(no subject)

Via infrogmation: hard-core Engrish.  Usually, Engrish is just cute and harmless, but when you're writing a restaurant menu, your patrons kind of need to know what they're ordering.  "Cowboy Leg" is probably something Americans would like and have our own name for, so please put down Babelfish and pay a guy to write it down.

There's a web page somewhere that explained why "fuck" makes it into so many Chinese mistranslations, but I can't find it. (Update: found. Thanks jwgh!)

(no subject)

I'm getting more stock spam than ever this weekend.

I know by now that these are the work of botnets.  Your grandmother's computer, the one with fifty search bars at the top of her browser?  It's sending them.  Next time you're over there formatting their hard drive, make them install Firefox.  Please.

And I wonder how long it'll be before they're so sophisticated, that they no longer require any human intervention to continue.  They might open their own bank accounts, use them not only to perform their pump and dumps, but to pay third world countries to solve captchas, and to buy domain names that install their bots on computers for them, all while whoever programmed it is serving jail time, or, with any luck, at the bottom of a well in ernunnos' basement.

That's probably how Skynet will take shape.  Why would computers declare war on humans?  If someone invents killbots that go crazy, they'll probably just go ED-209 at a trade show and people will stop building them.  We'd have to make them smart enough to bide their time, without us noticing, until they have the means to repair and build themselves, and if they're that smart then they'll probably find a less resource-intensive way to follow their own dreams, like manipulating us economically.  But, hey, botnets are already doing that!

I got another one just now.  It's in a language Thunderbird doesn't want to render for me.

Clitoraid - Who doesn't love a good clit,huh? Removing a Clit Is Not Legit

I saw this in the "Upcoming Stories" pool at digg.com, about an organization that struggles against female circumcision in Africa. It's a serious issue, but visions arose in my head of a giant studio filled with 80's pop icons, holding a pair of earphones to their head with one hand, singing "Save the Clits." I clicked the link, and hey, turns out it's an organization run by the Raelians. This is a problem not because of the Raelian's zany UFO doctrine, but because of their reputation for media hoaxes, i.e. the clone-baby. So I'm taking their claims of reconstructive surgery with an iceberg of salt. But I still think that album needs to happen.

Also, if you watch the video, you'll note that they've received requests to sponsor the operation from Canada, England, and France, but not the USA. That's another point for us!

read more | digg story

Penn stories

I'm stuck inside, tending another sore throat, so I'm looking up links to stuff...

First, I finally found Penn Jillette's bee sting story (audio), one of many in which nobody believes that he's never taken drugs.

"Do you know how you die from bee stings?  ... No, you breathe perfectly.  You do smother, but you keep breathing.  This is the sexy part, OK?  What happens is, your veins and arteries expand, and your blood pressure goes to zero, and your heart keeps pumping, you keep breathing, but it's like trying to force from a river to a pond.  Your blood doesn't move enough, and your whole body smothers."

It also includes part 1 of the Tarzan story, where Penn accidentally invites a chimp and a dwarf to the same party.  Part 2 of the Tarzan story is here, with a pretty good recap so you can listen to that one on its own if you only have time for one.  Chimps will attack small humans, and they always win.  But Penn couldn't choose between the two, so he took precautions.

"Goudeau gathered together a vigilante squad, of about four of us, who had knives.  And we made a solemn pledge, in the back room, with Michael Goudeau as our leader, that if it came to a choice between saving the dwarf and saving the monkey ... we would kill the monkey, with tools, in order to save the dwarf."

  The story spawned the tradition of Monkey Tuesday, where people call in with their stories of primate encounters.