Another New Sketch from Human Giant

Three Brothers Carpet


Carpet Monkey!!! Almost as awesome as Trunk Monkey but far more homicidal and frightening

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Who's Gay Today?

Apparently Ellen Page

I mean, come on already, is she??? You know, Lebanese! She certainly dresses like a, you know, tomboy. And if you google "Ellen Page boyfriend," not a whole lot comes up, except for a link to some interview where she refers to an old beau. And if you google "Ellen Page dating," you get the news that she dated Ben Foster, but then you get a followup saying she denies that ever happened. Who did she go to the Oscars with? I couldn't tell from the cropped shots of her, but it looked like she was maybe with her mother? For guys, that used to signify 100% gay, but for girls, it might just mean young and/or Canadian--or, um, gay. And then there was the web item saying "Ellen Page is an out lesbian," but for all I know the guy who ran that is the same douche who started the whole "Marcia Cross is coming out" campaign.



I personally don't buy Musto's Oscar Date argument- I mean how old is she like 18? If i was that young and going to the Oscars I wouldn't take some guy I'd been going out with like for a month, chances are we wouldn't (and we didn't) stay together forever and that would just be embarrassing.
And here are some comments from that "Is Ellen Page an Out Lesbian" thread he references

• She was a guest on a local radio morning show in SF a few weeks ago. A caller called in and asked her if she was a lesbian. She was dead silent, then said she didn't want to respond. It was pretty clear by her response that it was true.
• The Curve magazine interview does contain something interesting: Curve: Do you have any ideas about why the X-men series is so wildly popular among gay and lesbian audiences? Ellen Page: Of course. There’s a whole school of thought that the X-men is basically a metaphor for homosexuality. The whole mutant gene thing, and this group who possesses that gene being ostracized from society. I think it’s public by now that in this film they find a cure for the mutation, right? Curve: Yup. Ellen Page: So, yeah. I was having a conversation about that just the other day. What would we do if they came up for a cure for homosexuality. Which I think is just totally bogus... Plus, Kitty Pryde! I mean, there’s a loaded name. There’s something there, right? "What would we do if they come up with a cure for homosexuality" suggests that Page and her friend be affected by the introduction of such a pill. The lack of an follow up suggests the interviewer is either an idiot or was told to avoid personal questions.
• Did you see her trying to walk in heels on Letterman last night? That was the giveaway.
• Ellen Page is from Nova Scotia so it's easy to confuse her with being a lesbian. Have you SEEN Nova Scotian women?!?! Flannel everything!
• She's deadpan, intelligent and cute. How could she be straight?

and from OurChart

• Well it appears yes she is. On the Oscars, she had the same blonde woman sitting by her that sat by her at the Independent Spirit awards. Could be some elaborate coincidence but more likely that's Ellen's girl.
• I have heard many rumors that she is gay or at least interested in girls. I have also heard that her "romantically" being linked to Ben Foster was just a ploy by both of their management to quieten rumors on both of their sexualities. Personally I think shes adorable and an amazing actress. She's just so funny yet intellectual in most of her interviews. She makes a Canadian proud, thats for sure.
  I'm sure that this question will come up quite often if her rumored lesbian werewolf movie comes out with her Juno costar Elizabeth Thirley currently titled Jack and Diane.
• Maybe she is, and she just doesn't know yet...She would make a good lesbian...

THOUGH if you've seen Hard Candy, a really disturbing movie, you can see why she might hate guys

P.s. you know the whole "gay or european" joke? there really should be a "lesbian or Canadian" correlate.

