Those Terrible Twins

Every once in a while there is a scalding soft tall tale that is actually stranger than the Cold Hard Facts. Most such stories involve evil twins, and this one is no exception.

It all started when Rudy Gutierrez left his dog, Puddles, with his neighbor, Grace Saenz-Lopez, the mayor of Alice, TX. The dog was a Shih Tzu, one of those annoyingly yappy, little dogs with absurdly long hair that is a pain to groom. I mention this, because as you will see, the absurdly long hair is a cunning Chekhov's Gun. Just you wait.

Anyway when Gutierrez come back from vacation, he found the dog had died. Saenz-Lopez swore that the death happened in a manner that she was exempt from, and she further said that she had saved the Gutierrez family the trouble of burying it. The Gutierrez family were all quite distressed, but eventually they got over their loss and started the healing process.

That's when Rudy got a call from a friend, who reported seeing a familiar looking Shih Tzu at a local groomer. Told you the long hair would be important. Inquiries to the groomer determined that the dog was named Panchito and that it was owned by the mayor.

Sensing there was something suspicious, Gutierrez confronted the mayor. THe mayor denied that the dog was Puddles, but rather claimed it was her dog that just happened to look identical. Call it an evil twin of Puddles, if you will. Upon further interrogation, she broke down and admitted that it was indeed the same dog. The Gutierrez family now sued to gain custody, but a new complication arose. The dog had conveniently vanished.

Luckily a hard hitting reporter arose to track the dog down. Bravely confronting the mayor, he learned she was actually not the mayor, but rather her evil twin sister. Her evil twin, the real mayor lived in Arizona, and presumably so did the dog. The reporter bought this story for about ten minutes, before deciding maybe he should confront the mayor's twin a second time.

Driving back to her house, he bravely yelled, "I've been told you're the mayor and not the twin sister." Presumably his source for this was a skeptical preschool student, who the lame excuse for what it was and told the reporter so. However the mayor's alleged twin wouldn't budge, and the reporter left dogless for a second time.

Further inquiries revealed that the mayor really did have an evil twin, seriously, but she didn't live in Arizona. She lived about fifteen miles from Alice, where she served as a school district trustee. When the reporter tried to question her on the dog, she ignored his, not even bothering to claim she was the mayor and not the evil twin. However, the reporter did locate the dog on her property.

Thus the police, still not knowing which was which, wrote up arrest warrants for both the mayor and the evil twin. I of course mean alleged evil twin, as she has not yet been convicted. The mayor and the twin are still serving in their respective public offices, or perhaps each other's public office. But a recall effort is under way to replace them both with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Puddles is being held in custody until a hearing determines he is actually the dog belonging to the Gutierrezes and not the twin belonging to Mayor Saenz-Lopez.

The moral of all this is that twins are dangerous, and it is lucky I don't know any. Who knows what they would be up to?

Life After Death

A few weeks ago some friends and I got into a discussion of Facebook accounts, and one person wondered whether some smart alec created a profile for the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It seemed like a distinct possibility, and so I decided to find out. Alas the answer is no. Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson is not on facebook.

But it did occur to me to see if other famous people did have accounts on Facebook. I first started with other great rabbis. I figured that if any rabbi would have a profile on facebook, it would have to be either Hillel or Rambam, as every school, camp, charity fund, or organization named after a rabbi, will invariably be named Hillel or Maimonides. No one is ever original enough to name something after the Ramah, for example. And so, the search began.

In addition to all the organizations and quotes from Guide to the Perlexed, Rambam has two profiles. The first is the only Jew in the Egypt network, and the second one is in Quebec, Canada, which I can only assume was his summer home. A search for Hillel only turned up the college organization, a Mr. Rutgers Hillel, and זכר למקדש כהללֹ— Korech Lovers Anonymous.

Moving on to secular figures, we find that Theodor Seuss Geisel, one of the greatest writers of all time has a rhyming facebook profile with less than two hundred different words, and William Shakepeare still lives on, but only in China. And though Dumas is no longer with us, his Comte de Montichristo has been busy. But Franz Kafka takes the literary cake, with 214 separate profiles. Bet you regret wanting to destroy your books now, eh Franz?

After literature, there was one thing I HAD to check. Joseph Stalin has a profile. Joe Stalin stole my blog avatar, and teaches at Villanova (You don't want to see his profile at ratemyprofessors. It's not pleasant). Iosef Stalin has two, and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin also stole my picture, but at least he colorized it. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili has 11 profiles. And it would seriously disturb you to learn how many girls call themselves Joan Stalin.

