New contact lenses give athletes an edge, by screening out certain wavelengths of light to make it easier to follow a quickly-moving ball.

Bonus: They tint your eyes red, making you look bad-ass.

Also at that link: Magnets implanted in fingertips give users a sixth sense for detecting, well, magnetic fields. Which may sound useless, until you find yourself being stalked by an electromagnetic ninja. Which, if my life is any indication, happens every two or three months.

An electric car that can, supposedly, take on Porches and Ferraris.

And thanks to a commenter, an article about the sex-robots we'll all be bangin' in five years.

Shawn wants to know if a sex-robot will have sex with a Beta Male. Well, of course they will. But while Alpha Males will get the super-advanced, super-hot, super-lifelike sex-robots, Beta Males, lacking money and status, will have to settle for clunky things that look like the maid from the Jetsons, except with an artificial pooter.

Two or three years down the line, Beta Males can purchase... used sex robots from their Alpha Male betters, who will be moving on to penile implants which provide direct intradork stimulation.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (79)
Post contains 198 words, total size 1 kb.

They seem to have a whole bunch of superstitions about different Islamic sects. Sunnis think Shi'as have tails; and non-Sunnis think Sunni women are really into a particular sex act I'll call "The Wonkette Special."

Rightwing Lesbian Megan comments:

Over one billion people are supposed to believe in this nonsense. This vicious, satanic, Koranic bullshit. This bloodsoaked Mohammedanism. This vile, barbaric, superstitious Arab garbage. This filthy death cult in which cowardly shithead losers who blow themselves up and inflict pain and death and loss and despair on innocent women and children are lauded as holy, in which people are stoned to death for loving someone of the same sex, in which women have acid thrown in their faces, in which women are burned alive, in which baby girls have their genitals mutilated for the crime of having two fucking X chromosomes.

And then she stops tip-toeing around the issue and tells us what she really thinks.

Rightwing Lesbian Megan laughs at Ann Coulter.

The Religion Of Peace Is Fun And All Until A Woman Gets Brutally Stabbed To Death By Her Family Update: Father and brother stab young woman to death for daring to reject family's chosen slate of arranged husbands. This happened in Londonistan.

A lot of this savagery cannot be blamed directly on Islam. Much of this is simple Stone Age barbarism.

But Islam certainly doesn't help. It's a decidedly Stone Age religion in philosophy, and rejects all "modern" notions, stuff like "you should not butcher your daughter or sister in an 'honor killing' just because she doesn't want to marry one of the primatives you've decided she should be a slave to."

Prosperity makes life worth living. The more prosperous a culture, the more happiness can be pursued, the more value a life has. A life stops being something simply to be endured and becomes something that actually can be enjoyed; and then murder and death start seeming like bad things, rather things devoutly to be wished.

Islam -- rule by know-nothing clerics who have no skills or creativity or industry whatsoever, save for chanting 22 hours a day -- keeps these cultures poor and life, consequently, cheap.

"Honor killings" happen because all these people have is their (undeserved) sense of "honor." They've got nothing else. No prospects for happiness, for betterment, for individuality, for economic advancement. No vision of a world constantly improving through science and medicine and technology.

And the Islamic religion, either by accident or design, keeps its captives in a permanent state of misery and want and hopelessness. When all you have is the next world, there's little reason to not simply butcher an uppity woman in this one.

Thanks to Craig.

Barbarism Isn't Just Islamic: Man slashes son, wife to death with machete.

The difference? He'll be put in jail, possibly put to death, unless he can manage to convince a jury he's insane.

The father in the "honor killing" described above, however, fled back to his native Pakistan where he is being hidden by his family members.

There's a slight difference between a culture where lunatic savagery occasionally occurs and one in which it is excused and defended by the public at large.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (58)
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Article here, user review here.

I took a look and I'm already disappointed. There are a bewildering array of brand names you never, ever heard of, and some strange absences.

I looked for Skippy Low-Carb Peanut Butter, which is hard to find in supermarkets but kicks all kinds of ass for Atkins dieters. It wasn't there. Okay, fine. But then, neither is regular Skippy Peanut Butter. There are Skippy Peanut Butter products, like Skippy Peanut Butter bars and Skippy Peanut Butter in squeeze bottles (???) and Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread, but no normal Skippy Peanut Butter.

So Skippy apparently agreed to supply Amazon, but only with test-market sorts of products. Odd.

You'd think that an online store would give you access to just about every brand-name you could think of... but you'd be wrong. From the review:

On the other hand, the selection is impressive but still a bit limited. If you want crunchy peanut butter, it's a Gourmet item and shipping will cost ya. Among 146 varieties of ground or whole-bean coffee, there's not a single Guatemalan offering, and if you want a case of energy drinks, say hello to HOOAH! Soldier Fuel and Pimpjuice, because Monster and Red Bull are nowhere to be found.

