[ current selection | chemical brothers – get yourself high (it rocks, ok?) ]
[ feelin’ | bleh ]

	ev·o·lu·tion (n).
1.	A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.
2.	a. The process of developing. b. Gradual development.
3.	Biology. a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species. b. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

(source: dictionary.com)
now that we have the definition of evolution at hand, lets move onto this fascinating article from cnn.com about how georgia wants the word evolution banned from its schools. but this isnt your ordinary belittling of conservative religious cretins…nope, this time both sides are equally lobbing poo at the state’s school superintendent, kathy cox. cox wants to ban the word in favor of “biological changes over time” or whatever b/c she feels that the word evolution is just a “buzzword.” (she was most likely doing the “quotes” gesture with her fingers). this is of course in lieu of its definition which fits quite nicely the scientific theory of evolu….oops…biological changes over time. so obviously the not-so-conservative are doing the “eh?” eye. but surprisingly, so are the conservatives. “Social conservatives who prefer religious creation to be taught instead of evolution criticized the proposal as well. “If you’re teaching the concept without the word, what’s the point?” said Rep. Bobby Franklin, a Republican. “It’s stupid. It’s like teaching gravity without using the word gravity.”” bwahaha. not to mention “banning” words in and of itself is a pretty stupid idea. it could be fun tho as absolute ruler of the planet of me, and every week or so…just ban 3 words for shits and googles.

me > i decree, today, henceforth, til um…next sunday, that thou shall not use the following words. and! what! canada!
guy1 > and how are we supposed to state multiple subject matters in a sentence then?
me > you said “and.” striketh thee dead!
guy1 > what? this sucks…im moving to canada.
me > oooh, you just died two more times!!! smote thee!!!

…that would be great…

> evolution biological changes over time (via cnn)

…but you’d think they could maybe tweak the spacing so something like the following doesnt potentially happen…

> from “living in bills shadow” (via time.com)

holy fuck, way too much post-worthy shit today. this comes via tien, who got it from his friend rachelle, who got it from tale of two cities. funny shit…

> original craiglist listing

(more…)

quickie before lunch. i dont know why i just came upon this today…but i think its worthy of mention. im a generally open-minded guy. im neither republican nor democrat. shit, im not even really political. but ive come to accept the fact that george w. bush is a fucking eediot. we all knew this, but i thought that id just state the obvious. there was an open competition for a 30-second commercial, sponsored by moveon.org. 15 finalists have already been chosen, and one winner will be decided by a celebrity panel to be shown at the new hampshire primaries. theres open-voting however for 3 sub-categories…for funniest ad, youth ad, and animated ad. so go vote! winners are being announced on monday!

> bush in 30 seconds
> vote for the 3 categories…

current selection | uberzone – botz (organik mix)
feelin’ | warm…woo

nicked this article from #!/usr/bin/girl about some guys in washington who played a prank on their friends apartment when he was away. this can probably be filed under ingenious, but overly anal and meticulous. while luke trerice was house-sitting his friend chris kirks apartment, trerice decided to aluminum foil the entire apartment and everything in it. everything. trerice and some other friends meticulously wrapped all his belongings in aluminum foil…including all his books, his cd cases (which were still openable), his toilet paper (which they unrolled, wrapped, and re-rolled), and even each individual coin in his spare change. w. t. f. only four items were left unwrapped in his apartment…a picture of trerices girlfriend, his bed, a bathmat, and a book entitled “cruel tricks for dear friends“. craziness…but brilliant. its on a different level than some of the pranks im familiar with (dump in the water basin of a toilet, various involving laxatives, other miscellaneous college-level pranks). hopefully pictures of the apartment will make its way onto the web. like a space-age jetson apartment decked in sleek, yet slightly crumbled aluminum…woo.

trerice apparently hasnt had the time to start unwrapping everything…but he did remark, “As I was trying to sleep last night, I realized that, actually, it’s creepy.“

> greatest prank…ever (via usr/bin/girl > salon)

current selection | esthero – that girl (remix)
feelin’ | now groggy

as a nice follow-thru from the last post…for people on the other end of the intelligence spectrum, wired has an interesting article about the human brain and a 6-step regimen to strengthen it. your brain, like any muscle in your body, can be conditioned, improved upon, etc. if you dont use certain aspects of your brain on a daily basis however, it can and will go poo. and when it goes poo, you might start formulating stupid notions of suing cable companies and mcdonalds for making you a fat shitbucket. oh heck, maybe you’ll even become president. amongst some of the more interesting sections of the article, step 3 goes thru some common misconceptions that people might not even be aware of…

