You know who would look totally hot in pants a number of sizes too small for her?

Nobody.

I'm not clear on how someone who has thought through the need to wear a thong (which reminds me, wearing too-tight pants made of thin white material is a whole extra level of not-hot) to avoid having visible lines can miss the fat bulging out all around the top of her pants.

The lesson here is, if the answer to the question, “do these pants make me look fat” is painfully clearly “Yes, very much so, and skanky to boot!”, then don't wear them.

The preceding has been a public service announcement on behalf of everyone has to go out in public and be subjected to that sort of thing.

Category: Society

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So through some random link-following I read some of a highly amusing site run by someone trying warn people of the dangers posed by the aliens experimenting on us, and explaining how you can defend yourself (the answer, of course, being the next generation in tin-foil hats—just as stupid looking, but now with 10 times the mind-control-stopping effectiveness). What struck me most is that we apparently know that among other things aliens can:

• Control gravity
• Pass through solid objects
• Perform surgical procedures

And yet “aliens have not been able to remove a thought screen helmet secured with tape or string.” Clearly these aliens need some help managing their invasion, if they haven't managed to figure out how to apply their powers and tools to the daunting task of cutting through tape. But since they can read my thoughts from 100 miles away, I'm sure they are on their way over right now to discuss a lucrative consulting contract.

Category: Random

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Sometimes the religious right just pisses me off, but other times they make me feel downright sick. Take the following gem from an article about vaccines being developed for the human papilloma virus:

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favor vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

“Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex,” Maher claims

Remember kids, it's wrong to allow terminally ill people to end their life in a manner of their choosing, but it's okay to withhold potentially life-saving treatments from people who don't choose to live their lives according your rules!

So here's what really gets me. Lets assume the existence of a 100% effective HPV virus (it doesn't exist yet, as far as I know, but it theoretically could). There's no reason to think that these people wouldn't be at least as against it as they are against the 90%+ version being tested now. Given that vaccine, every case of HPV that leads to cervical cancer and possible death would be preventable. Morally, there is no difference I can see between withholding such a vaccine from everybody when it could be administered, and intentionally introducing a new potentially deadly STD into the population. You know what the latter would be called? Biological warfare. Terrorism. It would get you locked in a small cell in a military camp existing outside of normal US laws. But the former is just “protecting family values”.

Oh, and that 80% number? I was heartened by it until I read it the other way: 20% of parents would like to see their daughters get cancer and possibly die if they engage in pre- or extra-marital sex (or even just marry someone who has/does).

Category: Society

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Pet peeve of the day: seeing people copy my old EECS 338 home page and/or recitation notes including the “Valid XHTML 1.1” badge at the bottom, but then break the validity when they make whatever changes they need to make. If you don't know what the badge means or aren't going to make valid changes, then delete it! The fact that the people doing this are TAs in the Computer Science department makes me sad.

Also, as a general rule, when copying forward text that says it was updated “last year”, and said text is two years old, there's a little bit of editing that needs to be done. I mean, come on.

On the other hand it certainly is gratifying to see that the notes I spent two years creating and tuning appear to have become the de facto syllabus for the recitations.

Category: Geek

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Movie roundup for the week (movies I happened to see this week, not movies that are new this week):

The Good: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I wasn't expecting this to be very good (I was afraid that like Being John Malkovich it would never make any discernible point), but got it on a lark, and found it to be excellent. It was very thought-provoking in its exploration of the bittersweet aspects of relationships, but with a subtly that I find lacking (and aggravatingly so) in so many stories that try to make a point. I can't stand movies and books where you can practically hear the author shouting: “Now I am going to talk about topic X! Here is what I think about topic X. In case you missed that, I think this about topic X. Really! Lets go over that one more time—you stand right there, and I'll beat you over the head with my views. Great! Now back to the movie.”

Eternal Sunshine certainly had its share of really bizarre scenes that made no sense at the time, but by the end in most cases I could see how it fit in to the story being woven, and how its presence enhanced (again, subtly) the ideas.

Two thumbs up.

The Bad: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Bad does not even come close here—we borrowed it from the library, for free, and I still feel robbed. 106 minutes of my life are gone and I dearly want them back.

The theory that Laura and I have is that this sequel is the universe's way of balancing itself out. We got the original expecting it to be awful, and instead found it to be an entertaining, humorously campy experience. We got the second expecting another fun fluff movie, and instead had our very low expectations for the original realized this time around. Apparently the distinction between “campy” and “mind-bogglingly stupid” was lost on the scriptwriters/producers/directors.

I do not have enough thumbs to put down.

The ‘Meh’: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I actually saw this about a week and a half ago, but “The Good, The Bad, And I Didn't See A Third Movie” just didn't have the same ring. I wouldn't recommend Hitchhiker's to anyone, but I wouldn't actively dissuade anyone from seeing it either—that's about the best I can say about it. I know that The Man himself did a fair amount of the screen adaptation for this version, but I think some serious damage must have been done afterward. I simply can't believe that removing most of the funny dialog was his idea—presumably someone had to cut brutally to make room for important additions like the totally pointless dolphin scene at the beginning. On the bright side, there were sufficient amusing moments that I wanted neither my time nor my money back when I left the theater.

I guess my feeling is that if you already have two excellent adaptations (in the forms of the book and the radio show), making a significantly inferior third adaptation isn't a terribly good idea. But maybe I just miss Peter Jones.

Two thumbs that can't really be bothered to vote one way or the other.

Category: A & E

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It's getting to the point that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an exchange like this in the support section of one of the big Mac forum sites:

Posted by mac_n00b
so I opened up my hard drive and smeared the insides with butter to make it run faster but when I put it back in smoke came out of my computer and now it doesn't boot... help please!!!!

Posted by EliteMacGuru
Try booting from CD and running “Repair Permissions” on the volume

Given a week and a handful of fake accounts on some big Mac forums, I wonder what other bizarre witch-doctor fixes could be made to take root.

Category: Geek

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