Web sites that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:46 am

I don't have a direct link for this, but I think it's a really sad day when 'Fat Kid Falls Down' on YouTube can grab 3 million views.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:35 am

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/st ... er_mcqueen

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:15 pm

Full Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer.

It's a three-part, 14-odd-minute segment, only some of which actually aired. The link is to Part 2, which is the real meat of the interview. Highlights include videotape of Cramer giving hedge fund managers advice on how to skirt regulations.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:56 pm

Apparently, this came out 10 years before the electric clothes iron, and 9 years before the vacum cleaner.

It's "very useful and satisfactory for home use"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ciates.jpg

Image is way too large to post.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:22 pm

Cracked's Top 5 Common-Sense Fallacies

The third (Appeal to Probability) reminds me of some discussions we've had on this board.

shau · Post by **shau** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:31 am

You know that guy on the internet who wants to fight you? You know, the one who is a ninja master and the leader of an elite group in the army but he can't tell you about it because it is super classified? Frank Dux is that guy, but he isn't just saying that on the internet, but all the time. From his wiki.

wikipedia wrote:Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dux moved to North Hollywood, California when he was seven years old. He became a U.S. Marine in 1975.[citation needed] In 1996, Dux was with HIDTA, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area at the Criminal Justice Center, where he designed strategies and tactics and evaluated their existing training program and in 1997[citation needed], he received awards from the Multi Jurisdictional Counter Drug Task Force for drug task force investigations.[citation needed] He also was sponsored by the Department Of Defense to teach NEOA, Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association, covert activities.[citation needed] He is an adjunct faculty member of the Saint Petersburg, Florida Criminal Justice Institute[citation needed] and was named as a source contributor to the United States Navy SEAL Special Warfare Manual (K431-0097).[citation needed]

Any guy who has literally said that John Claude Van Damme movies describe his real life makes me laugh.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 4:23 am

Damnit, semiprotected. I wanted to add a "Note: this article is Bullshit" warning up the top.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 5:46 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_utC-hrjI

Obama's hopeful message to the Iranian people.

Is our President high or something? He should know better than to do stuff like this in America.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:56 am

Thats the sort of stuff Obama does well. Hes a good speaker, hopefully he can get Iran onside. And hopefully Rush and co use it to divide their crappy party apart further.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:37 pm

The deathstick guy in Attack of the Clones is named Elan Sleazebaggano. Also, he had no ears in the movie, but they were retconned in in a visual guide. I am not making this up.

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0236.html

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 7:03 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_utC-hrjI

Obama's hopeful message to the Iranian people.

Is our President high or something? He should know better than to do stuff like this in America.

I don't know, it seems like it bore fruit pretty fast.

Economic Times, March 27, 2009 wrote:WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said on Friday that many nations, including NATO partners and also countries like Iran, India and China,
have a stake in achieving security in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"From our partners and NATO allies, we seek not simply troops, but rather clearly defined capabilities: supporting the Afghan elections, training Afghan Security Forces, and a greater civilian commitment to the Afghan people," Obama said in a speech outlining a new strategy for Afghanistan.

He said he wanted to form a new contact group for Afghanistan that would include Iran, Russia, India and China, as well as NATO allies.

Yeah sure, the Mullahs went all crazy hat on Obama when he did that, but we're going to be doing joint force exercises with Iranian regular army in Pakistani border provinces by the end of the year. How retarded is that going to make the Mullahs look? And by that I mean to the Iranian people, because they are the ones who actually have a say as to what kind of government they have.

Obama could get Iranian soldiers patrolling Herat and Farah within the year, and the Supreme Leader of Iran could be out on his beard in five. Ca-ching!

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 8:14 pm

I know, this is too easy, but...

-Crissa

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:19 pm

Crissa wrote:I know, this is too easy, but...

Some questions ...
- Some of those retards claimed women prefer having male children. Problem is, IME this actually is true. Why, if nowadays supposedly most people believe women aren't inferior?
- I'm certainly one to say the Republicans losing's a good thing - but is there any non-fail source pointing to that being driven by voting women?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:29 pm

Bogode wrote:Some of those retards claimed women prefer having male children. Problem is, IME this actually is true. Why, if nowadays supposedly most people believe women aren't inferior?

My mother summed this up really well:

Maj's mom wrote:Little boys and girls are different. When you hear a thump coming from upstairs and you ask your son what he's doing, he responds, "Me and Tony are dropping the cat down the laundry chute to see what happens!"

If you ask your daughter what she's doing, you get, "Oh, nothing!" only to find out later that she's decided to make cookies out of your scented talcum powder and perfume, and has completely decimated your closet.

Generally speaking, the spirit of this held true in our family even after the siblings grew up, hit their teenage years, and became college graduates (My sister and I did not actually make cookies out of cosmetics, but rather, made real cookies and got flour down the heat register. That is much, much, much worse). We'll see if it holds true for my children.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:24 am

Koumei wrote: oh, it's tempting. Might try soldering, actually

Soldering doesn't work, the solder seems to have trouble 'adhering' to the metal.