False: Toilets and bathtubs drain counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The Coriolis effect, caused by the rotation of the Earth, can be seen in the spin direction of weather systems such as hurricanes and cyclones. But in the short-lived flush of a toilet, the force is far too weak to have an impact; the direction of the water’s rotation depends on the toilet’s design. (damn the simpsons for misleading us!)
False: No two snowflakes are alike. Snowflakes are six-sided crystals composed of about 1018 water molecules, giving them unimaginable — but not infinite — potential for variation. In 1988, Nancy Knight, a meteorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discovered two identical snowflakes that had been collected from clouds above Wisconsin. The snowflakes apparently formed as conjoined twins.
False: Humans use just 10 percent of their brains. MRI and PET scans show that a much larger portion of the brain is engaged during complex thought processes. And biologists scoff at the idea that we would evolve such an oversize brain — it eats up 19 percent of the fuel in our bloodstream — only to use but a fraction of it.
False: A penny dropped from the Empire State Building would kill someone below. A few calculations tell us that a penny falling edge-on from the 1,050-foot-high observation deck on Floor 86 of the 102-story skyscraper would fall 500 feet before reaching maximum velocity: 57 miles an hour. This is about 1/10 the speed of a low-caliber handgun bullet — fast enough to hurt but, except in freak circumstances, not to kill. It’s a moot point anyway: Thanks to updrafts, coins tossed from the observation deck generally land on the setback roof of Floor 80. (ok…whew…)
False: The Moon appears larger when it’s on the horizon because it’s magnified by the atmosphere. This is an optical illusion. You can confirm that fact by taking photographs of the Moon as it tracks across the sky: It will appear the same size on the negatives, no matter where it is. The cause of the illusion is the subject of considerable debate, but the leading theory is that it’s a classic Ponzo illusion: The brain mentally magnifies objects near the horizon because it interprets them as far away; thus the Moon appears larger to us when it is closer to the horizon.

the article admittedly gets pretty geeky towards the end, when they suggest some nerd pick-up lines if you happen to find yourself at one of the seven nerd bars they list. the photo illustrations they have are also ridiculously disturbing…

> m3ntal muscles of steel (via wired)

current selection | j ralph – one million miles away
feelin’ | sleepy

the world will never be short of stupid people. from the furthermore section of wired.com (and then finding the article), a lazy fuck from wisconsin is suing his cable company b/c he claims the free cable hes been receiving for the last four years has made him a lazy shit, his wife a fat fuck, and his kids mini-lazy shits just like him. timothy dumouchel of west bend, wisconsin claims that he tried cancelling his cable years ago, but it kept coming. and apparently the tv grew appendages because it was able to 1) keep itself on for the past four years and 2) force the family of inferior genetic material to watch it unwittingly. ever heard of the off button? maybe…unplug the tv? or maybe that mysterious power called ‘self-control’? and it took him four years to ‘fess up to the free cable (and lack of rationale)?? wtf. this country is just littered with the stupidity of people. this is probably even worse than that beached whale that tried to take mcdonalds to court for making her fat. argh…all this stupidity is making my eyes burn…make it stop!

> cable tv is evil (via wired > the post crescent)

current selection | club nouveau – lean on me
feelin’ | comfy

wow what an utterly fascinating article. the washington post has an article today on the trials and tribulations of the publicly stupid. and no, for once its not george w. bush…but close enough. adapted from the newly published book “the perfect wife: the life and choices of laura bush,” by ann gerhart, it details the shecret lives of the first daughters of george w. bush…jenna and barbara bush. for the last 4 years of bush’s term, the lives of his daughters have been, for the most part, kept hidden from the eyes of the public media. and holy shit, for good reason. they are probably some of the stupidest brats to step foot in the white house. well…lets be completely fair. barbaras not too bad…but her twin jenna tho, fuck is she an absolute tard. in a comparison to the former first daughter chelsea clinton, the article contrasts…

