But of course, my intent (as usual) is not to infringe on copyright, but to show how amazing Archer is and actually get more people to watch, so I’m still going to try to share this clip with the world. (Hey, I would embed their video and drive traffic to FX directly to promote the show, but their video clip collection is a bit sparse.)

Anyway, so here is it: from “The Limited” (season 3, episode 3), a great clip with Archer & Babou (the ocelot) that perfectly captures a key part of how awesome the show is. I’m obligated to give you a SPOILER ALERT warning since the clip is from the end of the episode, but watching it really won’t ruin anything for you since almost every Archer episode ends with some crazy chaos. Enjoy!

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Many believe World War II not only helped, but was one of the biggest factors in the US pulling itself out of the Great Depression– some do not– and I’m sure it’s been joked many times over that another war– in addition to the one we just finished fighting like, 5 minutes ago (did you know military operations had websites?), and the one we’re still fighting in Afghanistan– would help us out of this Great Recession. Well, the thought of someone in government or similar sphere of power seriously considering that idea is a morbid thought, but perhaps this is an even more twisted one: although domestic growth created to support wartime efforts could help us get out of our current, particularly deep economic rut, the thought of waging war for economic benefit– essentially letting the blood of American soldiers be payment for a way out of our current economic state, one created by Wall Street’s high risk, shady deals with subprime mortgages and derivative markets– is too “distasteful”. So, instead, those in power look at alternatives and given the somewhat misguided, but constant ranting about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its regulations are “job killers”, a conspiracy is born to systematically lower EPA regulations to allow corporations to redirect resources they would normally have spent ensuring they were abiding by various environmental laws and regulations, knowing that it may cause adverse health effects on millions of communities around the country. They decide that considering it takes much longer for you to die from cancer than a soldier to die from a bullet or a bomb, and it is much harder to prove that the chemical waste improperly dumped near your home’s water source is the direct reason why you get a particular type of cancer at a particular point in your life– especially if litigation gets tied up in the court system and you die before its conclusion, should you decide to sue your health insurance company and/or the owner of the factory or plant that caused the pollution in the first place– that slow, causally ambigous death of a few million is not only a more preferable and conveniently politically advantageous, but morally justifiable route for economic growth compared to more American soldiers dying in another war (or ideally, just working harder to come up with better economic policies). Besides, the increased health problems may boost the healthcare industry and once we’re out of the rut, the EPA can create even more jobs by raising– or in some cases, re-raising– regulations, therefore creating a need for corporations to go back out and hire workers and obtain other resources to abide by them.

And then the next time there’s an economic slump, all over again… until they find “the next thing”…

I’m not saying this is what could happen under a President and/or Congress that rails just a little too much against the EPA or that anybody is even seriously considering it, or if anybody seriously believes anybody is seriously considering it, but if I thought of it, someone else must have…

“The bottom line is that your country and you have to be on the same page where values are considered, principles are considered, what you believe in. And if that is not the case, then it’s… you may be born somewhere and brought up somewhere, but then you don’t feel that same type of loyalty. Because loyalty comes through ideas, not through the earth, not through mud and trees and hills. That’s the same everywhere in the world. Is there any country in the world that has it enshrined in the constitution that you have a right to be happy?”

And to underline the point even more, note that Larsen is originally from Pakistan. Food for thought– check out the trailer for “Citizen USA” below:

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“If they’re not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and violent extremists, then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent, fearful white people and racists?”

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And, by the way, do you know how hard it is to fix marble? That you would have to basically replace everything damaged here? Even if I was immortal and unbelievably wealthy– thus, having both the time and money to do it– I would be supremely peeved at the damage done to the steps of the dais, never mind how stupid the dais and thrones are. (That part of the fight isn’t in the clip, but you can see part of it at 1:50 in this featurette. I know, I have too much time on my hands right now. At least I tell you how to cut to the chase with the video.)