Pimpjuice? Pimpjuice? Okay, I might just break down and order a case of Pimpjuice. But as a general rule, Amazon doesn't look like a normal supermarket. If you walked into a market selling these odd-ball brand-names, you'd think you'd blundered into some kind of Bizarro World, or maybe accidentally wound up in an old but still running Russian Potemkin village, where everything seems sort of American, and yet... not quite.

Correction: Now Amazon's front page is offering me normal Skippy Peanut Butter. Not sure why a search for "Skippy Peanut Butter" didn't turn it up, but they do seem to have it. And reduced fat versions, too.

Not that that helps me. I want the fat, I just don't want the carbs.

Thanks to DDG.

Brave New World Update: Videogame makers cautiously enter the pornography market, with "games" in which you get to do things like, say, pretend you're having sex with an image of Jenna Jameson on your computer.

Hell of an innovation. Previously, when I'd wanted to pretend I was having sex with Jenna Jameson on my computer, I would have to download something called a "pornographic mpg or wmv file," play it, and then abuse myself with the repetitive mechanical fury of a misfiring industrial robot.

And now-- well, I can run this "game." And really "immerse" myself into the virtual world of Jenna Jameson, who looks increasingly strange as she surgically alters her face every three years, and looks stranger still as a computer-generated character, like an albino Drow elf with pneuamatic hooters.

So, I don't know. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for this; the market for beat-off products is already pretty well-saturated, isn't it?

I guess this game does offer the inducement of power-ups, and everyone will want to be the first pervert on his block with a +5 Holey Avenger and a Dick of Many Things.

Thanks to Allah, of course, for that one.

And then it gets really weird. Because a clothing line -- "Shai," whatever that is -- is now marketing its clothes online through (NOT SAFE FOR WORK, or MAYBE EVEN FOR HOME) actual full-hardcore, see-everything, to-completion pornography. It's like a normal online ad, with the models showing the clothes off, and with little buttons for you to click to find out about this jacket or those pajama pants, except that, you know, they're meanwhile having graphically-depicted sex.

Not at all safe for work, and the loading times are a bitch and a half.

The Internet seems to be bringing a single standard of sexual morality to the world, and that standard is, let us say, not overly concerned with being family friendly. In Europe, of course, you can see hardcore porn on free basic cable stations past 10 or 11 at night; heck, I think it might even be on broadcast stations. America is more resistant to that, and laws will probably forbid it, but the Internet is an end-run around the FCC, and almost everyone is in favor of keeping it an unregulated Wild Cyber West. It's already overtaking TV as the public's favorite entertainment venue; so, America will have free porn, at all hours of the day, constantly, ubiquitiously. While TV continues to show eight episodes of My Name is Earl in a row.

I wouldn't buy up media stock right now.

I got a Blade Runner* vibe watching this, imagining the world just ten years from now, when hardcore porn was used to sell virtually anything at all on line, even innocuous consumer products. Like, say, Skippy Low-Carb Crunchy Peanut Butter.

And I was thrilled.

No, really, I actually think that porn is going to grow increasingly boring as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous. People might just start having actual sex again.

Thanks to Jake for that one.

* Actually, it was more of a LOOKER vibe, Michael Crichton's terrifically fun movie about virtual actors, cosmetic surgery, increasing alienation from the real in favor of the digitially idealized, pornography, and advertising, featuring the coolest frickin' sci-fi gun ever (the Light-Optical Oculo-Kinetic Emotive-Responser, I think). The movie was made 20 years too early. Now this stuff seems right around the corner; some of it's already happening.

It continues to be available only on VHS, which is criminal. I don't know if it's truly a good movie, but if you were my age when it came on HBO, you probably still have fond memories of it. It was the "thinking man's Runaway."

They need to put this out on DVD. Heck, they need to remake it. I don't know if they'll top the casting of Albert Finney and James Coburn, but they could at least try.

Has to be more interesting than Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (31)
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The police gave "JackalGirl" a crime to solve, and the fire department staged a "fire" for her to rescue people from.

The day started off with a desperate call from Adam West, asking if "JackalGirl" could possibly help with the town's problems.

Too cute.

Thanks to Hell in a Handbasket.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (19)
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We were out last night because some cyberjihadis, whose main target was MyPetJawa, didn't have the l33t skillz to break into the system and so settled on a distributed denial of service attack on all of mu.nu's servers.

Described here.

I'm just saying: Look, if MyPetJawa is upsetting these people, shouldn't he be a little more understanding? Maybe if he took more efforts to "understand Islam,"* they wouldn't be so angry with him, and then the rest of us wouldn't be inconvenienced.

Please: Give in, Rusty. We can't have your unilateral attacks on people with legitimate grievances causing the rest of us problems. You must employ a "mu.nu test" for deciding if the rest of us support your belligerent provocations against Islamists. A little less of the Krazy Kowboy Krusader mindset might work wonders in "winning hearts and minds."

