Caffeine check

Just in case you ever wondered how much caffeine you were taking in from your favorite drink, the Science News folks can help you with a handy list of some of the most common.

Enter two food scientists from Auburn (Ala.) University. In the August Journal of Food Science, they report just how much caffeine they measured in a host of carbonated beverages. The researchers provide data on 74 colas, 28 Dr. Pepper or similar-tasting beverages, 26 citrus-flavored soft drinks, and another 5 miscellaneous drinks. Most of the drinks were nationally marketed brands, but the Auburn team included 41 store-brand soft drinks.

Here are just a few from the list:

  • Diet Mountain Dew – 55.2 (this is my poison of choice)
  • Barq’s Root Beer – 22.4 (love this stuff – needs more caffeine)
  • Diet Dr Bob – 30.9 (WTH is this?)
  • Diet Coke with Lime – 46.3

Mmmmm.  Makes me thirsty just thinking about it.

[tags]Caffeine, Soda, Poison[/tags]

More news of the stupid

We’re all stupid at some point in our lives.  Simple things like putting batteries in the correct way sometimes eludes even the best of us.  But when you are going to rob a bank, be sure to use your smartest brain cells.

He told the teller not to do anything stupid.0816dimbulb_mug

Too bad the bank robber didn’t take his own advice.

After he robbed a Bank of America on West Hillsborough Avenue last December, court records say, Etni Ortiz left his resume behind — dropped it, actually, when the bank’s dye pack exploded. Police found it outside the bank in a pile of dye-stained money. There were also photos, one of Ortiz. The picture, too, was stained with red dye.

Nine days later, Ortiz robbed First State Bank at 5700 Clark Road in Sarasota, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court.


Well, so much for that spree.  I think the resume is a stroke of genius in a way, though.  Now, someone can help him properly update it so he can find a better job.  They probably will also coach him to leave “Failed bank-robber” off the skills section, though.  Maybe just put something like “Escaped bank premises with over $3000 in two robberies” without highlighting the getting caught nor leaving behind a resume bit.  Hell, this makes me think I should start a bad criminal resume writing service.

[tags]Stupid criminals, Stupid, Bank robbery, Idiot, Moron, Resume writing skills, Dumb crook, Stupid robber[/tags]

Midwest teen sex

Check out midwest teens and their sex podcasts.

midwest-teensex_rebuild Each episode is sort of a parody of a given sex-ed topic (birth control methods, the ethics of dating much-older men, and so on) — but presented in a deadpan, internet-funny fashion. May or may not be work-safe (explicit subject matter) but it’s not pornography by any means. Just sharp sarcasm that rings true, with good advice.


It’s tame stuff, and not the pr0n you perverts were looking for.  (via boingboing)

Sometimes, I just like to smile at the misfortune of others

In this case, the misfortune of which I speak is the class action lawsuit the recording industry may now face for suing innocent people in their efforts to shut down peer-to-peer filesharing. Understand that I’m not saying people should be allowed to illegally provide mp3 files of music to others. Rather, the RIAA has abused the legal system to intimidate people, and now it is getting the payback it deserves from those wrongfully accused or bullied even though they have committed no crimes.

The scene at RIAA headquarters this week must have been fascinating. The group yesterday announced that it has finished sending out a new batch of 503 “pre-litigation letters” to 58 different universities around the US, generously offering to let students settle copyright infringement claims “at a discounted rate” before those claims go to trial. The letters blanketed the country, going everywhere from the University of Hawaii to Swarthmore, from Boston College to Tulane, from Emory to Chico State. And then the RIAA learned that its aggressive litigation tactics have placed it on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit.

Single mom Tanya Andersen, a defendant in a previous lawsuit brought by the RIAA, was one of the first to have her case dismissed with prejudice (it cannot be refiled at a later date). Throughout the court battle, she maintained her total innocence, a claim given even more plausibility by the fact that she was charged with downloading numerous gangsta rap tracks.

