Day: May 14, 2010

You Missed It: Job interview edition

I read a lot of news throughout the week. It’s part of my job, and I naturally want to stay up to date on the important subjects affecting the world. Admittedly, I avoid most celebrity news, because, well, I just don’t care. But I have to ask, who the hell is Justin Bieber, and where was he six weeks ago? It seems like he’s been on magazine covers, new stories, and random events all of a sudden. And he’s very popular with creepy older women. If you were busy resigning as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, odds are you missed it.

The bench gets steamy
President Barack Obama selection Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Jones Stevens on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court this week. Kagan has also served as dean of Harvard Law School, but has no actual judicial experience. This has led many in the Republican party to claim Obama picked her simply because of her looks.

Send in Chuck Norris
Yet another iPhone prototype was bought, filmed and reviewed by a tech blog this week. This time, it happened in Vietnam. In a video, the phone is disassembled by someone who has long fingernails. Following in the calm, measured response Apple had to the Gizmodo leak, when the company pressured cops to break down an editor’s door, Steve Jobs is asking the U.S. military to invade Vietnam.

Angry white men
Executives from BP and Transocean, the operator and owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, along with Halliburton, all blamed each other for the accident on April 20 and the ongoing oil spill during a congressional hearing. Lawmakers didn’t are, they blamed all of them anyway. Next up in the You Should Have Done Better hearings: Lebron James.

‘Gun-owners need not apply’

We’ve discussed guns in this space before. Americans have a right to them, and private businesses have a right to refuse service to anyone they choose … if they’re willing to make us leave.

Since open-carry proponents’ boycott of Starbucks isn’t working, the our brothers in Georgia have almost passed a law to allow privately-owned guns in non-secure areas of the airport. You know, the lobby to the place where it’s illegal to carry bottled water and pocket knives?

According to one of the lawmakers, State Rep. Tim Bearden, “Posting a metal sign that says ‘Gun-Free Zone’ is not going to stop a terrorist or any criminal intent on doing harm to law-abiding citizens.”

And Bearden’s right. A terrorist could pull a gun at the Delta counter. Or in the parking lot. Or in the men’s room when we’re just looking for a handie.

That’s why we need armed private citizens patrolling our airports for other armed private citizens. And to expedite this recruitment, we shouldn’t waste time with bothersome tests like in, say, law enforcement, airport security, anti-terrorist operations, the ability to use said weapon or basic logic.

IM IN UR BLOOD, FIXING ALL UR DUDES

DNA robots are alive. Alive!

And they’re totally in your blood. Fixing you all up like. At least, that’s what science says. We’re now one step closer to being in the future, except I still don’t have my f&^%ing jetpack.

There’s a lot of potential in this sort of thing-I personally see nanoscale machines, be they organic or metal, as the ‘cure’ for cancer, able to destroy cancerous cells without collateral damage. Of course, worst case scenario is that we end up with undetectable assassins. Which I’m not too against.

No, the real worst case scenario: members of the elite aristocracy use these DNA robots to turn themselves into immortal super beings, then they release a global swarm that will “reformat” the world into a “paradise” more to their liking. And by paradise, I mean one with a lot of figgy pudding.

One question: do they become violently insane when you flip the Y chromosome?

Another case of government pork

Sometimes, the United Kingdom is one of our closest allies. In nearly every war we’ve fought since double ya double ya ah, we’ve been joined at the hip heading into battle (except for World War II, where we decided to sit the first couple years out).

But now, there’s a rift that could threaten to undo the great alliance between the limeys and the Greatest Nation on Earth. You may have heard about the whole dissolution of Parliament and Prime Minister Gordon Brown stepping down thing, but did you know that they hold elections there, too?

That’s a good thing, America likes democracy, but we don’t let our animals vote. England cannot say the same thing. An English woman said her pig, or as they call them over there, “pig,” received a voter registration letter for the upcoming general election. How can we possibly be allies with a country that let’s mankind’s greatest foe vote in its own elections?

I’m pretty sure that’s what the War of 1812 was about.