Nice Beer Ad from Down Under a 1000 Auzzies in gowns crossing over the sheep strewn plains of Australia.
Ahh..foreign ads..perhaps this indeed the next form of cultural worms? I can see those soulless bastards on Madison Ave.."Yes..lets push hard on the foreign angle and prey/pray some poor sod on MeFi picks it up..we'll be rich I tell ya RICH!!!"
Forgive me MeFiers.
posted by Mr Bluesky
on Nov 3, 2005 -
23 comments
Where'd the remaining 27% go. Researchers in Germany have finished a survey that tells them how people spend their time. With an average life-span of 78 years most time is spent
sleeping with the least time spent
making new people. Number crunching this
research [direct image link] reveals:
5.12% 4 years housework | 0.96% 9 months washing and ironing |
1.71% 16 months cleaning |
2.78% 26 months cooking |
6.41% 5 years eating and drinking |
7.05% 66 months watching television |
0.53% 5 months diy |
8.97% 7 years at work |
0.96% 9 months commuting, plus |
0.64% 6 months traffic jams |
2.14% 20 months in school |
1.71% 16 hours orgasms |
0.05% 2 weeks kissing |
32.20% 24 years 4 months sleeping |
0.64% 6 months sitting on the lavatory |
0.05% 2 weeks praying |
1.92% 18 months shopping
So where does the rest of the time go.
posted by Schroder
on Oct 23, 2005 -
23 comments
rectuMTV Fairly twisted music video (Qtime) from the Taiwanese group Loh Tsui Kweh Commune. Definitely NSFW. Starts off innocently enough but goes downhill pretty quick.
It's official people, MTV is so last millennium!
posted by Mr Bluesky
on Oct 20, 2005 -
27 comments
Grandmas protest the war in Iraq and get the cuffs Funny, great story.
We tried to ring the bell at the booth, but no one answered," Wile said. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while and then duck back down. I don't know what they were afraid of. Maybe they don't know how to deal with a bunch of grannies."
posted by mountainmambo
on Oct 19, 2005 -
84 comments
The Torture Question tonight on PBS by far, television's most in-depth look at how the controversial interrogation policy evolved after a major power struggle within the Bush administration. (via Rocky Mountain News)
The problem, of course, is that it's often the things we'd rather not think about that we most need to hear, especially when those things are actions taken in all of our names with an eye toward making us safer. Ellen Gray
Watch a preview
here.
posted by tvgurl
on Oct 18, 2005 -
41 comments
Bush teleconference with troops staged. Nothing in the article says
who is responsible for organizing the staged question and answer session, The White House, military officials, or others in the defense department. Just that it infact was staged, and that the troops were coached for 45 minutes prior to the actual teleconference. When Bush, in an unscripted move, asked an officer if he had anything to say, he stammered through a sentence, in stark contrast to the well put together responses to all the other questions, thanking the President and saying, "I like you." More PR from the Bush administration.
posted by SirOmega
on Oct 13, 2005 -
173 comments
Noted in the live stream from this TV station This is the "Local2 News" live tv stream (which has been pointed to in three previous MeFi threads about other news stories.
Currently they've from time to time been showing storm track predictive models (which they say are their own development).
I'd rather have pointers to more models than the TV station's occasional glimpses, but, this is the most varied set of storm track predictions I've seen. Anyone know where they're getting them?
posted by hank
on Sep 22, 2005 -
24 comments
Some Click Candy at the Whitney A nice update at the WHITNEY Artport site. "Benjamin Fry received his doctoral degree at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on methods of visualizing large amounts of data from dynamic information sources"
posted by Mr Bluesky
on Sep 11, 2005 -
3 comments
Lustron House "We were revolutionizing a whole industry," said Richard Jones, former Lustron vice president of sales. "We were saying with our house: 'You put down a hammer and a saw and pick up a wrench.'" Though radical in its use of porcelain enameled steel, the Lustron house — a one-story, gabled-roof ranch with a bay window and side porch — looked much like other postwar-era dwellings. Behind its traditional façade, however, lay the hopes and expectations for a new era in American housing.
posted by goalyeehah
on Sep 8, 2005 -
14 comments
Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women's Army Corps. Early in 1941 Congresswoman
Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts (the first woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives) met with General
George C. Marshall, the Army's Chief of Staff, and informed him that she intended to introduce a bill to establish an Army women's corps, separate and distinct from the existing
Army Nurse Corps. Rogers remembered the female civilians who had worked overseas with the Army under contract and as volunteers during World War I: serving without benefit of official status, they had to obtain their own food and quarters, and they received no legal protection or medical care. Upon their return home they were not entitled to the disability benefits or pensions available to U.S. military veterans. Rogers was determined that if women were to serve again with the Army in a wartime theater they would receive the same legal protection and benefits as their male counterparts. After a long and acrimonious debate, the following year the bill was finally approved by Congress and signed into law by FDR.