Now, she is suing the RIAA, and her attourney has requested that the suit be elevated to class-action status. Happy happy, joy joy.

The illegal file sharing needs to be stopped. The manner in which the RIAA chooses to do that is too far-reaching and exceeds legal bounds constantly. This needs to be shut down and the agency needs to be forced to a new tactic in their efforts to shut down illegal filesharing.

[tags]RIAA being sued, Class-action against RIAA?, RIAA victim countersues for malicious prosecution, P2P, mp3[/tags]

Political facts

I’ve been reading FactCheck.org for a few years now, and have been subscribed to their email newsletter as long as I’ve been reading the site. The site, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, works to point out the misleading statistics, factual inaccuracies and errors, and flat-out lies spread by politicians and the organizations that support them. I’ve learned so much about politics over the years just from learning where politicians have mislead us (the general public).

While catching up on my FactCheck reading today, I learned that there is another source of political fact checking on the web now – PolitiFact. Going beyond FactCheck’s more reserved misinformation corrections, PolitiFact gives you the Truth-o-meter to simplify evaluating statements from the bearers of (mis)truths.

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates’ speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.

I think it is worth taking 2-3 minutes to read more details on the Truth-o-meter to see how it works and why it is worth checking. Interested in who is lying or misleading us? Well, here are a couple of quotes for you to check out for factual accuracy. I’ve chosen individuals from both sides of the US political debate, and selected short quotes with short PolitiFact responses or analysis.

  • Sen. Joe Biden: “The president is brain-dead.”
    Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 in Des Moines, Iowa.
  • Sen. John McCain: Sen. Clinton said “the surge of troops in Iraq was ‘working.’ Now…. Sen. Clinton says the surge ‘has failed’ and that we should ‘begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.'”
    Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 in a news release

I appreciate the fact that those running the site have enough of a sense of humor to even include the Biden comment, and the linked article includes links off-site to explanations of what exactly constitutes brain death. Each story has a graphical label for true, barely true, pants on fire (i.e., liar), and so on. I wanted to include the images for the above stories, but haven’t received permission from PolitiFact yet to do so. If I get a response, I’ll update my article with the images.

[tags]PolitiFact, FactCheck, Truths and Lies from politicians, The watcher watchers[/tags]

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Put a smile on your man’s face

Oh, you perverts. We’re not talking about that kind of smile. We’re talking pineapple smiles that last all day.

MM_delmonte-clip.jpg

If you want to change grouches to grins – give that man of yours Del Monte Pineapple Juice. Cater to his fondness for flavor.

Men like the rich, ripe taste of this juice – the definite pineapple flavor it has. They like its freshness-the bracing refreshment it always brings.


See, it’s the taste of that juice we like. The pineapple juice is what we’re talking about.

Honestly, I don’t even know why I post these things for you perverts.

[tags]Man juice smiles, Put a smile on your man’s face, It’s the taste of the juice[/tags]

Dan talks tools

If you don’t have the right tools, you just can’t do the job right. At least, that’s the view Dan expresses in his tool talk for techies/geeks.

If you haven’t got tools – the right tools – then you’re not a geek.

Sorry. It’s the truth.

Let’s take it as read that you already know about screwdrivers and pliers. Even hammer technology is not beyond your ken.

Here’s some gear you might not have heard of, but without which your PC-fiddling toolbox is not complete.

So get there and find out just how lacking you are in geek-cred. Oh, and Dan’s Australian, so some of the links he gives for tracking down the tools won’t be useful for you, but he has the decency to give pricing in US dollars. Only fitting, since the world revolves around US (yes, I’m kidding).