Chemists are behind in the fake profile game. Fritz Haber has only one profile, and it appears to be a LIVING Fritz Haber, not THE Haber. Kekule has none. The only famous chemist who does have a profile is Linus Pauling with 5. But mathematicians are rather better. 176 years after his fatal duel, Évariste Galois has finally graduated Princeton, Kansas City, and the University of Edinburgh. Hilbert, Godel, Lagrange and Laplace all have profile. And Fourier went to Rutgers.

Ignaz Semmelweis has a profile, as does Louis Pasteur. Lister does not, but I'm sure he'll have one shortly *cough*. Alexandre Yersin does not, but the disease named after him does. John Snow has a profile, and I had no idea that his work was an all too common last name.

I'm sure that many, many other famous people all have profiles, but I think this should be enough incentive for the Lubavitch to get a move on it.

Yea Linux!

This reminds me of the time I overheard two girls gossiping about actors, and for a split second, I wondered why the heck they were discussing quantum mechanics.

"CLASSIFIED" or "Fun with Madlibs"

Warning: After writing the outline to this post. I was told that Jon Stewart had made the same joke and even referenced the same passage that I am about to reference. To that all I can see is that, "Great minds think alike." But I don't need other great minds to think for me.

Recently I started reading "Fair Game" by a former CIA agent. Before the book could be published, it had to be vetted by the CIA. And the CIA chose to classify about a quarter of the material, mostly in the first chapters of the book. Now I am all for keeping sensitive material out of enemy hands, but I must say that it does add a certain amount of humor to the book. I suppose I should expect it of those kwazy CIA agents. Remember when I posted their recruitment video that they had streamed through YOUtube, and the CIA responded by yanking the video off YOUtube and sent me a warning about revealing sensitive documents*£. Well this is not quite as good, but it is still pretty good.

First of let us examine the method used to classify things. Here we can see a page of text with gray bars covering some of the words.


Here we can see a page of gray bars with some text uncovered.


Here we can see an entire page full of nothing but gray bars. Wait a minute, look up there near the top of the page. Can you see it? They left two periods unclassified. Why the heck did they do that? Isn't it easier just to gray bar everything. They must have done it for a reason, because clearly those aren't the only periods. Presumably the rest of the page is not one giantm multi-paragraph, run-on sentence. Make that giant, multi-paragraph run-on word, as I see there is a single unclassified space as well. No, so why did they declassify only those punctuation marks? Perhaps those sentences are just not important enough to conceal where they end. Or perhaps just the opposite. Maybe those are only decoy periods to further obscure the truth. Or, quite possibly, the censor just missed them. We may never know.

Another weird thing about the censoring is the content that is censored. Sometimes there seems to be a completely innocuous passage, and then right there at the end, right when you are least expecting it, BAM gray bars. Like here.

I paid and walked out of her chic Red Bank apartment. CENSORED I called Joe from the Doctor's office. "Honey, the doctor says he hears two heartbeats–—We're having twins."

I suppose what the author couldn't say was that she discovered that chic Ob/Gyn really was a mole, but that the threat was now "neutralized".

Here's another example that is even weirder.

Because the babies still didn't suck very well, we were told not to use bottles, but rather a large syringe that essentially squirted the formula into their mouths. It felt a little like feeding a baby bird. Switching between breast and syringe feeding when they took only a few ounces at a time and capturing each detail in a notebook soon took its toll. I was exhausted CENSORED. Every baby book...

What is with the baby censorings? I mean I'm all for giving a mother her privacy, but I notice the CIA kinda came in too late for that. Besides censoring like that just makes the paragraph more conspicuous.

And here is perhaps the weirdest example of all. "Could I actually do xx job on a less-than full time basis?" Now, you can tell by the size of the gray box, that the censored word is very short, probably only two letters. And from the context it's clearly "My". But then why bother with the censoring? Even now that I know the full sentence reads, "Could I actually do MY job on a less-than full time basis," I am no more enlightened in matters of national security. And if that "My" DID say loads about the state of security in this country, I would hope they would guard it better. It took all off two seconds for me to figure out what it said. We can only hope such poorly guarded secrets never make it to the ears of Bin Laden. G-d only knows what he could do with with such information. Perhaps he is building a "My" bmb as we speak. Thanks a lot CIA.

Of course all the censoring just begs to be played as the ultimate mad lib. Take that first example. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out whether the missing words are nouns, verbs, or adjectives, so just guess some at random and enjoy. The only catch is that if you randomly guess correctly, you may get a call from men in black coats next week. Hey wait. Hey what's going on. Stop you can't do this. The truth will come out. Hey! Stop it! Put me down! You can't silence me. I'll tell everyfriend I know. In alphabetical order! AUGGGGGGGH!.

*Sorry the warning email was classified. I am not allowed to share it with you.
£By the way, in an effort to avoid more ridicule, the CIA pulled down all their recruitment pages, including their great Flash game, so if you didn't catch that post earlier, than it is just too bad.

