I keep remembering what a teacher of mine once told me, that the peace movement didn't end the Vietnam war, it was the news media's 24/7 reporting of the event. It was Pentagon-supported body counts, watching the war on TV served up on the 6:00 news with dinner, and watching them unload dead US soldiers off airplanes at Dover air force base.
I honestly think that the media should go back to doing that, and bring our soldiers home. We've been in Iraq & Afghanistan too long, and we need to bring them home. We can't win these wars, and all we are doing now is killing soldiers.
OK, normally we don't post stuff like this here at Cuppa, but it is faux news story we got off The Volokh Conspiracy that they got off The Onion, that we, well giggled like a schoolgirl all the way through. So we felt that we should share it with you all.
Long have we contended that, when growing up, all the news of the world could be told in 30 minutes a day. These days with four or five 24/7 news channels, there is still only 30 minutes of news every single day, but now these stations still have to fill up 23.5 hours every day, just to sell commercials to keep their stations on the air, so that they can get paid.
Needless to say, what we so often wind up is is something like, well, this:
There is some (mild) cursing in this vid, so be aware.
The only thin that is worse than this type of story (told seriously) is when they break into regular programming to tell us that there is no new update on the critical story that they are going to lead off the news with in 20 minutes.
Actress and sometimes singer Lindsay Lohan filed a lawsuit against financial-services company E-Trade on March 8, 2010, saying one of its television ads "used her name and characterization" without her permission. What characterization was she referring to? A baby named Lindsay that is referred to as a "milkaholic." Apparently, Lohan takes offense to other people — fictional babies included — being referred to as any type of -holic. Lohan's lawyer went on to claim that the company was clearly referencing the socialite because she has the same one-name recognition as people like Oprah or Madonna and that E-Trade was "using [Lindsay's] name as a parody of her life." Lohan is seeking $100 million in damages.
Talk about an inflated ego!
I know that after seeing that, my first thought was about Lindsay (not)
So seriously is Lohan admitting that she is some sort of lactate-swilling slut?
Yep, that's what Jon Stewart said at the top of his show where he introduced Harry Markopolos on his March 8th show. Markopolos is the fellow who (back in 2000) blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff.
The man who spent nearly a decade trying to blow the whistle on what appears to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history has achieved a kind of hero status within the investment world. He is poised to reap both fame and fortune from a disaster that has cost the investors of Bernard L. Madoff as much as $50 billion.
By now, we've all heard about Toyota's inability to stop their cars, well, we just learned that a California Highway Patrol officer assisted in slowing down a runaway Toyota Prius (from 94 mph to a safe stop) on Monday after the car's accelerator became stuck on a San Diego County freeway.
Prius driver James Sikes called 911 about 1:30 p.m. after accelerating to pass another vehicle on Interstate 80 near La Posta and finding that he could not control his car, the CHP said.
"I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny... it jumped and it just stuck there," the 61-year-old driver said at a news conference. "As it was going, I was trying
the brakes...it wasn't stopping, it wasn't doing anything and it just kept speeding up," Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning he was pressing the pedal so hard.
I was chatting with Walt earlier today and told him that a dispute between ABC and my local cable provider (Cablevison) has caused ABC to cut the feed as of midnight this morning. According to ABC it is Cablevisions fault, and (you guessed it) Cablevision, it is all ABC's fault.
The Disney Co., which owns the ABC network, cut off service to the city's 3.1 million Cablevision customers after the two sides failed to reach a deal.
ABC officials acted on their threat to pull the channel unless Cablevision agreed to pay a rights fee to offer the top-rated station to its subscribers.
"Cablevision has once again betrayed its subscribers by losing ABC7, the most popular station in the tri-state area," Channel 7 president Rebecca Campbell said in a statement.
Cablevision blamed the stall in negotiations on Disney CEO Bob Iger.
What this mostly means to ABC customers, is that they won't get to watch the Oscars tonight. Fortunately, I live in CT, and we have a local ABC Affiliate (WTNH in New Haven), and can still access the feed through them.
Needless to say, this is (obviously) a short-term fix, and, well, something is going to have to be done.
Personally, I'm a little suspect, as since ABC is still essentially a "broadcast" channel, the Federal Government has decreed that the broadcast belongs to the public and should be free, so how can ABC pull the feed. An interesting question since the FCC doesn't control cable programming.
The $40 million that ABC is asking for from cablevision is actually rather interesting given as how its parent company (Disney), is renown for being the living embodiment of it's tightwad character, Scrooge McDuck.
To paraphrase Eddy Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, "...don't worry about us. We got guns and coffee here. We're gonna get wired and have a big party." Yeah, here at Cuppa central, those are two things that we dearly love (Walt because he's a Texan, and me because, well I just like to get wired and blow stuff up).
