Schlep, Jane, Schlep. Learn yiddish with Dick and Jane. Make sure your headphones or speakers are on.


[Via Screenhead]

Over thanksgiving break, I saw Alexander with my dad. It was quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen--would've walked out, but it was so awful it made all my muscles seize. As we walked out into the mall that the theater is in, I felt a little like burning the mall down. If you watch Alexander yourself, you'll know my pain.

Apologies to HA Rey (who also wrote one of the all-time great Constellation/Night Sky Books), but today on a Slashdot discussion, someone said something about "Isn't it curious that george bush..." and I haven't been able to get the Curious George/George Bush meme out of my head. It seems so obvious that it'd be a funny theme to explore (bumbling incompetent monkey in White House and all that), but all I could find in a cursory Googling was this:Curious GWB. Does anybody know of better Bush/Curious George mashups (preferably illustrated) online?

I guess I'm not the only one who found the Bush with turkey picture funny. Obey
[Via BoingBoing]

Travelers of the world beware. Or at least read the guide book before you visit the small asian nation Phaic Tan.
[Via Gadling]

This has been going around for a while now (at least since Nov 2, which is, in Internet years, um...a lot), but in case you missed it, Sorry Everybody is a site where you can apologize to the rest of the world for America's latest youthful indescretion. In response, there is now Apologies Accepted, which should be self-explanatory. View the galleries at both sites for full effect.
[Via Devoter]

Blame Bush, a site where you can post your latest gripe and blame it on Bush.

Excerpt:

My sister (MBA) has been unemployed for 2 years. My father (PHD) was forced into early retirement because the hospital pharmacy where he worked for 20 years had to cut jobs. My mother (ME) is a substitute teacher in a middle school because the University had to dissolve her department because they couldn't afford to keep it running. I'm the only one with a steady job, and I've already been laid off from 2 jobs in the last 4 years. Oh, and it's 70 degrees in November. I blame Bush.

[Via Condi Rice Is Angry]

"Bet you won't vote Democrat next time, eh turkey? Heh heh heh."

Oh goodie. President Bush plans on re-writing the tax code to eliminate the alternative minimum (which is an attempt to make rich people--who normally might shove their money into offshore tax shelters or use other loopholes to avoid paying their share--pay at least some tax). To pay for this, and other "tax yer income only oncet" measures, homeboy is gonna get rid of tax deductions for health care, amongst other horrors. Right now that peice in The Onion (see below) seems especially appropriate. Thanks, red states, for voting against your interests. If you use only simple words and stumble when you speak in public, maybe the mouth-breathers will elect you president. link

While I'm on the subject of taxes, has it ever bothered you that some of the selfsame nimrods who flaunt patriotism like it comes from a HappyMeal or free with the purchase of ten miniature American flags, and who deride as traitors those who disagree with the President on important issues like the war in Iraq, would gladly do virtually anything to avoid giving back to society in their share by using tax loopholes? Who are the real traitors? Who is putting their money where their mouth is?
[Via The Regular]

I'm tempted to make this play in the background on the desktop of my computer until the end of time. Bit of a download (.mov link), but well worth it--and a great costume idea for Renn Fayre!
[via Screenhead]

w00t. LMAO. ASCII movie of a war b/w LOL city and LMAO planes under WTF cloud skies. You'll enjoy it more if you like Rammstein, or liked them in Jr. High. And really, who didn't?
[Via Screenhead]

Remixed Diebold ads. Pretty damned funny.link
[Via Screenhead]

Glad that this could be the first post of the day. The kids who did this must have some sort of medical knowledge (or they just had a "big fancy words thesaurus" next to them as they wrote it), cause they use some really cool sounding big medical words. And not just words that sound big if you're from a red state (like "nuclear").
Jerry Garcia Autopsy - A Groovy Peek Inside Captain Trips - chickenhead.com
[Via Screenhead]

The cartoon 'Get Your War On' is always usually pretty awesome, but the most recent one (which has, admittedly, been up for some time) is especially apt.

Get Your War On

Freebord

This sounds stupid, but actually looks really cool and simple and seems to make skateboarding much better resemble snowboarding or surfing. Freebord. Be sure to check out the movie.
[Via

Should've posted this yesterday. Funniest thing I saw all day--the dubya movie, starring Don Knotts as W. dubyamovie.com
[Via Screenhead]

I'd like to share a letter to the editor in today's Oregonian that my boss brought to my attention:

Bush 'represents our values'
My wife and I voted for President Bush. We don't go to church. However, we don't want Roe vs. Wade overturned. We believe that the Iraq war was a mistake and lament the loss of jobs overseas. We believe access to affordable medical care is a right.

