First Rocky, now Rambo?

The retrospectively predictable, yet momentarily surprising results of placing something very hot into something relatively cold:

Goodbye glass cooking dish.  What will I make my brownies in now?

Google Reader’s “Trends” provides more information about my RSS reading habits than I want to have:

From your 80 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 6,358 items, starred 51 items, shared 0 items, and emailed 5 items.

That’s too many.

Does CNN think that Bobby Knight is mentally ill?

What’s my favorite type of sludge?  Activated sludge.

Pong was first released by Atari on November 29th, 1972 making today the 35th anniversary of the video game era. Happy anniversary to Pong, Atari, Nolan Bushnell, Al Alcorn and everyone else involved in the design/development of the game. The game was initially installed at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California and featured exciting, futuristic gameplay:

The test run in Andy Capp’s Tavern proved to be a smash success. Such a success that they started making commercials:

Based on the commercial, it’s hard to imagine who they thought audience for video games was going to be. But whatever potential missteps they may have made, everything seemed to work:

Atari churned out Pong at a breakneck clip, shipping 6,000 in 1973 alone. Desperate for new products, engineers tweaked new permutations: QuadraPong, Pong Doubles, SuperPong, Puppy Pong. But the breakthrough product was a version of Pong that could be played on the family TV set. Sears ordered 150,000 “Home Pong” units in 1975, and it became the bestselling item in its catalog.

To celebrate the anniversary, let’s play a game of pong:

Pong’s future today is bright. Well, moderately bright. Decades after its release, people are still creating version after version of the arcade standard (though none compares to the fun that must have been “Puppy Pong”). What will Pong look like in another 35 years? Only time will tell.

Have any more questions about Pong’s illustrious history? Answers can be found at Wikipedia or this surprisingly meticulous FAQ.

I’ve mentioned Ron Paul a lot, including my recent comparison of him to Snakes on a Plane, but I think I’ve finally pinned down a major Ron Paul problem, his unfavorables. Here are some results from the most recent Rasmussen poll in Iowa:

Among those likely to take part in the Iowa Republican caucuses, Romney is viewed favorably by 77%, Huckabee by 76%, Giuliani by 68%, and Thompson by 71%…

As for unfavorables, just 20% offer a negative assessment of Huckabee. Twenty-one percent (21%) have an unfavorable opinion of Romney, 24% say the same about Thompson, and 30% have a negative opinion of Giuliani.

McCain’s numbers have fallen since the previous Rasmussen Reports survey. Among Republicans likely to participate in the caucus, 54% have a favorable opinion of the Arizona Senator while 44% have an unfavorable view.

Ron Paul is viewed favorably by 39% and unfavorably by 52%.

Notice that bit at the end there? Ron Paul has an UNFAVORABLE rating above 50% That basically means that no matter what, more than 50% of Iowa Republican caucus voters will not vote for him. Money, media and message can do a lot to fix a public’s lack of knowledge about a candidate, but they can’t do much to fix a public’s established negative perceptions of a candidate.

A hundred November 5ths (or Tea Parties) won’t do Ron Paul any good if his unfavorables stay above 50%. And while those events raise a lot of money, they won’t do a lot to change negative perceptions. Of course, the commercials paid for by that money might help, but it hasn’t done so yet.

After my previous Virgin American lovefest, it seems sensible to point out that Virgin America makes great ads. Below is Virgin America’s Virgin Americans series of ads which have a subtle Sealab 2021 vibe about them (especially “Plugs”). Also of note is “Game” which features a series of all-star blogger cameos including Digg’s Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, BoingBoing’s Cory Doctrow, Xeni Jardin, Mark Frauenfelder, and Engadget’s Peter Rojas.

Plugs:

Game:

Read more »

One of the original versions of the Cheers theme song started with the following lyrics:

Singing the blues when the Red Sox lose
It’s a crisis in your life
On the run ‘cause all your girlfriends
Want to be your wife
And the laundry ticket’s in the wash

Also check out the full version of the theme song which includes a few wacky verses and an out of place saxaphone solo.

Via Cynical-C.

Libertarians against Ron Paul.

I see a typo and I want it grammatically correct,
No commas anymore I want them to turn black…

Troeltsch & Lorelei point out that the official title to Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones contains a comma in the original release, as in “Paint It, Black.” Keith Richards apparently feels the comma was mistakenly added by a secretary at Decca Records, while alternate theories consider the title to be racist. The comma has appeared intermittently on track listings ever since (according to a cursory search of Amazon).

Who, knew?

This scene from The IT Crowd made me laugh.

Wikipedia has a full list of all the references in Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

Via Cynical-C.

Someone asked one of my YouTube alter-egos “what was that song called about shooting a snake in the face?” The answer was M.F. Snakes on a M.F. Plane (lyrics NSFW) by Karate Monkey Death Car which I posted a year ago on another blog. What a great song.

