Obama finally denounces his bigoted pastor.

Original article:
“Obama’s Wright Turn” So why did this particular performance by Wright finally create the need for Obama to speak up more forcefully? That answer is simple: falling poll numbers in Indiana, North Carolina and nationally, and to that, we can safely conclude, Barack Obama takes great offense.

If one were a true consipiracy theorist, wouldn’t one think the government created AIDS/GRID to kill the gays? What’s really offensive to the sanity of the collective is that this asshole has been given any spotlight at all. But, perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps the government really did create AIDS to kill blacks.

Labels: Race

The bookseller has taken another step beyond its traditional business into the online publishing world, recently introducing Quamut.com, a site that teaches Web users things as diverse as the basics of football and how to build a Web site.

Labels: Blogosphere

Original article: “Apatow Readies “Greek” Movie With Hill and Brand” Judd Apatow seems intent on making leading men out of virtually every bit player he’s ever met. It’s a generous goal, to be sure, and Jonah Hill (“Superbad”) and Russell Brand (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) will be the next two to enjoy the producer’s predisposition. They’ll be starring in a buddy comedy entitled “Get Him to the Greek,” in which “a fresh-out-of-college insurance adjuster (Hill) is hired to accompany an out-of-control rock star (Brand) from London to a gig at L.A.’s Greek Theater” (Variety). Writer-director Nick Stoller describes “Greek” as “a very dirty take on ‘Almost Famous.’”

Stoller made his directorial debut last Friday with “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” featuring both Brand and Hill in supporting roles. He’s recently lined up two more productions with actor-writer Jason Segel. They will be writing another Apatow film for Stoller to direct called “Five-Year Engagement,” and they will also collaborate on the writing of the next “Muppet Movie.”

Labels: Movies

A portion of Pennsylvanians like the notion personal freedom, small government, and The Constitution. Ron Paul gets 126,000 votes, best of any primary:

Original article:
“Political Radar: In PA, Paul Records Best Showing of Campaign”

In second place—even though he announced earlier this year that his campaign was winding down and that he would focus on the next chapter of the revolution to take the Republican party back to its libertarian roots—was Texas congressman Ron Paul. ♦ In fact, with nearly 126,000 votes (16 percent of those cast), Paul recorded his best showing of the presidential campaign in a closed primary.

Labels: Ron Paul

“Daring Fireball”In a post titled “‘Editor Note,’ Eh?,” beloved hypocrite John “Horsegums” [1] 1:
Gruber once again mixes editorial and paid-shill roles as he—get this—berates MacUpdate for mixing editorial and paid-shill roles. He writes:

‘Editor Note,’ Eh? ♦ I agree with TUAW’s Michael Rose on this one: MacUpdate putting an “editor note” pimping their Parallels bundle on their entry for VMware crosses whatever line they’ve ostensibly drawn between their roles as an editorial source (app listings) and software publisher. Crummy move.

Earlier, Gruber thanks the company for giving him money to write about the company on his blog. Read (you’ll need a machete to cut your way though the irony):

MacUpdate Parallels Bundle ♦ My thanks to MacUpdate for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote their “Parallels Bundle”—10 Mac apps with a retail value of $475, on sale together for $65. You get: Parallels Desktop, BannerZest, Sound Studio, Leap, DVDRemaster Pro, MenuCalendarClock, Hazel, StoryMill, Art Text, and Typinator. ♦ … The promotion runs through Tuesday, so, as they say on TV, act now.

Remember, this is one man with one mind, one shill, not an organization where an advertising staff is kept separate from editorial. There is a clear conflict of interest with a smidgen of hypocrisy thrown in to the blender (for color).

Let’s break to allow time for my sponsor, Daring Fireball. Need to know just what you should think? Haven’t gotten your douche-fix, yet? Then, turn to Daring Fireball, won’t you?

Labels: Blogosphere

‘Divine’ blogger-fem says get over cunt; I say get off in it

Original article: “Dropping the C-Word”

Why is there still so much taboo around the word [cunt]? Perhaps culturally we still think of it as a curse word, an insult to all women, and a vulgar obscenity. But consider how much a woman’s body has often been deemed obscene historically. Why must an insult remain one?