Ooops!

Apparently there was some kind of horrible mishap with that last post, but I don't have anything else to blog about, so I'll leave it.

Kadir Buxton — Time Traveling Supergenious or lair?

Warning ! I am actuall

Two posts today?

There may be two posts today. But it is getting late, I have things to do before sundown, and the second post isn't finished yet. Feel free to check by later, but don't get your hopes up.

Tired of Walking GIrls Home

One of the majors problems of being on a college campus is that girls always insist you walk them home, even when they live in a completely different direction. Lucky for me, girls avoid me like the plague, but there are others who are not so lucky. The problem is that it is just not safe for a girl to walk out alone after dark, but at the same time, it is too much bother to walk with her. Now at last, there is a solution. The solute? Aya Tsukioka, of Japan, has has invented a dress, which she believes will allow girls to go out after dark and avoid random neighborhood psychopaths.

Taking inspiration from the ancient ninjas, who used to wear dark cloaks to blend in with the night, Ms. Tsukioka's dress allows the wearer to blend in with a city, by disguising her as a Coke Machine. It may sound like a really idea stupid idea that will never work, but the disguise is quite convincing. Try to pick out the girl from the actual soda machines in the picture below.


Did you guess the right one?

I didn't think so.

So now if a girl runs into a psychopath, all she has to do is distract him for a few seconds, perhaps with the old, "Look over there," gag. Then quick as a wink, she seamlessly blends into the surroundings, and her pursuer is left to wonder what in Hell that new soda machine is doing on Bob St. Meanwhile the girl's would be escort is free to do more important things than care about her safety.

There is just one little snag. What if the random neighborhood psychopath decides he's thirsty, but he only like Mountain Dew. He may well take out his anger on that new Coke machine, and that would be bad. Luckily, new models will disguise as less divisive urban monuments, perhaps parking meters or trash bins. A dress that is also a garbage can? That is one invention the Cold Hard Facts can salute. Nice job, Aya Tsukioka. Keep up the good work.

Silken Petals

My aunt requested that I put up a picture of the card she made, and let you decide for yourselves rather than just call her crazed. So fine here it is.



You happy now, Auntie?

Losing in Style

Yesterday Rutgers lost a second football game, which means it is no longer a "Championship Team". Some people cling to the deluded hope that, perhaps, if Rutgers wins every other game, it can yet be decent. Poor souls. They are setting themselves up to be crushed by reality. But not me, for I have hope of another kind. Which is why I am cheering for the Orange Club, even though "Orange Club" is the sorriest excuse for a team name that I have ever heard. Because, if we cannot have a great football team, at least we should have a totally lousy football team.

President McCormick said last year that the Scarlet Knights have finally put the university on the map, that having a good football team has made us more esteemed. But all the really esteemed schools have sorry excuses for football teams. Look at Cornell. They are in the wimpiest division ever, and they still lost every game they played. Look at Princeton. They are so bad, they would lose to Cornell if they were man enough to play them. And Princeton is even more prestigious a school than Cornell. The list goes on and on. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Caltech, MIT, Georgetown. Ye, to truly be "On the map," you need a lousy football team.

And if Rutgers doesn't blow it, that is exactly what will happen. If we want to be a "Harvard on the Raritan," we gotta play like a Harvard on the Raritan. We need to suck. Now is our chance. Last year we showed the world we were almost as good as Texas A&M. But who cares about being almost as good as Texas A&M, when you can be almost as bad as Harvard? Only then will Rutgers truly be Ivy League.

So Schiano, get out there and blow the game, and all the games afterwards. And Mike, you continue to throw those interceptions. And Ray, break a leg, literally. As for the rest of the team, you guys read up on the Black Sox. Make Cicotte* your role model. Together we can make a difference. GO ORANGES!

So let's hear it for Old Rutgers.
And hope their football team doth pan.
May they lose every single game.
May they head on home in shame,
To the banks of the old Raritan.

On the banks of the old Raritan, my friends,
where old Rutgers ever more shall stand,
For has she not stood since the time of the flood,
On the banks of the old Raritan.

*Yeah yeah, I know he was a baseball player. But that only means it would be even easier for him to lose a football game.

Building huts

You know what they say: "The huts have to go up. The blog doesn't have to be written." But I say it does, and so I wrote it.

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

Take heed, oh ye who see this in your mini-feed. And give ear, all ye who accidently stumbled across this on Google. Oh, and the few people who actually want to read the post, should probably read it too. For this is another Cold Hard Facts SPA SCARE!

Before we begin with the news, I would like to thank all those who offered to take me to a spa for my birthday. And I would especially like to thank my crazy aunt, who went one step farther, and sent me a card purporting to contain a gift certificate for a wax and facial. Of course if any of you were serious, I would have had to kill you. But since you weren't, yes it was quite funny.