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And from his stand-up show, on hip hop. Fast forward to 1:28 to see him perform as LL Cool J, Snoop, DMX, and Jay-Z:

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Second, Christina Aguilera‘s performance was also hot, especially the remixed “Genie in a Bottle:”

And finally, more Rihanna, this time with T.I., performing “Live your Life” (follow T.I.’s performance “Whatever You Like,” starts at 2:16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtESW0q2YMY. (Apparently, this performance’s embedding was disabled by request and MTV took down all copies of it on their site. Weird. Don’t know why.)

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Am I the only one who still finds Jeff Goldblum attractive in a non-human way (The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy)?

Disclaimer: I actually know a really smart and talented engineer who, after so many years in the industry, but no official degree, did his undergraduate degree through them so he could move on to a Master’s and I can’t blame him. Good for him.

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I didn’t think a show about web videos would be interesting since I’m not a fan of “wrap-up” shows and I think it’s weird when you people use TV to talk about things from the Internet– it’s like they’re dumbing down computers and the Internet to make it more accessible via television because staring at a TV screen is easier than staring at a monitor.

In any case, I gave the show a shot because I love Daniel Tosh and the show is actually pretty entertaining. And yes, I actually find exactly what I thought I wouldn’t like– using TV to “wrap-up” popular web content– useful since I don’t usually have time to troll the Internet for funny videos. And the Tosh.0 blog is actually a nice complement to the show itself, without being redundant. Give it a shot.

Here’s Daniel Tosh’s hilarious follow up to the above video:

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In addition to personal videos, I managed to slip a Kids in the Hall sketch through the system. Amazingly, I received a message from the KITH today via YouTube and I was afraid I was going to have another copyright complaint in my hands. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the following message:

Hey Hey,

Thanks for posting one of our videos on YouTube. We love it! Wanted to tell you about our new sketch "Car Bangers," available only online. If you like it, please subscribe to our page as well. And we are on tour- check out dates on our MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/kithtour08.

Peace!
KITH

Based on the comments posted on the KITH YouTube channel, it looks like many other fans got similar messages thanking them for posting video clips online. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever heard of artists (or rather the people that own the copyright allowing the artists) to support fans putting some of their works online. It gives the concept of viral video a fair chance! This is a particularly interesting idea for artists like KITH– it’s been years since they were on the air, but with fans posting videos online, they can reach a whole new fan base, a fan base who can buy their DVDs, buy tickets to their live shows, and more. It’s a great marketing opportunity and I’m glad somebody sees it so clearly and simply and acts on it. No muddying the waters with threats of lawsuits and content hoarding.

So, aside from loving their sketches, that’s another reason why I love the Kids in the Hall. Check out their latest video: Car Bangers.

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Secret Lives of Women. This show is about the “secret lives” of women, “[f]rom fetishes and fantasies to polygamists to the dirty little secrets of suburbia.” Most of the shows are very interesting and downright compelling– in the most recent episode I watched, “Sex Trade,” there was a story about an Asian pre-med student who works as a high-priced (I mean, not Eliot Spitzer high-priced, but anywhere from a few hundred to several thousands dollars) escort and call girl. (They obscure her face throughout the show, but I swear I know her.) Other past episodes have included topics such as “Plastic Surgery Addicts,” “Cheaters,” “Cougars,” and “Lipstick Lesbians.” The new season premieres on April 1. Check out these clips: “Sex for Sale,” “Why I Am A Cougar,” and “Mommy is a Phone Sex Operator“.

High School Confidential. Now, this is an interesting project: many of us think back and remember how much we’ve changed since high school, but not only that, how much we changed just in the four years while in high school. The show followed 12 girls for four years and now we get to see these girls deal with “sex, drugs, unwanted pregnancy, health crisis, and family chaos — all while trying to discover who they are.” The show particularly resonates for me because I remember many of my friends and myself changing so much from the time we were freshmen to the time we were juniors and seniors– we entered with such an idealistic look at the world and with such a high sense of morality, but real life sets in, slowly for surely, and things change very quickly, including our ideas of right and wrong. For the men out there: check out this show to get some insight into the psycho social mind job high school can be from the female perspective. Check out this video for a taste of what the show is about.