Cunt is great because it is rarely used, thusly it absolutely destroys.

The New York Times blog looks at Senator McCain’s campaign typeface, Optima bold. The New York Times in writing a piece on the typeface of the candidates — and the stuffy designers they interviewed — reeeeeally know how to relate to the common man.

Original article: “McCains Optimum Look”

Rudy VanderLans, founder of Emigre Type ♦ What does Optima say about Senator McCain? Nothing. It probably says more about the designer than anything else. Who, except designers, would judge a candidate by the typeface?

Labels: Blogosphere

We count the number of dick references in recent article in Variety

Here’s how it works: when we find a cheesy metaphor to cock in the explanation of this industry, it will be highlighted in italic type with a number to its corresponding sidenote — like this one — where a colorful explanation of things awaits. The original article is entitled, “Hard times ahead as porn goes soft?”Cocky Variety columnist Peter Bart writes about the economy’s effect on pornography sales, and my friends, does this prick stiffly nail it with the double entendres, painting the industry’s downturn with penetrating metaphorical visuals of the male member, thus creating a fun game for all of us to find and critique each one. Let’s probe this article and find just how many times can a writer use the same gag? (Note: sorry IE users, you’ll have to sit this one out.)

Hard (1) times ahead as porn goes soft? (2)

Apatow, Segel look below the belt (3) for laughs

by Peter (4) 4: Do we count this one? Judges say ‘No’ as this is clearly not an intended pun, but rather a horrible, horrible choice by a mother who is clearly unaware of the cruelty of schoolyard children. Still funny. Bart

Economists are citing some dire portents of a recession these days, but they’ve missed one indicator I find especially disturbing: The porn business has suddenly gone flaccid (5). 5: Folks this goes to show these guys not are playing hardball here. It’s out there, unabashed and in-your-face. You can’t help but smell the smegma on this stinker. The drop in porn rentals and sales is worrisome on several fronts: Till now, porn has been a recession-proof business. Further, with the country already in a dispirited mood (6), 6: Oh! He’ll lose points on this one, guys, as this was clearly an opportunity for a nice ‘have a headache’ joke, here. the fact that porn has gone limp (7) 7: Checking the scoreboard now. He’s got a respectable six, folks, and we’re not talking inches. (This is counting the ‘dispirited mood’ lame-o-riffic reference, though we really shouldn’t.) may indicate a true plunge in consumer confidence.

DVD porn is down between 10% and 30%, depending on which nook and cranny of the business you scrutinize. Joy King, executive vice president of Wicked Pictures, and a smart analyst of the business, says the smallest dropoff is in “couples-friendly porn” — films that embrace something of a storyline. Women account for roughly half of this audience, making their purchases in lingerie boutiques and toy stores (no, not kiddie toys).

By contrast, that sector called the “gonzo” side of the business is in serious need of fiscal Viagra. (8) 8: Boom!, and there it is folks. Viagra pops out its purple, ugly head surprisingly late in the story. No stranger to comedy, everyone, Viagra is a force to be reckoned; a gift that just keeps on giving and giving and giving in the comedy world. Guys with an appetite for “gonzo” are going unrequited, which may help account for the closing of many DVD emporiums like the Movie Galleries in the Midwest.

One beneficiary of these trends is online porn — a business that’s lofty in traffic but shriveled (9) 9: Like a scared turtle — Jerry Seinfeld taught us that — this nice metaphor makes money easy to understand: Less money = a tiny winky. Makes me want to be an economist! in terms of revenue. With sales declining across the landscape, employees at big corporations have a lot more time to check out the three-minute porn clips flashing across their computers. To the serious porn players, some of these clips are beyond hardcore — they’re, well, mega-gonzo.

Porn proprietors are doing what they can to meet their business challenges. Wicked Pictures, for example, is recycling its biggest hits, so customers can acquire “Space Nuts,” “Manhunters” and “Flashpoint” in one svelte — well — package (10). 10: I prefer the term ‘one svelte basket.’

