The Smarmy Carny

Cuke Skywalker

There's a new Star Wars spoof out titled Store Wars: The Organic Rebellion.

All of the characters are made out of some sort of food, including Ham Solo and Chewbroccoli. Sort of like Veggie Tales, but no CGI, with the exception of some lasers and light sabres. Despite the blatant message (the movie was commissioned by the Organic Trade Association), the movie is still enjoyable to watch. This is the punniest food project since "I Lobster and Never Flounder."

This movie was made by Free Range Graphics, who also brought us The Meatrix.

May the farm be with you.

Full-Court Shot, Part One

Allow me to use a fitting cliche here: I really dropped the ball on this one.

Back on February 2, I posted about an amazing 87-foot (full-court) shot made at the end of a high school game to give Guilford the lead over Randolph-Macon. The following day, Jordan Snipes appeared on local television (WFMY) news program. He was given a rack of 16 basketballs to try and repeat his performance. Not only does he sink a basket, several of his earlier attempts come amazingly close. I swear that this guy is more accurate from 87 feet than I am from the three-point line.

I know, I know . . . I can talk about it all I want, but you really just want to see the footage. Check it out.

Anyway, that was the following day. It only took me four months to post it.

Under "Construction"

As with any website that hasn't been abandoned or forgotten about (yet), this website is continually under some degree of maintenance. This is to be expected, of course, particularly as I write new content, learn more about XHTML and CSS, and install useful plugins.

Starting today, I have begun a fairly extensive makeover on the site. Be prepared that things may break. Be advised that things may look a little weird. Be forewarned that the site may go down as I royally screw up an update. Be exhorted that, some day soon, the entire site will suddenly look terribly different, possibly sending you into some sort of internet-induced cardiac arrest.

In fact, I have already begun the work, and I have broken some of the category links. I tried to catch all of the changes so that redirects would send you to the proper page, but I am certain that there must be a mistake or two . . . or twelve. As you'll see, I changed the categories so that, instead of using fun names like "Byte Me," they now use straightforward names like "Technology." Why? Because I decided that, for the time being, I preferred traffic to the site (particularly via Technorati's tag searches) than wit and fun. How many people are going to search "Byte Me" at Technorati? If you're truly interested in the answer to that question, I can search my statistics and give you an exact number.

Indeed, I have decided to leave the highly-personalized blue format that I have worked months to achieve. Why? Because it just looks sort of annoying. Maybe it's the fact that I have stared at the site for far more hours than you would care to. Maybe it just really is annoying. Either way, something new is in the works.

For those of you using IE, I will warn you that the site will look much more beautiful when viewed with Firefox. Sure, X% of my visitors use IE, but that doesn't much matter. The site will still be prettier in IE than in Lynx, but Firefox is "da" proverbial bomb. Install Firefox now, while you still have the chance!

Perhaps I will start up some sort of Giveaway Contest to promote the new look. I could give away a cup of jack squat, a box of diddly-squat, or maybe even a big goose egg.

No comment.

I have seen Star Wars III, but I'm no Star Wars geek. (I'm a different type of geek.)

Regardless of your thoughts on Star Wars, you really must view The Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes. As I'm sure you are aware, there are plenty of Star Wars nerds and geeks out there who await the next Star Wars con so they can dress up as their favorite Star Wars character, regardless of whether their body shape happens to coincide with the character or not. Granted, most of the homemade costumes you see at cons are often pitiful, especially considering the hours you can be sure went into making them.

I haven't laughed this hard in a week or so. Be sure to keep with it, as there are a string of so-so pictures followed by some truly great entertainment.

If you want to laugh at more Star Wars nerds and geeks, watch the classic Triumph the Insult Comic Dog clip where he visits the nerds standing in line for days waiting for the premiere. That one always gets me rolling, too.

Which is it?

Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Isreal has developed a program that can tell the gender of the author by the structure and words used in the text. It is about 80% accurate.

You may yawn at this. The interesting thing is what it tells us about the way we interpret and represent the world. You might still yawn at this, unless you're a sociologist.

What may interest you, however, is that someone has written a fun little script that takes the basics of the basics from Koppel's theories and program and allows you to test some of your writing samples. Of course, keep in mind that, despite the fact that Koppel's program is 80% accurate, this simplified program probably does not run at such efficiency.

I guess we can now replace the taunt "He throws like a girl" with "He writes like a girl."

Example of a Retard

This month, Brooklyn College's sociology department elected Timothy Shortell as its chairman.

Normally, this would be a case of "So What?" This time around, however, the chairman has caused an uproar.

As you read these Shortell quotes, keep in mind that, as chairman, he carries some weight when it comes to each professor's tenure at the college. I won't really comment much about this. I'll just let Shortell speak for himself:

On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying — like bad taste. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.

In the heart of every Christian, though, is a tiny voice preaching self-righteousness, paranoia and hatred. Christians claim that theirs is a faith based on love, but they'll just as soon kill you.

Modern religion is a fundamental belief in magic.

I have been attacked recently in the New York newspapers. We laugh at our critics. We will behold with joy their silly tantrums.

This sort of fodder is expected when dealing with anonymous jerks on the internet, but not generally when dealing with people who are not anonymous and who hold a prestigious position at an educational institution. Furthermore, his pseudo-taunts in the last of the quotes sounds malformed and childish, much like the taunts we hear coming from the extremists in the Middle East. I was surprised that he didn't end that one with "the streets will run with blood." That would lower him to the literary genius of Assam the American.

If you're interested in reading the piece that some of those quotes came from, check it out. It is titled "Religion & Morality: A Contradiction Explained."

As usual, we're seeing typical unbalanced treatment of Shortell's comments. Not surprisingly, Brooklyn College seems to be tiptoeing around this one. I like this quote from The New York Sun:

If a professor had spoken of, say, gay persons or Jews as moral retards, it's a safe bet that things would not be dealt with quite so delicately as they seem to be on Brooklyn College's campus at the moment.

Remember, some children just demand more attention than all the others.

This post has been re-posted at Random Fodder, Novac's personal blog.

I'm Count Dooku!

Liquid Generation has The Ultimate Star Wars Personality Test available for the taking.

As you can see, I turned out to be Count Dooku. Formerly good, now bad. But still, I'm Machiavellian, and I can use the Force to shoot lightning out of my hands!

That's odd. Most of my friends would have guessed Jar Jar!