Oveta Culp Hobby, chairman of the board of the Houston Post, was
appointed as Director of the
WAAC.
(more)
posted by PenguinBukkake
on Sep 4, 2005 -
4 comments
Power Cut Shuts Down Iraq Oil Exports ASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's oil exports were shut down Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country's only functioning oil export terminals, Iraqi and foreign oil officials said.
posted by celerystick
on Aug 22, 2005 -
21 comments
Corporate name calling "I had no bad words at all. I guess the earliest letter is dated in May and from then on up until now my name has been listed as
Jeffery Scrotum Bag Barnes and I have no idea why."
posted by saketini99
on Aug 18, 2005 -
28 comments
Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange
died over the weekend. His loss will impact our country considerably – he championed our anti-nuclear policy which led to the end of
Anzus and a falling out with the US that
continues to this day, he spoke at the
Oxford Union defending our stance on nuclear weapons and power and he was Prime Minister presiding over the far reaching
economic reform that has arguably led to the economic prosperity Kiwi’s are
enjoying right now. He was a man larger than life, funny, friendly and caring and his passing is being felt all over
Godzone.
posted by Samuel Farrow
on Aug 14, 2005 -
25 comments
Disengagement: The Game The debate in Israel over the withdrawal from Gaza has found its way into, of all things, dueling cartoony Flash games. The first, the
Wild West Bank, by proponents of withdrawal, has you removing settlers from the West Bank before they can establish settlements. The second, the "
Disengagement Game"
(click the square yellow button beside the picture), has you take the role of Ariel Sharon, whose political nickname is the "Bulldozer," as he uses his namesake (plus a club and a gaggle of pigs) to remove children protesting his policies. According to the creators of each, the first is supposed to be enlightening, the second purely entertaining. [Instructions inside]
posted by blahblahblah
on Aug 10, 2005 -
4 comments
IRAQ DRAFT BILL OF RIGHTS LEAKED IN ENGLISH The al-Mada newspaper on June 30 published what is apparently a draft version of the equivalent to the Bill Of Rights that is being worked on by a subcommittee in the Iraqi legislature. Omar from Iraq The Model first reported this on that day and provided his commentary on the document, but ultimately it was too large to translate. Nathan J. Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provides a valuable public service by translating the entire document, so a big hat tip to him. Let’s take a quick look at some of the features of this bill, as it is very promising although there are some provisions that need much deeper looking into (and others not so much). Nathan also makes thorough observations. You can read it in full here.
posted by Postroad
on Jul 22, 2005 -
14 comments
Joel Osteen's new Lakewood Church in Texas recently became the first in the U.S. to average more than 30K worshippers a week. This is the kind of news that gives many lefties with a fear the god-fearing the heebie-jeebies. But then,
on closer inspection, the brand of Christianity Osteen is offering, if shallow, also seems rather mild: a kind of dim-witted boosterism simply designed to get you through the week. He has been called "prosperity gospel's coverboy," and been viciously attacked for it on
Larry King. What to make of this new capitalist mutatation in Christianity?
posted by Hobbacocka
on Jul 20, 2005 -
40 comments
Debating A Neocon, etc. "Editors’ note: The following exchange is significant for its discussion of how the world order functions today. Particularly interesting is the debate over the significance of neoconservative ideology within the ruling class and whether such a thing as 'Islamic fascism' exists."
posted by davy
on Jul 13, 2005 -
23 comments
Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?
[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)
To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi
on Jul 3, 2005 -
87 comments
Next Act Won't Be as Easy as the First. Gates once conceded: "Google is still perfect, the bubble is floating and they can do everything. You should buy their stock at any price.” And just this week they affirmed this statement with their release of Google Earth, showing the world that their scope is beyond just websites. But is google growing too ambitious? is this desire to "search all of the world's information" signaling doom?
posted by merc
on Jun 30, 2005 -
22 comments