• Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google today for copyright infringement.  Many of Viacom’s shows were posted, and still are posted, on Youtube - including popular shows like the Daily Show, South Park, and the Colbert Report.  Viacom wants compensation for these vids - which actually seems fair.  I mean, youtube is selling adspace for what - shows that Viacom created.  Viacom should get something, right?
• It seemed obvious that content providers who were getting burned by Youtube were just waiting for the site to get acquired by a heavyweight like Google.  Youtube was what, a 30 person company with a net loss - they would just laugh at a $1 billion suit.  Why not just sue a homeless guy for $1b.  But Google…I mean, seems clear to me, that this is what all these content holders were waiting for - a deep pocketed company that would purchase Youtube, and could subsequently be sued for billions.  Makes sense right?  and I don’t have a stanford phd - I’m not even sure which letters in ‘phd’ are capitalized - but I think someone f’ed up with this acquisition.
• Is Google running out of ideas?  I mean, their last big idea was Gmail - and that admittently was paradigm shifting.  But since then they’ve just been acquiring here and there, launching random services, none of which are remarkable…What gives?  Even Google Phone rumors stick of also ran.
• Here’s an interesting story from Consumerist.  Some woman found a big insect leg in her Apple Walnut Chicken Salad.  Anyway, good job Consumerist for publishing this.  I’m really liking their site - it puts a lot more power in the hands of consumers.

• Hey, just found this picture of O.J. Simpson at the Kahala Hilton hotel in Hawaii.  When I was a kid - like 10 years old - I went to the Maile Room, which is a restaurant at the Kahala Hilton, with my family.  Anyway, I walked out of the restaurant to go to the bathroom, and some guy was outside, and was like, ‘did you see that guy, that’s O.J. Simpson.’  And of course I had no idea who OJ was, because he was a bit before my time, I wasn’t really into football, and he hadn’t started killing white women yet (as far as we know).  Just a random thought.

• Why to Japanese girls have such bad teeth?  Here’s a theory.  I think it has to do with Japan the country, because in Hawaii there are plenty of j’s, and their teeth weren’t bad like j’s in Japan.  I always thought flouride was the answer - but flouride prevents teeth decay, not crooked teeth.  Anyway, if you ever go to japan, take a look.  It’s really apparent.  I mean, it sounds a little racist or whatever, but it’s true.
• So, clearly I’ve been surfing Yahoo! Answers all day today, and I came upon this question.  Pretty incendiary, right?  But I mean, if you look at race, and say, eduction or whatever, there are statistically significant correlations you could draw.  Probably the same with race and athleticism.  I mean, the answer that was given makes sense to a certain extent, although it doesn’t mention the more likely answer - income, social status, etc., which to a large degree is because of segregation, racism, slavery, etc.
• But I get hung up on this - clearly there are physical differences between races - skin color obviously, hair, eye color, height, health, muscle structure, bone structure, etc.  So, why can’t there be racial differences for things like intelligence?  The brain after all is a muscle of sorts, right?  It’s a product of genes and evolution just like everything else.  I mean, I think it’s ignorant to accept that there are physical differences between races, but then stop at intelligence and say, well there can’t be any racial trends here, because god creates everyone equal, or just pass off the question as racist.
• I guess one point is that intelligence is a subjective term - a lot of ‘intelligence’ in the way that we consider it depends on education.  That is true, but there still is some physical capacity of the brain - and I don’t see what that should not be bound by the laws of evolution or genomics than any other part of the body - even if it isn’t super nice or PC.
• I mean, I think the point here is that there are always statistical deviations so you can’t judge a single person by broad stereotypes.  Regardless of how skewed the statistics are, you can never generalize a single person - I mean, look at Steve Nash - who would have ever expected that guy would be so successful.  But at the same time, I don’t think that we have to stick our heads in the sand because a topic is a little bit racy.  There are differences between races - let’s just accept that.  We evolved over millions of years or whatever across the globe.  It happens.  Why does PC mean we have to sweep everything under the rug?
• And can we make a rule that representatives at customer contact centers should be trained to speak traditional english.  I don’t like talking to the guy who’s ‘axeing’ me questions.  Just hard to understand.  And it’s hard to talk on the phone while holding my purse with the other hand.

