Knittin' Crap: Giving the Finger(s) to Puppets

For my birthday, Brad'n'Sarahliz gave me these McAwesome finger puppets. There's a bunny, a fancy bird, a snake, and... well, we're not sure what the fourth one is.

It's a.... skunkhorsupine...

Only Little Bunny Foofoo could bring McCain and Obama together.

News: The Stupid Report

Yes, that's right, time for another skewed overview of goings-on on the web.

When Stupid Science Gives Stupid People An Excuse To Be Even More Stupid:

• Respected British medical journal The Lancet finally retracted the much and oft discounted 1998 paper which claimed that the thimerosal preservative in vaccines was causing autism. Note that now, two days later, there's no mention of the retraction at all on their home page. They should be embarrassed; the study's statistical methodology has been shown to be bad, and while the editors couldn't have known that studies now show that the discontinuation of adding the preservative to the vaccines has not slowed autism rates, they have done the world's children a disservice by giving high-strung people who think they know better than doctors a reason to leave their kids unvaccinated for potentially life-threatening diseases and spread them to people who are either too young or medically unable to be vaccinated themselves. Mumps and measles may be confined mainly to third world nations now, but guess what? The third world is right next door. (e.g. Haiti)

Intermission:
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Wow, I can't believe those cats are just sitting there...

When Stupid People Have No Excuse To Be Acting Stupid:

• Several Puerto Rican doctors in Haiti to help with earthquake relief are in seriously hot water when pictures came out of them drinking and posing with guns. I realize they're seeing some awful things and everyone needs a way to cope, but if you're going to be a dumbass, don't pose for pictures while doing it. Morons.

Just Plain Stupid:

• An official proponent for California's Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage, claims gay rights lead to legalized pedophilia. On the dumbass scale of 1 to 10, this guy is approaching infinity. I love this bit:

  Under questioning by Boies, Tam said he was secretary of an anti-gay marriage website that carried a statement that homosexuals were 12 times more likely than heterosexuals to molest children. Tam said he agreed with the statement "based on different literature I have read." He was unable to recall where he read it.

  He probably read it on some other anti-gay website which makes up its own numbers. Or used the same methodology as the completely discredited vaccines-cause-autism paper.
• The Justice Department is considering taking anti-trust action against the college Bowl Championship Series. Seriously, they have nothing better to do with their time? Like, say, prosecute the greedy bastards who helped cause the financial crisis, for starters?
• The US Patent and Trademark Office tosses patent filings that come through their fax machine upside-down.
• Students at at least two Canadian colleges are increasingly failing basic English writing skill tests because they apparently think txtspk is acceptable in the Real World, even when they're getting graded on it. I guess one of the provisions of NAFTA was that the U.S. would also get to export its illiteracy! Yay!
• A study shows that the ban on cell phone use while driving has not lowered the accident rate The author says it's because people are switching to the equally cognitively-dangerous hands-free headsets, but really, I see more people in cars around here with handheld phones than with stuff in their ears. And I don't know what the law is like elsewhere, but in California, you only receive a fine when you get ticketed. It won't be until they actually put points on the offenders' licenses, which would jack up their insurance rates far more than any single ticket, that people will get a real clue.
• So, why can't the IRS just fill in your on-line return with what it knows (since it knows what's on your W-2) and do its own e-file service? Well, why doesn't the government do a lot of the things that seem like common sense to the rest of us? Answer: Lobbyists. In this case, mainly makers of tax preparation software, of which Intuit, maker of TurboTax, is the leader. I really have to take issue with Intuit's math skills, though. Their latest ads claim that they've helped over 500 million people with their tax returns. Not helped prepare 500 million tax returns but helped 500 million people. Hello, there aren't that many people in the U.S.! And while they do also sell a Canadian version, the combined population of the two countries is still less than 350 million. Even if you add in foreign nationals filing returns, you still have to subtract the number of citizens who don't file, like, oh, most of the 40+ million children.
• An alleged dumbass who allegedly stole a 1998 Dodge Durango (wtf?) from a Wal-Mart in Florida (why do these alleged dumbass stories almost always seem to come from Florida?) was found when he allegedly parked the allegedly stolen vehicle in front of his home. What was he doing when police found him? Playing Grand Theft Auto. For real. Of course, the meth police allegedly found on him might explain some of the stupidity, like maybe the choice of a Durango, but seriously. Oh, yeah, he was already out on bail for two other charges of, well, three guesses...
• A microwave gun firing an electromagnetic pulse could become a weapon for police to end high-speed chases. Of course, it would only work on cars with microchips controlling vital functions, which basically means all cars built in the last three decades. But it wouldn't stop the General Lee!

Knittin' Crap: Uh-Oh

Given the numbers, this must have happened awhile back, but...

Hansen Jr is no longer #1.