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Check it out:

Pretty impressive, isn’t it?

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When you have an LP (as you may also have heard it called, especially on something like House), there’s a 10-15% chance that you’ll get a severe headache with nausea, but that can usually be avoided by making sure you stay lying flat on your back for a few hours after the procedure and keeping your fluids up. A persistent headache can mean that a proper clot didn’t form at the puncture site and there’s a CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leak– a microscopic leak, not one that comes oozing out your back, so the headache is the only real tip off that you have one.

Amazingly, after staying strictly in the supine position after the procedure at the doctor’s office and then at home (except for the brief trip to the car in a wheelchair and all and then up the elevator home), I avoided getting a severe headache and hopefully, a CSF leak. Imagine my luck, considering I otherwise have a headache everyday, often all day.

Anyway, thanks to Marina and Charles for taking me to the doctor and taking care of me all day yesterday. For the less squeamish, check out this video of an actual LP.

The entire Timbaland album is pretty good; I really like that he’s working in a bunch of different styles, with a bunch of different artists, from Justin Timberlake to Fall Out Boy to Elton John to OneRepublic.

And if you’re curious about the girl singing the hooks in “The Way I Are,” it’s Keri Hilson who has, until now, mainly been a songwriter as part of The Clutch, a strong group of songwriters responsible for a series of hit songs, including Mary J. Blige’s “Take Me As I Am,” but in 2006, signed onto Timbaland’s new label and will be releasing her debut album soon.

Perhaps they’re only actively monitoring new content now– those lazy bastards.

In any case, I’ll scrounge around and try to replace the clips.

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I’ve been working somewhat with, among others, the instructors (especially BJ Fogg and Dan Ackerman Greenberg) for the Stanford Facebook class CS377W: Creating Engaging Facebook Apps, figuring out how to use Facebook and its application development platform to encourage development of apps to promote student life, aid in teaching and learning, reach out to alumni, and more. (My department, Student Computing, is currently running an app contest to encourage development of just those kinds of apps.) Wednesday night, I attended the class final– a full-blown presentation on the class (including the journey from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab exploring how to computerize persuasion in 1993 to the development of the class itself), aims of the course, lessons learned, and, most importantly, the apps produced by the class’ 25 student teams.

The class has gotten a lot of hype, especially in the blogosphere, and much of it has been about how students were looking to find the secret to building the next big app and, in turn, making big money from it (check out this WREX-TV, NBC11.com video and try not to be distracted by the dumbed-down and sometimes nonsensical tech imagery for the narration). Much of the class focused on metrics and taking advantage of the viral nature of social networking sites like Facebook– aiming, for each app, a high number of users (especially daily active users) and high engagement (number of page views and time spent with the app). The apps developed, as you can tell from the phrase “10 million in 10 weeks,” were largely successful in achieving these goals with over 10 million installs, over one miliion daily active users, and a handful ranking in Facebook’s top 100 apps (out of over 10,000): Perfect Match, Send Hotness, Hugs, and KissMe (originally based on the Full Moon on the Quad tradition at Stanford). (Sorry if I missed any that reached the top 100.)

However, focusing on getting the largest number of users doesn’t always result in developing the “deepest” or most “socially meaningful” applications– as one commenter put it, even the “Stanford intellectual elite [can be] devoted to producing such monumental drivel.” (Before the Stanford-developed KissMe app, just think of the success of the unbelievably simple Zombies app.) So, instead of focusing on the apps that had the highest number of users, I want to point out two apps that are particularly socially conscious and show how to take advantage of the power of the Facebook network:

• The Giving Tree – the developers of this app partnered with Kiva to piggy-back on the growing awareness of the power of microlending. Facebook users don’t even need to pony up their own money– instead, once 50 people have added one of the selected businesses to their profile, $25 is pushed to the business using money donated from companies.
• Save the Rainforest – here, the developers partnered with The Nature Conservancy to take advantage of some of the time Facebook users are spending on the site everyday. Users play a vocabulary game and for every six correct answers, one square foot of the rainforest will be adopted through The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program. As of the class’s final presentation night (December 12, 2007), 5,000 square feet had already been saved!