Anyone out there use Tor?  In case your not already familiar with the Tor network let me describe it simply.  Tor is a virtual network within the Internet that allows users to mask their original location from the end supplier of the information.  This is accomplished by packaging the information in such a way that it is routed through several servers before reaching its end location.  You can find more detail (more technically accurate information) from their website at http://tor.eff.org

I’m bringing up Tor now because of an issue that came up recently regarding a paper that was published outlining a theoretical way to pierce the veil of anonymity of the Tor network.   As an avid supporter of Tor, I was concerned about whether someone truly found a way to track Tor users.  This paper was published on the notable tech news site slashdot.org.

Last week the Tor development community published their response on a blog.  My personal opinion of their response is that they fail to really address the issue today through a software patch or a quick and dirty work around.  I almost think that their assertion that they haven’t seen the attack carried out “in the wild” really doesn’t disprove the argument that such an attack is possible or already being carried out. Furthermore, by stating that these vulnerabilities have been well known for some time before the paper was published seems to reinforce my belief that they seem to want to dampen the problem.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that the Tor project is mismanaged (because its not) and I’m not saying that the network is vulnerable (I am not that smart) I’m merely saying I would be more comfortable if the Tor people addressed these issues in a better way.  I do think the project is important for many people in the world that live in countries that are “less than free.”  If you are someone living in these areas I personally would still use Tor but I would definitely pay critical attention to any news that comes out regarding additional vulnerabilities.

Also, if you have an extra buck or two please find some time to give some love back to the Tor project.  Maybe with more support they’ll be able to make everyone happy; even snotty kid like me.

There has been a big stir lately about an article published in Asianweek titled “Why I hate blacks” written by Kenneth Eng. Since the article was taken off the Asianweek website, you can find a copy HERE:

SF Chronicle published a story today about the backlash surrounding this article. I’m always confused by a media debate that ends with the statement “I believe in the first amendment but in this case someone went to far.” Too Far? Is that possible?

I didn’t think the first amendment applied to those comments that are only mildly disagreeable. Remember that story about the college opinion editor that wrote the article that contained the phrase “Rape only hurts if you fight it” First of all, the article was meant to be satire and people ignored that and took it literally; even after he said it was a work of satire! This poor kid was dragged in front of television cameras and forced to comment. He was totally fucked. His own newspaper sold him out, demoted him and appologized for offending anyone. His only crime was having poor taste, shouldn’t he be allowed that right? I think its a sad state of affairs when journalists are no longer allowed to publish opinion pieces that will offend people, even if it is designed that way.

Although these two cases might have proved examples of poor choices for writing topics, I do think their speech should be protected. The content of the writing shouldn’t determine whether or not, these people have a right to publish their opinions. Although Kenneth Eng in particular really stepped off the mainstream with his rant, I’m suprised that it got published because its so poorly written. Wouldn’t it be a boring world if everyone just agreed with each other?

I was watching television yesterday and noticed a new commercial for Nasonex, an allergy medication. The weird thing was that there is a bee in the commercial that flys around with a Mexican accent? Seriously WTF? Is it just because of The Simpsons that someone would imagine a funny bee with a Mexican accent? I don’t get it, nothing about Mexico even remotely relates to a bumble bee. Stashmedia has a copy of the commercial here.

This guy critiques the biological inaccuracies of the Nasonex bee. Its pretty dorky but interesting nonetheless. A real lovefest over here

This racism is killing me. -Dave Chappelle

As Barack Obama continues his candidacy for president people are beginning to talk about his smoking. But what does it mean? I’ve heard the argument before, I believe in an article somewhere about a company hiring new employees. The owner of the company said he would never hire an employee that smoked, since that person must not be intelligent enough to realize “paying money to kill yourself is a bad proposition.” Could this be really true? Do people out there think that only stupid people smoke?

I’ve wrestled with this idea a long time and I’m not sure I’m any further than when I started. The employers argument is factually correct. I think we’re at the point in our nation that everyone knows that smoking isn’t good for you and the longer you do it you can expect adverse health effects from it. Its hard to say that ignoring the negative effects makes you dumb. You could just not care; right? I’m sure for Obama like most smokers its probibly tough to describe why they smoke. They just do it because they like it.

I’ve also read some discussion about Obama’s smoking being a positive thing for his image. That thought is definitely something to ponder. Smoking cigarettes has long been associated with the a rebelious persona. This could somewhat fit into the image the Barack is trying to portray. People do appreciate the politico that they feel are able to just tell it like it is. From what I can tell of my circle of friends, some find it comforting to see that Obama has a little stink on his hang low. It makes him more human. I think only time will tell if the rest of America is able to embrace the smoking issue.