* Is it just me, or is your first reaction after turning on the news and hearing someone say "We must try harder to understand Islam" to wonder, "Oh God, what did they blow up now?"

It seems this "suggestion" that we must better "understand Islam" always comes after some new Islamist outrage.

I kind of wonder: After Muslims blow something up, and other Muslims cheer them on for doing so, shouldn't we really be asking if Muslims ought to try to "better understand" Western civilization? Perhaps paying particular attention to the Judeo-Christian moral imperative against murder?

Doesn't that make more sense? They are, after all, the ones killing people. Maybe they could better profit from an additional dollop of "understanding" or two than their victims?

Why is it the people who get blown up continuously have to learn about the folks planting the bombs?

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (52)
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Dang, that's like my favorite store! I love paying eight dollars for a box of organic mueslix!

The Austin-based grocer spent seven months studying the sale of live lobsters from ship to supermarket aisle, trying to determine whether the creatures suffer along the way.

In some stores, they experimented with "lobster condos," filling tanks with stacks of large pipes the critters can crawl inside. And they moved the tanks behind seafood counters and away from children's tapping fingers.

Ultimately, Whole Foods management decided to immediately stop selling live lobsters and soft-shell crabs, saying they could not ensure the creatures are treated with respect and compassion.

"We place as much emphasis on the importance of humane treatment and quality of life for all animals as we do on the expectations for quality and flavor," John Mackey, Whole Foods' co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

Animal rights activities were thrilled with the decision, not just because of the way lobsters are harvested, shipped and stored but because of the fate that awaits many of them — being dropped alive into a pot of boiling water.

"The ways that lobsters are treated would warrant felony cruelty to animals charges if they were dogs or cats," said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

But, see, they're not dogs or cats.

They really take this non-discrimination thing pretty far, huh? A lot of this stuff is semi-justified when we're talking about mammals. But lobsters? They are, no kidding, pretty much large insects. They're bugs allowed to grow large because size scales differently under water.

But they're tasty.

On the other hand, thinking about them as bugs just really put me off them.

Thanks to MoveOnandShutUp.org.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (68)
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It's one thing to be killed by these bastards. But to be captured? Worse than death, I'm imagining.

The military is looking for them, of course. I hope they find them. But this is bad.

We've managed to avoid this throughout the whole war. (An actual captured US serviceman, I mean.) I guess it was just a matter of time.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (31)
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A quarter of the US population has tattoos.

I don't. I missed the chance, when I was in my twenties. I'm not going to be like a guy mentioned in the article, who gets a tattoo before he turns 40 because he can hear the "minivan approaching." I don't know of any minivan-warding symbols I can put on my skin.

I'm anti-tattoo. I'm generally anti-fad, and I was really anti- this particular fad. I don't want to knock people too hard for having them, but they really made my life annoying during my twenties. Every time I was at a party people would begin having their "tatt talk," explaining how and when and why they got this particular Celtic-knot-circumscribing-a-dragon-biting-down-on-the-Chinese-character-for-entropy tattoo, or what this particular interlaced-barbed-wire-and-rose-vine-around-their-ankle might say about their personality.

It was, I guess, an identifier of a personality type -- Suburban Rebel -- and an excuse to talk to people of the opposite sex, neither of which are bad reasons for doing something. (I started smoking as an excuse to talk to girls -- girls always need cigarettes -- and that's a far less healthy thing to do.)

Still-- as one of the tribe of the non-inscribed: Really, really boring to sit through so much tatt-talk. And I didn't understand why others found it so fascinating. Sure, I doodle on the cover of my notebooks, but I don't strike up conversations with strangers about what I was thinking when I "inked" my Mead dream-journal with a sketch of Darth Vader fighting Robocop.

And so predictable. How many times can one hear a girl say she has a tatoo of a rose "in a place I can't show you" and react with titillated surprise? I mean-- well of course you do, darlin'. Who doesn't?

Always the same. This is my ankle one, I've got another one on the small of my back, and I've got a unicorn sodomizing Calvin and Hobbes simultaneously with his horn "in a place I can't show you." And then, as reactive as saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes, I'm supposed to raise my eyebrows as if I'm scandalized and aroused to hear something I just heard three minutes ago from the last chick telling me about her tatts.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (226)
Post contains 378 words, total size 2 kb.

I think this campaign is kind of absurd. Boondocks and Doonesbury go over the line all the time, and yet liberals don't seem to mind them all that much.

I think she shoud be criticized, not censored or denied an outlet. (At least, not before she goes, as I fear she will, full-tilt bonkers.)

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (143)
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Krakatoa is explaining how he derives confidence from his mad ninja nunchuck skillz and his extensive porn collection. And then one of Allah's debate partners pretty much challenges him to a fight.

Politics may cause heated discussions, but that's nothing next to discussions about sexual politics.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (12)
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.