Get Cynical

Part 2

(via Classic TV Showbiz)

Click here if you’re not sure.

From John Cole:

And it is crazy. The folks who spent a year telling us Barack is not ready to be President are now extolling the virtues of being on the PTA. The folks who mocked Obama’s “celebrity” for six months are now buying Palin dolls because of one speech she read at a convention. The whole thing is just nuts.

Update:
Rick in the comments says:

Just to clarify, in the second half of the speech the telepromter didn’t stop for audience applause so she was speaking without it.

But Rick is either lying or has been misinformed:

Sarah Palin delivered a powerful speech last night, but she did not “wing it.”

Which is what Erick Erickson, citing sources close to McCain, has written on his blog, RedState.

Erickson writes that “the teleprompter continued scrolling during applause breaks. As a result, half way through the speech, the speech had scrolled significantly from where Gov. Palin was in the speech.”

This claim has been picked up on Drudge and could quickly enter into the insta-mythmaking about a speech that need not be embroidered.

Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech. But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems.

Go ahead and laugh but once this song gets into your head it isn’t leaving.
He is like a mountie
He always gets his man
and he’ll zap you any way he can.

Adam shows you what happens to your voice if you breathe in sulfur hexafluoride

(via Kottke)

This is great news for gay men!

BLACKLICK, Ohio — Mixed feelings. That’s the best way to describe how people feel about a controversial church sign that was seen in Blacklick this past week.

For 24 hours, the message board outside Havens Corners Church, 6696 Havens Corner Rd., read, “I kissed a girl and I liked it, then I went to Hell.”

The message refers to the chart-topping song by pop artist Katy Perry “I Kissed A Girl.”

Pastor David Allison said he didn’t put up the sign to draw attention to the church.

“We didn’t intend to get into all this, but it’s become a bigger thing,” Allison said.

He was just very concerned about the implications of the song for teenagers and what he called a music video so suggestive it borders on pornography.

(via Yglesias)

About 1,500 one star reviews so far.

Here’s some background if you’re just coming to the party.

Like the PC version of Mass Effect before it, Spore’s DRM limits owners to only three activations of the game after installation. The point is to prohibit software pirates from sharing and reusing activation codes over and over, but it also means that if a user happens to uninstall and reinstall Spore more than three times for completely legitimate reasons, they’ll have to contact Electronic Arts customer support to request and have approved a new authentication on a case-by-case basis. Which is precisely what has Amazon users up in arms.

A quick scan of the negative reviews reveals some bitterly sensationalistic headlines: “DRM Kills another potentially great game,” “Not a chance until the DRM goes,” and “DRM complicates life, removes value.” One reviewer, who calls the DRM “draconian,” even likened a purchase to a rental as opposed to an actual ownership of the game, since a player could theoretically be barred from playing their copy of Spore if they use up their activations and EA refuses to allow more. “What you will be left with is a nice, colorful $50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another copy/license if you want to continue playing,” the user writes.

And believe it or not, this backlash comes after EA and Maxis made Spore’s DRM less stringent, when fans decried the originally announced plan to require online authentication every 10 days. As for how much the Amazon debacle will affect sales of the game remains uncertain, but it’s probably a PR problem that EA and Maxis could have happily lived without.

There is no way I would ever buy software that had a limit on how many times you could install it. There are many times I uninstall games that I haven’t played in a while to free up some hard drive space (Spore requires 6GB of space) only to install it later on when I’m in the mood. Or if other issues come up. Or if I buy a different computer and want to put it on that one.

I understand a company wanting to make it more difficult for a game to be pirated but why are they trying to make it more difficult for your paying customers?

From the NY Times:

The Truman Show delusion, or Truman Syndrome, has drawn attention in recent months, in the United States and Britain, as psychiatrists in both countries describe a small but growing number of psychotic patients who describe their lives as mirroring that of the main character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show.”

Played by Jim Carrey, Truman Burbank leads a mundane existence in the suburbs, starting from the time he was in the womb, while being filmed for a documentary television show that he cannot escape. Everyone is in on it, including his wife, and no one will believe Truman when he discovers clues that his life is being chronicled all the time by cameras.

With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information.

The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the current cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line?

(via Conceptual Trends)

Easter on the small Greek island of Chios means one thing – a massive firework battle, with over 50,000 rockets raining down on two small towns.