Abram Sauer Online

Made by University of Rochester-NY students. Indeed, the kids are going to be alright. 

via

This charming lady is Laura Francese. Not only a Buffalo Bills cheerleader, she is also a bit of an avid outdoorswoman. And I don’t mean she likes camping in the back of the minivan in the parking lot at Lake George. No, Laura likes killing things that had parents (and presumedly, eating them). This includes deer, boars and fish. Yes, she shoots fish with fucking arrows! Here is her Biffalo Bills “Jills” cheerleader page. Her favorite color is pink and she “adores every animal.”

Here is her personal hunting page of her killing all those animals she adores.

And that’s all well and good. Nothing blows off steam after a season of having to cheer for Terrell Owens like shooting something through the spleen with a sharp rod. But what is this?!

(more…)

Sesame Street cannot be topped.

Earlier: Red Skin Cheer

Gamer is this generation’s Johnny Mnemonic… 

An Inside Jokes tag is not forthcoming.

“This person probably caught on, and turned it off.”

National Public Radio (90.7 in Wisconsin; <3) carried a round-table discussion with scientists on promoting reliable science and technology news?  One subject was how scientists could “spice up screenplays with science.”

The scientists recognized the idea of “product placement” as a powerful force. And some argued that there should eb an effort for “reality-based science” to be the “product”:

“Well, we actually recognize the power of Hollywood to inspire people, to inspire imaginations. When I was working as a journalist, I always would talk to scientists about what made them want to become a scientist. And invariably it would be a book they read, a movie they saw, or someone they met, but in general it was this entertainment industry.

It has the power to reach people with a very strong, inspiring message and it can get across very broad, general messages about, you know, the good or bad of science. And so this is a way of doing that by essentially finding a way to get entertainment people and scientists in a room together and talking.”

The panel discussed very specifically how it could work:

“It’s good when it’s done well. For many, many years I was on and still am - on advisory boards to Hollywood, and I keep trying to tell them that it’s not so much your job to tell the science story, but to tell the science process, because that’s not where people are going to get their science information, so you need an accurate thing.”

With some amusing anecdotes, speaking of The Day After Tomorrow:

“…big special effects. One of the things that our other speaker, Sid Perkowitz, brought up during our session was, okay, yeah, the science was ridiculous in terms of the time scales on which it happened, but it did have a measurable impact on people’s attitude towards climate change. People came out of there with a sense of immediacy and urgency that they did not get had they happen to see “Inconvenient Truth.”

Plus, it has scientists getting emotional about climate change deniers. Something you don’t always se. It is as enjoyable as it sounds:

“I completely agree and I got to put down the blogosphere. The blogosphere is one of the worst places to go for information, because, unlike Paul and others, most public people are not going to spend three hours a day doing this. We really need to reestablish the mainstream media in putting some specialists back in who can smell the north end of a southbound horse, because most general assignment reporters can’t and certainly their editors can’t.”

Listen to the whole wonderful thing.

Were you aware that Amazon.com, on occasion, will do wholesale removal of the “buy” buttons from books published by imprints the site is warring with? Me either. But this history of the tactic from the Writer’s Guild is fascinating:

The Battle of Britain, Part One
The first reported use of the buy button weapon was in the United Kingdom. Early in 2008, Amazon removed the buy buttons from hundreds of Bloomsbury titles. Bloomsbury is a major British publisher, publishing authors such as William Boyd, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling. Amazon and Bloomsbury resolved their differences on undisclosed terms, and the lights went back on for all of Bloomsbury’s books.

The Battle of Britain, Part Two
The second use of the buy button weapon in the U.K. that we know of came later that year, when one of the world’s largest publishers, Hachette Livre UK, took the hit. The publisher’s CEO, Tim Hely Hutchinson, wrote in a letter to authors, “Amazon seems each year to go from one publisher to another making increasing demands in order to achieve richer terms at our expense and sometimes at yours.”

In response, The Writer’s Guild created Whomovedmybutton.com. The service immediately notifies authors (or anyone) when Amazon makes status changes to any of the titles you are monitoring.If you are an author with a book on Amazon, it’s highly recommended you use this free service.

RELATED: via Awl commentor Moff, this story about Amazon Fail:

“But no. Instead, we got the Foot-Stompingly Petulant Friday Night Massacre: One minute the books were there, the next they weren’t. And everyone was left going “huh?” Was it a hardware glitch? Was it a software bug? Was it a terrorist act in which renegade Amish attacked Amazon’s server farm and poured jugs of hard cider into the machines, shorting out the ones holding Macmillan’s vasty inventory? No! It was one corporate entity having a big fat hissy fit at another corporate entity…”