Other: Highlights of My Week

• Two airport security checkpoints, 0 minutes waiting in line.
• A TSA agent wished me a happy one-day-early birthday.
• A job interview wearing my Doc Martens.
• Another job interview wearing my angry shoes, but I managed neither to get lost nor to have to walk to make up for a missed bus, so they managed not to get past being cranky shoes.
• Finished two long-in-the-works sweaters.
• Slept through half my actual birthday, since it was after a very long day of travel.
• Got on a Glendale Beeline bus so new, the instructions were still taped to the wheelchair belts.
• Got my W-2 and e-filed my returns that evening. I want my money back from the gummint, dammit!
• Made another costume for my Costume Ball.

Other: News, Week 4

I won't mention Haiti, because it's too damned depressing and everyone should know what's going on by now. I did have a realization last night when I was listening to NPR and whoever was on was talking about how the ability to donate money via SMS to various organizations was a sign of "the democratization of giving." I realized that the word "democratization" is waaaay over-used these days and that's starting to annoy me. Now, let's move on. (Seriously, it's not like there were ever any real barriers to making donations to groups. Yes, texting makes it much easier, but having had, in the past, to make a credit card donation over the phone or the web was hardly an onerous task.)

Now with C++-style comments! Because I'm bored and I can!

Dumbassbook:

• Facebook and clickjacking: "Reseacher Nitesh Dhanjani also said a design flaw in Facebook is granting third-party apps permission to access user profile data without express approval from users." karen.shocked(0);
• Facebook employee tells all. karen.shocked(-1);

Just plain WTF?

• Researchers at a Washington state university decided to conduct an experiment to see how distracting cellphone use really is. They put a clown suit on a guy on a unicycle and sent him riding around a campus square. Only 25% of people on cell phones noticed him. While they did have control groups of people walking with friends (71% noticed the clown), listening to music (61%), or walking alone (51% -- wow, I guess most people space out as much as I do), they didn't have one of people who were walking and chewing gum at the same time. if (karen.walking == true && karen.gumchewing == true) { karen.faceplant(force.hard); }
• A maker of rifle scopes with a Pentagon contract has been etching Biblical scripture onto the scopes it has already been shipping to the U.S. military. karen.head.desk(force.hard);
• A technology-focused middle school in San Diego was put in lockdown because officials thought an 11-year-old student's science project, a motion detector made from a Gatorade bottle and some electronics, might be an explosive device. karen.head.desk(force.harder);
• In spite of at least one recent poll which said that the vast majority of people will not pay to subscribe to online newspapers and the fact that the New York Times abandoned another Web subscription model only a couple years back, that venerable (but socio-technologically idiotic) publication has announced it will again start charging on-line readers next year. Morons. nyt.shoot(nyt.foot);
• UK researchers blame an upswing in the number cases of rickets, caused by vitamin D deficiency, in that country on video games. It sounds like the vitamin is not regularly added to milk as it is here in the U.S., but the researcher in question advocates changing that. karen.swallow(multi-vitamin);

And now for some funnies!

• Conan O'Brien, responding to reports that NBC would be allowed to keep some of the signature characters he developed on The Late Show years ago: "Isn't it great to live in a country where a cigar-smoking dog puppet and a bear that masturbates are considered intellectual property?" karen.boosts(conan);

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It's a Death Race 2000 remake done the right way... with kittens! karen.points(100000);


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karen.jealous(1);


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Most cheezburger pics are pretty self-explanatory, as long as you remember that cats spontaneously do incredibly wacky things on a regular basis. This one, though, I'd really like to know the backstory. karen.perplexed(1);

Other: Just In Case You Forgot

Just in case you forgot that I am an Über-Cool Nerd Goddess, I managed to impress (perplex?) a hiring manager today by telling her that I run FreeBSD on my home desktop.

Knittin' Crap: Ravelympics!

To coincide with the Winter Olympics, people on Ravelry have put together a parallel event: Ravelympics! The object is to challenge yourself with one or more projects, starting with the opening ceremonies on February 12 and finishing by the end of the Olympic games.

I somehow got myself made captain of the team for the Japanese Knitting and Crochet Group, a group which mainly consists of people like me, who can't read a word of Japanese but still love the patterns, with several multilingual people who help us puzzle through the rough written bits. (I'm captain because it was my idea to put together a team for the group.) I still think that Team Teami (teh-ah-me, Japanese for "hand-knit/crochet" (remember, the Japanese use the same word for "knit" and "crochet")) should get bonus points for people who are working off patterns they can't even read, but I'm not sure that will fly.

You can follow our progress on this Google docs spreadsheet. I'm still waiting for pattern information from most team members, but the game organizers haven't posted a finalized event listing yet. I'd been planning to make this sweater:

but now the thought of finishing an entire pullover in 16? days is starting to freak me out.

Stay tuned for updates as the Games draw near!