Bits & Pieces

Lady Gaga is back, and trashier than ever. This time she is working with Beyonce. If you are a fan, watch it full screen.

(via Mashable)

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, summarizes the “man points” he scored during a weekend home improvement project. The concept of “man points” is new to me, but I really like it. Hilarious.

Excerpt:

Yesterday I decided to make some man points. (-1 for knowing I need them.) Recently we purchased online a big metal rack to hold free weights. (+1). The delivery guy left the package outside the door when we were gone. I wasn’t strong enough to carry it inside. (-1 for having no upper body strength.) So I tipped it on its end and “walked” it into the garage. (+1 for using science to move a heavy object.)

The rack required assembly. This was a problem because all of my tools had been stolen from the garage last week. (-1 for leaving tools unprotected. -1 for having so few tools that they all fit in one basket. -1 for not replacing them the same day. -1 for not having an attack dog in the garage.)

The main tool I needed was a rather huge Allen wrench. I didn’t own that sort of tool even in the days when I had tools. (-1 for inadequate toolage.) So I dropped everything, jumped in the car, and headed to Home Depot for a tool buying spree. (+1 for going on a hunt for tools. -1 for calling it a spree. +1 for intending to buy tools for which I had no immediate use.

Check out Roger Ebert’s live blog of the Academy Awards here.

My guess for Best Picture: The Hurt Locker. Or maybe Avatar. Who knows?

And if you are away from a TV you can watch the AP’s coverage of the Oscars streaming live here.

Google has a nice template listing all the nominees here.

At least according to The Awl. Check out this video compilation of Apple products’ appearances in movies and on TV.

Apple’s Greatest Cinematic Achievements from The Awl on Vimeo.

It seems that a California state senator with a long history of anti-gay rights statements was arrested for drunk driving after leaving a gay bar. Karma is such a bitch.

Sources tell CBS13 a state senator from Southern California was arrested for allegedly driving drunk after leaving Faces, a gay nightclub in midtown Sacramento, early Wednesday morning.

The California Highway Patrol pulled over Senator Roy Ashburn at 2:00 a.m. Wednesday after an officer noticed a black Chevy Tahoe swerving at 13th and L Streets.

Closeted gay people can cause all kinds of damage, usually to themselves. It is really too bad that they do not feel comfortable in their own skin.

Updated: Today, finally, he admits he is gay. It is tragic that it took an incident like this for him to acknowledge the truth. Tragic for his constituents, and more fundamentally, for him. Closeted gay people are dangerous to themselves. This is why openness is the best option for all involved.

The best of Russian television. (h/t BoingBoing)

A nice summary of sheer scope of the Interwebs today. Amazing.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

To me, the death of a trainer at SeaWorld by the acts of a captive killer whale highlight the problem with using animals purely for human entertainment.  It is wrong, both morally and practically, to imprison a animal meant to cruise the seas in a cement tank solely to make money on displaying that animal. When the animal is a dolphin (yes, despite the name Killer Whales are dolphins) and therefore highly intelligent it is even worse. It is torture, pure and simple. And there is no sufficient justification for such abuse.

Susan Orlean agrees:

I hate to say this, but I loved seeing Shamu perform at SeaWorld last Christmas. Seeing an orca rise up out of a pool in balletic rhythm with a trainer, feeling the seismic thuds as he hit the water, and watching him power his way through the water was stirring and astonishing. Afterward I felt awful. There is probably some valuable research that goes on at water parks, and perhaps audiences who come away as stirred and astonished as I was will be inspired to join a whale group or take up an environmental cause. But none of that balances out the bigger issue, which is that whales don’t belong in captivity, and certainly not in amusement parks.

Further, the practice of training killer whales for pure entertainment is also dangerous for the trainers. Read this chapter from The Peforming Orca: Why the Show Must Stop, part of the background material for a program on PBS called A Whale of a Business. Excerpt:

Since the first orcas were kept captive in the 1960s, there have been numerous “accidents” with trainers, most of which were covered up. Those that have come to light were mostly revealed by disenchanted trainers or members of the public who witnessed the accidents during a show. Marine park public affairs directors always played down such incidents, calling them bizarre accidents, and in some cases denied they had occurred. In recent years, with the proliferation of cheap video cameras, a number of incidents have been recorded. They range from bitings and collisions to near drownings when whales have held trainers underwater. Many of these dangerous incidents happened when the trainers were riding whales around the pool. Some former trainers such as Graeme Ellis believe that orcas, in general, do not like to be ridden. “They may tolerate it when they’re young or new to captivity,” says Ellis, “but later, it can lead to problems.” Yet most marine parks still feature trainers riding orcas during the shows. Only Sealand and the Vancouver Public Aquarium in Canada, Miami Seaquarium in the USA, Marineland in France and Taiji in Japan no longer allow trainers to ride the whales. In recent years, fewer trainer accidents are known to have occurred at these establishments compared to parks that feature in-the-water work. Yet, there have been some injuries and the most serious incident of all occurred at Sealand.

Update: Alexander Cockburn writes that using Orcas for entertainment purposes is a form of slavery.

Call him, just for now, Spartacus. He was two years when the slavers captured him in 1982 and hauled him off to the little town of Victoria, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in the far Canadian west. And there he met his fellow slaves, Nootka and Haida. Day after day in slave school they learned their tricks. Day after day, they did their act for the paying customers. And then, on February 20, 1991, in the tank operated by Sealand of the Pacific, the three struck back at their captors.

Okay, not Spartacus, but an orca whale – Tillikum, the one who drowned 40-year old Dawn Brancheau this week in the Shamu tank at SeaWorld, Orlando, after grabbing her by her pony-tail.

Tillikum was caught off Iceland. Nootka and Haida, both female, were seized in the Pacific. In fact Nootka was the third orca by that name to be bought by Sealand. The first two died within a year of their capture. At that time enslaved orcas had a life expectancy in captivity of anywhere from one to four years. These days they do a bit better. In wild waters, orcas live to be anywhere from 30 to 60.

First, a version by Jennifer Warnes:

Now one by Leonard Cohen, its writer:

What is this all about? Anyone have a clue who did this and why? The intentionally low production values should not mislead, in that a close look indicates it is actually extremely well done. And don’t let the current low viewer count on YouTube mislead. This is virtually certain to be a big YouTube hit. But why?

My guess: This is actually part of a viral campaign for Avatar to win “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards. And here I am being all viral and stuff….

(h/t William Gibson)

Many of my friends seem aggressively disinterested in foreign films. I love them. And this doesn’t help.

Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourism Ads Directed By Lars Von Trier

By the way, Lars Von Trier is, in fact, a great director.

Get it here.

My cat does not know me when we meet a block away from home, and I gather from his expression that I’m not supposed to know him, either.

–Guy Davenport, quoted in the New York Times.