Jon Stewart on media, fun election merchandise

Well, political season is in full swing again, and that is angrying up my blood so I thought I would try to start posting every once in a while again.

First stop:

• Jon Stewart on Palin's Media Surrogates found on Comedy Central Insider.  I'm really glad that someone pays attention to what these people say over time.  His examples are all Republicans, I believe, but I certainly don't think this kind of two-faced-ness is limited to just that party.  I would love to see a 24-hour media channel that constantly challenges people on their changing positions and hypocrisy, or shows video proof of contradictory stances.

• Otherwise, I've put some hopefully fun political designs on my Zazzle Store.  Please feel free to check them out and buy many, many items. (Using the link in the first sentence of this paragraph gives me a better royalty, by the way, thank you.)
  

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

News bloopers, boomshine

I ran across this Yahoo! article today about TV anchor mishaps caught on video. The article has many links to YouTube videos of said goofs caught on tape. I didn't watch all (or most) of them, but the couple I did were funny.

Before I link to some examples, I've also been playing this simple, little web game called BoomShine. Easy to learn (and really the whole game wasn't that difficult) but fun.

On to a couple news videos, and I don't know if they really count since they are University news channels. The first is an old favorite (Boom Goes the Dynamite!):



This other one is very similar; a painful awkwardness. I hadn't seen this one before today (Bad Weatherman):

Doh, simpsonize yourself

In another use of picture face recognition, you can use the Simpsonizer to create a Simpsons character version of yourself. However, I'm not sure it even uses any of the photo recognition, as the first attempt looked nothing like me at all. I had to customize the heck out of it to get remotely close.
Here's what I ended up like:


The site was pretty buggy, and took many attempts for the page to even load, so the other alternative is to build your character from scratch at the Simpsons Movie website. Here's what my total-from-scratch Brian looked like:

Anna Nicole! Britney! Idiots! Copernicus!

Hello,
A little warmer here, but with some more snow now. This weekend is giving a little warmth that is starting to hint at spring. (Maybe that groundhog was right after all!)

Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole. Argh! I ran across this article about how television is failing the public because of the obsession on non-news disguised as important news. I could not agree with this more. It is unbelievable how her death has taken more air time than President Ford's death, or even the North Korean six party talks, the "Scooter" Lewis Libby trial, Iranian nuclear news, bombs in Thailand, or anything else that is, well, news.

I just saw the movie Idiocracy this weekend. It deals with a man frozen until the year 2505 where he wakes to find society is so dumbed down due to celebrity worship, commercialization, mass media/entertainment, and larger number of children from lower intelligence families. While it was mainly a dumb comedy (and a pretty funny one at that), there was a hint of horror there because you can really see things moving that way. I recommend the movie, but be aware there is a high amount of very bad language and sexual and bathroom humor. But it fits in with the analysis of...

...oh wait! There's new Britney news! Hooray! Let's see what top celebrity psychiatrists say about her bald headed, rehabbin', tattooin', partying like she's crazy lifestyle! We need a replacement when this Anna Nicole stuff dies down anyway!

Other bits:

• A different kind of crazy: Texas Republican Chairman Warren Chisum believes the earth stands still and the sun rotates around it. And he's distributing memos to legislators pitching this knowledge.
• A bit of fun: the Line Rider is a fun little online diversion. Give it a try and check out some of the saved movies.

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.