News: Critical Facepalms

These make my head hurt.

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• 4th grade "science" quiz, which explains a lot and makes me sad at the same time...
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News: Even More Random Stupid

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• Why I always freeze to death in an office when I dress for the actual weather. The building at my last entertainment-industry job was kept cold enough for storing meat (which was apropos, considering how they treated the IT people), which struck me as particularly at odds with the fact that Hollywood was touting how green it was. If they'd turned the thermostat up a few degrees, they could have reduced their energy consumption quite a bit. (Also, if they gave bus passes instead of a car allowance to VPs and above, they could have done even more in that direction, but... wait, you think I'm calling them hypocrites? Hollywood? Never!) For men who insist on wearing suits in the summer, they should revert to the Southern gentlemanly practice of wearing linen. Surely some big agro-business is trying to engineer wrinkle-resistant linen?
• Instead of inventing machines to do physical labor for us, maybe we should be inventing machines to think for us...
  

Kitty's response to the stupid:

News: Stupidity Legislation

Yes, background checks for people trying to buy guns are all well and good, but what we really need are minimum IQ requirements to keep guns out of the hands of morons.

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Knittin' Crap: 2,000,000 Angry People With Pointy Sticks

Apparently the US Olympic Committee sent a cease-and-desist letter to Ravelry (posted here for people with Ravelry accounts, and reproduced in full on Gawker for those without) over use of the term "Ravelympics" for the knittin'-and-crochetin' tie-in event hosted on (but not officially sponsored by) Ravelry.

Needless to say, the floodgates have opened.

Yes, in less than 12 hours, it got onto Gawker. The letter is being dissected, denigrated, and worse, in many venues, but I'll pick out my two favorite little bits and leave it there.

We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

Really? There are athletes who are so petty and have so much time on their hands that they've told the USOC that they're upset by a bunch of afghans? (The insulation device, not the nationality.) I call shenanigans!

The Olympic Games represent ideals that go beyond sport to encompass culture and education, tolerance and respect, world peace and harmony.

Really? Because the whole letter sounds pretty disrespectful, especially since they do go out of their way to denigrate afghans (again, the insulation device, not the nationality) and the effort put into them.

With this post, I'm inaugurating a new tag: facepalm.

Karen, Captain, Team Minecraft, Ravelympics 2012 (so sue me, assholes)