P.S. One odd thing I noticed was mentions of Obama’s preferred cigarette brand seemed to mysteriously change from Marlboro Reds to Kools (a menthol.) great guys! very subtle…

Slashfood today had an interesting article about food and relationships.  The article posed the question whether a relationship can truly work if one person has a restrictive diet.  I have a little personal experience in this area, I once dated someone that claimed to be on a vegan diet, and to be perfectly honest, eating with her sucked.  At the time I played the game and lied and said “vegetarian food is good” or “I don’t mind not eating meat  if it bothers you,”  Deep inside I knew my palate was crying.

First most of these vegan places are usually very dogmatic, I don’t know what it is about the lifestyle but it attracts people that usually have a grab bag of extreme political views.  Its not enough to just avoid eating meat and dairy, you need to constantly reinforce this choice through statistics and pseudo science.  The second thing is that most of the vegan food out there tastes awful, its not that its lacking meat ingredients its bad because it lacks much of the seasonings and cooking techniques that are time tested to make delicious food.  The third problem to usually arise is that people that claim these views are critical of other people that don’t have the same diet as they do.  Although most claim to be open-minded thinkers, eating meat with them is a constant struggle with comments and strange looks.  I can’t tell you how many times I had to hear how “better” you feel internally by not eating meat.  Is so funny because most of these people lack a frame of reference to determine if they truly feel any different w/meat or w/o meat.   My favorite story that all vegetarians (or vegans) like to throw out is the old story about how when they “tried” to eat meat it made them violently sick.  I think that’s the biggest load of horseshit I’ve ever heard!  I know all my carnivorous brethren out there feel me on that point.

In conclusion, I think people of two opposing diets can work but only in one regard.  Someone will need to eventually compromise and not really care about what they eat.  In my case I eventually thought the chick was psycho (unrelated to the vegan diet) so the relationship didn’t last, but to be honest: I care a lot about what I eat and I don’t think its fair that we have to cancel the Zuni Cafe reservation to eat at Cafe Gratitude (I’ll have to save the review of this disaster for another time.)  So all you self-described vegetarians out there dating a full fledged carnivore, Good Luck!

Yahoo has an article entitled 4 Ways to Ruin Valentine’s Day — and How to Avoid Them. In this piece by a Men’s Health columnist, this male expert offers four key ways to improve a guy’s chances at scoring bonus points with his girlfriend on Valentine’s day. It might not be obvious from my name, but I’m a girl, so I’m filled with all of that illogical nature that SushiAttack rants about. So you can take my word when I say that this guy doesn’t know jack about how to impress a woman at all, and I pity whatever poor sap tries to “wow” his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

Let’s start off with what this guy suggests men should do. 1) Instead of getting the girl a card, write her an *email* describing your top 10 reasons you love her. 2) Instead of roses, buy her orchids because they’re exotic, not cliche, and will last longer than roses. 3) Instead of going out to a restaurant for dinner, order take out foods. FINGER foods that require you to feed each other using your hands. 4) Instead of lacey lingerie, buy her comfortable cottom boy shorts and a tank top.

Okay, so now that he’s set up his suggestions, let me tell you why a girl would NEVER EVER EVER appreciate this approach:

• The most important thing a guy needs to remember about any type of special occassion is that thought and effort are paramount. A guy really needs to have some sort of tangible item to present to his girlfriend. An email won’t cut it. Cards are cheesy and have nothing really meaningful at all in them. But that’s why you write a message inside of the card. Take those top 10 reasons you love her and write it in the card. Or, if you don’t like cards, write it on stationary and leave it for her in front of her keyboard. An email is too convenient and lacks a certain amount of thought and effort. It’s like why 99% of women would never consider ever sending an evite in lieu of a paper invitation to their wedding. Electronic format lacks a level of specialness and it shows that you can’t even take the time to walk to a grocery or drug store. In this case, form is only slightly less important than substance.
• Next: Pay attention to what your girlfriend likes. If she’s the traditional type, roses are likely exactly what she likes and she’ll like them on Valentine’s day. If she’s mentioned that she doesn’t really like flowers b/c they die so quickly, maybe get her something else that she would prefer. A gift of something that she’s really been wanting is probably going to be more appreciated than a mere traditional token that she doesn’t really like anyhow. If she does like orchids, then go for them. If you don’t know if she likes flowers, err on the side of caution and get her some. It’s a rip off on Valentine’s day, but the thought and effort are always going to be appreciated. No guy ever really got slammed b/c he was thoughtful and got his girlfriend the traditional expensive sign of love. Only true bitches can voice that complaint. If she does, you’ll still win if you spin it as I said. If not with her, then in the publicity war if she complains to anyone else. They’ll just think that she’s selfish and you’re a sweet, thoughtful, romantic boyfriend.
• Think about the mood that really turns your girlfriend on. If she is a foodie, she’ll likely love to go out on Valentine’s day and try out some new restaurant. If she is more of a homebody and really hates crowds or is just really zonked from work and being out all the time, then ordering in is likely a good option. Just think about what types of foods she would want. Finger foods can be possibly arousing for desserts, but I doubt anyone is really into the idea of feeding each other the entire meal. I mean, in reality, nobody’s really jonsing on the idea of eating eggrolls and sushi that’s shoved in their face by their boyfriend. And please, if you’re going to handfeed each other, don’t try anything messy like buffalo wings or swedish meatballs. You’re just asking for more gross and sloppy than erotic there. BUT, something that every guy should consider is some sort of chocolate covered dessert to hand feed each other. A little bit of feeding each other is good. An entire meal is unnecessary. And dessert is the end, so you can still end up with some great intimacy to segue into more interesting activities.
• TRY to imagine what your girlfriend might think of the message you’re sending her with the gift. Okay, lacy lingerie is without a doubt really for the guy. Nobody can argue against that. But women do like to feel sexy and feel that their boyfriends still think that they’re sexy. Giving her boyshorts and a tank top instead of lingerie trades the sexiness for the dumpiness too much. A woman will think for at least a split second that there’s some sort of unpleasant negative connotation in such a gift.

Okay, so now that I’ve addressed this article’s suggestions, here are a few more tips on what to do for a girl’s special occassion.

• Try to take queues from your girlfriend. If she mentions that she wants something, write it down. Or, even better, Amazon now has a great feature called Gift Organizer. You can create separate entries for each person in your life and save various items for them as potential gifts. That way, if there’s no special occassion immediately approaching, you’ll have saved yourself some headache in the future.
• Learn from history. It gets said all the time, but take what you know from the past and adjust accordingly. Also, your girlfriend will likely hope/expect for the same amount of effort and thought that she put into your birthday or whatever last special occasion. If it was pretty laid back, you should at least try to meet that baseline. You will have the higher ground if you at least met the level of effort and thoughtfulness that she put into doing something for you.
• Remember that all girls are different. These suggestions are pretty true as a whole, but of course all girls are different with different levels of expectations. I’d say that I’m a pretty low maintenance girl. I don’t expect to have really expensive gifts or dinners liek some skankyass gold digger, and I’m pretty chill with my demands. Take these suggestions as the minimum. Your girlfriend may have higher expectations than me.

Anyhow, this post may prove SushiAttack right about the illogical nature of girls, but regardless, we’re here, and if you want to have a decent relationship with a girlfriend, you just have to accept the fact that your’e dealing with someone who’s not always the most logical person in the world.

I’ll be honest, I’m not THE Japadamus(the owner of this site) but I like to also think of myself as someone able to make interesting observations about the future and present day.  Case in point, look to my post here, where I talked about how all women are insane.

Its been all over the news lately, so you are probably already familiar with the NASA astronaut story so I won’t bore you with the details.  Just let me beat my chest for a second, I was right!  Women are crazy, this story just proves my theory.  The only question is now, what is the solution?  No TJFKAK its not “deeznuts.”

I wouldn’t call myself someone that lives vicariously through others but as most people know, I’m pretty fiscally conservative (cheapskate.)  I guess because of my tendency to rarely buy nice things, when I know friends that have purchased something cool, I get really excited to see it.  This behavior leads me on a rollercoaster of emotions one of them being frustration if my friend hasn’t setup the new gadget yet.  Although they might have good reasons not invest the time in getting up and running, all I can think about is let me see this thing in action.  Especially if this is a purchase they’ve been planning a long time.  Maybe one day when I truely think I’m balling out I can relax and buy some stuff, until then, the message I have for my friends are: SETUP THAT SHIT ALREADY!

