Much like Andy Riley's fantastic Great Lies to Tell Small Kids, Fake Science provides all sorts of information which just isn't true, but is hilarious.
Of course, it's not always completely false, and sometimes it's depressing in addition to being funny.
Eileen Jones humorously echoes many of my own thoughts about Facebook.
Maybe somebody could explain Facebook to me. I’m on it and I still don’t get it. I hate it without understanding it, like a dog barking at a vacuum cleaner.
I've been on Facebook for over six years, since it first launched outside of Harvard. After all that time, I still don't know what the point is. Every few months I sign in to my account, reject a bunch of fallacious friend requests, increase my privacy controls, and contemplate deleting the whole damned thing.
Update: The link for this article has been corrected.
Calling in to an automated telephone system, you almost always just want to speak to a human. After wading through a sea of button-presses, you finally get to the right department. "To better assist you", that automated woman you just want to throttle until she can no longer calmly but perpetually stymie your attempts at resolution says, "please enter your 16 digit account number". You laboriously enter this number, then wait while the call finally rings through to a real-live human who might even be on the same continent as you.
Of course, when you finally do reach someone, John or Jane or Ranjit has no idea who you are nor what you're calling about. So you again provide your account number digit by digit, all the while wondering what the point of this, what the point of anything, is. Time passes, the progress of human civilization is slowed, and the global happiness index declines.
At least on the Internet, information can be passed around with ease. For instance, when you receive an email like this to check in for your flight:
That handy "Check In Now" button will pass along all the requisite information. Once you click it, you'll be logged in automatically, and ready to print out your boarding pass:
Or…not. The page which loads is devoid of any useful information. The system has no idea who you are and checking in manually seems to be the only option. But what was the URL for that "Check In Now" button, exactly? Was it just a link to AirTran's standard check-in page, with no customization, despite all that information being included elsewhere in the email?
http://ebyepass.airtran.com/FindReservation.aspx?process=ExternalReservation&depcity=BOS&confirmcode=KGGLUE
Oh come on! Look at that:
depcity=BOS
confirmcode=KGGLUE
Canny as you surely are, dear reader, it is no doubt obvious to you that the first bit indicates "Departure City: Boston" and the second provides "Confirmation Code: KGGLUE". Now what did they want on that check-in page?
It's all there, AirTran, everything you want!
Is this story mildly amusing or deeply depressing? Either way, the tales of the wakaresase-ya in Japan are at least fascinating.
The function of the wakaresase-ya is the direct opposite of a dating agency: with great ingenuity, and the right fee, they will prize apart human relationships. Do you have a troublesome ex-boyfriend who won’t leave you alone? A beloved son who is getting engaged to an unsuitable girl? A dead-loss employee who refuses to take the hint and retire? All of these difficult situations can be resolved by the splitter-uppers.
What does someone who does this for a living think about it?
"Life consulting — that’s what this job is," Mr. Tomiya says. "When people have no one to listen to their problems, then they end up committing suicide or resorting to murder. But by paying a certain amount to have their problems solved — well, that’s good for everyone. That’s why I’m proud of my job."
This high-minded rhetoric comes from someone who was hired by a man's mistress, to seduce that man's wife. This seduction will then give the husband grounds for divorce, leaving the entrapped wife with no career and no means of support. That'll be good for her, somehow, I'm sure.
Also worth noting is that Mr. Tomiya is married himself, and his wife works in the business with him. Classy.
In other plane-related news, Thomas Salme had an expired commercial pilots' license, but he was never properly certified to fly passenger planes. Apparently, that didn't much matter. With a forged license, he was able to rack up 10,000 hours shuttling passengers over 13 years. He also had a flawless safety record.
Upon finally being caught, Salme's punishment is to be banned from flying for one year and fined approximately $2500.
The SR-71 was a fascinating spy plane, but the grandfather of them all is the U-2. The U-2 actually outlasted the SR-71, which was originally intended to be its replacement. The linked article discusses the chase cars which followed the U-2 to assist it in landing.
