Coffee, ATHF scare, big boss battle

Welcome from the cold in Whitmarshall!

Here are a few items for today:

• Coffee taste test, and who beats Starbucks? McDonald's wins. I'm not a coffee drinker myself, but how can McDonald's be better when it is obviously much cheaper than Starbucks?
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force viral ads cause Boston bomb scare. Hey, what do you know? Viral marketing does work!
• Think it's time to pack away that old generation Playstation 2? You need to check out this video of the first boss battle in God of War 2.
  

Applebee three, hogfather, computer interfaces

Hello!
I went to Applebee's the other night, and the meal was fine. The one thing I don't understand is why, every time I'm there, they have three girls standing by the door. Are they extra employees in case there is a rush? No, because it was busy there last night, but there were still always three or four of them there. They even sometimes send two of them to seat new patrons. So are they trainees? I don't think so, because it is always like that. I'm not sure why a manager would pay for them all to just stand around there. Maybe I don't understand the restaurant business.

Links for today:

• Terry Pratchett Discworld fan? The UK Sky One adaptation of Hogfather is online (not sure how official the links are, though).
• There are some interesting new interface projects out there, like the Bumptop (video on YouTube). I certainly think this one is cool, but I don't really see it as practical.
• Something else is the D'Fusion system of integrating CGI realtime with video. Very cool.

Idol authenticity?

I'm watching "American Idol" as I write this (please forgive me), and something about it has bothered me (past seasons as well). And maybe I should say there are many things about it that bothers me, but I'm going to bring up one in particular. In the later half of the show, they show a little bit of strung together clips of losing auditioners singing the same song (tonight's was Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long"). This montage includes some of the losers that stormed out in high emotion or in a rage. So I'm to believe they were willing to come back to sing a little bit for comedic purposes? Or do they film that song before the people audition? It all seems a little phony to me. I don't doubt that there are people so delusional that they think they've got a chance when they can't sing, but I suspect that a lot more of them are phonies or plants.

Plus, I think that Ryan Seacrest might be a muppet.

Activist judges, average iq, villager villains, punch out

Snowy day here in Whitmarshall. Thought we'd miss most of it this winter, but snow is now all around.
Links:

• Attorney General Gonzales raps 'activist' judges, saying that federal judges can not make rulings (or judge, ahem) matters of national security. He says they should defer to the President and Congress. But wouldn't that be disabling one of the checks and balances from the three equal parts of government? I don't know what to say: I'm torn between my confusion on how we have cabinet members that don't understand the basics of government, and my obedience of Big Brother. He's double-plus good! All hail Oceania!
• Average IQ Map of the World. Uh-oh, changed my mind: All hail Eastasia! (This Wikipedia page is flagged for possible deletion, so view it before it goes away.)
• Entire village suspects in mayor's murder. Wow, must have been a well liked politician. Darn those activist villagers!
• Sorry to link another live-action video game recreation, but this live action Mike Tyson's Punch Out was pretty humorous for those that remember the game.

Uncanny Orville, below average children

Hello!
I watched bits and pieces of the Golden Globes (though I usually try to avoid the big awards shows), and the thing that disturbed me most was the new Orville Redenbacher commercial. Yikes! That's creepy. Why do we always need to use dead spokespeople? I'm more or less OK with it if it is an animated cartoon capturing the trademarked image, like the animated Colonel Sanders from a few years back. But integrating old footage of a celebrity or creating a computer generated version of a dead spokesperson is just weird and seems kind of disrespectful. Did these people say from their deathbed "Please, if technology provides a way to milk my image for corporate gain, please do so!"

Switching topics: I ran across this article that says you can't blame schools and teachers for American woes because intelligence, not education, is part of the problem. The author points out that half of all children are below average, and I guess I can't argue with that. I think there are definitely problems in educational systems (and discipline and parental guidance, and such), but the article has some interesting points.

Apple phone, singing, sodium, virtual reality

Hello on this cold January weekend. A small potpourri of links for you today:

• One of the big tech stories recently has been the (currently named) Apple iPhone. Check out Gizmodo's Macworld 2007 iPhone coverage for details and pictures. Pricey, but I got to admit I checked out Cingular's website to find that, alas, they have no service in my area. That's probably for the best; I'd like to see this thing in the real world for a while to see if it lives up to the hype.
• Speaking of the hype, Conan O'Brien's show has captured it in this iPhone parody commercial.
• While we're linking videos, here's a couple more.
• An older one, but still good. Amazing splicing creates George W. Bush singing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'.
• Here's an even older one; old newsreel footage of the government disposing of sodium by dumping it in a lake. What, didn't they pay attention in chemistry class?

• Lastly, here's an article about businesses embracing virtual reality. It has a mention of the Iowa State University facility. I saw a predecessor of it years ago, but I'm sure the new one is more impressive. (But not as impressive as the iPhone.)
  

College saga video

Hello!
I ran across the following video from Kotaku. The website it was linked from looks like it is down (must have been too much traffic), but I found the 4 episodes in the series on YouTube. It is a live action parody of the Final Fantasy games (with a little Zelda and other pop culture references thrown in). If you weren't a Final Fantasy geek like me, you'll probably not get it. I thought it was funny, but the story gets really pretty lame as it goes.
Enjoy! (And episodes 2 - 4 are on YouTube, if you want to continue. It is called "College Saga".)