Monthly Archives: December 2007

Dave Barry’s year in review.

As we stagger to the end of 2007, we have to face the fact that 2008, being a leap year, will have a whole extra day of alarming events. So as bad as this year was, we should not be in such a hurry to move on. Instead, we should pause for a moment to raise a glass and offer a toast to our friends and loved ones, wishing them health and happiness.

And then we should put the glass down, because it was probably made in China.

The easily offended were offended.

Of course Duke Nukem is in there.

While somewhat excessive in my mind, I like this law. They don’t say, “don’t use your cellphone and drive,” they say “use your cellphone and drive and cause a wreck and it’s 2 years in prison for you”.

Those that are competent to use cellphones and drive can, those that aren’t either know it and don’t try or they don’t know it, try and get tossed in jail.

The Duke Nukem Forever trailer.

Absolutely no gameplay is shown.

If you were planning on looking at Mars, tonight’s your best chance.

Not here though. Here it’s cloudy. All. The. Time.

It could still turn out okay.

Jackson will executive-produce, not direct or write (which he did with his partner, Fran Walsh). And there’s no director or script yet, though Jackson & Walsh will retain director and script approval.

Putin named Time’s Person of the Year.

Of course, I was the person of the year last year, so it’s not as great an honor as one might think. I think they jumped the gun with Putin, the next year or two will see a lot more from him.

Duke Nukem Forever trailer comes out tomorrow.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Go to page 12 of this PDF and it should be cleared up. (warning: direct link to PDF)

Ships discover sailing.

Let’s have a Patrick Swazye Christmas.

/Joel > Mike

Hobbitesses.

101 dumbest business moments of the year.

The 10 worst gadgets of the year.

I lol’d.

Because it’s wrong. So very wrong.

Fix up your cubicle. I like the bamboo one.

Reuters Pictures of the Year.

The Top 25 Sci-Fi shows in the last 25 years.

Lost higher than Firefly? Shenanigans.

I want my cats to glow in normal light, thank you very much.

This years wacky warning label winners have been announced.

If you were looking for a space flight simulator to download, it’s here.

It starts slow, but gets rolling a few paragraphs in:

A HEADLINE in Monday’s Daily News, “He regrets his role in ‘postal’ vid,” implied that Richard Marino, the subject of a YouTube video, was sorry for an incident in December at a Brooklyn post office. Marino, in fact, is not sorry. The News regrets the error

Turks offended by Italian soccer team uniform ask a judge for three points. It’s like the worst of American legal excess meets delicate Islamic sensibilities.

Wanna know a great feeling? Clicking the button that pays off your last of your credit card debt. Though I appreciated them letting me borrow money for a plane ticket and my tv and some clothing, and various other things, it’s nice not to have to send them any more money.

Until next month because I put Christmas spending on it. But for two weeks, I owe them nothing! nothing!

Vista in exchange for Microsoft snooping on me for three months. Hmm. I’m conflicted.

Not really, of course I’ll do it.

I couldn’t do this with a calculator, slide rule and scratchpad.

I think where I go wrong is I don’t see things in my mind. Not even you. You’re just an abstract construct of all my associations with you. Yes, that’s what’s holding me back from the glories of the math world.

It seems fair to me that China should be allowed to pull itself up to our standards of lavish life before they are forced to curtail their carbon emissions. India too.

Su Wei, a top climate expert for China’s government attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, said the job belongs to the wealthy. He said it was unfair to ask developing nations to accept binding emissions cuts and other restrictions being pushed for already industrialized states.

He said the United States and its fellow industrial nations have long spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while newly emerging economies have done so for only a few decades.

I like this:

The United States was ranked No. 55 because it opposes mandatory cuts in emissions and argues that technology, private investment and economic growth will save the planet from global warming.

Because if the government doesn’t put overly burdensome and therefore unenforceable regulations in place, you just aren’t trying. Waving your collective hands about is what’s really important.

12. Full. Turns.

The worst that could happen is that the engines run dry and explode.

You must go look at the picture.

So, since I don’t lock down my wifi router (yes, I know how, I just doubt anyone in my neighborhood would bother and with the trouble Ubuntu [back in the Dapper days] was having with my wifi card it was easier to leave it open.), I’ll have to be on the look out for illegal usage and face massive fines if I don’t report them. Awesome. Thank you so much Congress. Way to punish the innocent.

On the whole it’s a good list, but I have some issues with this list of the top 50 Ultimate Weapons. How the light saber came in so far down is beyond me.

Ewww.

This.

Except I discovered Amazon years before I heard of Instapundit.

Written here.

Hi-res images of Mars. 3’D too. If I only had some 3-D glasses.

If you used a credit card outside the United States between February 1, 2006 and November 8, 2006, you can get some money back because apparently some people don’t expect to get ripped off by credit card companies and sued them. And won.

I think energy conservation and alternate sources of power are good ideas in their own right, and must be pursued; I just don’t think lower Manhattan will be awash in 2050 unless we cut carbon emissions to a level previously associated with the 15th century, and I’m not going to live in a state of guilty panic over my carbon footprint. If others want to walk around wearing sandy underpants, fretting over what they cannot avoid doing and scolding others for buying produce shipped from Brazil instead of buying local, they’re welcome to it. Everyone needs a purpose in life.

Link

Bonus quote:

In any case, I suspect that the impulse to bring all these untidy unhelpful examples of flagrant individualism under the steady hand of the Ministry of Rational Allocation has something to do with that fretful busybody insistence that people are simply not living right. If we had Star Trek replicators in every house that would conjure goods and meals out of boundless energy produced by antimatter teased from a three-micron fissure that opened into a universe populated entirely by unicorns who crapped antimatter in such abundance they were happy we used it up, and used their shiny pointy horns to poke more of it through the aperture into our dimension, columnists would bemoan the disconnect between labor and goods, and the soul-corrupting influence of endless ersatz vegetables. You can’t win. Because you shouldn’t.

I can’t wait to see how this ends. Back to salami tactics.