Saturday, October 06, 2007

Friday Funnies (Belated)

Hardees/Carls Jr. is advertising its Frisco Burgers again. Only thing is, this time, the commercials are absolutely hillarious. Consider them to be a parody of Sir Mix a Lot's crossover rap hit of the early 90s.






Friday, October 05, 2007

Alan Greenspan: The Best Financial Authority of Our Times, Living or Dead?

John McCain made an interesting remark published today:

"If he's alive or dead it doesn't matter. If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" McCain joked. "Let's get the best minds in America together and fix this tax code."
Having served for 18 1/2 years as Fed Chairman, Greenspan is considered at the top of his field of central banking. Obviously some politicians consider him in even much higher regard.

Some recent video of Mr. Greenspan:

Follow-Up: Go Figure

Go figure. The previously-mentioned editor of a student-ran university newspaper in Colorado gets to keep his job.

The punishment was one of the least severe the board could impose. The only lesser penalty was to dismiss the allegations against McSwane.

America's Youth: What We Have to Look Forward to

This isn't indicative of all of them, just a subsect of the next generation which is frightful enough in and of itself.

A screaming 15-year old girl who is resisting arrest after violating a curfew law.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Monkey Mondays: Matthew the Monkey


Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria's Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.

A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case earlier this week, ruling that the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories had no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf.



What Kind of World...

What kind of world do we live in when Britney Spears is ordered to give her kids to ex-husband Kevin Federline?

Come on, I know Britney is the role model for (among other things) being a bad parent...but Kevin Federline...better?

Wow.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Fall of Languages


Some fascinating stuff about languages around the world.

a report, released a couple of weeks back by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Oregon, on the alarming rate of extinction of the world's languages. While half of all languages have gone extinct in the last 500 years, the half-life is dropping: half of the 7,000 languages spoken today won't exist by the year 2100. The NY Times adds this perspective: "83 languages with 'global' influence are spoken and written by 80 percent of the world population. Most of the others face extinction at a rate, the researchers said, that exceeds that of birds, mammals, fish and plants."

A physics principle and a math principle applied to linguistics: Half lives and the 80/20 principle. Great stuff!