You, like me, are probably trying to reduce the app clutter on your Facebook profile, but if you’re going to use apps, I think these two are certainly worth it.

And with that, I leave you with a short video of Dave McClure leading the audience in The Wave to get them psyched up for the presentations:

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Of course, although I don’t actually care about maintaining an active channel worthy of thousands of subscribers and followers, the sad part is that, in a big box, in big letters, the channel displays a list of your YouTube Friends and mine sadly says “You have no Friends.” That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?

Anyway, if you are more than a casual user on YouTube and want to be my friend (I can’t believe I’m actually writing this), please add me as a friend.

But you know, only if you want to.

Sad. So sad.

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After reading about hiccups in Wikipedia, I probably know more than I should ever know about hiccups, but here are a few interesting tidbits:

• In 1988, Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine published his research on “Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.” In 2006, he was one of the recipients of the Ig Nobel for medicine for his research. Aside from being “research that makes people laugh and then think,” as the Ig Nobel folks say, the additional interesting thing about this is that there’s an episode of House where a patient who claims to be suffering from hiccups, after being told they will go away on their own, requests a specific treatment/cure that he read about, one that some guy one a prize for. Later, House throws the patient’s file on the counter, telling the nurse to make a note about “drug-seeking behavior.” Dr. Cuddy asks, “Morphine?” House answers, “No, anal-digital stimulation.”
• As recounted by my friend during our hiccups discussion, Charles Osborne, after slaughtering or weighing a hog (I’ve found conflicting reports on what he was actually doing, but it definitely involved a hog), suffered from hiccups continuously for 68 years, from 1922 to 1990. (He obviously holds the Guinness World Record for “Longest Attack of Hiccups.”) Contrary to what we thought earlier– that he had hiccups all the way until his death– his hiccups actually mysteriously disappeared on their own in 1990, a year before he passed away. Nevertheless, he still managed to live to the ripe old age of 97, marrying at least more than once and fathering several children.

Check out this interview of a girl who had hiccups for five weeks (the video shows her after about three weeks in):

I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by sharing some of these case study examples since they are real world examples of sexual harassment litigation, so here’s a little sampling so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:

One word: priapism. If you don’t know what this word means, you should learn, especially if you’re a guy, and then check out the 2006 case Arrieta-Colon v. Wal-Mart. Props to Arrieta-Colon in winning the case, but talk about awkward.

That may be sexual harassment, but more importantly, it’s sexual assault. There were one or two examples where one co-worker (usually male) continually made unwanted romantic/sexual advances towards a co-worker (usually female)– advances that weren’t just repeated requests for a date or inappropriate comments, but extended to groping, touching, and more. (Specifically, check out the 2006 case Howard v. Winter as one example.) While admittedly there are serious sexual harassment issues, what about the sexual assault? This type of behavior is illegal not only in terms of creating a hostile work environment, but also because it’s a crime. I don’t know about you, but sexual assault trumps sexual harassment.

Spanking. And lots of it. WTF? There were multiple examples of spanking somehow being introduced into the workplace as a sometimes valid, sometimes invalid form of punishment. Check out the 2002 case Yerry v. Pizza Hut of Southeast Kansas. If someone seriously suggested to me to physically hit or be hit, much less spank or be spanked, as a way to punish someone in the workplace, I think my head would explode. And yet, somehow people involved in such cases went along with this treatment. It’s amazing what people don’t understand about their rights, will put up with to keep their jobs or do to avoid confrontation.

And with that, a little video to lighten the mood:

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Maybe this is how you get a palace with a phallus.

