Moonage Webdream

I enjoy Newsbusters almost as much as Mythbusters.  They’re a hoot at pointing out factual errors in reporting.  And, they LOVE picking on MSNBC.  Good reason to, MSNBC is a classic at bad reporting.  However, in their haste to show how wrong today’s headline was, I think they missed the obvious chuckle of the day.  To wit, a young girl makes a trip to the North Pole.  Now, we’d all like to go there, so that part’s pretty interesting as it is.  However, the North Pole is a pretty dull place for the most part.  Just a bunch of snow.  So, to liven up their piece a bit and to turn it into a global warming message, MSNBC embellished by adding melting glaciers and starving penguins.  Two problems with that obviously stick out.  First, and most conspicuous is the fact there are no glaciers on the North Pole.  It’s a flat plain.  Secondly, and the part that really got under Newsbusters’ skin, there are no penguins on the North Pole either.  However, the best part of it all to me was what Newsbusters totally missed.  Namely, this:

Now, to me, that is more exciting than the fact there are no penguins on the North Pole.  That name ring any bells?  Maybe this will:

Get it now?  The babe who needed a canoe for ankle deep water also thinks there are glaciers and penguins on the North Pole.

Man, where was she when I was in college?

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Technorati Tags: Camilla Hempleman-Adams, flood, glacier, global warming, michelle kosinski, msnbc, new jersey, newbusters, north pole, penguin

What’s so remarkable about this babe you ask?  Well, this one’s not going in Pavlov’s, it’s going in mythbusters for one reason and one reason only.  She was arrested outside a pizza joint for blowing, drum roll please, .55.  You heard that right, point five five.  Now, according to the Blood Alcohol Content Calculator, if she weighed 100 pounds, which is the lowest it will go, she would have had to have drunk 8 margaritas in one hour to acheive a BAC of .36.  Using that math, which is the best I could find, she must have drunk about 12.  Their summary of her status pretty well sums it up:

Illegal everywhere; may need medical attention

I think they need to toss in psychiatric attention as well.  Meagan is suicidal.  If nothing else, use the psychiatric angle to get her off the streets.  She passed out IN HER CAR.

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Quickie uodate:  The Smoking Gun finds out the neatest stuff on people.  For instance, Meagan apparently was semi-sorta-famous around 1993 or so.  Here she is appearing in Briooks and Dunns’ Rock My World  (Little Country Girl):

Now, I could have simply just mentioned it, but I couldn’t believe what she looked like then. And for that matter, what she looks like now immediately post a .55 bender. Therefore, Meagan has worked her way back into the Pavlov category FOR SURE!

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Technorati Tags: blood-alcohol, brooks-and-dunn, drunk, Idiot of the day, little-country-girl, meagan-harper, Mythbusters, Pavlov's Dog, rock-my-world

Received this email, again:

Don’t buy Pepsi in the new can. Pepsi has a new "patriotic" can coming out with pictures of the Empire State Building, and the Pledge of Allegiance on them.  However, Pepsi left out two little words on the pledge, "Under God." Pepsi said they didn’t want to offend anyone.

In that case, we don’t want to offend anyone at the Pepsi corporate office, either!  So if we don’t buy any Pepsi product, they will not be offended when they don’t receive our money that has the words "In God We Trust" on it.

HOW FAST CAN YOU FORWARD THIS ONE?

It’s bogus and verified as such on several sites.  According to those sources, Dr. Pepper ran a similar can shortly after 9/11.  However, they did not quote the Pledge of Allegiance at all.  The Pepsi hoax has been floating around since.  It just amazes me how many of these goofy email hoaxes float around endlessly and how quickly and easily people fall for them.

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2/11/06 - I am updating this post because I have found something amazing on what I thought was this routine droll issue:

These is actually an online petition to voice your objection to the can-that-never-was-or-will-be:

http://www.petitiononline.com/PepsiCan/petition.html

What’s even better, there’s 866 signatures so far!

• Technorati Pepsi boycott

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Technorati Tags: Mythbusters

The Colts went down yesterday.  That ended the threat to the ‘72 Dolphins record.  According to just about every football announcer, some of the ‘72 Dolphins squad toasted a glass of champagne.