A summary of how to land a U-2 spy plane:
Slow down, fly down to the deck at around 140 mph.
Have chase cars drive on runway, hauling ass behind you and offering radio advice.
Land plane in polite, controlled crash.
Don't screw up.
It's 8 AM, Saturday morning. Like any normal person who isn't a baker or a truck driver or some sort of half-crazed magician who practices obsessively for as many as 18 hours a day, you're still asleep. Rapidly, however, you find yourself woken by a muffled but loud noise. The noise repeats itself over and over again, making it impossible to sleep.
It is apparently a sound check1, at eight in the damned morning on a Saturday. At this point, if you are a religious person, you have two options. You can demand that your god strike down these evildoers with great speed and fiery vengeance. Alternately, you can renounce your faith. Either way, you're awake now, and on a sour note.
This was my Saturday, as the bank in the shopping plaza next door decided to celebrate their grand opening with a carnival. Read that again – a bank decided to celebrate their opening with a carnival. That is truly bizarre.
This is the same TD Bank who, in December of 2009 while still under construction, put up a sign stating "Open 7 Days A Week". Almost three months later, in February of 2010, the bank finally opened its doors to customers. However, that was apparently some sort of "soft opening", because after another three months, they had their official "Grand Opening". Again, this is all for a bank, one with hundreds of branches already open.
All this led to a revelation: TD Bank has no concept of time.
With no concept of time, TD Bank decided to have the band for their carnival do a sound check at 8 AM. They also decided to have their carnival begin at just an hour later. Attendance for the first three hours was predictably sparse. No one wants a hot dog from the free hot dog cart at 9 in the morning, because that is disgusting. Their "Additional parking at subway station – Shuttle service provided!" sign was laughably optimistic. For a time, there were more men on stilts juggling bowling pins (1) than attendees (0).
Eventually, attendees outnumbered employees of the bank, but it was still close. While this can largely be attributed to the fact that, yet again, this was a carnival for the opening of a freaking bank, it's possible potential attendees got lost. You see, TD Bank also has no concept of space.
This is the invitation they sent out, listing the address as "Alewife Brook Parkway & Lakeview Avenue". Now have a look at a map of the area. Lake View Avenue (not "Lakeview") doesn't actually intersect with Alewife Brook Parkway at all. The point where it comes the closest to doing so is, as the crow flies, over a third of a mile off from the bank's location. Driving, that distance is more like half a mile away. That's…not close.
I've never used TD Bank. Perhaps they provide fantastic service. Maybe they have the most delicious lollipops. Until they get a few physics lessons to learn about time and space, however, customers should be awfully worried about just how many days their checks will take to clear.
Footnotes:
In fact, it was probably the most annoying soundcheck I've ever heard and I wish I'd been awake enough to get a recording. What you hear is an attempt at a recreation, from the memory which haunts my brain. ↩
As you might imagine, things did not end well for the assailants. These ninjas are very productive, but perhaps they should run a bit more.They also failed to notice a ninja, Nathan Smith, standing in the shadows outside the dojo. Mr Smith immediately alerted his sensei, or teacher.
In baseball, a walk is as good as single (at least if no one is on base). In the case, however, the Astros were likely none too happy being forced to walk from their hotel to the ballpark on Sunday due to traffic snarls caused by the Bay to Breakers race.
It capped a miserable day for the Astros, many of who were forced to walk to AT&T Park from their hotel two miles away because taxi drivers refused to take them into the traffic from the Bay to Breakers foot race in the area.
This is the same Bay to Breakers mentioned yesterday. If you're interested, that post has been updated with a (safe for work) photo of park sex.
Over the past weekend, the 2010 Bay to Breakers race/saturnalia took place in downtown San Francisco. I ran the race, took part in the madness, and lived to tell about it. If you’re considering running or attending Bay to Breakers, this post may be of use to you.
