Random @Work Stuff

I. This profoundly bitter-yet-accurate Ken Layne article. It's why people need not to spend too long in D.C. He is right, though, is the worst part.
(Via Gawker)

II.
DARPA's ("Immanetizing the Eschelon Since 1973") new "robot pack mule:"

IT STUMBLES AND GETS UP! NOT OK.
(Via PopSci, ultimately via Daniel)

Because we were listening to "Crush on You"

Just had to let you know here is a list of "Lil'" rappers & producers.

It's not an official Wikipedia list, but it's good enough.

I bet there are more. (Thoughts? Does anybody actually read this?)

Who Let You In Here?

RE: This Rick Ross video:


Nelly's an easy, understandable mistake to make. He's putting out a new album, maybe there was label pressure, whatever. People used to like him, fine. (Apparently, he's actually more interesting and articulate [OMG NOT RACIALLY TRANSCENDENT!] when he's freestyling, or at least during this one freestyle he did on Rap City.)

ON THE OTHER HAND: WTF is up with the white guy with the nasty hair and trashy hat? He looks like Kevin Federline campaigning to get elected mayor of Margaritaville. Get him out of there.

Rick: if you're so desperate for a hook-singing-guy as to stoop to Beach Blanket Trailer Trash there, maybe think about giving Nate Dogg a call. I'm pretty sure he's available, and maybe a little bored and/or hungry.

MATCH GAME!

I fell in love with amazing '70s game show Match Game Sophomore year of college, when we had cable in the dorms and I spent HUGE amounts of time watching GSN. I loved a lot of the shows (in particular, the similarly-awesomely-'70s Richard Dawson-era Family Feud, in which our drunken host would just stick his tongue down the throats of female contestants in front of their fathers, brothers, and husbands), but Match Game was the BEST. Period. Subversive, winkingly dirty, clever as hell, full of in-jokes and weird sexual tension.

It's been off the air for quite some time now, although the Wikipedia says there's been a few efforts to revive it. I say the time is nigh. It was in SNL, for chrissakes!:



(BRILLIANT, btw.)

SO! BRING BACK MATCH GAME!

Clearly, there are some problems. It'd have to be on relatively late at night, OR on some sort of premium-cable-type channel (MAYBE GSN, maybe like, Spike? or Logo? something like that? G4?). The hardest part would naturally be people. I think the ideal host would be someone like Joe McHale or maybe Greg Proops...someone snarky but not angry (NOT like the people who do Root of All Evil). As for guests? All things considered, the show could potentially be a vehicle for post-reality tv stars, and could be manned on a semi-permanent basis by members of the same pool of c-list comedian-pundits who show up on Best Week Ever/I Love The.... Doug Benson is no Charles Nelson Riley, but it'd be a start.

So yeah!

Let's start a petition or something...

Irony!

Isn't it funny that Florida and Michigan's tragic mania to influence the election by being the earliest states to hold primaries DIRECTLY CAUSED the chain of events before us, when the last 8-10 states to hold primaries may end up determining the Democrat nominee, and therefore the next 4 years?

HAHA.

I guess I'm ultimately glad my parents moved out of Florida when my brother and I were still young...(They could've picked a better state than Maine, though.)


In other news, I'm pretty sure that my recent trip to D.C. has caused me to fall impossibly behind in my RSS-reading. That I'm doing this doesn't help, but whatever.

We're boned

From
Wonkette:

More than 6 million homes will go into foreclosure before this housing collapse is finished, and the number of houses now sitting empty in America has reached a staggering 18.6 million — including 2.3 million currently on the market.
Imagine every housing unit in the entire state of California suddenly empty. That's about how many houses are vacant today.
...
Columbia professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz did an interview with CNBC on Friday. Guess what he said about the combination of food and energy inflation plus the housing collapse?

"This is going to be one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression."

Two points:
1)Wonkette adds, with typical snark, "And this is why we need to take a long, hard look at Jeremiah Wright's religious sermons about black people." I'm not so sure I agree with their implicit point (i.e., that just maybe there are more important things the candidates should be discussing.) The thing is, based on everything I've heard about the candidates' economic positions, the question really seems to be: whose underinformed, ill-conceived, special-interest-pandering-to economic policy will make the upcoming crisis the least worse?
2)My generation doesn't really have a work ethic, from what I can tell. There was a spate of trend pieces a few years ago about how people around my age joining the workforce for the first time were pissing off their supervisors by whining too much and expecting praise for their every action. Recent studies indicate that a vast majority of my peers want to be famous, and I'm pretty sure the percentages just increase as the kids get younger.

I'm making a prediction: in 2011, President Obama announces that he's rescuing the economy by nationalizing MTV and making everybody the star of their own reality show.

I can't believe I'm blockquoting Bill Maher

But I am (apparently):

There's a seemingly dry headline this week that is a lot scarier than it looks: Bank of America's profit declined 77% this quarter. They're a big bank. They're a consumer-oriented bank. And it turns out their losses are not just coming from the subprime mortage crisis. They're coming from small business loans, construction loans, and simple credit card debt. Bottom line--people can't pay their bills.

The time for arguing over whether or not we're in a recession is not only past, it seems almost quaint now--a little math game that we had the luxury of playing back when things seemed like they might improve at any moment. Whether or not the eventual numbers reveal that this is technically a recession, professional and amateur economists alike can now agree that the economy is technically "in the shitter."

Wow.

I'm pretty sure that the Iraq war is significantly contributing to this recession. It's costing us hundreds of trillions of dollars, the costs to local governments and businesses to comply with various bizarre 'anti-terrorism' regulations is onerous, and the already-rising costs of health care are only going to be pumped up to incredible new heights by the demand from veterans—both military and civilian (in the form of contractors and volunteers)—who have been both physically and psychologically wounded by their experiences. It's a god-damned shame.


I'm pretty sure Frederique Bastiat is loling in his grave right now...