Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

2012: “An eye-popping, insult to the intelligence strictly for the kiddies and crackpot doomsday enthusiasts.” — Kam Williams, News Blaze

The Men Who Stare at Goats: “Either someone missed the memo about other people’s LSD trips being a colossal drag, or else they fed it to a goat.” — Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

The Fourth Kind: “going to great lengths to make us believe the events depicted in this movie are real, but it’s about as a real as the date I had with Jennifer Aniston in my dreams the other night.” — Willie Waffle, WaffleMovies.com

Couples Retreat: “during the shark attack . . . the sympathy was not necessarily with the humans in the water” — Andrea Chase, Killer Movie Reviews

Law Abiding Citizen: “Say what you will about Death Wish, but Charles Bronson was never boring.” — Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times

The Box: “Whatever you do, do not accept delivery of The Box, a package that doesn’t know where it is going nor how to get there.” —David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer

Astro Boy: “a big selling point for my kids to see this movie was the line, ‘I have machine guns… in my butt?’ Viewer, be warned.” — Kevin Carr, 7M Pictures

Categories
animation humor Sport

Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

This made me laugh. It’s an animation about Dock Ellis’ “legendary LSD no hitter”.

(via)

Categories
history

Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes

Everything you need to know about the first decade of the twenty first century in seven minutes, according to Newsweek:

[Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes | Youtube]

Categories
Art

Workout Triptych

A short film I created for my video sketchbook class, Workout Triptych:

Workout Triptych

Categories
family

Fast Computer

According to my dad, his new computer is so fast that the slowest part of opening Firefox is double clicking. When he found out how to add the shortcut to the single clicking quicklaunch menu, he exclaimed that the time to get on the Internet just dropped in half!

The highlights of their order includes:

  • Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Processor
  • 8GB DDR3 RAM
  • Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
  • OCZ Vertex 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD

I’m curious to give it a try and see how Windows 7 performs and if using a solid state drive is really as great as the reviews seem to indicate. The thing that intrigues me the most is the idea that a solid state drive can’t crash because it doesn’t have any moving parts.

My parents said that as fast as the computer is, the boot time could be faster. Their non-scientific time trial indicates that a cold boot takes about 45 seconds.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Obama and all but one US Presidents share ancestor

A seventh grade student, BridgeAnne d’Avignon, and her 80 year old grandfather traced President Obama’s ancestry back to a common relative with most of the other presidents. They’re all related to the former King of England from 1199 to 1216, John “Lackland” Plantagenet.

You may remember John “Lackland” Plantagenet, or John of England from the characterization in Disney’s Robin Hood.

Disney's Prince John

Prince John and Sir Hiss as scanned from page 166 of The Illusion of Life Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

Yes, THAT Prince John. Aha.

According to BridgeAnne, the only former US president that does not share John “Lackland” Plantagenet as an ancestor is Martin Van Buren.

Video news link.

Categories
economics Politics

Political lobbying is like an all-pay auction

David Zetland teaches Environmental Economics and Policy 100 at UC Berkeley. In this YouTube clip from one of his lectures, he demonstrates how political lobbying is like an all-pay auction (an auction where you pay your bid regardless of whether or not you actually bid the final, highest bid).

[YouTube – Political lobbying explained through the example of all-pay auctions]

A sleazy online auction site, named Swoopo, uses a similar style auction to dupe suckers into creating a “sunk cost” and then extending the time, giving the competition time to recap their own sunk costs. Everyone is a loser in this game, do not play it.—see Metafilter’s writeup.

(via)

Categories
advertising books

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture

age-of-persuassion-how-marketing-ate-our-cultureOne of my favorite radio shows has been turned into a book. The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture is now available in book stores across Canada!

Authors Mike Tennant and Terry O’Reilly have known each other for about 20 years; they began their career together making radio shows in 1995 with O’Reilly on Advertising. They’ve followed that up with “The Age of Persuasion” and a book based on that show which hits bookstores today.

Last Tuesday I took advantage of an opportunity to talk on the phone with Terry and Mike about the show and their new book “The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture”. My questions are in bold text.

Categories
life

A Glimpse

BEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBE…The whining screech of the fire alarm wakes me abruptly.

I glance at the alarm clock beside my bed. 6:10am seems a bit early to get up on a Saturday morning but I decide that I’d better check just in case nobody’s around — nobody is.

There isn’t a lot of smoke, in fact, in my groggy state I can’t figure out the source of the alarm. Then a moment later I flip on the oven light.

It turns out somebody’s cooking one of those Delissio frozen pizzas. I hope they like a crispy crust… with black toppings. Yum.

Categories
life

Google Wave

I just received an invitation to join Google Wave. I have yet to have an actual conversation in it yet, but I’ve been supplying nominations for a few of my friends to get invitations. It’s sort of like being the first person with a telephone—it’s not very useful until the people you want to talk to, get one too.

Previously