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Pot Kettle Black

Adnan is an inspiration

Crazy rides rockets
Waves a magic wand
Empty out your pockets
Words without a song

I myself have found
A real rival in myself
I am hoping for
The re-arrival of my health

Sleeping eye sockets
Baby suck your thumb
I'll keep you in my locket
A string I never strum

It's become so obvious
You are so oblivious to yourself

I'm tied in a knot
But I'm not
Gonna get caught
Calling a pot kettle black

Every song's a comeback
Every moment's a little bit later

Lazy locomotives
Wherever you may roll
I think you have no motive
I know you have no home

It's become so obvious
You are so oblivious to yourself

I'm tied in a knot
But I'm not
Gonna get caught
Calling a pot kettle black

Every song's a comeback
Every moment's a little bit later

Every moment's a little bit later
Every moment's a little bit later
Every moment's a little bit later

I'm tied in a knot

But I'm not
Gonna get caught
Calling a pot kettle black

I'm not
Gonna get caught
Calling a pot kettle black

Wilco-Pot Kettle Black [download] buy it on iTunes

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Go Back To The Gutter, Adnan

Adnan Ghalib is a sleazy disgusting horrible human being if this recent Star report is to be believed where he's bragging to friends that he's gotten Britney pregnant

"Only weeks after Britney Spears drove to Rosarita Beach, Mexico to exchange marriage vows with Adnan Ghalib, the paparazzo is bragging to friends that she is going to have his baby, Star has learned exclusively.

And what do you know! The fallen pop princess’ belly is starting to show a little bulge, in spite of hours of classes at the Millennium Dance Complex.

“Britney is Adnan’s dream come true. He knows that if he has a child with Brit, he’ll be made for life,” one friend of Adnan’s tells Star.

(celebitchy)

after reading that Rolling Stones profile on the American Tragedy of Britney Spears I actually thought for a brief momenthe might have Britney's best interest at heart but it appears that he's actually like all the rest just a bloodsucker.
Though I will be honest and admit I was about to call him much worse in what I thought was another example of horrible hypocrisy until i saw the full video and it's only regular hypocrisy

though asking if she's a good kisser is so sleazy and was over the line. Plus didn't you know Adnan only kisses and tells in print.
asshole.

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Is it better for the Environment to read newspapers online?

I'd always assumed so, just because of the "no tree" thing but Slate's Lantern provides some rather interesting information about it

When I finish reading my Sunday newspaper, I can't help but think I've just committed an egregious environmental sin—all those poor trees that had to die so I could titter over inane op-eds, guacamole recipes, and overpriced real estate listings! The greener choice would be to read the paper online, correct?

The Lantern believes so, but the environmental difference between dead-tree newspapers and their online editions is a lot smaller than you might imagine. In fact, there are learned experts who contend that traditional newsprint ultimately comes out ahead, at least in terms of net carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the Lantern disagrees with some of the assumptions these contrarians make, it's worth exploring their arguments in order to better understand how hard it is to calculate a product's cradle-to-grave impact.

The environmental costs of paper are easy to assess: As you point out, a whole bunch of trees get chopped down in order to provide your Sunday morning entertainment. Manufacturing 1 ton of newsprint, which is enough to create approximately 280,000 broadsheet pages, requires the contents of 12 mature trees. So let's say your weekly indulgence is the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which averages 172 pages and has a circulation of 606,698. Those numbers translate into 4,472 trees' worth of paper every week, or 232,544 trees per year.

Forty percent of the Star Tribune's newsprint comes from recycled material, 5 percent higher than the national average. (American newspapers lag behind their European counterparts in this regard—the average for British papers, for example, is 80 percent.) More than 57 percent of American newsprint originates in Canada, mostly the Canadian Boreal Forest; according to Forest Ethics (PDF), a Canadian NGO, clearcutting is the preferred technique in these regions. Though many logging companies replant felled trees on a one-to-one basis, environmentalists believe these replacement forests (which are often harvested once the trees reach a certain age) are not as effective at storing carbon dioxide as old-growth forests.

Once the logs have been cut, the most energy-intensive phase of the process begins. According to this 2007 report (PDF) from the Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, newsprint production accounts for roughly two-thirds of a paper's energy consumption. Wood pulping is perhaps the "dirtiest" part of this process (PDF); overall, the Department of Energy estimates that the paper manufacturing industry is the nation's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, trailing only the chemical, petroleum and coal, and primary metals industries.

