Archive for May, 2007

Bruce Campbell vs Old Spice

Here are two Bruce Campbell Old Spice commercials and one documentary on these commercials by Bruce himself. They are amusing so if you are just killing time, please watch them all. Hopefully you do know who Bruce Campbell is, but if you don't, click here for a short history. If you just clicked there, I can't believe you don't know who Bruce Campbell is. [youtube]Af1OxkFOK18[/youtube] [youtube]Yg6bZSM48vU[/youtube] [youtube]7ba1O8OjbTs[/youtube] I know it's kinda silly to have a video about the making of a set of commercials but this one is funny. I really like when they talk to the girls who have no idea who Bruce Campbell is but try to pretend they do and when the girl sits on his shoulders on at the piano. Those are my highlights but feel free to share your own.

Pop vs. Soda vs. Coke

Scenario: you are in a restaurant in an unfamiliar town. You've been seated for just a minute when the waitress walks up. "What'll you have to drink?" It's too early for an alcoholic beverage and you're not in the mood for coffee or tea. Water is for cheapskates and juice is for hippies. But what do you call those sugary carbonated beverages that go perfectly with a burger and fries? Depending on where you are in the country, asking what kinds of "pop," "soda," or "coke" they have on tap has a 66 percent chance of earning you a dirty look. Don't call it pop in Massachusetts. Don't call it soda in Toledo. And now you can see what to call it no matter where you are in the nation: Soft drink dialect The graphic above, from the Pop vs. Soda Page, demonstrates an interesting phenomenon. The United States is permeated by a ubiquitous popular culture. We all watch the same TV, listen to the same radio, and see the same movies. Yet regional differences remain. Even the Web, which spans the globe and threatens to make English the international language, can't stamp out these sorts of things. The Web can make it easier to study them, as the chart above shows. For some verification of the map above, check out the results of Prof. Bert Vaux's Dialect Survey: pop, soda, coke, soft drink (soda is in red, pop in blue, coke in green, and soft drink in orange) People in the northeast and California generally say soda, with outposts surrounding St. Louis and Milwaukee. The rest of the Great Lakes and Midwest region say pop, and so do the Plains and the Pacific Northwest. The only people who say Coke when they point at root beer and Pepsi are Southerners. Coke is based in Atlanta, so maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe it's related to these maps. The Dialect Survey also answers other questions such as whether you mow your lawn or cut your grass and how to pronounce thespian. I think the most important finding of all this research is clear: about 6 percent of Americans actually call pop "soft drinks," proving that 6% of Americans are annoying jerks.

What Wouldn’t Jesus Do? The Five Funniest Videos of the Son of God

In honor of the passing of Jerry Falwell, who made a mockery of Christ's teachings, we present the best mockeries of Jesus himself. Actually, that's a bit harsh - these aren't really mockeries, more like satire. 1. First off, in Passion of the Christ 2, Judgment Day, we see Hollywood logic extended to Mel Gibson's blockbuster. A box-office hit deserves a sequel, and any self-respecting sequel needs twice as many explosions. [youtube]EWuji6TADXM[/youtube] 2. Family Guy pairs Jesus with Chris Tucker. Finally, some recognition that Jackie Chan is equal to one-third of the holy trinity. [youtube]NqH2dGettBw[/youtube] 3. Monty Python's Life of Brian is, of course, the classic elseworlds version of Christ. Brian is almost, but not quite, Jesus. In this scene, Brian tells us that we're all different: [youtube]qANMjwLmo6Y[/youtube] 4. A modern-day Jesus feels strongly that he will survive. [youtube]fN1dPtEph2U[/youtube] 5. Finally, UltraChrist gives us the most probable scenario. Jesus, returned after nearly 2000 years, finds today's youth just don't relate to him. So he casts away his robes for spandex and becomes UltraChrist! This may also be the only movie depicting Jesus vs. Hitler, Jesus vs. Richard Nixon, and Jesus vs. Jim Morrison. [youtube]uWAkNr_gGh8[/youtube] Did I miss any? put a link to any other great Jesus-based comedies in the comments below. By the way, I disqualified at least one video for cheating - Yakety Sax makes anything funny.