At the same time, other producers are cutting production costs and special effects. Since these films already are made on skimpy budgets of $50,000 to $75,000, these cuts are not welcomed by the porn filmmakers. At the same time, some of their actors won’t mind completing their tasks in one take, rather than *wrestling (11) 11: Not counting it. Nope. No-siree.

Still, veterans of the porn trade are edgy about the downturn. A generation ago, they recall, when authorities cracked down on “Deep Throat” and closed many of the porn palaces, the country promptly fell into a serious recession. Economists attributed this setback to the ups and downs (12) 12: Did Peter slip one in while we were sleeping? We’re cautiously calling this one a ‘No.’ of energy prices, but porn analysts insist other sorts of fluctuations play a more urgent role in consumer confidence. 13: This dead horse keeps on getting beaten. Is there no mercy for the joke that wears thin — thin like tender, sensative skin?

Members-only (13) club?

There’s a certain dark irony in the fact that, amidst the squeeze (14) 14: Oh no he didn’t! He’s back in the game, folks! Gone are the jokes about erection status, here come the wanker jokes. Bring them on, I say. Bring. Them. On. in porn, Judd Apatow appears to be on a crusade to defy the code by making the full-frontal phallus an important co-star of all his films. In “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” the latest release from the Apatow comedic assembly line, there are not only abundant dick jokes but also abundant dicks.

Until recently, the unofficial policy of the MPAA code was that the presence of a penis meant an automatic NC-17 rating. But Apatow, who has scored with films like “Knocked Up,” “Walk Hard,” “Talladega Nights” and “Superbad,” seems increasingly dependent on below-the-belt humor. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” opens with a fairly tight shot of Jason Segel’s member and, as if to push the joke, it closes with yet another one. Apparently Segel doesn’t mind — he wrote the script as well as starred (Segel clearly is plugged into Apatow humor, as a graduate of “Freaks and Geeks”).

Is Apatow merely trying to be naughty? Evidence suggests that the shrewd young comedy writer-director has been successful in attracting the dating crowd — yes, both girls and boys — to his raunchy escapades. Further, testing shows that young women usually laugh at the sight of a pathetic penis.

So that news will send the purveyors of porn into yet another panic. At a time when “gonzo” is fading, “limp” is in. What does that say about the mood of the country? (15)

Labels: Best of

Comcast’s blocking of peer-to-peer data irks some customers, who have taken their complaint to an FCC hearing.

Original article: “The Raging Grannies Greet the F.C.C. - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog”

“We are here facing these problems because of a failure of F.C.C. policy,” Mr. Lessig [11. Larry Lessig, Stanford law professor, founder of the Center for Internet and Society.] said. “The F.C.C. has failed to make it absolutely clear that network owners, if they’re building the Internet, have to make it absolutely open.”

Labels: Technology

Apple has revised the way it sends software updates to Windows PCs via its Software Update service in response to charges that it was sneaking its Safari Web browser onto users’ desktops without their permission or knowledge.

An issue exists in the accuracy of this article. A dialog indicating that Safari will be downloaded — which needs to be OK’d — is both the giving of knowledge and getting of permission. This article by Jonathan Cremin for Neowin is negligently inaccurate, where he or his editor calls the Safari installation in Windows “stealth” in the headline [1]. Safari doesn’t install in the background without the user’s knowledge. It tells the user the installation will happen and asks for permission.

Labels: Apple, Technology

France does not support the idea of free speech in the way we know.

Original article: “French bill outlaws pro-anorexia websites”

People behind anorexia-promoting websites could be jailed in France under a law that has been passed by one of the country’s two houses of parliament.

Lower house the French National Assembly adopted a bill aimed at criminalising “incitement to excessive thinness by publicising of any kind”. The bill carries a penalty of up to three years in jail and a fine of €45,000.

A number of websites publish advice and encouragement to people, mostly young women, who want to be dangerously thin. These are targetted by the French bill in order to protect the 40,000 anorexics living in France.

The law is aimed at sites which provoke a person to excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged restriction of food, risking death or directly compromising the person’s health.

Labels: Crime

Civil rights “icon” teaches daughter the “science of marriage.”