Finally, you've got distribution costs—trucking all those copies to newsstands and homes, then trucking them back to recycling centers or landfills. About 69 percent of American newspapers are recycled, with about one-third of that newsprint getting shipped to China.

The end result? According to a 2006 report, a single copy of the British tabloid the Daily Mirror, weighing in at 6.4 ounces, accounts for 6.1 ounces of carbon emissions.

Paper may be an energy hog, but so, too, are the servers and desktops that make online newspapers possible. Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have estimated that the average server consumes 4,505 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, a figure that includes the power used to cool the hardware. (The average American household uses a bit more than 10,000 kWh of electricity annually.) It's not clear how many servers are required to power the typical online newspaper, but if you factor in the third-party ad servers, it's likely in the hundreds.

You also have to account for the electricity required to power the end user's computer. The Swedish report cited above calculated that a person using a 160-watt desktop with a 120-watt screen who reads an online paper for 30 minutes actually does more environmental damage than if he or she had purchased the dead-tree edition. Granted, this report involved 40-page tabloid newspapers, and the wattage figures are a little outdated. You can also quibble over the assumptions about the environmental cost of disposing of computer hardware, which is factored into the Swedish equation—wouldn't we still buy (and throw away) computers if there were no online newspapers?

But the Swedish conclusion is certainly food for thought, as is this recent blog post by Wired editor-in-chief (and my longtime boss) Chris Anderson. He stirred the pot by claiming that the dead-tree version of his magazine is actually more eco-friendly than the publication's Web site, primarily since carbon is kept locked inside the paper. Ideally, copies of the magazine are recycled. But even if an old Wired ends up in a landfill, Anderson argues, the paper will decompose very slowly and become fossil fuel, rather than releasing its carbon into the atmosphere. (By the time that transition to petroleum is complete, our species will hopefully be well beyond the oil era.)

The Lantern isn't quite convinced by this argument; he thinks it underestimates the long-term consequences and carbon emissions of logging in old-growth forests, as well as the nasty pollution created by the wood pulping industry. So, despite the intriguing Swedish report, the Lantern maintains that online newspapers come out ahead of their dead-tree Sunday rivals.

That conclusion is subject to revision, though, if American newspapers start adopting more sustainable environmental practices. The Green Press Initiative, for example, recommends that publishers increase their use of recycled fibers to 50 percent of the total by 2012 and use only virgin fibers that have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

By the time the industry gets around to making those changes, however, we may have already entered the age of the ubiquitous e-reader. And at this point, no one really knows how the proliferation of such hardware will affect the planet.

the more you know...the more you realize that no matter how much you try or think you know, the farther you need to go. But every little bit counts, right?

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Ralph Nader is Good For Something After All

With the news that Ralphie is throwing his hat back into the ring (how many hats does this guy have and seriously how is he still alive- in Colombia they kill you for scoring an own goal) there is some good that came out of it at least.
It allows me to repeat a joke that I thought was hilarious from an old episode of NPR's This American Life.

Here's the set up: this female comic is, I think the only woman in this really tough and funny room of other comics just kinda shooting the shit and like the highest honor is to make the oher comics laugh, but she hasn't been able to get a word in edgewise.
One day while walking her dog she thinks of this perfect joke concerning Ralph Nader but it's like after 9/11 and so he's out of the news. A few years pass and she's still hanging and holding onto this perfect joke but there's not an appropriate or organic place to insert it, because y'know it will be funnier if it seems off the top of their head and done with perfect timing but finally Ralph Nader is brought up again in this comedic cipher and she sees her chance. The topic is Ralph Nader and his support for reinforced cockpit doors from long before 9/11

"You know, years before 9/11 Nader had been advocating for reinforced
cockpit doors. If he'd been elected the attack might not have
happened"
she steps in, finally
"Of course everyone probably would have been distracted by all
the flying pigs"

You can listen to the episode "It's Never Over" here- it's the last act and the comic is Tami Sagher- she tells it better than I.