Fucking blood thisters.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 1:16 am

Maj wrote:
Bogode wrote:Some of those retards claimed women prefer having male children. Problem is, IME this actually is true. Why, if nowadays supposedly most people believe women aren't inferior?
My mother summed this up really well:

Maj's mom wrote:Little boys and girls are different. When you hear a thump coming from upstairs and you ask your son what he's doing, he responds, "Me and Tony are dropping the cat down the laundry chute to see what happens!"

If you ask your daughter what she's doing, you get, "Oh, nothing!" only to find out later that she's decided to make cookies out of your scented talcum powder and perfume, and has completely decimated your closet.
Generally speaking, the spirit of this held true in our family even after the siblings grew up, hit their teenage years, and became college graduates (My sister and I did not actually make cookies out of cosmetics, but rather, made real cookies and got flour down the heat register. That is much, much, much worse). We'll see if it holds true for my children.

If you click through to the whole blog entry, you get the claim that women have never done any tasks that require "more logic than emotion." Last time I checked, figuring out which berries are poisonous wasn't an emotional endeavor.

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Mar 31, 2009 1:51 am

No, it's a factor of tricking the least popular/useful member of the tribe to eat the berries and seeing what happens.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 2:22 am

Maybe off-topic, but I though this was cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqR8A8ecKWo

I also enjoyed this walk down memory lane.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 2:26 am

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:No, it's a factor of tricking the least popular/useful member of the tribe to eat the berries and seeing what happens.

See, all cold logic.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 5:45 am

Crissa wrote:I know, this is too easy, but...

-Crissa

I love all of the 'now we're gonna get it' joshing.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:16 am

Bigode wrote:
Crissa wrote:I know, this is too easy, but...
Some questions ...
- Some of those retards claimed women prefer having male children. Problem is, IME this actually is true. Why, if nowadays supposedly most people believe women aren't inferior?
- I'm certainly one to say the Republicans losing's a good thing - but is there any non-fail source pointing to that being driven by voting women?

Sex selection is a real possibility in our modern age with amnio-screening. People in East and South Asia usually select for boys when they do it. To the point that boys outnumber girls in India and China by substantial margin. In Europe and North America, a majority of sex selection requests are asking for girl children.

I don't actually know why that is, but it is empirically true, at least according to the genetics department at my hospital.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:30 am

I heard somewhere that the world, controlling for everything but births and deaths, is about to peak in population and decline really shortly. Even in the third world nations.

Confirm? Deny?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:48 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _sex_ratio

Okay, here we go. Here's some empirical evidence for what Frank was saying. This is a total ratio of males to females, so.

China 1.07
India 1.07

This is actually pretty damn bad. The only reasons why it's as 'low' as it is in China is because the ratio of M/F becomes .92 in China for people greater than 65 years old. HOWEVER, when you look at current births, it's:

China 1.12
India 1.12

Fuck. Things are completely bologna fucked over there. Just for comparison's sake, let's check out the absolute worst country on the list, M/F births only:

Qatar 1.87

Holy fuck.

Anyway, I don't really see any pattern to these. It can't be with gender inequality, because the lowest ratio of M/F births are in the Sub-Saharan African countries. The countries with the lowest M/F ratio total is Europe, Northern Asia, and Southeast Asia. Wikipedia has a sex ratio graph on the their webpage and Indo-China, the Middle East, and... Greenland stick out like a sore thumb.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:52 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I heard somewhere that the world, controlling for everything but births and deaths, is about to peak in population and decline really shortly. Even in the third world nations.

Confirm? Deny?

Confirm. The rate of growth of the rate of growth of population is starkly negative. While populations continue to grow, especially in the Philippines, many countries are already hitting zero or even negative growth. And all countries are heading that way.

Last I checked, the best statistics suggested we were going to top out at 10 billion or less by about 2050 and fall down to some lower but nknowable number (since it will depend largely on the reaction of the world to the highest populations it has ever had and to the prospect of negative growth in the second half of the 21st century).

-Username17

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 7:00 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Anyway, I don't really see any pattern to these. It can't be with gender inequality, because the lowest ratio of M/F births are in the Sub-Saharan African countries. The countries with the lowest M/F ratio total is Europe, Northern Asia, and Southeast Asia. Wikipedia has a sex ratio graph on the their webpage and Indo-China, the Middle East, and... Greenland stick out like a sore thumb.

The reason you can't see a pattern is because the root causes vary in different regions. For example, we should see about 51% of all babies born be males, because male sperm is slightly faster than female sperm. But male fetuses are also slightly more fragile than female fetuses, both from a chemical and an auto-immune standpoint. So when mothers are stressed physically or exposed to chemical teratogens, they are more likely to spontaneously abort a male fetus. So if you go into Russia there are substantially more women born than men.

Greenland on the other hand, is a protectorate of Denmark, so Greenlander girls can and do go off for a better life in Copenhagen.

The reasons for sex ratio differences are not always in the form of brutal misogyny practiced by people subscribing to backward and horrible social mores. Although of course in Qatar and China it actually is.

Although many middle eastern countries also have extensive guest worker programs that disproportionately bring in men - that's not what is going on there.

-Username17