The unofficial results are in: the new Texas license plate doesn’t totally suck.
I’ll be following this story closely, dear readers.
Not as sucky as some
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Author Archives: wellsdc
It’s hard out here for a pimp
Rich dudes on business trips beware–Dallas women may drug and rob you:
Well-dressed men at posh Dallas hotels and bars are being targeted by a ring of flirtatious women who may be drugging them before swiping their watches and other expensive items, police said.
One man was injured when he was beaten, possibly by a high-heeled shoe, police said. Another lost his wallet while in his car with his pants around his ankles.
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The stylish W hotel in downtown Dallas is among the places where the scheme is said to have been run. Authorities said the women knew what they were looking for; several of the victims wore Rolex watches.
In one case, police said a 37-year-old Tampa, Fla., executive lost his iPod, laptop and $4,000 watch after accepting a beer from one of the women.
The women may be slipping drugs into the drinks of their victims, police said.
In addition to business travellers, Dallas police “suspect there are others too embarrassed to file police reports.” Way to take all the fun out of hotel bars.
Help Texas license plates not to suck
The Texas Department of Transportation is allowing Texans to vote on what their new license plates will look like. Please vote so we don’t end up with a field of bluebonnets on every license plate! (I love bluebonnets, but I don’t want to see them all the time.) Voting ends on February 11, 2008.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a write-in category, so many of Texas’ other lovely natural resources (e.g. Amber Heard) will go unrecognized by the state, alas.
When times were simpler…and bubblier
I did not watch the Superbowl, as I don’t particularly care about the Giants, the Patriots, the NFL, or the game of football all that much. I also no longer find the commercials all that entertaining–the secret formula is out, and there is really no way to surprise us anymore.
Still, it is worth remembering the glory days, when Superbowl ads were unusual and edgy, and the idea of a “.com” company held endless promise. I think this was from the 2000 Superbowl:
At least E*Trade survived the crash, abeit with some problems.
My 2-second music video career
I was an extra in a music video once:
You can see the back of my bare-ass-bald head beginning at the 3:48 mark (I’m in front of the hot redhead). Interesting shoot for an interesting band. I pretty much had no idea what the hell was going on. This was back during my days as a music video company executive (ah, 2003…), and I was baby-sitting the camera. Not a happy story.
"Liberal Fascism"
PMI on how to review Jonah Goldberg’s new book.
Kinda NSFW.
Kinda disturbing.
Way bemusing.
I think it says all I have to say on the topic.
The Oscars leave me behind, once again
Of all the movies in the latest Oscar nominations, I’ve seen exactly four of them:
- Charlie Wilson’s War(Supporting Actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman)
- Ratatouille(Original screenplay, Animated feature, Original score, Sound editing, Sound mixing)
- The Bourne Ultimatum(Film editing)
- Transformers (Sound editing, Sound mixing, Visual effects)
Of the four, the only one I didn’t find disappointing on some level was “Transformers,” and that was just because I had no expectations whatsoever.
Seriously, though, I’m pulling for “Bourne” for film editing–based on what little I know of the subject, that part of the film kicked ass (think high-speed fight scenes). On the other hand, I didn’t like how the techno remix of Moby’s “Extreme Ways” broke continuity with the first two films. Minor criticism, I guess.
What generation are you?
The whole Baby Boomer/Generation X/Generation Doofus nomenclature has always struck me as just a marketing tool, especially since so many people seem to be barely left out of categorization. My parents, born in 1944 and 1945, missed inclusion in the Baby Boom (beginning in 1946). I was born in 1974, and it was unclear for quite a while whether I fit into Generation X or not. Now generation labels are thrown around all over the place.
Here’s an interesting test to determine your generation based on technology usage rather than date of birth–it makes more sense to group avid Wii-players together than just people born between Year A and Year B. As an example, I was at Ikea a few weeks ago and was mystified by a teenage girl who, while examining fabric samples and talking to her mother, was furiously writing text messages (“texting,” as the kids say) on her phone at a remarkable rate. It seemed like super-human multitasking.
Apparently, though, I fall on the high end of tech savviness, as the quiz puts me firmly in Generation Y (18 points!). Chronologically, I’m near the end of Generation X, though.
I wore through a Nirvana cassette in high school and once broke a closet rod because of all the plaid flannel shirts I owned–that must merit inclusion in Generation X, right? Plus, I think a great many recent technological advances are stupid (HD television, mostly–a topic I’ll expound upon in a later post.) I feel more Generation X than Y (although I never participated in a mosh pit), so maybe I’ll just split the difference and say I’m part of Generation X.5.
Join us. We have coffee.
Cloverfield and disaster porn
I haven’t seen Cloverfield yet, but I’m sure I will at some point. The History Channel’s “Life After People” premieres tonight, too. It gets me wondering–and I have no answer to this question–what it is about the destruction of familiar landmarks in movies that is so dang entertaining.
A few examples include Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and Armageddon/Deep Impact, a nice compilation of which is found here:
Think of it as disaster porn: the “money shot,” if you will, of all these movies is the mega-CGI scenes of destruction and mayhem. Maybe we as a culture just need to be repeatedly desensitized after events like 9/11 and Katrina, and watching NYC get blown up/flooded/smashed by a monster/inundated by leprechauns is the way to do it.
Or maybe we’re just a nation full of assholes. Hard to tell. Anyway, I prefer the much more sober, survival-against-all-odds Battlestar Galactica over fluff like Armageddon.
And besides, the spoilers about the Cloverfield monster make it look pretty silly.
God meets calculus
Reprinted from a comment thread without the permission of the author, because it made me chuckle:
[T]his reminds me of the day I disproved God with calculus, in calculus class, at a Catholic high school. Let me see if I remember it…
Let {C} be the set of all possible truth claims that might fill a particular gap in our knowledge. If we have no reason whatsoever to choose one possible claim over another, the probability of each claim being true is 1/n (where n is the number of truth claims).The believer makes the mistake of assuming that n = 2 (i.e. “Jesus” and “Something Else”). But the elements of a set must be discrete: “Something Else,” unlike “Jesus,” is not a discrete claim. “Something Else” is itself a set of discrete possibilities, all of which must be counted individually among the truth claims of {C}.
If the believer cannot introduce any reasons (i.e. arguments) to narrow the set of possible claims, then the membership of {C} is limited only by our imagination. As Vishnu piles upon Odin, as telepathic koalas who control the weather bump into the invisible leprechauns who tuned the Universal constants, n quickly approaches infinity — and the limit of 1/n, the probability of any one claim being true, falls to zero.
Q.E.D. ……?
I really don’t remember my high school calculus class too well–I’m one of those people who can honestly say I won’t ever need calculus for my job. I get about as far as n = ∞, so 1/n becomes infinitely small, and then I get lost.