February 2010
Rick Sanchez needs to switch to decaf
I saw this exchange earlier today on CNN:
Rick Sanchez: Look at those buoy readings from the Pacific! That’s nine meters!
Scientist Guy: Yeah. That means that w-
Sanchez: OMG HOW MUCH IS THAT IN ENGLISH?!
Scientist Guy takes two seconds to do a calculation in his head.
Sanchez: ANSWER ME! WHAT IS IT IN ENGLISH?! ENGLISH: DO YOU SPEAK IT?
Scientist Guy: It’s, uh … about 27 feet.
Sanchez: That’s a 27 foot drop in the water level! TWENTY-SEVEN FEET! AHHHH!
Scientist Guy: Right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be a 27 foot tsunami when it gets to Hawaii.
Sanchez: BUT WON’T YOU ADMIT THAT IT WAS A 27 FOOT DROP! GO ON AND ADMIT IT!
Scientist Guy: Yes. But, again, we can’t be sure-
Sanchez: OMG BE AFRAID! GET WORKED UP! MAKE HAND GESTURES!
Scientist guy: Okay. Hold on. Yes, we know there’s a tsunami coming, but there are a lot of factors that we don’t know abo-
Sanchez: SHUT UP I SAID BE AFRAID! HYSTERIA! RATINGS! DRAMA! HYSTERIA! THIS IS IMPORTANT! JUST ADMIT THAT THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Scientist Guy: Um, yeah. I’m just going to go ahead and back away from you now.
After I some Twittering about that, I thought, “You know, Rick Sanchez should probably be interviewing noted Theological Seismologist Pat Robertson. I think that would be more his speed.”
I really hope that a producer took Rick Sanchez aside and said, “Hey, Rick? Listen, man, it’s great that you’re so excited and everything, but when we invite a scientist onto the air to calmly explain science to our viewers, maybe you could be a little less Nancy Grace and a little more professional newscaster. That’d be great.”
wise words
There’s a card in the Zendikar expansion for Magic: The Gathering called Landbind Ritual. It’s a sorcery card that gives you two life for each plains card you control, and it has one of the most beautiful flavor texts I’ve ever read:
“Honor this place, for our children’s children will stand here and speak these same words again.” - Ayli, Kamsa cleric.
I would love it if this card was handed out to every person who visited a national park. I would love it even more if people would speak these words to their children … and truly mean them.
Batman triumphs over Superman as comic fetches record price →
guardian.co.uk
Detective Comics No 27 sells for more than $1m, beating record set by book featuring rival superhero
“The Angels have the phone box.”
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-2-21) →
last.fm
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Note: This reflects what a weird week I had. It also illustrates why I love having Sonos + Rhapsody so much. That MGMT album is absolute shit, and I would have been really bummed if I’d bought it. But because I have Rhapsody, I can listen to it, the artist will get something because I listened to it, and I’m not stuck with a shitty album that I have to sell back at the CD store (or, more likely, just delete because I buy everything from Amazon MP3 these days.)
Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation →
eff.org
The over-arching question: are digital books as good or better than physical books at protecting you and your rights as a reader?
Below we offer a checklist that can help guide your inquiry, as well as an extended explanation of why the answers to these questions matter. Not surprisingly, some of the issues overlap. For example, Digital Rights Management, or “DRM,” matters not only because of the limits it places on users, but because of its impact on innovation and competition. Yet by separating out the various issues, we hope to spur a more rigorous consideration of the various digital book offerings.
Our goal is not to tell authors, publishers, vendors, libraries, or anyone else what strategies they must adopt, or tell book purchasers what options they must choose. We hope that a robust marketplace emerges, with various business models and technologies. Instead, this checklist represents the key questions that readers should ask of each new digital book product or service to evaluate whether it adequately protects their interests. That sort of rigorous inquiry will help us decide which digital book future we want — and how to vote with our feet until we get it.
“We were very excited when Wil Wheaton appeared as Sheldon’s nemesis, and right now we’re looking to see if he can come back to give Sheldon an opportunity to settle the score,” Executive Producer and Co Creator Bill Prady announced to TV Guide Magazine when the Academy of Televisions Arts and Sciences hosted an Evening With the Big Bang Theory on February 18th. “Fingers crossed that we can do that, I think an arch enemy is someone who appears from time to time.”
—Wil Wheaton Returns to The Big Bang Theory
“There is no try, only Zuul.”
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Modern Ghost Towns →
fuckyeahghosttowns.tumblr.com
A tumblr (with a naughty name) that features pictures and historical information all about modern ghost towns. If you’re as fascinated by 20th century urban decay as I am, you’ll love this.
(via theremina)