However, according to Urban Legends, that’s not true.

I kinda liked that legend.

Dang.

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Technorati Tags: dolphism-1972, miami, Mythbusters, Sports

Got this via email.  I had heard of this for a while, the myth is true. 

As we’ve mentioned before, Sony-BMG has been using copy-protection technology called XCP in its recent CDs. You insert your CD into your Windows PC, click "agree" in the pop up window, and the CD automatically installs software that uses rootkit techniques to cloak itself from you. Sony-BMG has released a "patch" that supposedly "uncloaks" the XCP software, but it creates new problems.

But how do you know whether you’ve been infected? It turns out Sony-BMG has deployed XCP on a number of titles, in variety of musical genres, on several of its wholly-owned labels.

EFF has confirmed the presence of XCP on the following titles (each has a data session, easily read on a Macintosh, that includes a file called "VERSION.DAT" that announces what version of XCP it is using). If you have one of these CDs, and you have a Windows PC (Macs are totally immune, as usual), you may have caught the XCP bug.

• Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
• Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
• Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
• Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
• Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
• Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
• Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
• The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
• Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
• Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
• Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
• Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
• Horace Silver Quintet, Silver’s Blue (Epic Legacy)
• Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
• Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
• The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
• The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
• Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
• Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
• Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc
  had no protection)

Several other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:

• My Morning Jacket, Z
• Santana, All That I Am
• Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album

This is not a complete list. So how do you recognize other XCP-laden CDs in the wild?

• Tip-off #1: on the front of the CD, at the left-most edge, in the transparent "spine", you’ll see "CONTENT PROTECTED" along with the IFPI copy-protection logo. A few photos make this clearer.
• Tip-off #2: on the back of the CD, on the bottom or right side, there will be a "Compatible with" disclosure box. Along with compatibility information, the box also includes a URL where you can get help. The URL has a telltale admission buried in it: cp.sonybmg.com/xcp. That lets you know that XCP is on this disc (discs protected with SunnComm have a different URL that includes "sunncomm").

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Two thoughts I have:

• The beauty of this is the ONLY way this works is if you buy the CD.  If you download these via any internet service, legal or not, this doesn’t apply and it’s not something to worry about.
• Just another nail in the traditional music industry’s coffin IMO.  With the advent of flash memory players ( Ipods et al ), there is no need to even own a CD.  Before too long, and it’s coming faster than I would have guessed, all music will be digital.  I mean that as in temporary ( flash, as opposed to permantly burned media ).  People won’t release entire CD’s, they’ll just release one song at a time.  And, you’ll just download it.  If you really like it and plan to keep it, you’ll just burn your own CD.

Technorati XCP.  Google Blog search for XCP.

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Technorati Tags: Music, Mythbusters, Opinions

In 1960, Victor Mature starred in the movie Hannibal.  I’ve seen this.  Once, I think.  If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it features Hannibal mercilessly driving his soldiers through the glacier covered Alps.  Some of his soldiers, and even elephants, slip on the ice and plummet to their deaths thousands of feet below.  It’s a really bad movie about reputedly one of the greatest military minds of all time.  Hannibal gave the Romans absolute hell.  He defeated the Romans in Italy before eventually exhausting his resources.  But, the climax to the Hannibal legacy was his march through the ice and wind driven snow of the Alps and Pyrenees.

Now, it seems, that may not have been the case.

""At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with his army."

Out of curiosity, I checked weather.com for the current conditions in Zurich.  It’s sunny and 84 degrees (F).

So, rather than falling off ice covered cliffs, it’s more likely Hannibal was trampling daisies on his way to fight the Romans.  Doesn’t make for quite as spectacular movie viewing IMO.

Now, come to find out, Vin Diesel is remaking Hannibal, the motion picture.  I just wonder which vision of Hannibal crossing the Alps he’s going to use?

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Technorati Tags: Movies, Mythbusters

Apparently this pic is still making its way around the ‘net:

This pic has been around for a LONG time.  It has been so prolific that Snopes ranks it #5 on it’s Hottest all-time list.  It developed such a life of its own that even National Geographic saw fit to debunk it.  But yet, four years after its origin, it still lives on.

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Technorati Tags: Mythbusters