You Missed It: Damn dirty ape edition

This is the really sucky time of year. You’re broke from Valentine’s Day, it’s cold, and the only sports you can watch are those of college (sorry, NHL, you don’t count). We all just need to stick it out a few more weeks until the glory that is St. Patrick’s Day is upon us. So while we’re waiting for that time warp we ordered, here’s something to pass the time.

If you were busy putting out a new license agreement saying you own whatever users upload to your site, then retracting your statement, odds are you missed it.

Oh George, you certainly are a curious little monkey
Like most Americans, Sandra Herold of Stamford, Connecticut had a pet chimpanzee. It was so cute when she got it as a baby. She fed it well, trained it, slept next to it in a bed and even gave it kisses when she left the house. But one day, the chimp turned into a 200-lb. monster. It came out of nowhere. How could anyone see a large, powerful monkey with an owner whose mental stability is questionable be seen as a threat? On Monday, the chimp attacked a woman, nearly killing her. Police had to shoot the monkey. Remember: this could happen to you are your chimp, too.

Sharpton not an ally in the War on Animals
On Wednesday, the New York Post ran a political cartoon making reference to the chimp incident. It showed a dead chimp and two cops with guns, one saying inferring that a monkey had been the one working on the economic stimulus bill. The black community, lead in part by Rev. Al Sharpton, saw this as a racially insensitive cartoon. Because, you know, sensitivity is what we have all come to expect from a splashy tabloid like the Post.

Worst case: One could end up elected governor
A report from the military warned of giving machines too much killing power and autonomy this week. The U.S. Office of Naval Research report says that if we giving killing machines too much automated power, we could risk a machine mutiny and subsequent war against the human race. The report stressed extensive testing before unleashing any new robot weapons into the field, adding, “Dude, that new Terminator movie coming out this summer looks sa-weet!!!”

Another day, another Hitler headline

Adolf Hitler, the dead dictator of Deutchlund (that’s alliteration, Kyle), has made yet another headline this week, this time through Fox News’ pressing coverage of YouTube fads.

For the uninitiated, a YouTube fad is a joke that other people imitate for about 2 days, and then promptly becomes unfunny when Fox News covers it as News.

Users are posting footage of the mustachioed, megalomaniacal mastermind of mass murder (boo-yah) yelling at underlings in the 2004 movie, Downfall, with new subtitles about why he’s pissed:

Of course, it wouldn’t be a news report about a fleeting cultural phenomenon on Fox unless somebody was offended. A group representing Holocaust survivors has objected to at least one video in which the balmy Bavarian bratwurst-eschewing bomb-dodger has trouble finding parking in Tel Aviv, Israel.

To be honest, you’d probably have to be Jewish to get that one, anyway.

Cancer cures put on hold for more research into DUH news

Nothing to see here people. Move right along. Water is still wet. Grass is still green. Balls are still round and men still see women in bikinis as objects. How do we know this?

Because we have a surplus amount of lazy graduate student scientists.

Here’s a way to understand the study: Scarlett Johansson is washing her car in a bikini. Because you’re a dirty pervert, you watch her doing so from her lawn hedge. The purpose of the study is to show the difference between thinking, “Scarlett is washing her car. It must be dirty.” and “Wash that car, Scarlett. Oh yeah! So dirty!”

Basically, they’re saying the first one, you associate a passive activity, and prescribe reason and motivation to why she’s doing something. The second one makes the actions much more directly associated, applies that all motivations are sexual, and involves more dirty words running through your mind.

So, what does this mean? Since science is not actually trying to attempt to solve anything useful, like curing horrible diseases or building me a sweet robot body, henceforth, scientists should only be allowed to study rutabagas. It would be just as productive as what they’re doing now.

WoW is greener than you

Stanford Professor Byron Reeves thinks World of Warcraft can be harnessed as an energy-saving tool by attaching Smart Meter readings to gameplay goals. Sadly, he wants energy-saving, not energy building.

Smart Meters monitor the electricity in a household and feed that information to power companies. By uploading it to WoW instead, Reeves thinks the game could become a tool to encourage environmental awareness.

Reeves went on radio show Living on Earth for their Green Gaming segment last Saturday to pitch the idea:

“So imagine that you’re in your home, you’re signed into [the] game… and you make a decision in the game to turn off the lights in an unused bedroom [in real life]. As soon as you do that, the Smart Meter recognizes that, sends the information through the network to your computer and your house [in the game] turns a shade of green that it wasn’t before. And if I’m using less electricity, my team might do well. I get gold pieces and points… whatever the game designers think is fun. You get feedback in an entertainment game about what you’re doing in the real world.”

At his office, Reeves said the point of having Smart Meters as part of gameplay was to get gamers thinking about ways to be more energy efficient while letting them game … because what WoW players need to know is how to become more efficient while playing that game.

You know what would be a much better device for the WoW player? The Cheetometer, used to measure the amount of Cheetos intake by the average WoW player.

I’m totally calling trademark dibs on “Cheetometer”.

Extinction never tasted so good

Worcester’s buttonquail was a species of bird believed to be extinct. For a long, long time it had not been seen in the Philippines, and the bird had never been photographed.

That is until the damn bird was caught, photographed by National Geographic, a well-known terrorist organization.

However, this story has a happy ending. The bird was found by the “journalists” alive and well–on the poultry market. It was soon sold and eaten.

“What if this was the last of its species?” said Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu.

How fitting an end.