Original article: “Civil rights icon convicted of molesting daughter

The Rev. James L. Bevel, 71, a top lieutenant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who also helped organize the Million Man March, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced.

Labels: Crime, Race

Labels: Photography

I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. — CEO Kurt Denke, Blue Jeans Cable, to Monster legal

Monster Cable sends “cease and desist” letters to a smaller cable outfit alleging design patent infringement. Hysterically, the smaller company, Blue Jeans Cable, sends a “Oh no he didn’t!” legal letter back, bitch-slapping the overpriced Monster company, and tearing holes in all of its arguments.

The entire letter is posted and is accessible in the sidenote (sorry IE users, you’re bitches who can’t read those). In this excerpt, Blue Jeans Cable CEO — who is himself a lawyer — has fun with his response: he speaks of Monster’s offshore tax evasion schemes [11.If they exist at all.].

Original article: “Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable”

Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

Further, if any of these patents or trademarks has been licensed to any entity, please provide me with copies of the licensing agreements.  I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable’s principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income; my request for these licensing agreements is specifically intended to include any licensing agreements, including those with closely related or sham entities, within or without the Monster Cable “family,” and without regard to whether those licensing agreements are sham transactions for tax shelter purposes only or whether they are bona fide arm’s-length transactions.

It’s difficult through the legalspeak, but this is comedy gold to snakes everywhere, I’m sure.

Labels: Technology

“Gangsta rap,” the mispronounced term associated heavily with the murder, rape, and theft by the black, criminal underworld, was invented and perpetuated by some whites, according to singer, songwriter, nutjob Alicia Keys.

I was reading the minutes of one meeting in August of ’82 of the secret white club that convenes monthly, and Sweet River Baines!, that night’s agenda was indeed for the white racial majority to devise a way to once again oppress the black underclass, with rhyme.

Original article: “Keys Talks About Her Conspiracy Theories”

Keys, 27, said she’s read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck “to symbolize strength, power and killing ‘em dead,” according to an interview in the magazine’s May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

“To symbolize power strength and killing ’em dead”; who are the “’em” in that sentence? Wait, don't tell me.

Labels: Race

Vast repertoires of condemnation are often directed at rap music in today’s society. For instance, many rappers refer to women with degrading words, or the lyrics glorify selling drugs and promote gun violence. The criticism is virtually endless. ♦ However, one of the greatest contributions rap has offered America is often overlooked. Rap music has, perhaps unintentionally, aided in minimizing the gap between races.

Indeed, rap has pulled a generation of white kids, already having taken the black, into the gutter of criminal mentality, speech, and behavior. Bravo, rap. I salute your induction of sideways caps, hopping cars, and your commitment to class.

Labels: Race

Original article:
“‘OpenMac’ Promises $399 Headless Mac… But Not From Apple”

A company called Psystar has started advertising a $399 computer called “OpenMac” which claims to be a Leopard compatible Mac built from standard PC-parts. For $399…

Labels: Apple

Dad and Mom discover the quibbles of inter-gang parenting.

Original article:
“Parents Fight Over Which Gang Toddler Should Join - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver”

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

Beautiful.

Labels: Crime, Race

‘She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.’

Original article: “‘World peace’ hitcher is murdered”

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

Labels: Crime, Race

A chilling look at conditions reported at the Arctic pole…

Original article:
“Inside the Beltway”

…great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines [11. Moraine, n.: a mass of rocks and sediment carried down and deposited by a glacier, typically as ridges at its edges or extremity.] of earth and stones,” and “at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.”

…from 1922!

This was worth a repost as a bit of perspective. We can all just calm down and relax, have a margarita.

Your Score: 405 Average reaction time:
Black Armed: 845.2ms
Black Unarmed: 912.12ms
White Armed: 786.8ms
White Unarmed: 870.96ms

A psychological test linked from the New York Times Internet opinion page professes to measure humankind’s racial bias. The above is how I scored in my first and only test, which surprises me: In the test, you are to shoot either armed or unarmed blacks and whites; I was slower to shoot blacks than whites, yet slower, however, to holster my gun when faced with an unarmed black man. Since I do plan on buying a gun, this gives me a smug piece of mind.

Labels: Photography