I stumbled upon this by accident, but since “get” got me here, I’m using this Google Game as an excuse to show you my favorite comic strip, Get Fuzzy.
Check out Comics.com to enjoy the day-to-day hilarity of Bostonian Rob Wilco, his feisty cat, Bucky, and sweetly dim dog, Satchel. I get it emailed to me for free every morning. It’s a day-brightener. Click on for a few goodies. Continue reading
Well, kind of a game, anyway. You remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? If you dig into IMDb’s advanced search functions you can enjoy a sort of solitaire version.
On the homepage of imdb.com, select the pulldown menu next to the search box and choose Advanced Search. From there you can search by Collaborations and Overlaps by entering the names of two actors. How else would I have known that Rob Lowe and Tracy Morgan both appeared on the 2004 ESPYs? (Works for crew as well as cast.)
For more fun — or research, or time killing — the Advanced Name Search lets you search actors by place of birth (or death), height and star sign. Jennifer Grey and I are both 5-foot-3 Aries from New York. (I think we went to the same high school, too, actually. Bonus: when I sort by ascending height, the title of the page becomes “Shortest Aries Females….”) With the Name Text Search you “select a section to search within (mini biography, trivia, quotes) and enter a word to search for (e.g. “arrested”).”
That one, by the by, turns up 483 names if you search within bios and 526 if you pick trivia. Have at it.
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Unhappy Media
Tagged celebrities, games, imdb, search
We’re going to play a little game. Take a look at these before and after photos visually extolling the remarkable results of the Cenegetics healthy aging program. I see commercials for Cenegetics frequently enough to question my television habits and the last time I caught their ad something caught my eye in the pictures above. Something is wrong. Can you find it?
Keep reading for the big reveal. Continue reading
I swear: I wasn’t even trying to go the Jew route with this one. It just happened.
I really want to focus on other results here — like what the internet can tell you about flies being annoying that you can’t tell from, you know, flies, or why so many people want to know how to say “so annoying” in Japanese — but I just can’t resist. Just. Can’t. Resist… Continue reading
Rick Sanchez is an idiot.
He was an idiot before he went on XM/Sirius show Stand Up with Pete Dominick. He was an idiot when we said that Jon Stewart is a bigot, when we pulled back to not bigot but just prejudiced, when he sarcastically ranted that the networks are run by entitled, villainous Jews who he hopes worry about another Holocaust (what?!), and when he got his stupid ass fired by CNN as a result of it all.
Salon summed it up elegantly on Friday:
That was fast. CNN just waited until 6 pm eastern to fire Rick “CNN’s Second-Dumbest Anchor” Sanchez. CNN will pay morons to read Tweets on-air, but they won’t employ morons who semi-coherently express resentful antisemitic comments on satellite radio.
Here is CNN’s brief statement:
“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.“
This summary pulls out the good parts, with audio. What kills me most isn’t that Sanchez tries to play the race card while employing Speedy Gonzalez-like sound effects on his show every goddam day and acts as though he’s the only famous person whose dad worked hard, it’s that he thinks it’s prejudicial to make fun of him for mispronouncing things:
[Speaking as Stewart] Oh, I know… wait, hold on, let me find, oh that Rick Sanchez, that little Puerto Rican guy. I’ll make fun of him. Do you have anything.” “Uh, yeah, last week, he mispronounced the word indutably or whatever.” “Yeah, that’s it, find me that and we’ll do a whole 4-minute segment on how he mispronounced the word arithmetic.”
You think that shit’s funny because your family is Puerto Rican? No, ya moron, it’s funny because news anchors are supposed to be smart. Jesu Christo, ese. The whole point of The News is to enable people who don’t know the word “indubitably” to turn on the TV and learn things from people who do. And the fact that you have — ahem, I mean had — a job reading the news when you don’t know “the word indutably or whatever” is as hilarious as it is disappointing, terrifying and stupefying.
Speaking of reading, by the way, Ricky boy goes on to say that if he just read the teleprompter every day without going off-script Jon Stewart would have nothing to say about him. Dude! Exactly. That’s the whole freaking point. As soon as you start running your stupid mouth you give Stewart and the like more fodder to feed on.
Case in point: Where was your teleprompter when you got yourself fired? Aye dios mio, indeed.
I never tire of watching 92Y’s brilliant parody of those insufferable New York Times Weekender ads. And neither will you:
It’s based on a couple TV spots in the NYTimes Weekender campaign. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find the full version of one of them. It’s a real shame, because there’s a lot of douche to enjoy. Perhaps you remember the I’m not a call now kind of guy guy. Oh! Hate you! After the jump, the best I could do to wrangle up the referents.