[tags]Tools, Dan’s Data, You are not a geek[/tags]

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Please *DO NOT* buy BioShock

I started downloading the BioShock demo Monday night and went to bed while the download completed. I loaded the demo Tuesday morning, played for about 5 minutes, and bought the game – the demo is awesome enough to convince me the whole game will be great, and I love Irrational’s work that I’ve played in the past. I did not have a chance to install it before leaving for work Tuesday afternoon, nor Wednesday during the day. However, I did find this interesting Digg about the shitty copy protection on the game and regretted immediately that I have already opened the game and cannot, therefore, return it. Quite the dry-hump, really, because the game is great. But I disapprove highly of companies trying to fuck me or my computer.

Last year, I bought Galactic Civilizations specifically because the developer made a point to not put copy protection on the game. It is the kind of game I would play if I had more gaming time in my life, but I’ve yet to open the game or install it. I purchased it just to show support for developers and distributors who trust customers. BioShock, on the other hand, comes from either a developer or a publisher (I suspect the latter, but cannot rule out the former) who apparently assumes customers are only interested in giving away as many copies as possible. The sad thing is, gamers who buy the game are now screwed by potentially harmful copy protection, while the pirates still get it for free and without copy protection messing up their computers. Basically – screw legitimate customers and fans without slowing down folks that weren’t going to pay anyway.

From someone claiming some relationship to 2K Games:

really, the only people who will be concerned about any of these security measures are those who are rapidly putting bioshock on many pcs… if you use the game as you normally do, you won’t notice this at all.

Well, them and those of us who don’t like companies installing things on our systems without our knowledge. But then, we’re just weird like that. I get pissed when a program puts itself off my Programs section of the start menu instead of letting me set the submenu I want to use. I sure as hell am not OK with a program that installs drivers without giving me the option to instead choose to not install. This is the same crap Sony pulled recently which pissed off so many. And to write it off as not a big deal and not a concern except for those attempting to illegally use the disc is stupid, naïve, and ignorant of geek and gamer culture.  I have looked all over the outside of the box, and there is no mention of this violation of my computer, so I can’t decide to *NOT* buy the game based on this knowledge after looking at the box. I’ve read the manual and found no mention of this, so I can’t choose to *NOT* install the game and avoid this. Ultimately, we choose to install one program, and another gets installed without our knowledge and without warning to us that it will happen.

I will be downloading the hacked version off a torrent site to install the game and play. Once I’m finished and ready to remove the program, I’ll be selling my copy on Ebay. You can be sure I’ll mention the apparent effort to restrict personal use of the program when I list it.

Make no mistake – this is a great developer with a great game. The copy protection pisses me off, though, and it’s bad enough for me to recommend that others not buy the game.

[tags]Do not buy BioShock, 2K Games hates legal customers, 2K Games encouraging piracy, BioShock, Securom, Securom sucks, Torrent sites[/tags]

You know, I’m not even sure that’s illegal around here…

When you catch someone digging up a corpse for the purpose of, ummmm, getting it on with the dead, what do you do?  Turns out that in Wisconsin, they don’t do much at all.

Three men who dug up a young woman’s corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

Guess I’ll have to start making fun of Wisconsin almost as I make fun of Arkansas now.

[tags]Necrophilia, Overlooked laws, Get it on with the dead, Corpse hunting for fun and sexx0ring[/tags]

How exactly does one steal a 3-ton meteorite?

Odd news from Russia:

Russian news agency Interfax is reporting that thieves have stolen a three-tonne meteorite from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908.

. . .

“It winds up that it disappeared said [foundation director] Lavbin. “Our colleagues are establishing what got lost, where the rock is and why they only came to us about it now,” he said.

Hmmmm. I can’t even begin to hypothesize how that could be stolen?

Oh, and comments after the article suggest that this news item is bogus. I still posted it, because I like it regardless of veracity.

[tags]3-ton meteorite stolen, How to lose 3 tons[/tags]

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Google reader gripe

I’ve been using Bloglines as my RSS reader for a long time now.  While searching for something totally unrelated on the big, wild, intarw3b, I found this LifeHacker article singing the praises of Google Reader.  Intrigued, I decided to take a look.  First, let me point out that the LifeHacker article, so full of praise for Google Reader, doesn’t even include a friggin’ link to Google’s reader offering.  So after studying the proselytizing for Google Reader, I can’t even go straight to the tool and check it out.  I have to spend extra effort to find and hit Google Reader myself.  Yes, it’s a triviality in the grand scheme, but if you are trying to sell folks on a new idea, you have to make it as easy as possible.

