have chalk boards?), and someone comes up with this idea...

"I know.."  (sniff, sniff)  "What if we gave everyone some tricked out laptop... with webcams... that we can activate remotely.... you know, just in case anyone steals it..."

"Wow Professor Shit For Fucking Brains, what a great idea!"

(sniff, sniff)  "Yeah!"

"Yeah..."

Yeah....

No teacher put their marker down, used their god given brain and said, "Wait, my head is doing something... it's telling me that might be such a great idea afterall.  Yup, it's saying that's a bad idea.  A bad, stupid idea..."

A laptop.  With a webcam.  That can be remotely activated.

Let's forget for a second that, you know, people go to pound me in the ass prison for spying on people without their knowledge and consent, nevermind they be CHILDREN...  Can you begin to comprehend what goes on in a teenagers bedroom?  With a laptop?  And a webcam?  I know what went on in my bedroom when I was a teenager, and I didn't have a laptop.  Or a webcam.  Or the web.

I'm guessing if someone had remote access to my bedroom when I was a teenager, I wouldn't just have been called into Vice Principal Shit For Brains office for "inappropriate behavior".  I probably would have been sent to away.  Far away.

What, like you never played with zebras when you were a teenager???

 

Good zebra...

nick

Somewhere between puberty and Burt Reynolds...

I swear every couple of months I get into a conversation over how much (or if) men should shave their... well... junk.  Don't ask me why it's such an issue.  But it is, and I was going over it with a few peeps today.  One had heard from someone who heard from someone that only "civilized men" shaved.  Or "un-civilized men" didn't.  Horse a piece.  When another asked him what camp he fell into, he proudly proclaimed "UN-CIVILIZED".

After I came back from the bathroom to wash the puke out of my mouth I took to the white board for some education and constructed the following graph...

 

*S represents amount of shaving

** a(a) represents level of acceptableness and/or age

nick

Then I read some Howard Zinn and now I'm always depressed...

Howard Zinn passed away today.  I've never been a huge fan, but any good intellectual (like me) has probably read him from time to time.

I especially like his and Noam Chomsky's analysis of The Lord of the Rings...

Especially the theory that pipe-weed is... well, responsible for whatever is going on with the Hobbits...

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not? 

Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit. 

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire's pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor's unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say. 

Chomsky: But without the pipe-weed, Middle Earth would fall apart. Saruman is trying to break up Gandalf's pipe-weed ring. He's trying to divert it. 

Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf's interest to keep Middle Earth hooked. 

Chomsky: How do you think these wizards build gigantic towers and mighty fortresses? Where do they get the money? Keep in mind that I do not especially regard anyone, Saruman included, as an agent for progressivism. But obviously the pipe-weed operation that exists is the dominant influence in Middle Earth. It's not some ludicrous magical ring. 

Zinn: You've mentioned in the past the various flavors of pipe-weed that Hobbits have cultivated: Gold Leaf, Old Toby, etc. 

Chomsky: Nothing better illustrates the sophistication of the smuggling ring than the fact that there are different brand names associated with the pipe-weed. Ah, here we have Gandalf smoking a pipe in his wagon — the first of many clues that link us to the hidden undercurrents of power. 

Zinn: Gandalf is deeply implicated. That's true. And of course the ring lore begins with him. He's the one who leaks this news of the supposed evil ring.


nick

Big Dog

I knew they'd come pretty far with robots, but this is insane!



Tell me you didn't feel bad for the robot when that dude tried kicking it over...

Courtesy of Boston Dynamics.

Nick

What the frack?

I... uh.... hmmm...

A baby bed made of cardboard huh?

Well, at least Al Gore would be proud....

What else do you say? You can, uh... paint it? And draw pretty pictures on it?

Fuck... I give up...

Nick

HiiiiiiiiYA!

The hot wife had some work to do at home last night. So after putting the boy to bed, I finally took Chuck Norris up on his request to duel.

We stepped into my dojo in the basement. Only, immediately upon seeing my vast array of martial art skills... Chuck knelt. And surrendered unconditionally. Then he got me a beer.



This morning Chuck sent the following email:

From: "C Norris" <>
To: junyer_mint@yahoo.com
Bcc:
Subject: Last Night
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 10:58:44

Chuck asks for forgiveness and mercy.

Always your student,
Chuck
***

What a little sissy boy.

Nick

Art of the week

There's lots of good Flickr groups out there these days. Like... groups of girls in bikinis... and........ well, that's the only other one I've found yet, but I'll keep looking.

This one is a good one though. Stick figures in peril. Some good stuff in there.

Yup.

Nick

Product of the week

In my opinion, the best ideas are those in which you see, and then smack yourself in the head for not thinking of first. The Gorillapod is one of those ideas.

When I was a janitor at a magazine printing company, I used to collect these flexible air hoses that were very similar to the ones they use for this Gorillapod. You could snap them together and customize them to take just about any shape you wanted. I never knew what to do with them though. Maybe if I didn't do so many drugs as a kid, I could have actually come up with an idea like this. Come to think of it, if I didn't do so many drugs as a kid, I probably could have come up with a lot of good ideas. Oh well.

I haven't picked one of these things up yet, so I can't comment on it's function, but the idea is a good one I think. I don't know if I would use it a lot, but I could see using it on a hiking trail or something when you can't find a flat surface to set your camera and you want to snap a timed shot of you and your significant other looking like a bunch of yuppies from the city pretending to be outdoor enthusiasts. Our favorite shot of course, but it's always of one of us or the other because we don't feel like dragging our tripod out when we're hiking around.

I'm thinking of some other more adult-oriented uses for this (with a camera, you sickos), but we'll save that for another post on another blog.

Nick