Madison Avenue Blues
This ad man’s ballad is almost as touching as the original.
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Apatow Bicycle Frolic
Terrific illustration depicting what a warmup exercise must be like at Apatow film camp. This piece comes from the mind of Dan Park, who is responsible for all sorts of insightful artistic mischief…
Mep Report #113
Living Forever Really Wouldn’t Be That Bad (Except for the Seven Sets of Teeth), Fruit Fly Empathy Camp, Kidnapping Twins in the Name of Science, Greg Questions the Evolutionary Benefits of Feeling Like Crap, The U.S. Economy = Ponzi Scheme, Time to Reset the Economy (if Storey Gets Paid), Storey Wants neither Science nor Nature nor Anything Else, Humans Aren’t All That Evil (Except When They Are), and Everyone Loves Conspiracies.
Listen Now!
Matrix Pod-Chair
As it turns out, designer Eduard McIntosh is the progenitor of Skynet, or the Oz Head, or whatever computer lineage eventually morphs into the overlord of the Matrix universe.
Called the Autonomous Living Unit, the theoretical one-man-band chair would provide all the needs of the user, and eventually make fully furnished living spaces obsolete. The project is pitched as a solution for homeless people or squatters living without amenities. As long as these people have a few hundred thousand bucks to spare on their pod, they’ll be living it up with the rest of us.
We’re on our way now…
Glen Beck’s Logic Fells Guest
I realize I’m a little late to the party on this one, but it’s still too good to pass up…
“Gone.”
My two favorite things in this clip…
1) It seems that ‘Cancer’ is Glen Beck’s Power Word. Don’t be anywhere near him when he says it.
2) When Beck asks for help, some dipshit producer ambles over so she can get a closer view of the prone David Buckner. Unfortunately, she has no skills to bring to bear on this situation… or in any other, for that matter.
Headlines to Love.
Courtesy of the AP:
Man pretending to fall off bridge actually falls.
Go ahead and read the story if you want. But really, does it even matter?
The Wire’s David Simon on Bill Moyers
While I can’t embed it in the page like I usually do for you lazy internet folk, I’m going to recommend that you flip over to this interview:
Tremendous piece by Bill Moyers’ Journal on The Wire, The Drug War, the corruption of American ideals, and the inevitable end of the American Empire. It’s all in there. You will learn more from David Simon here than in any civics or business class you have ever taken. So, click over and grow your brain immediately.
Brains Turn Off in Presence of “Experts”
A study featured in New Scientist this week showed that average people have a spectacular capability for short-circuiting their own judgment when in the presence of an expert.
This new data happens to fit perfectly into TMR’s 85% Theory. The theory states that since a large majority of professionals and advice-givers are incompetent, people should always take advice with a grain of salt and do their own due diligence before making decisions.
So, while I temporarily have the support of the scientific community on this one, let me preach for a moment: Don’t listen blindly to doctors, lawyers, accountants, politicians, brokers, astronauts, or clergy (or scientists). These people are just as fallible as anyone else. They are just as self-serving as anyone else. They are just as complacent and mistake-prone as anyone else.
Expert status is just as much a function of good publicity as it is of real practicable wisdom. You are almost always the most qualified advocate on your own behalf . And you always know yourself better than anyone else ever can.
In the words of Emerson,
“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”
Image via Kim Richter.com
It’s an AIG-stravoganza!
UPDATE 3/28: Hi there. Welcome to our little podcast/blog project. Due to last night’s BoingBoinging, we seem to have a lot of new visitors. So after you read about our shot across the bow of AIG, you might wanna check out some of our other features, like one of our 100+ podcast episodes. Here’s a good sample to start with.
Anyway, thanks for visiting. Feel free to leave comments and feedback and let us know how we can improve the Emu. END UPDATE