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The Apex of Western Culture

it just has to be all downhill after this "Moment of Truth."
be forewarned this is so so sad and difficult to watch

Wow, what a question to lose (absolutely) everything on. We are all going to hell

[RELATED: Here is some information about what happened before the above: Lauren Cleri admitted that she had been fired from a job for stealing money, would rather give food to a dog than a homeless person, knows things about her father that she keeps from her mother and has avoided sex with her husband by pretending to be asleep.

And they're now separated because of it all... That's really sad and makes me feel dirty]

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Fixing Oscar?

As you may have heard this year's Academy Award telecast was the lowest rated one ever. And in case you didn't hear, here's John Oliver of The Daily Show letting Jon Stewart know all about it


And that diminshment in ratings is causing some people, or at least Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times to declare that like every other aging Hollywood star Oscar needs "major surgery."

IT'S now painfully obvious that the Oscars need what nearly every aging star in Hollywood has already had -- a face-lift.

The ratings for the show couldn't have been any worse if they'd been stuck with all of Jay Leno's strike-show guests instead of Jon Stewart and Co. The numbers hit rock bottom, down a million viewers from 2003, the show's previous low ebb, and that was right after a war started. Even worse, the ratings for younger viewers dropped off a cliff, falling almost 25% from last year's telecast. The film academy elders should be very, very worried.

Like the evening news broadcasts, the Oscar is a relic, a cobwebby holdover from a bygone media age when Big Events earned Big Audiences. Those days are going, going, gone. The Grammys' ratings were down, the Emmys were down, the Golden Globes would've been down even if it hadn't been eviscerated by the strike.

Younger audiences just don't believe in appointment viewing anymore. Their lives are full -- they don't stop what they're doing to watch Oscar night. The only show that's held its ratings is the Super Bowl, which had at least three things the Oscars lacked: inventive, state-of-the-art production; a whole second show inside of the show -- splashy new commercials, which are often more involving than the game itself; and a far more suspenseful fourth quarter. Is there really anyone in America who didn't get best picture, best director and three of the four acting awards right in their Oscar pool?

In an era where everyone's lives are twice as busy and their attention span has been cut in half, it is simply suicidal to put on a pokey three-hour-plus award show. As the legendary B-movie master Sam Arkoff once put it, when trying to sell a film that stunk: "If you can't make it a better picture, you can always make it a shorter picture."

The academy should heed his advice. Here's how we watched the Oscars in my household: We TiVo-ed the broadcast, came back from Little League practice, hopped in bed with some snacks and zapped through the commercials, the musical numbers and most of the craft awards, giving our full attention to Stewart's routines, the clip compilations and the big awards and acceptance speeches, starting with best animated feature. Total elapsed time: one hour, 45 minutes, tops.

Our family's version of the Oscars, thanks to the magic of TiVo, didn't drag a bit. If academy chieftain Sid Ganis is going to staunch the bleeding, he needs to put the telecast under the knife. Although I'm sure it will cause a firestorm inside the academy, the technical awards -- sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects, makeup and costume design -- have to go. No one outside of the academy wants to hear acceptance speeches from people they've never heard of, no matter how heartfelt. The Oscars may have once been a celebration of craft, but the world has changed. Today's audience wants a horse race. The show is just bad TV.

The same goes for those cringe-inducing renditions of the best original songs. With the exception of a wonderfully spare rendition of "Falling Slowly" from "Once," they were all massively overproduced, drenched in so much glitz that they lacked any emotional resonance. I mean, who did the choreography -- Michael Bay? And speaking of Ganis, why is the academy president on camera, taking up valuable time explaining arcane voting procedures? It's just dead air.

There is plenty of precedent for streamlining the Oscar telecast. Just watch the Grammys. In a typical telecast, the Grammys have roughly 20 musical performances while giving out 10 actual awards. The other 100-odd Grammys are presented earlier in the day at a pre-award show with presenters, acceptance speeches and a full audience. As an experiment, this year's pre-show was webcast on Grammy.com with the idea of expanding it into a bigger event in the future.

MTV stages a Web simulcast for its Video Music Awards, with separate hosts situated backstage, giving fans watching on the Internet a chance to see some of the backstage action.