Posted in Shoot the Messenger
Tagged 92Y, douchebags, new york times, the weekender, tv commercials, videos
I saw a short article on MerriamWebster.com that caught my eye the other day. Yeah, I hang out on a dictionary website, what of it? Anyways, it said there was a spike in lookings-up of the word “limn” earlier this month after it was used in the headline of a Baltimore Sun article: Opposing votes limn differences in race. The unusual, even esoteric word choice got people’s attention, for better or worse.
One reader described the usage as “unbelievably arrogant and patronizing.” Others thanked the paper for expanding their vocabularies.Responding to the controversy, the paper’s eminent blogger about language, John McIntyre, pointed out that it “may not have been the shrewdest choice for the front page.” However, he added, “Speaking as a language maven, I applaud when people consult dictionaries to add another little brick to the wall of their vocabularies. Now that you know what it means, it is yours forever.”
Limn, says MW, means “to outline in sharp detail” or “to describe,” by the way.
I’m torn here. Being a word nerd and constant mourner of the English language (like the Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten), I praise a paper for introducing some nutrition into what junk food writing people usually devour. But I don’t think a headline is where you ought to do it. A headline — of a news story, anyway — is supposed to be the bit that tells you, in as few words as possible, what you’ll get from the article to follow. Throw in a $10 word and you’re defeating the purpose for a large majority of potential readers. You may even alienate some of those readers and lose valuable eyeballs.
You got to sneak it in there, like a pill in a dog treat. Trick folks into wisenin’ up. Insinuate a new word or usage into an easily apprehendable context and maybe you’ll manage to surreptitiously augment a vocabulary or two.
Lookups on Merriam-Webster spiked on September 8, 2010.
On September 7, The Baltimore Sun ran the headline, “Opposing votes limn difference in race.”
That unusual word choice ended up making headlines of its own.
One reader described the usage as “unbelievably arrogant and patronizing.” Others thanked the paper for expanding their vocabularies.
Responding to the controversy, the paper’s eminent blogger about language, John McIntyre, pointed out that it “may not have been the shrewdest choice for the front page.” However, he added, “Speaking as a language maven, I applaud when people consult dictionaries to add another little brick to the wall of their vocabularies. Now that you know what it means, it is yours forever.”
Limn means “to outline in sharp detail” or “to describe.” It’s a close relative of illuminate.
Posted in Unhappy Media, Write and Wrong
Tagged definition, headlines, merriam-webster, vocabulary
This rather brilliant post from Martin Robbins’ The Lay Scientist blog on the Guardian website basically sums up what I (try to) do for a living. Those who can’t do teach and those who can’t hack it in the lab write… formulaically.
In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?
In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.
In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.
Suddenly I was overcome with a need to listen to Gloria, by Laura Branigan. I lifted my already-plugged-in mp3 device and searched for the song. To my dismay I realized that– what the fuck? — I don’t have it on there. Other Glorias, yes. U2’s Gloria. And Mineral’s. But not Ms. Branigan’s, the one I was currently butchering a capella.
Too lazy to rummage through my CDs and ruing that visit to a record shop in Kansas City when my friend picked up the Flashdance soundtrack before I did, I went to the YouTube for the quick and easy way to play it. I noticed a number of other Gloria tracks up there, so I decided to do a little Google investigation:
That’s a lot of Gloria. And that’s not even all of them. (See Mineral, above. Cross ref: Emo as fuck and still in rotation.)
I’ll let you poke around and find your own favorite Gloria, but read on for a couple suggestions.
Posted in Google Game
Tagged gloria, google search, laura branigan, mineral, u2, videos
A new free iPhone app called Facts on the Ground allows users to track the construction of Israeli settlements in contested territories. As the app’s makers, Americans for Peace Now explain:
You can use this map to explore the data we have collected about settlement activity in the West Bank. The map is organized in several layers that show different kinds of data.
“Settlement” is the term used to denote Israeli civilian communities built in territory conquered by Israel in the Six Day War (June 1967). This territory is comprised of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. These neighborhoods have been a major issue in the peace process since 1967 and remain highly controversial.
It’s probably Apple’s most politically-charged app, and looking at comments and reviews on the iPhone download page or web posts about the product make one thing pretty clear: Jews love settlements and iPhones. Maybe Muslims are Android-users.
I’d like to suggest a similar app for Jews interested in settling. The iSettled app would track new marriages all over the Upper West Side. Layers would show number of kids, tax bracket and number of blocks to the nearest synagogue. Links directly to your J-Date account!
[Thanks to Michelle for the link. Check out her awesome Sukkot Sizzle party at the Delancey tomorrow night. Will be a good time for sure. And if you show up at work too hung over to function on Wednesday you can cite religious observance and nap at your desk. Booya. (Jew-ya.)]
Posted in Gadgeteering
Tagged americans for peace now, apple, facts on the ground, iphone app, israel, jews
No Happy Medium 