StumbleUpon | Darque's comments & reviews

10 Worst YahooAnswer Health Questions of All Time - Compare Health Insurance Quotes | Go Insurance Rates

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:40:12 -0800

Wait, wait, wait. This is a website called "goinsurancerates.com," and in it exists this collection of pictures from another site, "yahooanswersfail.com" (with the watermark still plainly visible), which is itself a site that collects pictures of another website, Yahoo! Answers. I'm fuzzy on exactly how this relates to insurance, but whatever. I've also previously bitched about the inanity of the "fail" theme - which is itself an ironic failure of grammar, seeing as how it should either be "epically fail" or "epic failure" - but again, whatever.

The real hat-trick pulled off by this website is in its sheer lack of creativity. A website hawking discount insurance decides to put something funny up to attract hits. Seeing as how "funny" and "Insurance" go together like eggs and handcuffs, someone made the executive decision to rip off a bunch of material from another website. Not just any humor donor would do, though - they needed someone who had already stolen content from another website. But not just any ripoff collection would do, not for our intrepid insurance website - no, they required content stolen from a website about another website featuring trolls asking questions to other trolls for cheap laughs.

This site should be quarantined and charged with receiving stolen goods - twice stolen, and not good in the first place.

Now this is how to rob a bank | Article | The Punch

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:36:33 -0800

This isn't crime news, it's a mission from a Grand Theft Auto game... or at least it really sounds like one, and would explain the ace flying the Maverick.

Investors.com - How Regulation Of Drug Industry Discourages R&D And Costs Lives

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:31:42 -0800

Yeah, because who wants their Viagra regulated? Dammit, pill companies can't be denied their golden parachutes and corporate jets. They're not street-corner drug dealers, you know! Okay, well, maybe they are, but they're the ones that are rich enough to buy senators, so we're supposed to care about their well-being, dammit!

Extra points for the veiled threats of denied medicine if they don't get their way. Hey, Pfizer and P&G - why don't you go fuck yourselves for a little while, and see if we can't get by without Cialis for a while, mm-kay? Your shareholders will drag you out of your offices and pillory you before we give in to pharma-terrorism.

Meanwhile, live with regulation like the rest of us - at least until you assholes need yourselves a bailout and we get to socialize your industry. And then we finally all get cheap pecker pills!

imgur: the simple image host

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:54:10 -0800

Why the hell doesn't anyone ever build monuments to Starscream? Prime was all goody-goody and conscientious, cautious about the use of his power and wary of the consequences of his actions to the innocent. That's not America at all. Starscream, on the other hand, was a paragon of deception, cowardice, uneven combat, cheating, and stealing - those are all the things that America adores!

The Illustrated Guide to the New Firefox 3.6 Windows 7 Integration :: the How-To Geek

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:19:04 -0800

Wow. Now that's real integration - one feature only works with three or less tabs open, and the other feature only works with three or more tabs open. Why is Microsoft still putting in this extra fluff when it's already a bloated whale carcass? I dunno, I don't care. This is one feature I won't be looking for in Linux.

BREAKING: Texas Judge: Ban On Gay Marriage Unconstitutional | The New Civil Rights Movement

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:14:26 -0800

A judge ruling that the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional is good enough - but in Texas? Outstanding. Now that's a set of cojones. But the bonus question here is, the gay couple got married and then moved to Texas? What, are they suicidal?

Savagery and Silence in the First World | CommonDreams.org

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:30:19 -0800

Okay, I appreciate the news, but the editorial slant here is so far off it's laughable. "Here in the US, most people understand that (if we have not already reached it) we are approaching critical mass..." Really? Care to prove that? Actually, I think, if you're going to use peoples' opinions as proof of your claims, you'll also have to go back and explain why people have always thought that society was in a hopeless moral decay, a sinful tailspin of depravity. Come on, it was an old story already when they put Sodom and Gomorrah into the bible, and it was probably already an old story when philosophers in ancient Egypt put their concerns of moral decay into hieroglyphics. People have been whining about moral decay, or social disorder, or critical mass, or whatever you want to call it, for thousands of years. What's so special now, other than the fact that modern communication lets us all work each other up into a froth about it? Life goes on, and will continue to do so.

