Red Herrings

A friend of mine is visting a relative in Abu Dhabi and sent me this priceless screen shot, which he got when he was trying to access YouTube.

Well, apparently you make it *pink.* This is just weird. "We wanted to make sure that it was something that people were comfortable carrying and didn't make it look like they were 'Dirty Harry,'" said Tom Smith, the company's co-founder and board chairman, referring to the Clint Eastwood movie. "And it does the job." What's next, snap-on outfit coordinating covers and dangly charms? Wait, what if a tiny cute taser WAS a dangly cellphone charm?! Well, it's already big in Japan. Who would think this cute little guy is a taser? Don't worry, it only gives a slight "zap" to (as the website…

I received an email today to this effect, which was rather interesting: You seem to be sincere in your presentation. Before I cast a vote, would you be kind enough to answer this, please: You are the only person around and you are wandering on a isolated beach. You do not have a care in the world as you breathe in the fresh, salty air and delight in the sound of the ocean surf caressing the sparkling sand. Your footsteps are slow and you enjoy the feeling of the wet sand between your toes as you walk along the gently lapping waves. You approach an object discarded along your path. At first,…

Yours truly is currently on a plane which left Detroit at 2pm today (well, or I will be shortly) and is headed towards Shanghai, China. I'm off to visit my parents in Suzhou and then a week each in Malaysian Borneo and Phi Phi/Koh Phenang Thailand. I'm so unbelievably psyched! I'm posting an open thread on China, Malaysia, and Thailand for anyone who is familiar with the area to give me tips about what to see/do/eat/dance/drink/etc. I'll be live blogging my trip (when I have access to the internet that is) so stay tuned for some funny stories and photos from the other side of the world. Now…

So, I'm trying to learn Mandarin right now, in order to be able to communicate when I go visit my parents in China. I'm learning from a student here at UM, for a modest per hour wage. However apparently some people think that all those tones and characters will just jump into your brain if you throw enough money at them. In Australia, the former Federal Government's Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's obsession with learning Chinese Mandarin has been revealed to the public. The public that is footing the bill estimated to be worth AUD$70,000 (RMB430,000 or USD$55,000). Yikes. But at…

So Mike over at The Questionable Authority posted an excellent critique/synthesis/etc of the comment thread going on in the Obama vs. pedophile case, which I thought deserved its own post. Check it out.

I can't believe some of the stuff that Presidential hopefuls have to endure. Barack Obama is currently involved in a lawsuit with a self-professed pedophile over pictures of his kids. It's enough to make any father lash out in anger. A self-professed pedophile posts photos of your young daughters on his Web site, where he describes them as an "angelic duo." It happened to Senator Barack Obama whose presidential campaign threatened legal action against Lindsay Ashford, a self-professed pedophile who handicapped the 2008 campaign by judging the "cuteness" of several presidential candidates'…

Water is water....unless its holy water, of course! I'm not quite sure what's special about this gimmicky beverage, except its from Canada and might raise my eyebrows slightly more than Aquafina or Evian. I'm pretty sure this water isn't any holier than Detroit's finest tap water. Uh oh, looks like THOSE holy water sellers have competition from THESE holy water sellers. In fact these guys think their water will save you from sin. (Not really, its a joke.......) When I tried to place an order, they gave me a confirmation number and said my order would be filled through omnipotence. I wonder…

If Kazakhstan wants to clean up its image (remember how much they protested about "Borat"?), they might want to curb the rampant parrot-smuggling-by-Audi practices going on. Kazakh border guards arrested a man trying to smuggle 500 parrots in his car from neighbouring Uzbekistan, media reported on Tuesday. "Border guards discovered a live cargo of 500 parrots in his car," Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted a KNB security service official as saying. It was unclear how the parrots fitted into the Kazakh man's Audi. Trade in wild parrots is banned around the world, according to the U.N.…

I once had a friend who's dog, Cuddles, *loved* beer. Cuddles would beg and whine if anyone had a cold tasty brew in the room. You can imagine how that scernio usually ended up: "Hey guys, watch what Cuddles can do!" It always seemed like a waste of good (or even bad) beer to me, but apparently a lot of people in the Netherlands don't think so. After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold bottle of beer. So Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt. "Once a year…

Dozens of assailants assaulted the Yale barber shop quartet at a party in San Francisco. That must have been some really bad singing. Very strange......