Why did we vote the way we did? We voted for Bush because we believe he represents our values and his opponent did not. Our values reject the hedonistic and materialistic values of popular culture.

To be specific, we reject the trash we see in the popular media and abhor the way it projects American culture to the rest of the world.

We dislike elitists from the large urban centers who demean simple people who believe in God and express their faith by going to church. We believe in God, and although we don't attend church, we believe the Ten Commandments and Christian teachings are an excellent basis for moral and ethical behavior. We suspect we are not alone.

Dale P. Henken Coquille

I was going to rip this one apart, urban elitist that I am, but if you can't see the folly in this one...god help us all.

Here's a fantastic story in The Onion right now that hits it just dead on. Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

Some excerpts:

"You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you."

Added Rove: "You have acted beyond the call of duty—or, for that matter, good sense."

"My family's been suffering ever since I lost my job at the screen-door factory, and I haven't seen a doctor for well on four years now," said father of four Buddy Kaldrin of Eerie, CO. "Shit, I don't even remember what a dentist's chair looks like... Basically, I'd give up if it weren't for God's grace. So it's good to know we have a president who cares about religion, too."

Kaldrin added: "That's why I always vote straight-ticket Republican, just like my daddy did, before he lost the farm and shot himself in the head, and just like his daddy did, before he died of black-lung disease in the company coal mines."

Kaldrin was one of many who listed moral issues among their primary reasons for voting Republican.

"The alliance between the tiny fraction at the top of the pyramid and the teeming masses of mouth-breathers at its enormous base has never been stronger," a triumphant Bush said. "We have an understanding, them and us. They help us stay rich, and in return, we help them stay poor. See? No matter what naysayers may think, the system works."

Thanks J!

The Columbia Journalism Review has an insightful article online about the difficulties of scientific journalism. Specifically, the article does a great job of actually recognizing the difference between social/moral/religious/other issue groups, like creationists, and scientists. When some editor tells his staff to cover both sides of an issue like evolution "equally," he's engineering into the article an absurd skew, becuase scientists and social advocacy groups are on fundamentally different footing. I'm really not sure how many people understand how science works, what with peer review and the interface between basic research and clinical practice (in the case of biomedical science) and all. I've talked to a whole lot of smart, but not scientifically-trained, people about my thesis and what I work on, and I'm continually surprised by how few of those people have an understanding that surpasses the 'DNA is the building blocks of life' level. I'm sure that those same people wouldn't be able to effectively distinguish between fringe science and good science except by instinct. And as the continued circulation of tabloids seems to demonstrate, it's easy to overcome the instinctive bullshit meter by making the reader/believer part of a privileged or outsider group.

This really worries me--bad science journalism-->bad science understanding in adults-->badly informed electorate-->bad policy decisions (especially decisions on education, medicine, the environment)-->bad results, poorly educated children {lather, rinse, repeat}. I think that an uninformed electorate is largely responsible for the fact that the bush administration was able to sack Elizabeth Blackburn, who is an extraordinarily respected scientist, from the presiden't council on bioethics. Not a whole lot of ire was raised by this, which is difficult for me to understand. But when you think of the way that science is being "balanced" around here, with scientists' findings being made to kowtow to issues groups when being presented in mainstream media, it makes sense.
[Via Slashdot]

Awesome. This kid from CMU won the college edition of Jeopardy with a Final Jeopardy wager of $1337. And yes, he is a comp sci major.
[Via Boingboing]

Okay, so I promised a friend I'd blog about this today, and I might as well share the love anyway, right? This is, bar-none, the bone-diddliest series of quicktime righteousness I've seen since...uh, since MC Hawking got his first pimp cup. Here is Chris Christmas Rodriguez, because you asked for it.
[Probably Via Screenhead, but I can't remember]

Fuck the South. Hehe. This is great. Not that my predisposition for intellectual eliteism is noticable or anything, but..

"All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice."

Exactly what is needed--a flash cartoon remake of the Beastie Boys' classic No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn starring George W. and the gang (and Condi Rice's ass, apparently).
[Via Screenhead]

Short Film 'More'

This is fantastic. I'm sure everybody who's anybody has seen it before, but previously it was only available (to my knowledge) on iFilm in a really half-assed ad-burdened version. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, um, you suck. And see it now, so you can stop sucking.
[Via Screenhead]

So long as I'm yakking about John Ashcroft, here's the obligatory John Ashcroft sings "Let the Eagle Soar" video. Yes, he really did do that. Yes, he really did write that song himself. I'm pretty sure that's why he got sacked.