But, now is the time to be serious and not funny, for I have unearthed a vast conspiracy. Yes, men take a gander at this article, and watch the smiles vanish from your faces. I have reflected on this story, and I can come to only one shocking conclusion. There is a vast conspiracy of mean and nasty women wishing to get us face down in a tub full of beer and laugh at us. Lies you say? Perhaps, but take a gander of the newspaper that article is in. That's right, the Women's Section. They could have been plotting this for months and I would never have known. But thanks to a tip-off, I know now, and perhaps there is still time.

Arm yourselves men. Arm yourselves, and trust no one. Wife, sister, mother-in-law, they could all be in this together. Even your own mother may try to lure you in, as this young man found out too late! Prepare yourselves men. Prepare yourselves or you will share his fate. And if its too late, if you were already sucked in, if you are forced to bathe in beer, at least buy a keg and do it in your own shower. You might lose, but at least then the spas won't have won. Plus you'll save about a thousand bucks.

And if there are any good women left. If there are women who have not yet succumbed to the curse, then you too are at risk. I speak of the Tupperware parties. Or should I say Spapperware parties. It's the most insidious plot since oral surgeons started offering eyebrow buffing and make-up tips. I can hear the spa executives chuckling to themselves. They know ladies will buy anything at a Tupperware party.* They know all your weaknesses, but you still have to hold out as long as possible. Society depends on you. And absolutely refuse to host such parties. Sure you might earn a few dollars. Sure you might get beautiful skin. But is beautiful skin really worth the cost of your soul? Oh it is? Then I guess we're doomed.



*Even Tupperware seems extra exciting to women at parties. "Wow it stores food. I'll take 30!" Top behavioral experts are still trying to figure out why.

Good News

My brother, "not notElon's brother", actually managed to get the service provider to unlock the DSL. Perhaps he is very persuasive. Or possibly he blackmailed them. I But the important thing is it works, so if a blogpost comes out today, be sure to give him your thanks.

And also thanks to "In no way am I notElon's dad." We couldn't have done it without him. He gave my brother the ride.

Postscript: Actually a blog post just did come out today, this one. So you are forced to thank my brother and father.

Blame Vewizon

I won't swear on it, but blogging will resume tomorrow, once I have more reliable internet access, if I have more reliable internet access.

If only they knew...

According to a press release on their website, the FEC has recently declared blogs to be media and to be subject to all exemtions therein. I didn't really give a darn until I suddenly remembered that I have a blog, and if the blog is media, do I not have the status as a reporter.

During the past hour, I have been thinking of how I can best abuse my press credentials. I figure I can start by running around shoving clipboards in people's faces, demanding snappy answers to all sorts of weird issues that people don't actually give a damn about. But there must be more I can do. Maybe something involving Freedom of Press. But, for once, I'm not sure how best to annoy everyone.

So I will throw it open to you readers. How can The Cold Hard Facts best take advantage of its newfound status, and how many people can we piss off along the way? I will consider carrying out the best entry. And as always, knowing very well that the contest will have no entries, the best answer wins a blog post.

I am not bound to please thee with my Answer...

... Certainly not when you ask that kind of question.

I have recently been spending time on Yahoo! Answers, mostly out of sheer boredom between class sessions. For those who don't know, Yahoo! Answers is a website where random people on the internet ask questions, and other random people, like myself, stop by to answer them. Good answers are rewarded with points, and when you get enough points, you presumably get rewarded with something nice, a toaster oven say. I already have over 2,500 points, and I'll probably get that cool leather jacket any day now. What's that you say? Points are meaningless? NOooooOO! Well at least I still have a blog post.

I earned most of my points in two fields, one of which I am now a "Top Contributor" in. Perhaps you can guess which fields those are. Well I won't tell you if you are right or not because I refuse to admit how much of a loser I truly am*. But I noticed there are some people who are even bigger losers than I am. And for your viewing pleasure, I will ennumerate the with snide remarks.

1) Some people, forgetting that any random bozo is going to answer their question, describe, in extreme detail, a 15 step experiment they would like their research group to carry out. Then they ask whether the project is safe. Hello! There are probably only 10 or so labs in the country that can do that project, and yours is one of them. Lives may be at stake here, and you me whether what you are doing is safe? Do you really think it is a good idea to waste your time and points asking that. Wouldn't it be better, to, I don't know, ASK A COLLEGUE! Someone who also went to graduate school. Someone with experience. I am one of the most knowledgeable people on that Yahoo Answers forum. I have had 2 years of training in that subject, and I can't even understand the question. And knowing the other users on that forum only makes me less comfortable about you asking there for safety advice.