Much like the afore mentioned Los Angeles Crime Map, Washington DC has its own city-provided crime map. It’s not as easy to use as LA’s, but it provides more detailed control. I was able to discover, for example, that in the past year my neighborhood has experienced 73 violent crimes within 1500 feet of my house including 1 murder, 3 sexual abuses, 28 robberies without a gun, 23 robberies with a gun, 16 assaults with a deadly weapon (not a gun) and 2 assaults with a gun.

Thankfully the murder and the assaults with guns are outside of my normal routes, but there was at least one robbery with a gun immediately outside my front door. I wish the site provided details about each individual incident.

Thus far this year 412 people have been murdered in New York City.  Approximately 29 of them were white and 272 were black.  Only 8.5% of the murders were committed by strangers — if that stat stays constant across races, only two or three white people were murdered by strangers in New York City so far this year (the number for black people would be around 23).  These numbers are staggeringly low.

Go Broken Windows.

“Southland Tales = weird and not bad.”

I have to give this driver credit for being bold:

Seriously, Kee (Key) Me? The amazing part is that nobody had yet keyed the car. I was tempted to do it on general principle.

Place world cities on a world map. It starts easy and gets harder. I got to level 9 with a score of 323,801 and a “Traveler IQ” of 107. Damn you Africa!

Via Neatorama and Militant Platypus.

In the 1860s the Secret Service busted a plot to steal Abraham Lincoln’s corpse:

Somehow Ben Boyd had to be sprung. As a contemporary lawman saw it: “They knew that money could not get him out. It had all been talked up, the money could have been gotten, but it was impossible.” So what to do? Kinelly thought he had the perfect solution: he (or rather his hirelings) would steal Lincoln’s body, then offer to exchange it for the freedom of Ben Boyd—plus a big cash bonus.

Apparently stealing (and ransoming) corpses was a big activity back then. Who knew?

I’ve had it with this motherfucking Ron Paul in this motherfucking election.

Ron Paul’s supporters are everywhere. I recently spotted this one at the Griffith Observatory above Los Angeles:

There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about this car or its slogans, but it’s indicative of the dozens and dozens of small but loving Ron Paul support signs I’ve seen over the past year. I’ve seen more support for Ron Paul in real life than I have for all the other candidates combined (I’m not entirely clear why), and that’s not even counting his online phenomenon which completely blows the other candidates out of the water.

The problem is, Ron Paul is Snakes on a Plane.

During the run-up to Snakes on a Plane, everyone was shocked by the amount of excitement and support the film had garnered online. Running Snakes on a Blog, I had a unique perspective on the actual number of people involved and could have told you that the buzz was being created by a relatively small number of extremely vocal, web-savvy people. The media focused on the fact that there was excitement, not on the number of people who were creating it. When the movie was actually released, the ticket sales were disappointing. The people who were excited about the film all went to see it, but that didn’t lead to dramatically improved sales among the general population. A small, vocal community doesn’t always transfer into general, real world results.

Ron Paul’s support appears to be similar.

Ron Paul’s supporters are, like Snakes on a Plane supporters, very web savvy and very vocal. They also appear to be very few in number (also like Snakes on a Plane supporters). With the exception of a recent bump in a few states, his numbers over the last year have lingered in the one to three percent range across the country. His people can sure as hell draw attention to themselves, and they can make some noise, but they aren’t numerous. Ron Paul raised $5 million on a single day, but he’s still not causing a major stir in the polls… this has all the hallmarks of being another cause that is unable to transfer its online enthusiasm into real world results.

Like Snakes on a Plane supporters after its Hollywood premiere, I expect that there’s going to be a lot of disappointment among Ron Paul supporters after the first few primaries. The excitement online just doesn’t necessarily translate into real world success and there’s no indication that Ron Paul is going to shake Snakes on a Plane syndrome.

This webpage has an annoying domain name.

I recently flew Virgin America between DC and Los Angeles and was very, very pleased with the service. In addition to all the well-touted and well-reviewed features, they paid a lot of attention to smaller details that can make a trip more enjoyable. The most impressive of these smaller details was the amount of care devoted to the safety placards and the safety video.

First the video. Tell me if you’ve ever watched a safety video as enjoyable (and non-condescending) as this one:

Now the safety placards. They, like the video, communicate the same safety information you’ve seen a thousand times, but Virgin America has gone through the trouble of updating the imagery so it doesn’t look like the hypothetical disaster is affecting passengers in some strange 1970s universe.

Here’s the entire Virgin America safety card:

Click to big-ify

Check out the attire on the passengers. And the facial hair. I’ve pinpointed a few examples of what I’m talking about:

Click to big-ify

Attention to minor details isn’t going to convert a bad customer interaction to a good one, but it indicates that someone, somewhere is actually thinking about the customer and trying to make every aspect of his/her experience a better one. That bodes well for everything else. Good job!