junosand (Mark) submitted a link to YouTube's video of the Final Countdown, saying "How can you deny a link to The Final Countdown? There's even some interview footage with Europe."
Well, he's right. I can't deny such a link. Incidentally, I just learned to play the beginning of the song on guitar yesterday. Yes! They need to remake the video with clips from Arrested Development's Gob and his magic shows. (There may be a delay before the video shows up below)
It's true. Our first film and trailer are now on YouTube, meaning no more scrambling to get it to play on your computer with different codecs. In fact, you should be able to play the trailer and the movie below. Of course, this version of Van Quattro still carries the same Crappy Sound™ as the original.
Trailer (~1 min.):
Movie (~10 mins.):
And in case you miss the graphics of the original webpage (or want the AIM buddy icon), go here.
After hearing about the decision by an Iranian newspaper to join the international Muslim protest and open a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, illustrator Amitai Sandy and actor and screenwriter Eyal Zusman decided to bring Israel into the new battlefield: They have declared an Israeli competition for anti-Semitic cartoons, open to Jewish participants only.
"We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!" said Sandy. "No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!" declared Sandy last week, in announcing the competition on his Internet site boomka.org. The announcement invited artists from all over the world to send in cartoons, illustrations and short comics that express hatred for Jews in the most outrageous way.
News of the competition spread over the net, and within a few days the initiators of the competition received hundreds of e-mails congratulating them on the initiative. Quickly the discussion spread beyond the realm of the Internet and reawakened the debate on the limits of satire; media outlets from all over the world swooped down on it with interest. Sandy says that within three days he was interviewed by more than 30 dailies, two television channels and a radio program broadcast on 450 local stations in the United States. Sandy, 29, relates that most of the e-mails have come from Jews around the world who say they are glad to hear about the initiative and that it has made them proud to be Jewish. E-mails from Christian surfers, who congratulated them on the initiative but noted that they would not feel comfortable participating in the competition, led him to decide to restrict the competition to Jewish participants only and to focus it on Jewish self-humor.
"I believe that humor is the best way to examine our values," he says. "The problem with values is that over time they become sanctified, and therefore the best education is to cast doubt, to ask questions all the time, even about the values one believes in. One of the best ways to do this is self-humor."
dave submitted a Marketwatch article on a big-time H&R Block goof. Apparently H&R Block incorrectly calculated their taxes. If they can't do their own taxes right, what makes you think they won't mess up yours?
Shares of H&R Block Inc., the company that helps millions of Americans complete tax returns, fell 8% Friday after it said that it got its own taxes wrong in recent years.
The Kansas City, Mo.-based company said it will restate results for fiscal years 2004 and 2005, plus previous 2006 quarters, mainly because of errors in calculating its state effective income tax rate. The mistakes resulted in H&R Block understating its state income tax liability by about $32 million as of the end of April, 2005, the company added. The restatements will knock 7 cents a share off 2005 fiscal-year earnings and 2 cents a share of fiscal 2004 results, the company said.
Looks like they're tied up in other litigation as well:
California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued H&R Block on Feb. 15 claiming the company has violated 15 state and federal laws by selling high-cost refund anticipation loans mainly to poor families. When marketing the loans, H&R Block failed to adequately inform customers they can keep more of their income throughout the year and not have to wait for a refund at tax time, the suit claimed.
Lockyer's suit also alleged that H&R Block advertisements were deceptive, portraying the loans as a "refund" or "instant money."
"In reality, the refund is a loan, the cash is a check, and the check is for substantially less than the refund, after the loan fees and other charges are deducted," Lockyer's office said in a statement unveiling the complaint.
Of course this screw-up shouldn't significantly impact them, as calculating an individual's taxes is far different than for a corporation. But you can't hide the irony.
Blagojevich says he didn't realize "The Daily Show" was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-confused Democratic governor.
"It was going to be an interview on contraceptives ... that's all I knew about it," Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday's editions. "I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was 'the gay governor.'"
The interview focused on his executive order requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Interviewer Jason Jones pretended to stumble over Blagojevich's name before calling him "Governor Smith."