The race starts at a point a couple blocks inland from the San Francisco Bay, and runs for 12 kilometers across the city, ending on the Great Highway, just before the beach. The name of the race is blatantly inaccurate, but "Just Inland From the Bay to Not Quite at the Ocean" is a lot less catchy, in addition to being more difficult to fit on a running bib.
If you're truly interested in a competitive race, Bay to Breakers may not be for you. Oh sure, it attracts a few Kenyans, but the ratio of competitive runners to overall participants is miniscule. If you don't run in the elite group, or perhaps the A or B groups right after, you're in for a long seven and a half miles of trying not to step on other people. The C group where we started was utter bedlam, and tortillas were flying everywhere. That's not a euphemism1 – people bring and throw thousands of soft tortilla shells at one another. The subsequent D and E groups only get worse, as far as running goes.
For tens of thousands of casual runners, as well as those who probably wouldn't even run to catch a bus, Bay to Breakers is simply an event. There are thousands of participants dressed in fantastic costumes, from Avatards to Waldos and everything in between.2 Perhaps the best costume was this guy dressed as a dog, but a close runner-up was the knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They ran in a mimed riding style, shouted a litany of movie quotes, and had a porter behind them banging coconut shells, for the entire race. Dedication!
My friends and I dressed as ninjas, because a long-sleeve, long-pants all-black costume replete with a full head mask is the perfect get-up for a long road race. Far from dying of heat exhaustion as we intended, however, the costumes kept us warm on a cold day. Many believe San Francisco is part of California, but its weather is clear proof that this is simply not so.
If you choose to run a race as a ninja, you're sure to get plenty of cheers. When someone calls out "Ninjas!", a quick turn of the head coupled with a "Shh" gesture is a great crowd pleaser. Squinting also works well for photographers, and skulking up behind other runners often has great results. While everyone loves ninjas, it's now clear that white people love ninjas the most. More specifically, they love the "Strictly for my ninjas!" catchphrase, probably because it's the closest they can get to saying that other N word.
Instead of donning costumes, a small number of participants take part in Bay to Breakers naked. Perhaps this sounds appealing to you. If so, this must be because you haven't looked around you lately. People are, by and large, disgusting, and the participants in Bay to Breakers are no different. Unfortunately, far too many of these grotesque specimens of humanity ascribe to the philosophy of "If you don't got it, flaunt it anyway". The best plan is to simply keep your eyes unfocused and always moving, because a blurry glance at an old man's equipment as it flops around is really the most your cerebral cortex can handle.
As the race winds down, the rolling party takes over, growing especially large near a park known as the Panhandle. At this point, the shift from serious running to serious drinking is complete. Thousands upon thousands of people simply walk up the street along the race course, modeling their outfits, showing off their floats, and imbibing alcohol with wanton disregard for unenforced open container laws. After walking with this mass for a bit, I am now able to scientifically verify that Mitch Hedberg was right when he said "If you're watching a parade, make sure you stand in one spot. Don't follow it, it never changes."3
Many participants enjoy mind-altering substances and drinks during the event. For instance, according to one observer, that midget was wasted! Prior to the event, four young men passing by in a beat-up Honda Civic beeped their horn and rolled down a window, to share the secret that they were, quote "so fucking high", and it's a certainty that they weren't the only ones. When drinking, just remember that there are as many as 100,000 participants in the events, and under 1,000 portable toilets. Do the math, and you'll see you probably will need to carry the 1.
Eventually the party ends, or at least spreads out across the city, and then the clean up happens. The course is shut down block by block, with police on motorcycles to clear out revelers, and street sweepers bringing up the rear. It's impressive to see, but after a quick viewing, it's time to find another party. The day is still young, and the world is your oyster, whatever the hell that means.
One last piece of advice though. Don't attempt to have sex on the grass in a park. The slow clap I'll start from the rooftop of an apartment overlooking the spot you've chosen has proven to be a real mood killer.
Footnotes:
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