Anyway I’ll step off my soapbox now.

While partaking in a few drinks yesterday, some friends and I had a discussion about whether or not women are truly crazy. I know, this sounds like the beginnings of a typical misogynist rant but hear me out for a second.

As we were drinking we each shared stories about women doing some pretty crazy stuff. I start thinking about my past and when I started knowing that woman were crazy. I never grew up thinking that woman thought differently than men but slowly as I got older it became very apparent that woman aren’t analyzing situations the same way. A few things I’ve noticed is that woman seem to over-analyze a lot of things, but their analysis isn’t logic based so conclusions can be reasonable to completely fantastical. At an earlier stage in my life, I always assumed that the fantastic conclusions that women come up with are just something they are expressing to hide what they realize is actually true. Sort of like a defense mechanism. I would then argue with them in an attempt to peel back the layers and get the “truth” out. I soon realized that there was no inner truth and women cling to crazy ideas because they actually believe them. I learned quickly that presenting a logical argument is futile women don’t think it terms of logic.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slkB2o_ss-Q]

Surprisingly, I googled “woman + logic” and found the following rant

The rant is being hosted by some group titled “Christian apologetics and research ministry” Which goes to show that in order to understand the way woman think, it requires a gift from a omnipotent being.

KGMB reported today that “The Dog” is being sued by a women who alleges that the dog and his team threw her down a flight of stairs and broke her back while trying to apprehend her boyfriend.

I think its laughable that people think “the dog” has any assets to take. I mean give me a break, does it look like the Dog is blinging out, his clothes were purchased at the swap meet from aging 1980s metal groups. I guess in Hawaii people assume if you’re on TV you must be able to afford the nice sashimi blocks.

So I fell back into the old pattern and started checking the woot-off in progress and what did I see, a BOC!  So i tried to buy one and had to click that orange button thousands of times, when I finally was able to login to the purchase screen, it pushed me to a picture of a pink pig radio.   Fuck I hate woot.   I hate it even more that japadamus in the other room was able to buy three.   What a scam, I hope japa and all the other buyers get jack shit.

 Seacrest out!

Ok. This might seem blasphemous but I’m going to come out and say the woot-off is bullshit. Its one day of all crappy items that didn’t sell on each of their respective days and now they bundle it together and start selling it all over again.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great strategy for the company. I’m just sick of looking at 20 ipod speaker combos waiting for some poor sucker to buy them just so we can move on.

…And there’s the elusive Bag of Crap, let me tell you something, I’ve very doubful anyone gets anything more than crap. There’s always some fool bragging that he got the ultimate suprise gift. I love the economics of the BOC, they sell 1500 items at 5 dollars a piece =7500 All on the rumor that some guy got something good buying a BOC some time ago. Genius

As someone that appreciates good sushi there is one thing that I think needs addressing, and that is the short comings of Real Japanese restaurants.

What?!?

Yes, not everything is perfect about the way Japanese people run their restaurants. Sorry if this offends.

• Service: I’ve noticed two distinct types of servers that real Japanese restaurants employ. 1. The incompetent little Asian girl or 2. The flaming homer-sexual. In these circumstances I think my preference is for the latter. I can’t tell you how many meals were interrupted by some little girl, either messing up the order, not bringing something or just plain f-ing things up.

• Price: For whatever reason (probably greed) real japanese sushi places are always more expensive. But Sushiattack thats because you pay for authenticity To most people this excuse makes sense, to me it sounds like horseshit. Let me tell you why; kitchens are all manned by the same personnel, well trained Latinos, plain and simple. Don’t misinterpret me, I’m not saying food cooked by Latinos is any less delicious I’m just saying that the backbone of all kitchens are the same. I don’t believe there should necessarily be some kind of J figurehead premium.

• Lettuce: What?!? Yes, I don’t understand why someone would pay to get air-shipped Hamachi from Tokyo, Wild Norwegian salmon, live uni than serve a salad with frickin iceburg lettuce. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to push some organic agenda, I’m just saying its not 1950, there are better options. If McDonald’s can include some interesting lettuces in their $2.99 salad, a Japanese restaurant with the avg bill $50+ can get a little more creative. Help a brother out.

Anyone got any other good ones? Leave your comments!