2) The other users browsing that forum. Namely the guy who asked, "Two chemicals dangerous when mixed. Where I get them?" Luckily for him most knowledgeable chemical people aren't sadists** and would never give him such info. There's a good chance he's still alive.


3) Many people probably use Yahoo! Answers to get help with homework. This is fine. Some people ask about 50 questions at the same time, and expect other people to do their homework. Those people receive a lot of snide remarks, and not all of them from me. But even those people are smart enough not to use Yahoo! Answers to cheat on tests. And even the people who use Yahoo! Answers to cheat on tests don't normally give the point value of each test question they want answered. But one guy did just that. He (or she, but I think girls may have more brains than that) painstakingly typed in 16 Algebra questions, and yes, right there next to the title of each question, was the amount of points the question would be worth on the test. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I mean a) How could anyone answer all those questions and get back to him before the teacher wondered what was taking him so long in the bathroom? b) By putting the point-score there, he annouced to the whole world it was a test, and most people want money for test questions. c) Writing that point-score wastes time. And if you only have an hour, it would probably be in your best interest to hurry. Anyway I got back to him about three days later with this answer: "You Fail". And I got my 16 points for it; To add to his embarrassment, I voted it the best answer.

4) On the topic of people who write stupid math questions: You would be surprised to find the number of people who write in asking for 50% of 30 or help adding a two-digit number. I don't know about you readers, but I find this shameful. a) It is not too much too expect for someone to be able to add two-digit numbers. It's not that hard. Even Paris Hilton could probably add two-digit numbers if she set her mind to it. It might take her a few hours, but she could do it.*** If Paris can add, so can you. b) If you are such an absolute moron that you don't know how to add two digit numbers, at the least cover your stupidity with a calculator. There is no need to announce to the world what a dunce you are. A calculator can do the job cheaper and faster.

5) Someone who answers the aforementioned question with "Arg Math! I hate math! It burns. It burns. Make it go away!"**** is even worse than the last guy. She (Sorry ladies, but she did have a female avatar) also could do with some math and perhaps some counseling. I mean does she freak out every time she write up a deposit slip? But at least the other guy knew how to read. You have to give him some credit. He knew to ask that question about addition in the forum labeled "Mathematics". If this person is that scared of numbers, why in heck did she go to a "Mathematics" forum? What did she expect to find there?

Besides the people, there is one other highly amusing thing about Yahoo! Answers. The "Alternative Science" forum somehow ended up lumped with the "Actual Science" forums in "Science and Mathematics". Even more amusing, "Alternative" happens to come just before "Astronomy and Cosmology" in the list. This ensures a constant supply of ridicule and torment towards anyone who dares ask a question about Astrology or UFOs. It's very entertaining to watch.

And last, some questions just make you say "Whaa..." I speak of course about this one.

Hypothetically speaking, if my husband went into New Zealand's witness protection program, will I ever see him

For some reason, I am partial to one Edgar Greenberg's answer.

The New Zealand Witness Protection Program? OF COURSE! I KNEW that orc looked familiar. Tony we have our man. And nope you'll never see him again. Not now anyway. Thanks Honey.

But this guy's was good too.

Probably not - because New Zealand's witness protection program is the best in the World bar none.

You are told to dress like a sheep and go mingle. So far not one protectee has ever been found....
Source(s):
Support your local All Important Question Of The Day&trade (and Completely Ridiculous Question Of The Day&trade and Just Wondering&trade)

The Completely Ridiculous Question of the Day&trade? That's one cause The Cold Hard Facts heartily supports.******



*Out of touch with Culture. Ha, I'll have you know I earned an A in Pop Culture. I'm like totally awesome, man.
**Unluckily for him, I am sadistical. I told him exactly where to get them chemicals from. I also told him the reaction product has a sweet and tangy smell. Expect an update real soon, possibly from the Darwin Awards.
***You catch the Pop Culture reference? I told you I was on the ball.
****Ok it wasn't quite that. But I HAD to exaggerate. People who can't add aren't all that witty or literate either. '
*****Contrary to what this post may make you believe, I do sometimes give actual and factual answers. Just don't ask me to make a "Cold yam salad recipes with marshmallow fluff?"

New Computer

I recently bought a new MacBook to replace my old laptop. You may have noticed how blogging suddenly stopped a while back. That's because I broke my computer. Well actually I almost immediately replaced my computer, but I haven't felt like doing The Cold Hard Facts. But now at last I return.