“Chelsea went to parties and drank and had boyfriends just like many other teenagers — which is what Jenna and Barbara craved — but Chelsea had a gift for keeping her mishaps out of the public eye. She …treated her Secret Service agents with respect. Accordingly, they were more inclined to protect her when she got herself in jams. The twins, meanwhile, seemed to have decided that their agents were their enemies — and their chauffeurs, bellhops and valets.“

bwahaha…wtf. secret service agents as bellhops and valets. this article is just full of quotables from the adventures of jenna bush: warrior princess…

“…Jenna sat in a crowded bar and tried to sweet-talk the bartender into breaking the law and serving her, but he lost his nerve when he saw the guys with the earpieces and asked her to leave. Jenna, according to an account in U.S. News & World Report, was furious. She yelled at her agents, then fled down a back alley. They gave chase, said the magazine, and when they caught up with her, she taunted them: “You know if anything happens to me, my dad would have your ass.” But when she called her father to complain that her detail was interfering with her drinking, he sided with her agents…“

two words…biz-atch. holy shit, what a little fucktard. even tho ill admit that dubyas portrayed as a pretty rational and understanding father by the article, i cant help but think how genetics plays a part in all this. nature vs. nurture and all that. he mustve known he was passing along flawed genes…and in turn only expected the worst from his offspring. twins, no less…wow. i almost feel sorry for the guy. poor poor dubya…

> bad genetics: georges daughters (via washington post)

current selection | yoko kanno – blue
feelin’ | still cold…

ooh, while we’re on the subject of the ol’ big red, the cornell-built spirit rover just landed on mars and is transmitting back alot of hi-res images of the surface. which is good news for the lead researcher steve squyres, who is actually a professor of astronomy at cornell and was my professor 3rd(?) year for an astronomy course…the politics of space exploration. ok, i didnt really do so hot in the class…but the course was still coo because he’d go off on all the things happening at nasa et al (there were alot of problems at that time), and then add, “oh btw…you cant talk about this stuff outside of class because its kind of classified…” he mentioned the spirit way back then also, and it wasnt til now that it finally landed. space exploration is so slow…

> spirit mars explorer (via discovery)

current selection | misia – kazenifukarete
feelin’ | hungry

an interesting article from the ny times talks about hollywood portrayals of asian culture in movies. people have been rather particular about the way japanese are depicted in recent movies like lost in translation (short men, engrish speaking, etc…), kill bill (dragon lady), and the last samurai (uber-honorable, much to learn from the foreign man, etc…). while ill admit to having been a little grated at the thought of maverick as the last samurai, i do think we live in an age where people are a little overly p.c. and being culturally sensitive. the potentially stereotyping depictions in past movies like rising sun and gung-ho, and the even worse yellow-facing of the far past…mr. wong, sayonara, shit…even breakfast at tiffany’s…are things of the not-too-distant past. but cinema has progressed alot since then, and cultural understanding (as opposed to overt cultural sensitivity) has allowed movies to broaden cinematic diversity again. attempting to depict something as absolutely “accurate” is near impossible anyway because perceptions of cultural inheritances will differ from person to person. what one person may find scathingly accurate (the talk show host in translation), another person could see as a perpetuating stereotype. is o-ren ishii a depiction of a dragon lady (which is a chinese stereotype), or is she just portraying a bitch? there are so many facets of culture thats exposed to media and portrayance today, that if someone were to tread as lightly around everything that could be perceived as offensive, they wouldnt be able to engage culture at all. likewise, if they were to go ahead and try and make something that was sensitive to everybodys culture, it would be just as sanitized.

ok, wheres this going? oh yea…movies have come a long way since daughter of the dragon, and for asian depictions in particular, theres still a ways to go. but its progressing…theres at least no more yellow-facing. and we should all be glad for it.

> land of the rising cliches (via ny times)

m3ntal side note
i also found it interesting how the last samurai portrayed the samurai caste as honorably flawless and absolute with their bushido code. this was of course a wholly idealistic portrayal, since samurai were for the most part politically corrupt. the “ideal” samurai was a fantasy, a fabricated notion glamorized by literature and chambara cinema. on a similar note, i was watching terry jones’ medieval life on the history channel last nite where they were discussing the european knights of old. while many attribute chivalry and damsel-saving with knights of yore, the historical fact about knights were that they were little more than professional fighters…and later in history, rich religious professional fighters. rather ruthless ones at that. history, as it turns out, seems to be able hide alot of facts…so its comforting to know that sanitizing the past isnt confined to just one culture.