quarblotz

2:36pm: In my mind they're Jedis
There are about a dozen variants of this on YouTube, so I'll only post the one. It does dive straight into the middle of the Hallelujah Chorus, so if you're at work check the volume before you hit play. Enjoy!

8:25pm: Via io9, I bring you William Shatner and Adam West in Alexander the Great!

5:16pm: Signs
Prediction: No matter who wins in 2012, EVERYONE will use it as an indicator that maybe the world really is going to end.

Bonus prediction: This will only be funny twice.

9:49am: Tricks of the trade
How to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew, via The Kitchn. Tell Tara I'll handle the wine at New Year's!

6:51pm: Politics
So, I've seen a lot on the internets about Health Care and the Stupak Amendment. I've read a lot of posts about what a rip-off Stupak is, and how the poorest women will be the most affected. Here's to everyman's party, at the expense of everywoman. And so forth.

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9:28pm: Deep thoughts
The new drunk dialing: Sharing on your Google Reader while intoxicated. Bitchin!

7:26pm: Everything Above the Neck: quick survey
We've produced a little survey for work to investigate attitudes and behaviours relating to men's shaving. It will only take about ten minutes, and we'd really appreciate your opinions!

Everything above the neck Survey

Boys - please fill this out by 8am Friday morning London Time;

Everyone - please feel free to pass this along to any male relatives/friends who might also be willing to give up ten minutes.

We want to hear from a variety of people, from the cleanest of clean shaven, to ZZ Top-alikes, and everything in between, regardless of age, products used, or frequency of shave, so don't be shy.

All answers are treated in the strictest confidence and we won't be looking at individual answers. Your response is anonymous, so don't be afraid to tell the truth!

Thanks!

1:03pm: Shopping
So, I'm reading more and more blogs about retail, and specifically about Grocery stores. I've just found My Private Brand, a blog dedicated entirely to stores' own-label products. Yes, this is the sort of thing I find interesting.

They've linked to an article in adweek about Private Brand Malpractice. It's basically about how retailers stock the national brands and so can spot new trends in packaging early, and can copy them in their own packaging to better give the impression that their own brands are viable competitors with the national brands.

What got me was this sentence, buried halfway down:

With studies showing that an average of five parking lots are visited during a typical shopping day...

... Really? How many parking lots do you visit on a typical shopping day? Because I go to one. We make a list, decide where we want to shop, and go there. Every now and then we'll hit a second store because the first doesn't have a specific item, like frozen gluten-free pizza, but these are the exceptions.

Is it because we try to buy mostly fresh items, and nobody really cares where the milk comes from? Is it because we're just not choosy enough? Or is the "five lots" number above exaggerated because people are doing lots of different kinds of shopping on a single day, and so will hit up Kroger and TJ Maxx?

Five stores!? Really?

2:54pm: History

8:24am: Hobbies
FOUND!



via talk_bizarre

8:58am: Trick or Treat
A clip from "A Bit of Fry and Laurie." I'm assuming most of you recognize Hugh Laurie from "House," but I don't know how many of you know who Stephen Fry is. This is me officially encouraging each and every one of you to find out.

3:00pm: Separated at birth!
Who else thinks Beckham's new beard makes him look a little too much like Gary Oldman?

6:14pm: Just browsing
Guess what awesome light reading I was doing online today to lead me to this Wikipedia entry on Bookland.

10:26am: Echidne observes Lisbon Fashion Week. Unremarkable, except that it's provided my Quote of the Week:

"Alas, men lack the training to accept fashion rules."

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9:24am: I feel a petition!

1:01pm: TV
To be perfectly frank, I don't give a crap who David Letterman slept with. The most interesting thing about this "news" is that the controversy and airtime seem to be focused around the concern that Letterman might have abused his authority as boss in order to pressure these women into having sex with them. What about the girls!?

You know, if any one of those women had come forward to say "David Letterman pressured me to have sex with him, implying that I could lose my job if I didn't" we'd be digging into every remotely shady corner of her past and defending Letterman as an upright citizen.

7:36pm: Cheese!

9:39pm: More on health care

9:24pm: Where it hurts
Lookit! From Shakesville:



Shakesville quotes from Buzzfeed: "A surveillance camera at a bank in Wisconsin captured this customer surprising a masked bank robber and tackling him. Stick around for the second angle to watch the old lady kicking him while he's down."

Two things: 1) Awesome! 2) I'm offended that YouTube is calling a 54 year old man a grandpa, and that Buzzfeed is calling his wife an "old woman." Three things! Am I mistaken, or was that some good old fashioned wrasslin?

11:23am: Adventures in Internetting
So, PZ has a new retirement plan. In detailing this plan, he linked to this article:

Christian hotel owners sued for "defending their beliefs." Now, the jury is clearly still out, and it sounds like they may have said some things more inflammatory than "Jesus was a nice guy." They're still being sued.

More than that, I wanted to point out some of the other "related" articles linked to on the same page:



That first article, "Muslim lovers to be caned for trying to have sex in a car," is only relevant because it's about Muslims; it's not even a case from the UK.

The second article, "Jedi church founder thrown out of Tesco for refusing to remove his hood was left 'emotionally humiliated',", is indeed about religious discrimination. I mean, probably the hooded cloak was mistaken for a "hoodie," and the staff were just uneducated on the finer points of traditional Jedi garments.

The last article (because a post for "comments" is really just for trolls), "Christian nurse accuses hospital of discrimination after being removed from frontline duty for wearing cross necklace" is sort of relevant, because it's about people getting offended because of religion. Or rather, fear of people getting offended by religion.

What have I learned? That Christians will say inflammatory things to Muslims about Mohammed thinking it's rational discourse, and won't understand where they went wrong. That newspapers think everything with the word Muslim in it is about the same thing. That bureaucrats are so worried that someone *might* be offended that they've banned religious jewellry. And that some Jedi are being out-canonized by enormous, hyper-generic chain retailers:

But Tesco hit back in the spirit of the epic space saga and claimed that the three most well known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies - Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker - all appeared in public without their hoods.

Oh, the humanity!

10:57am: Gapminder
Hans Rosling's Gapminder presentation from TED 2006. I'm sure we can all agree both that I'm a huge dork, and this is really interesting!

4:00pm: Movies
So, the boy and I went to see District 9. That was weird.

9:48pm: Sewing
How cute is this dragon cape!? I'm considering making a grown-up sized one for myself.

9:30am: Scientific!
Via Philosopher's Playground, LSD testing on British soldiers:

9:19am: Mania
Via Pandagon, this post about "Republican Party chairman of Boise County in Idaho" Charles McAfee, an employee of Wells Fargo. He was sent to a property to photograph it because the owner had failed to keep up with the mortgage. When the owner tried to talk to him, McAfee pulled a gun.

I think Amanda nails it when she says:

Gun-brandishing teabaggers, right-wing preachers calling for the execution of gays and the President...in all of the years the left was out in the political cold, did we see any of this completely unhinged behavior?