The computer comes with a 64 bit, 2 GHz Intel processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a nce graphic card. But I didn't get it for any of those reasons. I didn't get it for the display or for the DVD drive. All computers have them. I didn't even get it for the Programming Tools or the Big Bang Tic Tac Toe, although not every computer has them, and the Programming Tools are darn useful. So is the ability to natively run MatLab. But those features are worth blogging either.*

No the first real advantage is the cool new track-pad. The old computer's track-pad had a tendency to freeze up, or drag the cursor in exactly the wrong direction, and the new track-pad lacks those problems. But that's not the cool part. In fact, who even cares if the track-pad works. So long as its boring, it could be made of solid gold and read your finger position with millimeter precision, and still not be worth talking about. No the reason the trackpad is cool is because I can do things with this track-pad, I couldn't dream of doing on the old one. On my old computer, in order to left click you had to push a button, and in order to right click, you had to push two buttons. Such a pain. But behold the new age! For now I can do both by just touching the pad. So far I've saved about .7 seconds that way. And who need scrollbars anymore, the trackpad can do that too!

But the best thing by far is the motion sensor. Apple places a motion sensor in all it's computers. The supposed real purpose is to sense when the computer is dropped or jerked, so the hard drive can be protected by parking the disk heads in time. But Apple also made the sensor readouts available to third party programs, allowing all sorts of cool new features like a car alarm. Yes by actually doing something productive with the stupid remote and motion sensor turns your computer into the perfect way to annoy your brother. Just point the remote at the computer, hold down the Menu button until you hear you hear a beep such as a car's key fob might make, and then "accidentally" jiggle the screen, before running off with the remote. Ta-dah, instant noise. And since he can't turn it off without the remote, you can go off bowling and leave the computer ringing for hours.** But there's more! iAlertU will even take a picture of the perpetrator via the built in camera, assuming it gets a good shot, and send it to you via email, assuming you can check your email with your computer gone and all. But with much effort, we did manage to capture this picture of the perpetrator.


Ha, I must have been trying to steal it for the insurance money. Please excuse me while I interrogate myself.

"WHERE'S THE COMPUTER"
"Oww! On... the desk Owww"
"Don't make me do good cop-bad cop."
"It's on the desk. Right there in front of me. Oww"
"Fine I asked for it. Oww"
"Oww, quit it! It's on the oww desk"

This make take awhile. Excuse me.

*Actually Big Bang Tic Tac Toe probably is. Tic Tac Toe has never been so... creepy. Its unreal.
**I wouldn't actually recommend this. There are such things as hammers.

Is Pop Culture Science

And if it is, Why the Hell Study this Garbage.

First you may be wondering why I hae not mentioned the religion class. Well it turns out that the religion class is more of a history course than a studies course, and thus it is harder to make fun of. That does not mean there are not interesting moments in the class, because some religious beliefs can be... Well here's a example. This came from an Anglican Priest in 18th Cetury Virginia. At that time planters were worried that perhaps if their slaves converted, and became good Christians, the slaves might earn rights. The pastor knew which of the two groups of Christians paid his salary, and he thus addressed the issue with the following religious ruling.

To remove all pretence from the Adult Slaves I shall baptise of their being free upon that account, I have thought to fit to require first their consent to this following declaration You declare in the Presence of god and before this Congregation that you do not ask for the holy baptism out of any design to free yourself from the Duty and Obedience you owe to your Master while you live, but merely for the good of Your Soul and to partake of the Graces and Blessings promised to the members of the Church of Jesus Christ . One of the most Scandalous and common Crimes of our Slaves is their perpetual Changing of Wives and husbands, which occasions great disorders; I also tell them whom I baptise The Christian Religion does not allow the plurality of Wives, nor any changing of them; You promise truly to keep the Wife yo now have till Death dos part you. It has been Customary among them to have their feasts, dances, and meetings on the Lord's Day, that practice is pretty well over in this parish, but not absolutely; I tell them that present themselves to to be admitted to Baptism, they mus promise they'l spend no more the Lord's day in idleness, and if they do, I'l cut them off from the Communion.

Ahh those Anglican Pastors. So empathetic to the needs of their congregation.

However, due to it's rather factual nature, the class itself is less deserving of parody. I might present a funny quote or two, but I will primarily blog about the Pop Culture.

And now for the question of the day, Is Pop Culture, or at least the study of pop culture a science? It certainly claims to be one, but at first glance, this does not seem so. I mean there are no explosion and hardly any mathematics. But even so, it could still be one of those soft, wimpy sciences like Neural Cellular Biology. So let us start at the beginning and keep an open mind.

A rigourous, scientific study of Popular culture is admittedly difficult. Apparently there are laws against locking subjects in rooms and playing 24 hour non-stop Hillary Duff music, while quantitatively monitoring their behavior.

Day 26, the subjects appear to be experiencing extreme agitation. Number 24 tried to strangle my graduate student, when she brought him food. This is the 28 time this week, that he ha displayed such violent tendencies. I intend to study this phenomenon further.