These are the kinds of innovations the academy desperately needs to embrace. It should have a full-on Web broadcast, anchored backstage by someone who's been in a Judd Apatow movie, with live remotes from Oscar parties around the country. The technical awards, beefed up with appearances by younger actors and filmmakers as presenters, would have enough appeal to merit their own telecast, perhaps on a movie channel like AMC or Turner Classic Movies the night before the Oscars. Freed from the weight of academy ceremony and tradition, they could serve as a proving ground for fresh ideas and new talent that could be incorporated into future Oscar telecasts.

Having a separate, less formal tech ceremony would allow the academy to experiment with new ideas, whether it's trying a Web simulcast, showing user-generated parodies of Oscar films or launching a Web-sponsored "pick the host" contest. The show could add star appeal by doing interviews with stars preparing for the big show the following night, playing fun clips from the Independent Spirit Awards or having a live remote from an industry Saturday-night party.

MORE important, some of this informality needs to filter into the actual Oscars. The most obvious place to take the TV audience is backstage. People yearn to get behind the velvet rope, so why not offer frequent glimpses of what's going on backstage during the show? The host is only on camera for a small percentage of the three-plus hours. Wouldn't everyone want to see what Jon Stewart is up to backstage between his official duties?

Today's audience loves being inside the bubble. The NBA regularly mikes players and coaches, letting us eavesdrop on the coach's locker room exhortations and the players' jokes and conversations, replaying the best bits minutes after they've happened. If the image-conscious NBA can do it, surely the Oscars could let us have a feel of what's going on in the green room too.

When it comes to live programming, there is no better TV in America today than what you see every week on ESPN and Fox Sports. It's where practically all the best innovation and new ideas come from. As anyone who's ever been to the academy's nominee lunch will attest, the Oscars' creative team is long in the tooth. With all due respect, it's time for some new blood.

I disagree with a lot of that.I know ratings are still important and the arbiters of quality but instead of expecting massive ratings an appropriate scaling down of expectations in the face of this new media reality would probably be better than having the Oscars, the pride of Hollywood and a symbol for decades of glitz and glamour to the world going the way of the MTV Video awards (which last I checked were dipping in the ratings as well, Britney Spears or no Britney Spears.) A lot of the appeal of the Oscars is the mysterious veil of celebrity and the perfection- if you were to let people see how, for example, Katherine Heigel was jonesing for a ciggie, sure it may appeal to the more TMZ crowd and thus get ratings but it would also be a loss of the mystique and magic which is Hollywood's stock and trade. Of course it's an exercise in excess, but that's Hollywood
His whole point summed up in "The Oscars may have once been a celebration of craft, but the world has changed. Today's audience wants a horse race. The show is just bad TV" isn't that just appealing to the lowest common denominator, one that doesn't appreciate or celebrate craft? I don't think that denunciation or apathy concerning skill and craft is what this world needs more of right now.
Sure this may be good tv but can we at least try to do something better?

I agree a lot of the fluff can go but I don't really think having celebrities off site handing out the Technical awards will really draw voters to watch to see if a guy they've never heard of wins for a film they've never seen and taking your inspiration by the "innovation" of ESPN which as a bastion of self congratulation puts the Oscars to shame, not to mention their own time filling endeavors.

Also the whole "get a face lift" angle- aren't there enough beautiful people who in their pursuit of lost youth have ended up destroying their appearances? Whatever happened to aging gracefully? It can be done- look at Julie Christie or Helen Mirren.

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Shocking, Shocking News

though I'm glad others are catching onto the menace
Automated killer robots 'threat to humanity': expert

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

"They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don't know why that has not happened already," he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

"I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line.

"Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement," he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. "And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger," he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine -- even an intelligent one -- how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense's 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme -- the largest military contract in US history -- provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

"But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems," he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. "We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do -- and then get an international agreement," he said.

I have to admit there was a time when my fear of robots and their eventual destruction of humanity made me think I was insane, but even though me being right means we're all going to die, it's good to know I'm not crazy. After all just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you...

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