Even gang-rape as a spectator sport doesn't mean that the world is ending. Yes, it's awful, but let's put it in context... In March of 1964, Kitty Genovese was stalked outside her Queens, New York, apartment and attacked three separate times over a thirty-minute period. As her killer kept leaving and returning to finish the job with one brutal stabbing after another, 38 people watched from the windows of their own apartments, and not one person called the police until she was dead. Even as she was screaming out that she was dying, only one person anonymously called out, "Leave that girl alone!" which was followed up by turning off the lights and going back to sleep as she died. That's okay, her assailant, Winston Moseley just waited a few minutes, came back and stabbed her again. That was 45 years ago - and guess what the papers all said? Moral decline! Oh sweet dear Jay-zus, the whole world is ending because of the end of civilization! And yet here we are, 45 years later, with the high-school remake.

Gang-rape is nothing new, either - that's why there's already a word for it. They gang-rape in bars, they gang-rape 8-year-olds, they gang-rape pretty much anything and anyone - and that's been going on for thousands of years, too. This is the danger of a society that shields itself from crime through ignorance - people don't know that shit like this happens all the time, so it shatters their minds when they finally see it. I blame television; people are spoon-fed insipid crime dramas where all the crime is thoroughly bowdlerized, sanitized, and made clean for family viewing - and all along, half the show is devoted to the hero cop's unethical office romances. This isn't an example of moral decay. It's an example of what's been happening all along, crimes to which most folks are happily oblivious.

So please, spare us the dramatic, fawning, self-important drivel that we get at the end of this article: "But I've long since accepted that being an activist and a writer, futile though it may be, is who I am. The ship may be going down, but like the orchestra on the Titanic, I keep playing." I'm sure your words will inspire other vapid writers who, thousands of years from now, will still be whining about moral decay.

http://media.komonews.com/images/090522_shuttle_large_7.jpg

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:14:58 -0800

Whenever I pull out my old, original, first-year Game Boy (yes, it still works - let that be a lesson to you, Microsoft XBox Division!) I play Tetris just as feverishly as ever. About one out of every two or three attempts at Level 9, Height 5 is successful - and if you've got old-school gaming chops, you know what happens. Now my three-year-old daughter loves the game, and loves seeing the congratulatory animation - a little, green-and-gray Space Shuttle takeoff. She excitedly says, "Three! Three! Three! Bastoff!" And where are they going? "To see Luna!" Where else, sweetie? "To the stars!" That's when she gets this faraway, contemplative look that I have yet to decipher.

I am so happy to be able to say that, within her lifetime, the chances are very good that she will have access to commercial spaceflight. I won't pretend to feel special because I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I mean, who didn't? But my daughter may get to do what so many of us did not: break orbit. She may actually get to see the spectacular vista pictured in this photo, and she may get to set foot on the real moon. It simultaneously breaks my heart to know that I'll probably never make it, and makes me feel vindicated that my little girl just might do what was once reserved for the very special, very lucky, very brave few.

May Earth be worth the trip home, my little monster.

Full Size Batmobile Replica | Geeky Gadgets

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:02:40 -0800

20,000 hours of work? Okay, quick, I need 20,000 friends and one afternoon... hell, we could make two! (Or, "Does that include daylight savings?")

George Bush said Palin was ill prepared: 'Is she the Governor of Guam?' | Crooks and Liars

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:00:07 -0800

Apparently George W. Bush, the man who created an entire culture devoted to assuring him that every idiotic thing he said (of which there were a great, great many) was pure genius, actually managed to figure out the truth even when the Republicans were ga-ga over Sarah Palin. Pure random chance, perhaps? Or, more colloquially, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while."