Thus Sociologists once again must take the wimpy way out and conducts surveys and or case histories. This is called Qualitative Research, or BSing. Qualitative Research is not unlike what Dr. Sachs has done. There are of course two differences. Oliver Sachs studied people with postencephalitic parkinsonism, while Pop Culture sociologists study Paris Hilton fans, so they face the additional problem that their research subjects are brain-damaged.

The second problem is more serious. Whereas Oliver Sachs can also do real science, soft and wimpy though it is, I simply do not see how a sociologist can. I must admit that sociologists do have elaborate ways of coping with this bias, (Emic and Etic and all that), and their studies are very thorough, but ultimately I think their research speaks for itself. So we conclude that no matter how much documenting and analysis there is, we still may not have a science. It's a shame, because done properly perhaps this would lead to interesting insights in human nature. Ah well. Done improperly, it as least generates much hilarity.




*This knowledge is all hearsay. I never had the urge to investigate her directly, but I get the impression that any fans of hers are weirdos.

Femininity, Decontruction, and Coconuts: An Explosive Concoction

So let us continue where we left off in the textbook, and from there we will proceed to the class. For once in my life I actually took notes, and I intend to use them, so expect the world. (Yes I might have made a note or two in Diff Eq, but they hardly count.)

We proceed from the basic understanding of pop culture to a didactic analysis of the effects of the feminine revolution on the genre of Mass Culture. Perhaps Didactic is not the right word. Well I don't care, and neither does the author of the cunning pun, Femininity as Mas(s)querade*: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture. Ha I'll bet you didn't even realize Faminism was popular culture, but didn't Betty Friedan make the Top 40 just last year? Oh, well it must be a masculine conspiracy!
Well, let us proceed back to the footnotes.

•Feminism stands as the vanguard, the first defense against the homogenization of society. It and it alone fight the good fight against the corrosive evil of supermarket tabloids.
•Even Marxism has learned that if it wishes too survive, we need feminism.
•But Marxism doesn't truely belive in Feminism.
•Hmm we already mentioned the importance of Feminism and Marxism, but something is missing.
•Ah yes a gay guy, because naturally gays represent the omnipresent womanly love inherent but DEEPLY hidden in the breathtakingly flawless philosophy of Trotskyism.
•Trosky! Now there's a pop culture icon. When's his CD coming out?

Um the rest of that chapter doesn't really mention Pop Culture at all, but if the Gay-Feminocommmunist Cabal of Evangelical Nightmare really exists, the rest of the chapter is probably its Satanic Scripture.

The next chapter seems to me to be boring and devoid of meaning, but I will point out that the last owner of the book must have been enthralled with it's prose; he highlighted every word.

Chapter Six: Deconstructionism.
•Pop Culture was created by some vast supreme power to permanently disenfranchise the proletariat.
Incidentally the best proof of G-d's existence can be found in the rants of Atheist Communists. They say the world is being run by an all-pervasive Bourgeois Conspiracy, with the goal of the utter destruction of the working class. Religious people call that omnipotent and omniscient force G-d. It's just a matter of perspective.
•Pop Culture is being shaped by this mysterious force.
•The working class only think they are watching a video of half-naked women, but really they are being softened to prevent the, otherwise inevitable, Communist Uprising, may it happen in our days.
•Pop Culture is constantly being manipulated, with yesterday's sex objects being forced aside to make way for today's sex objects.
•All the problems in the world come from the immoral influence of pop culture.
•Things are always in there balance. Every day there is a constant clash between the forces of justice and the evil influence of depraved Pop Culture.
•Hmm. Maybe conservative Christians and liberal Communists really do have common beliefs.
•Um, maybe we're being too extreme (You think!) We should probably backpedal just to be safe.
•Yeah let's muddle the issues a bit. If it's too clear, we won't be able to get tenure.

OK Last chapter.
•Pop Culture is he People's Culture. It symbolizes Liberty and Freedom.
•Or maybe not. Maybe it symbolizes continued oppression.
•At it's roots are the struggles and desires of the working class. But they have been twisted and transformed into junk.
•This isn't a very original chapter, is it?



So there you have it. Pop Culture through the eyes of non-science academics. Academics who need to go outside more. To Hawaii, say. Perhaps Aloha Springs. Just stting there relaxing. Under the shade of a coconut tree... Oh right, sorry. Join us tomorrow when we tell you how to study Pop Culture**.






*Ha Ha. Get it? Mass as in Mass Culture. But if you exclude the 's', you end up with masquerade? Ah those Cwazy Sociologists.
**Hint. It come out the back of a male ox. Oh and it's brown.

Cultura

Imagine a coconut. Now imagine a second coconut. Now imagine a lady is beating you over the head with said coconuts. Well at the Aloha Springs Resort, you don't have to imagine because.... Whoah! Looks like I got a little carried away there. Because, today's post is not about getting hit on the head with coconuts, at least not physical coconuts. No today's post is about 1) pop-culture and 2) why Britney Spears deserves to get beaten with a coconut.