Kinda like Woot.com‘s Stupidly Big Button (sign up at Woot and buy something sometime to see – it’s a stupidly big button to complete the purchase process), you want to make getting your final point across as clearly as possible.  This Keep it Simple, Stupid philosophy is why I *TRY* to make the first link in every article I post or the last link before a blockquote the link of relevance/intent for my stories.  When I want you to check something out, I try to make it easy by putting it the first link you see in the article or the link immediately before the quote I’m pulling from the article.  I’m not successful every time (this article being a prime example of failing to simplify what link is the most relevant for the story – the LifeHacker link and the Google Reader link are to main two I will focus on here).

That said, let me now lay in to my interface gripe about Google Reader, which ultimately is what I wanted to write about.  After finding and visiting Google Reader, I see a nice, Googlishly simple front page (resized here).

google-reader_resize

Hey, it’s simple.  That’s the Google style.  Since I want to try this out right away, I hit that stupidly big button labeled “Get started by adding subscriptions.”  Now, we get this screen for adding a subscription.

google-add_feeds_resize

What’s missing here?  The stupidly big box labeled “Feed URL”  Here’s what Bloglines gives you when you say “Add Feeds”

bloglines-add_feeds

But Google, in a bafflingly non-Google manner, has chosen to not give you a simple screen like this for entering the address.  In an apparent attempt to dumb down the interface, Google has made it harder for a knowledgeable user to user the tool.  No, to get my feed in there when I already know what feed I want, I’m forced to click another button labeled, bizarrely, “Add Subscription.” But, um, isn’t that already what I’m trying to do?  Didn’t I already hit a button to add subscriptions?  Why should I have to tell the reader again that I really want to add a subscription?  This is, for lack of a better term, Microsoftian interface design.  So, if I click the not-stupidly-obvious Add subscriptions link, do I get the current page refreshed? Do I go to another screen where I can put my feed address?  No, I get a little AJAX pop-open box.

google-real_add_feeds

Now I can finally add my feed and get the news I want.  But why do I have to click add subscriptions from the add subscriptions page? Shouldn’t there be a stupidly big box the first time I say add subscriptions?  Has Google decided to forget smart interface design after years of leading the industry with easy access interfaces?

I’ve been on a big interface annoyance fling after reading a lot of Joel’s commentary on software lately.  I highly recommend the two books of his I have read, if you want to learn a little about good software and interface design.

I may end up trying out Google’s RSS reader offerings some time, but for now, I’ll stick with the stupidly easy interface that I find at Bloglines.  I’ll let all you really smart folks use Google Reader.  Maybe in the future, I’ll be smart enough to catch up.  Also in the future, look for a brief annoyance based post about Windows Live Writer, since that is the tool I now use for writing to the Blahg.  And maybe the Amazon affiliates program link builder, since it’s annoying to try to get Amazon links, in my not so humble opinion.  In fact, I enjoy criticizing the works of others enough, I may just do it for other programs and web sites I deal with.

[tags]RSS, Google Reader, Bloglines, Google, Interface criticism, Interface annoyances[/tags]

Time to buy those airline tickets, folks

If you’ve ever sat and thought “Where can I get a sex change operation if I don’t have a lot of money?” – it looks like the Brazilians have you in mind.

Brazilian judges have ruled that a sex change is a constitutional right, so the government says it will provide the operation and treatment — gratis.

Unfortunately, some of you won’t qualify. To find out if you can catch a ride on the “I want to play for the other team” ride, hit the full USA Today story and see what the rules and requirements are.

[tags]Brazil, Free sex change, Just a sweet transvestite[/tags]