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If ever there comes a time when everyone you vote for wins and they do everything you think they should do, there will still be a gap between what is and what ought to be, at home and around the world. It’s just inevitable… And so people like you and me– private citizens– have more power to do public good than ever before and we should step into the gap. And unlike previous times, it’s great if you’re rich– Bill Gates and Warren Buffet deserve the world’s thanks and gratitude– it’s amazing what they’re doing, but you don’t have to be rich. In the tsunami, Americans gave 1.3, 1.2 billion dollars. Thirty percent of our households gave over half of them over the Internet. That’s stunning. So, that means if like everybody that’s watching The Daily Show decides tomorrow that they think the biggest thing in the world is to make America free of foreign oil and they want us to go into biofuels and there’s a fund that promotes that and everybody that sees this show gives ten or fifteen or twenty dollars– not big money– they all do it, you could change the world.

Watch it at Comedy Central– Part 1 and Part 2– and check out the the Clinton Global Initiative.

But it does remind me of this clip from Kids in the Hall:

I love Kurt Vonnegut and here’s another example of why I love him.

The best part of this? Vonnegut’s commentary on how good America is at democracy– after 100 years, you have to let your slaves go. After 150 years, you have to let your women vote, etc.

Just as Jon Stewart says about his own life, Vonnegut’s book helped make adolescence just that much more bearable. I’d rather forget the person who introduced me to Vonnegut, but I’ll never forget Vonnegut and his books. I absorbed his books throughout high school and have probably read almost everything he’s ever published. He introduced me to satire and black humor and that you could somehow find a balance between science and religion and that you could find fault with man to the point of utter disappointment and pessimism and yet still be a humanist.

I just picked up his newest book A Man without a Country. More hilarious insight ensues.

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I wasn’t going to comment on this, but this Daily Show clip is just too funny to pass up: Quicktime, Windows Media.

When I first heard about this, I was really surprised– I thought Microsoft’s change in stance on HB 1515 was very strange. Say what you will about Microsoft as a technology source or even as a corporate power, but from what I’ve heard, they have had a pretty good track record on supporting charitable causes. They have a sizable matching program for their employees’ charitable donations and everyone has heard of Bill Gates’s personal philanthropic efforts. Moreover, in terms of queer rights, Microsoft has a sizeable queer community (GLEAM, Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft. And as Steve Ballmer says in his email to Microsoft employees, they were one of the first companies to provide domestic partner benefits and to include sexual orientation in anti-discrimination policies.

However, the peculiar thing is that Ballmer (and Gates, by extension) says that they are wondering if a corporation should become involved in broader social issues, that if they take an active stance for or against legislation, what kind of message does it send to employees and shareholders who might hold an opposing view?

Well, with the increasing corporatization of America, I would think that its obvious that corporations have an enormous influence on social and political issues and if they want to continue to exert that influence in some areas, shouldn’t they also feel some moral responsibility to, put bluntly, not be a bunch of wusses when it comes to broader social issues? Perhaps the case would be different if Microsoft did not have a history of becoming involved in social and political issues, but to back down when things get a little interesting seems cowardly. By instituting domestic partner benefits and including sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination efforts, Microsoft’s internal policy was already making a broader social statement and while Ballmer says he does not want to promote a law that goes against the personal beliefs of many of its employees is really a lame-ass copout. By supporting HB1515, Microsoft wouldn’t be saying that gay marriage should be legalized or that employees have to embrace homosexuality. What they would be saying is that no matter how you feel about homosexuality personally, a lifestyle choice that is in no way illegal, you should not disciminate against homosexuals in the workplace. You may not like black people, Asian people, white people, Jewish people, Muslim people, red fish, blue fish, but it’s illegal to discriminate against them in the workplace. Obviously, Microsoft agrees with this idea since they have an internal policy against discinination based on sexual orientation and have recognized domestic partners in providing benefits. If they think it’s good enough for Microsoft, why isn’t it good enough for the workplace in general?

(Discovered off of Boing Boing)

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