He urged Blagojevich to explain the contraception issue by playing the role of "a hot 17-year-old'' and later asked if he was "the gay governor." At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to someone off camera and said, "Is he teasing me, or is that legit?"
The segment, which aired two weeks ago, also featured state Rep. Ron Stephens, a Greenville Republican and pharmacist who opposes the governor's rule. Stephens has said he knew the show was a comedy. "I thought the governor was hip enough that he would have known that, too," Stephens said.
dave submitted a link describing how yesterday, Apple sold their one billionth iTunes song, which was Coldplay's "The Speed of Sound." He also relatedly remarked "What did the lead singer of Coldplay name his daughter? 'Apple.'" From the NBC article,
Apple said it was purchased by a computer user in Michigan who will get a hefty grand prize that includes a 20-inch iMac and a $10,000 gift card that's good on any item in the iTunes Music Store.
You know how annoying it is to get those last few drops of ketchup out of the bottle? Well, GE has solved your problems. They have created a super-repellent plastic which is superhydrophobic, meaning it greatly repels anything water-based. That means even substances like honey will easily slide out of a container made of the material. The biggest difference between this and similar materials like Teflon? Cost.
While several existing engineered materials behave this way, the GE accomplishment is noteworthy because it was done with an inexpensive plastic, GE's Lexan, that's normally "hydrophilic," meaning water spreads out on contact, not something that's "hydrophobic" to start with, such as Teflon or silicone-based materials. These latter materials are far more expensive compared with Lexan, a ubiquitous thermoplastic used in products ranging from CDs and DVDs to automotive headlamps, food storage containers, and common household appliances.
While GE is not predicting specific applications yet, a few are theoretically possible. A cheap superhydrophobic plastic could be used in food containers from which every last bit of ketchup or syrup would flow right out. It could also allow for a building panel that repels water so efficiently that rain would wash away dirt -- making it essentially self-cleaning.
Such a material could be a bonanza for medicine, too. In the field of microfluidics, superhydrophobic materials are needed so that tiny volumes of blood or other body fluids can flow more easily through micrometer-scale channels. Although some superhydrophobic materials are currently available, they're expensive enough to preclude visions of diagnostic gadgets that you could buy in a drugstore. A cheap plastic, though, could make such a disposable diagnostic chip feasible. "It is a big deal and it is important for the microfluidics applications," says Neelesh Patankar, a mechanical engineer and microfluidics at Northwestern University.
Paulette Chandler watched helplessly as high blood pressure destroyed her husband's kidneys and forced him on to dialysis. She wanted to give him one of her kidneys so he wouldn't have to spend years on the transplant waiting list. Unfortunately, they have different blood types, so their kidneys wouldn't be a good match.
As it turns out, though, her blood type does match another patient who needs a kidney transplant, Francisco Torres. Torres and his wife don't match, either. But Torres' wife does match Chandler's husband. So the two couples have agreed to exchange kidneys.
Barring last-minute medical complications, the kidney swap will be done today at University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. More than 80 paired-kidney swaps have been done around the country, but today's transplants will be the first paired exchange in Illinois.
With more than 65,000 people on the national kidney transplant list, patients are having to wait as long as six years to get kidneys from deceased donors.
That's right, Google just unveiled Google Page Creator, with 100MB free storage and a WYSIWYG editor. They claim the product is still in early testing, so expect some hiccups (more than their usual beta disclaimers). But it's easy to use, and you don't have to know how to code anything if you don't want to. (But if you want to, you can write the HTML yourself).
You login with your Google Account (required) and that becomes your URL. This is not a very good idea since by revealing my URL, I am also revealing my email address, though only indirectly. If your email address is in the form firstname.lastname@gmail.com, your webpage would be at http://firstname.lastname.googlepages.com. However, as with gmail, you can add and remove dots from your username, so the URL http://firstnamelastname.googlepages.com would work as well.
Update: The page saves are very slow. It's nice that you never lose changes you make, but you try to navigate away from the page and the delay is significant. Hopefully they will resolve that.