Can’t Touch Strippers with a 10 Foot Poll

The saga of the great Stripper debate continues. The bill is currently under review by the house due to several questions of constitutional legality and whether or not the language of the document actually makes sense or is just plain ridiculous. There is also question about the CCV and whether or not they told the truth about similar legislation in other states and legality of the bill. Recently on their site to bolster their failing support they published a poll that they had done saying how the majority of Ohioans support the bill. Of course if you look closer you will notice several fishy things about this poll, and realize that it is just another attempt by the CCV to propagate their own cause that the majority of the public does not support.

Firstly there is the whole issue of the inaccuracy of polls. Looking at the entry on Wikipedia there is an entire section on how and why they are inaccurate. First is the sampling error. This has to do with the size of sample being polled. The larger the sample, the more accurate the polls and the lower margin of error. You will notice that this poll only has a sample of 500 and a margin of error of 4.4%. The number of registered voters in Ohio for the 2004 election was 7,979,639. Is it just me or does 500 people seem like a really small sample of the total number of voters? The CCV would have you believe that the poll represents some overwhelming majority but you can clearly see it is barely a handful of people. Also with such a small sample of people the margin of error is quite high. So even this data might not be correct. Right off the bat the poll is rife with problems bringing its accuracy into question.

Secondly look at the people polled in the survey. 80% of those surveyed where white. 65% were married. Over half of them were over the age of 45. So out of those 500 people surveyed the vast majority are older married white people. Already this is an incredible biased sample. The CCV is trying to claim that this poll represents the majority of Ohioans, but obviously it is only a small percentage and not a large cross section. If I ran a poll and just sampled my constituents I’m sure I could come up with poll results so the exact opposite of these results.

Finally take a look at the company that did these polling results, The Polling Company Inc. They are a full service market research, public affairs and political consulting firm. Look at that last line, political consulting firm. They are obviously hired for political purposes to help with political issues like trying to get a bill passed. Their whole point was to design a survey that would support CCV platform and not create a non biased one that would actually show what people are thinking. Look at their list of other political clients: Massachusetts Republican Party, Mercer County Republican Committee (NJ), National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, Republican National Committee, Republicans for Environmental Protection. All of these are Republican organizations not one democratic. It looks like the CCV hired another right wing shill group to promote their conservative agenda.

What it really boils down to is we already have a method to decide what the public wants besides polling, it’s called voting. Put the issue to a vote and see what the people really want. Don’t interview 500 people and say this is what everybody wants. The CCV of course doesn’t want to do this because the majority of people do not support the bill and further more they would be disgusted that time and money has been spent on this when so many other issues like education and the economy need to be addressed by the government.

The Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp, Environmentally Friendly Engineering

Lately we have been uber-enviro-nerds with the talk of wind turbines, deep lake cooling and environmentally friendly roller coasters. I just felt the need to put up another nifty energy saving device that was invented by a Bloke from the UK named Peter Hughes. He has created a ramp that absorbs kinetic energy from breaking or slowing down while driving your car over regular roadways. The idea is simple, use the cars wasted kinetic energy to power the streetlights and stoplights. There are a series of plates installed under the road which the cars will drive over, more than likely around stop lights or other areas where the traffic will be slowed. The weight of the car slightly shifts the plates, causing kinetic energy to be created. The energy is stored and then used to power whatever. It is better described on the official site, so I will just do you a favor and quote it here.
The ramp is unobtrusive, silent in operation, causes no discomfort to the vehicles occupants and is entirely safe in operation. The Ramp is designed to require the minimum of maintenance and may be used for generating electricity to power street lighting, traffic lights, road signs, with the surplus being fed into the national grid. It also has the capability to store electricity within a storage battery facility.
I also found a video that you can watch that shows this in action. [youtube]uA0aiKFMSac[/youtube] I have high hopes for this technology; it is a very smart design and easily implemented for almost any roadway. The amount of energy spent operating the lights for roadways may not be much in comparison to other utilities we expect in our daily lives but this simple innovation will hopefully lead the way in other inventions to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels and ultimately reduce the amount of pollution because of this. I think this technology is only currently being implemented in the UK but hopefully American cities will become aware of this power creating device and take advantage of it's obvious benefits. Also, since America is the largest contributor to pollution world wide, it couldn't hurt to try to change the image for the better by fully embracing any new technology that could possibly make a worthwhile difference.