Where would college students be without the low-cost, high-sodium food product that are instant noodles? So many nights, broke as hell yet hungry......but wait! There's Ramen noodles in the pantry, or, if you feel like splurging, a whole Cup O' Noodles! As evidence that MSG, trans-fat, refined flour, and salt galore can't be all bad (er......), Momofuku Ando kicked the bucket at the ripe old age of 96. Born in Taiwan, Ando founded his company in 1948 from a humble family operation. Faced with food shortages in post-World War II Japan, Ando thought a quality, convenient noodle product would…

French art is downright weird sometimes, never illustrated better than through SpermCube. From what I can gather, its a "public art project" that everyone is supposed to "contribute" to. Oh man, I can't even keep a straight face typing this. :D More pictures under the fold (may not be work safe)...... Now there are two options on how to support SpermCube. Weigh these options carefully! 1. Donate your own gametes to the cubical masterpiece. 2. If that makes you queasy, fear not. You can still support this 'joy forever' through a monetary contribution. Wouldn't you like to become a…

In case you can't make it to the grocery store, or all the turkeys are sold out, just take a peek into your own backyard. There's a lot of wild turkeys just walking around. And they all look delicious. Happy Thanksgiving!

This is just plain heart-breaking. Even these Inuit seem sad to kill these poor belugas. About 200 beluga were first spotted in early August by hunters in the Husky Lakes area south of Tuktoyaktuk, a string of saltwater inlets north of the Arctic Circle that are linked to the ocean through a 300-meter-wide [980-foot-wide] channel. There still were about 80 of the white mammals left in the lakes by late October, but the lakes and the channel are quickly freezing over and the whales' air hole shrinking. Residents were cheering for the belugas to escape, even though each animal could provide…

A newborn voclanic island has been identified in the South Pacific near Tonga, according to the reports of two vessels that have passed nearby. The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the northern Tongan islands group of Vava'u in August, reported on their Web log on August 12 that they saw streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water -- then "sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice." They posted photos of huge "pumice rafts" that they encountered after passing Tonga's Late island while sailing toward Fiji. "We were so fascinated and busy taking…

According to a suit brought by two cops in New Mexico, they were served hamburgers that had been laced with marijuana. The lawsuit says Mark Landavazo and Henry Gabaldon, officers for the Isleta Pueblo tribal police, were in uniform and riding in a marked patrol car when they bought meals at the drive-through lane October 8 of a Burger King restaurant in Los Lunas, New Mexico. The officers ate about half of their burgers before discovering marijuana on the meat, the lawsuit said. They used a field test kit to confirm the substance was pot, then went to a hospital for medical evaluations. "It…

First it was the World Series, now this? Adding insult to injury, Detroit must follow St. Loius yet again in the rankings, this time for most disgustingly crime-ridden city. I would have thought that "the D" as we fondly call it, would have had THIS competition in the bag. But no. The one thing, the only thing that Detroit had going for it, and we are shamed yet again. Perhaps it has something to do with the mayor of St. Louis' name being Francis SLAY? The safest city was Brick, N.J. With a name like that, it HAS to be boring as hell. Despite Detroit coming in second, we can at least console…

This urinal, shaped like a woman's mouth, was located near Vienna's national opera in Austria. But it won't be there much longer--politicians have demanded its removal because they think it is sexist. "We think that it's tasteless, misogynistic and offensive," Marianne Lackner, media spokeswoman for the Vienna Department of Women's Affairs told The Associated Press. But according to this Yahoo news piece, the urinals have been around for 3 years. So, why all the fuss now? Apparently, a McDonalds in Amsterdam also had a few of these urinals, and was also pressured to remove them back in July…

Yeah, I'm walking around SFN checking out posters and talks, and will likely blog about them later after a bit of a breather. But, somnilista FCD sent me this news blurb about a chocolate igloo and I had to pass it on. This totally reminded me of the chocolate Taj Mahal that Willy Wonka built! Four Italians have constructed what they believe is the world's first full-sized chocolate igloo but they have yet to solve an age-old problem: It still melts. "It was a tough thing to do, much more difficult than building a normal snow igloo," Marco Fanti, 45, who used to race cars in desert rallies,…