Employees Must Wipe Hands on Pants

This story makes me laugh.

Apparently, Apple wants to apple Digital Rights Management to tennis shoes. Seriously.

Wow. If I weren’t so afraid that they would actually find some deviously Draconian legal means to accomplish it, I’d be rolling on the floor. Fortunately, the technology for getting a pair of shoes to identify itself electronically (without just installing a second, easily removable RFID tag of some such nonsense) is pretty much not possible with modern technology.

And I don’t think even our government is preparred to endorse arresting people for wearing the “wrong” brand of shoes.

…oh, and there’s also this new billion-dollar science laboratory. But nobody really cares about that, do they?

Article is here.

The International Space Station is probably the greatest unified human endeavor in our entire history as a species. Never before have so many different nations come together and joined resources to create a single project with such a massive expenditure of funds, engineering know-how, and raw determination. All for the peaceful goal of increasing scientific knowledge for the human race as a species. Completely independent of nationality, creed, religion, race, gender, or any other imaginary dividing line.

If our race wants to take pride in any single accomplishment that we can truly say we did TOGETHER, without ulterior motive, without posturing, without war, or greed, or to allow one subset of humans to dominate and control another, this project is really the poster child for such a feat.

And all the press seems to care about is that the bathroom works.

Seriously, every single mention, every story written about the ISS in the months since the toilet developed a problem has been sure to wedge that fact into the first two or three sentences. Do they think the human race, engaged in the greatest endeavor of all time, is nothing more than a pack of scatalogically-minded perverts? WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ASTRONAUT’S POOPIES?

This article makes me mad.

Do right-wing conservative idiots have nothing better to do than examine the fashions used by every advertisement in America to look for their own racist bigoted gripes? I mean, that’s not an “Islamic Headdress” she’s wearing. Even if it was, Islamic does not mean “Jihad”. And even if it did, Jihad does NOT MEAN TERRORIST.

Not even close. That’s like someone from an Islamic country saying you shouldn’t eat pita bread, because it’s somehow similar to an American Cheeseburger…and since America is full of Christians, and Christians perpetuated the Nazi holocaust, eating Pita is saying you approve of the Holocaust.

I mean, WTF kind of logic is that?

On a side note, I noticed that in the background of the picture attached to that article, is the Oregon capitol building. This was in Salem, Oregon — my hometown.

So what, is now everyone in Salem a terrorist because some woman in an ad wore the “wrong kind” of scarf there? How much more 1984 do we need to get in this country before there is any fucking outcry about it?

The last time America boycotted an Olympic Games was in 1980, over ironically enough, the Soviet invasion of Afghanastan.

Well, if America has any balls or international credibility left, the time has come to do it again. This stuff CANNOT be tolerated.

Of course, given how in debt we are to China, the chances that the current administration will do anything but sweep the current “unpleasantness” under the rug and gloss it over is slim-to-none. (Thanks a lot Nixon. Whatever happened to hating Those-Damn-Commies like any decent right-wing zealot ought to? Oh wait, the second they became HYPOCRITICAL commies, then you found something in common, eh?)

I guess while we’re there, we can pick up all their tips on proper internet censorship, and government spying. We wouldn’t want there to be an OPPRESSION GAP, now would we?

Jeremy says:
there’s a cnn article, ‘man on dive trip bitten by shark’
Jeremy  says:
why the fuck should anyone care
Jeremy  says:
people get bitten by sharks left and right
Jeremy says:
it’d be funny if they were taking an ironic approach to getting people to read stuff,
Jeremy says:
making article titles so supremely mundane that readers go ‘what the fuck’ and open them up
Jeremy says:
not that I actually did
Jon says:
“Toast thoroughly buttered”
Jeremy says:
yeah or ‘Person with a gun, fired it’
Jeremy  says:
“Breaking News: White girl is hurt.”
Jon says:
“Fatty foods found to cause obesity in some”
Jeremy says:
“Overweight people outraged.”
Jon says:
“Religious Fanatics Outraged”
Jon says:
“News Censorship Continues Due to Efforts of ######.”
Jeremy says:
“Iran rattles their sabers.  America brandishes things in response.”
Jon says:
“Arabs declare Hatred for Israel”

50 years ago today, humanity began the so-called Space Age, when Russia launched Sputnik.

I’ve read a ton of articles on this recently, and think that it’s pretty cool that we can finally talk about this event without the nationalistic fervor of the Cold War coloring our perceptions about it.

At the end of the day, we humans are pretty clever monkeys. Putting an object in orbit, launching the advent of the space science that has evolved in fits and starts over the last half-decade, is a milestone for human development that shouldn’t really be tied to any one nation or culture, but celebrated as an achievement of our species.

I really think we need more of those if we’re going to continue to develop as beings.

I watched a show on the History Channel over the weekend, spreading the latest propaganda from the scientific community who are trying to redefine what a planet is.

Here’s my beef with them:

They want to say “These are planets” and include Earth in that definition.

But they don’t want to see scientists constantly discovering new “planets” out in the Kuiper Belt for the next few decades (as, with the discovery of Sedna and Eris, seems likely to happen) .

Neither of these is for any kind of scientific reason.

If you want to define a planet in terms of “significance” within the solar system, there’s really only ONE planet that qualifies (Jupiter). Possibly as many as four if you include the three other gas giants. But Earth and the other terrestial planets really don’t measure up to this standard, so why include them?

Well, the answer here, I’m afraid, is pride. Humans want to live on a full-fledged planet. Not a “Dwarf” planet, or “pigmy” planet, or “Micro” planet. Even though that’s really what Earth actually is.

So, why are they so insistent that the definition exclude the newly found KBOs (Kupier Belt Objects)?

Again, the answer is pride. There’s a great deal of prestige in the scientific community about discovering a new planet. Scientists have realized that there’s likely a great many more KBOs to find. Their jealousy over the upcoming discoveries of these objects have prompted them to preemptively diminish these accomplishments by redefining the words to describe them. (Who cares if you discovered a “Dwarf Planet”, anyway? Big deal.)

Really, we live in a solar system with all different sizes of objects. If one of them is a “Dwarf” planet, don’t the other classes of “planet” now need modifiers as well?

That would mean we’d have to end up living on a Micro-planet Earth… But at least we wouldn’t be living with the hypocrisy of a “scientific” standard that has nothing at all to do with science, and everything to do with egos that put Jupiter to shame.