Actually the class hasn't started yet per se, but I did do the reading. The reading as 4 chapters in a book called, what else, Pop Culture. Four chapters of pompous, academic, ranting. Four chapters, spanning 41 pages. Luckily most of what they said was garbage, and the rest can be summarized in bullet point form.

• eC15 means Early 15th Century
• Likewise lC19 means late 19th Century
• By now, you can probably guess what mC17 means.
• If you want your readers to know what the hell you are talking about, it would be best to write "Early 15th Century." It takes only a little longer to type, and it is much clearer.
• At the very least define your acronyms, rather than forcing your readers to do guesswork.
• That goes double for l. and fw.
• Culture is a very old word stemming from a root meaning agriculture. It's facts like this that are useful in Trivial Pursuit.
• Eight bullet points, and we haven't even touched Pop Culture.
• Eventually in the eighteenth century, culture came to mean nourishment for the mind. Thus Opera can be considered Culture, as can Calculus, but the author, being "Liberal Artsy", does not mention Calculus.
But what does this have to do with Britney Spears and Coconuts? Well we have many more bullet points to cover.
• The word mass indicates plebeian or low base, mob, ignorant. It also indicates a fundamental property of matter, but we don't really care here.
• So here's the nub of our argument. If we prefix culture with mass, we vulgarize it. So instead of Opera, we get, well, Britney.
• Presumably Pop Culture is the same sort of thing.

You following? Good cause there are 3 more chapters to go. Interesting how much time you can spend on the blindingly obvious.

• Culture, as in the Shakespeare and the calculus, is appreciated by only a small number of people. Actually again the author only cares about art, music, and literature, but I'll give F.R Lewis the benefit of the doubt.
• Not only can only a few people appreciate the beauty of Shakespeare, but those precious few people can something or other. "For such capacity does not belong merely to an isolated aesthetic realm it implies responsiveness to theory as well as to art, to science [finally] and to philosophy in so far as these may affect the human situation and the nature of life." In other-words, understanding culture involves responding to external stimuli. It involves not being brain dead.
• Only those select few individuals make any meaningful contribution to society, and everyone else could die of Plague for all the author cares.
• The Author is of course of this minority.
• notElon disagrees with this author. I mean without the rest of the world, who would clean up all those bodies?
• Besides that, even if most people aren't intellectuals, they sill can contribute to Society in some way, assuming they are not brain dead.
• "It seems, then, not unnecessary, to restate the obvious."
• notElon has noticed.
• America does not possess this high culture, but is more "Democratic."
• I mean just look at that Mark Twain. So low-brow.
• And don't get me started on Dave Barry.
• Those darn Americans are even making the British less stuck-up.
• Even France won't hold out for long.
• Then Culture will be dead, and the world will be doomed. Doomed. Doomed to mediocrity.
• If it means getting rid of the Author, no loss.

Half way there. Gee, this is fun.

• "For about a century Western Culture has really been two cultures: the traditional kind — Let us call it "High Culture" —that is chronicled in the textbooks, and a mass culture for the market.
• Only for the last ONE HUNDRED YEARS? G-d where has this guy been?
• There were always two sets of academics those that sit around in monasteries having obscure discussions ie the Monks and those that popularize their knowledge ie the Minstrels.
• Lets see if we can get "The Monks and The Minstrels" into an academic journal.
• Many of those guy you enshrine as Pure Culture —Shakespeare for instance— were also popular entertainers, and they are actually the far more interesting category.
Oh sorry I got carried away for a second. Back to this guy's bullet points.
• "A work of High Culture is occasionally popular, though this is exceedingly rare.
• Gee, I wonder why.
• Soviet Russia is the King of Mass Culture, i.e propaganda and statues of Lenin.
• Everything in Soviet Russia is BIASED and appeals to the lowest common denominator.
• And the masses love it. They eat Pravda up. They sing the most tasteless base odes to Stalin with real fervor.
• What is wrong with these stupid Russians? Can't they see this is all garbage?
• Gresham's Law can be applied to culture, because I said so.
• Gresham's Law states that bad currency drives the good out of circulation, as people are more eager to spend that which depreciates faster and they will hoard their more currency as they come across it.
• Gresham's "Law" of Culture: "Bad stuff drives out the good, since it is more easily understood and enjoyed.

Technically there is yet more material, but that is probably enough to stew on for now. Does Gresham's Law of Culture explain Britney Spears? Does it explain Coconuts? It is it not too late to go back to the Feudal System? Tune in when we replace the batteries, and once again shine the light of Cold Hard Facts upon the daemons of Popular Culture.