Condoleeza Rice: Good morning, sir, it's time for your daily security briefing. So if you'll just please...
George W. Bush: Get some briefs? Heh Heh Heh. That one gets 'em every time. You know what Condi?
Rice: What Mr. President?
GWB: You know what Condi? I was just poking around on the internets, like Dick showed me how, and I googled our boy John, and there's this video there, have you seen it?
Rice: I'm not sure what you're talking about, Mr. President.
GWB: Well, it's this video of John after his speech at a seminary in, I think, Georgia, and he's singing. Cheesy music from a boombox to accompany him and all.
Rice: I'm not sure I follow, sir.
GWB: My question is this, Condi: Why didn't this show up at our security briefings? I mean, what the fuck? Do we really have to keep giving ammunition to the Axis of Evil?
Rice: Umm...Mr. President, I thought we agreed that teenagers on the internet are not part of the Axis of Evi..
GWB (interrupting) You said that! You said it. I never agreed. Anyway, fool me once...shame on...liberals. Can't get fooled again, you see? Right after the re-coronation, we're dropping John like he's a hot armadilla on a cold tin roof, got it?

John Ashcroft Writes Like an Eighth Grader

Have you read the text of Ashcroft's hand-written resignation letter to Bush? Although there aren't any glaring errors or malapropisms really, there is just a general laziness about his writing. It's just so sterile and stiff. He must have written this in short order after an unexpected request for his resignation and had to swallow his pride to make it respectful enough for eventual publication.

Jesusland

You've probably seen this before, but in case you haven't...
This is a splendid idea--to let the left coast, New England, and some of the better upper mid-western states just secede and become part of Canada. The rest of the old USA (the Marching Morons part) could become, well, as you see.

This is what voting should be like. A paper trail, verifiable, transparent, open-source. I want to be able to securely ensure that my vote is counted, while remaining anonymous. It isn't hard, and it isn't too much to ask.
[Via BoingBoing]

Okay, so I'm a-gonna wax a little self-indulgent here and talk out loud about how I think this blog is about to change, but that's my right, okay? Anyway, if a blog post is made in the depths of cyberspace and nobody's around to read it, does it make a sound?

So I think I'm about to get a little more topical and more commentary-based, though I know that's pretty overdone in the blogosphere. But topical--that means you get to apply me to your skin, doesn't it? That can't be done *all that often*, can it? Anyway, I just want the opportunity to force my opinion onto more people more often, that's all.

Speaking of which, in the time I was gone (read: had better things to do/was too lazy to post) a couple of things happened. First, and most importantly, 59M Americans done smoked theyselves retarded. Second, by way of explanation of the above, a new species of human was discovered. These new guys, as you no doubt already know, are tiny--the height of a toddler with a cranium 1/3 the size. The fossils that have thus far characterized the species date to c. 18,000 YA, meaning they may have cohabitated with H. sapiens on the island. I'm pretty sure they could have located new species of troglodyte pretty easily just by visiting polling booths in 'middle America', but scientists are generally smarter than to go there.

The third thing that happened was I graduated from ma fancy-pants caw-ledge. They gave me a nice receipt certificate and a carrying case and everything. I'm a little bummed that the carrying case doesn't seem to have a belt-clip on it, but I'm sure somebody has an aftermarked add-on for it. I haven't looked yet, though. Graduation was great--got to walk across a stage and shake El Presidente's hand, and some good friends came up to see it. The only disconcerting bit was when the Dean of Students made everybody drop trow and stamped us all "USDA certified SMART" on the left cheek. I guess all colleges do that these days, but it still seems a little excessive.

Thank god. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Servant of Satan The Christian Right, has resigned his post. link

Or do we still have reason to fear? They couldn't really make him a Supreme Ct. Justice, could they? No, there may be 59M dumbasses in America, but there have to be enough smart people in the Senate to block such an absurd appointment, right? Right?

Guddamn, it's been a long dry spell here at EvolutionKills. November-March=Lots of empty months of non-bloggage. Well, that's all about to change. I'd like to be able to claim that in the intervening time I had grown a social life from a seed in the lab (or hell, grown decent results from some seed in the lab), but that's just not the case. If my first post is any indication, I'd say I gave the blog thing the good ol' High School try. Now I've got a degree, I don't have a thesis, and I guess I'm going to skip over the good ol' College try and pass straight on to the good ol' Grad School try. I think that means that I'll get all tweaked out on coffee and beer and write until the wee hours of the morning. Oh wait, that's pretty much what my college experience was like, so maybe that should be the good ol' College try again. Now I'm confused. I guess I'll have to come up with some sort of criteria that describe a 'good ol' post-bac, pre-doc try'. Yeah, I'll get back to you on that one.

In the meantime, however, check out what I've been doing in the lab. Yes, that's right, it's my senior thesis--and you thought life couldn't get any better!

Also, I give you my solemn pledge that I'll post more often than twice a year from now on. And just because I've got my fingers crossed right now doesn't mean that I don't mean it.