Still, if we ever found ourselves out on the road, we know one coffeehouse we're surely gonna visit, and yep, that's Starbucks, for as surely as we all know that these establishments are the gateway to the Underworld, at least they support an open carry policy in their stores.
...in light of a renewed statement by Starbucks that’s it’s standing by a policy to allow people brandishing unloaded weapons into its stores. (Check out the good videos embedded in the story, as well.)
The quick backstory: The “open carry” movement, in which gun owners carry unconcealed handguns as they go about their everyday business, has been gaining serious traction in recent months. Gun-control advocates have been pushing to quash the movement, including by petitioning the Starbucks coffee chain to ban guns on its premises. Gun-rights advocates have been taking the battle, and their guns, to an ever-broadening range of retail establishments.
While some retail establishments have, for one reason or another, banned open carriers from their premises, others haven’t. Among those in the latter category: Starbucks.
Yep, what could go wrong with a bunch of folks hopped up on caffeine and carrying weapons?
If you haven't then perhaps you should simply stay way, stay far, far away. Never heard of ChatRoulette? Don't worry, you don't really want to know, but since you are obviously still reading this post, let's talk about this for a bit. From the little I know about it is that ChatRoulette is a new website that brings users (with computers and webcams) face-to-face, via with an endless stream of random strangers all over the world. The "Roulette" pare come s in that when you are bored (or freaked out) by your chat buddy, you simply hit "F9" and spin to a new partner.
Well, all the news electronic news media is reporting on this (because, as we all know, there is no war going on in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and they have to fill 24/7 air time with something).
Anyway, our pal Jon Stewart did a segment on it last night:
Tonight, Jon Stewart finally—and hilariously—jumped on the Chatroulette bandwagon. Stewart mocked the media's obsession with the Internet's newest fad, before trying it out himself—and running into Diane Sawyer, Keith Olbermann, Katie Couric, Brian Williams and more. Here are screengrabs of all his best encounters (they were real). [CLICK HERE] to see full video of the epic segment
No really, United States Senator Jim Bunning, (R) Kentucky is delaying a deal in Congress to extend unemployment benefits. Some states will be hit harder than others if Congress doesn't act to reinstate benefits that Brunning doesn't want you to have.
As long as Jim Bunning delays a deal in Congress to extend unemployment benefits, states around the country will see unemployed Americans start to lose those benefits.
But seven states will be hit harder than any others: Florida, New York, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia.
All of them will see an average 10,000 or more workers each week lose their benefits this month if Senator Bunning continues to hold up legislation, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a New York-based advocacy group for employment rights of lower-wage workers.
Some folks have to work extra hard at being ass-hats, Jim Bunning isnt one of them. To him it seems to come natural.
Yep, you read that right, there is (finally) a backlash to the nonsense of the Tea party Movement. Unlike their "counterparts" (and fools like Jim Bunning). Here is a salient, reasonable pitch for the movement.
According to the party's Mission Statement:
The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.
As reported by The Washington Post, the Coffee Party movement movement is being positioned as an Alternative to the stances of Tea Party members. Currently is is a fast-growing movement on Facebook.
When it comes to playgirl videogames don't look to me, I personally gave them up back when my Atari 2600 was still the hottest game system on the market. Back then, I was just starting out in my writing career, and was getting paid a (relatively) obscene amount of money to play a game then write about it (and keep the game). Well, when I stopped writing about videogames, I literally stopped playing the, as I determined that why should I waste time playing them when I could be working.
Well, a couple of decades later, and I just ran across this little gem called Heavy Rain that (almost) makes me want to buy a game system again. it is an interactive "choose your own adventure movie-cum-game that was developed by the Paris-based Quantic Dream. From what I understand it’s a murder mystery in the film noir genre, that was created using a 2,000-page script, and has a deeply profound and complex plot. Game reviewers from all over are falling all over themselves to praise the game, which was released last week Sony (SNE) for PlayStation 3.
The New York Times’ Seth Schiesel, for example, wrote on Friday, in what was a typical rave review of the “Heavy Rain”:
“In terms of eye-hand coordination or ‘gamer skills,’ Heavy Rain is negligible, even trivial, in its challenge, which will offend twitch fiends. Yet this is no simplistic Choose Your Own Adventure for children. This is a wrenching, often disturbing, almost entirely gripping experience for grown-ups.”
Near as I can determine, it is something wicked-cool, with soul and creativity, unlike most of the shoot-em-up videogames currently available. Needless to say, it still contains gut-wrenching violence, as you try catching a serial killer who drowns young boys in rain water. While there are some who think the game feels too much like a straight-to-DVD movie, it might also be just the kind of change that the weak games market needs to reinvigorate itself.
Here are a couple of (mature-themed) trailers for the game.
Not sure how the game turns out (or even if I'd have enough time to actually play it), but I think that I'd like to see the film version. For more videos, go here.
