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Marge Simpson: Playmate?

Turns out that Marge Simpson will be the November Playboy centerfold.

I am not quite sure how I feel about this one; usually I am pretty open minded about these things, but this just strikes me as wrong. Like much of the readership here, I grew up watching The Simpsons, so Marge has become something of a mother figure for me. Finding out that she will be featured in Playboy is unsettling to say the least.

On the other hand, this will give the squares something to complain about; which is always entertaining.

Regardless, I may be purchasing my first Playboy since high school, to satisfy my...ahem...academic curiosity.

MS Office Starter 2010 is Like a Racecar (Paint-Job, not Performance)

Microsoft hopes you haven't heard of OpenOffice.

Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs.

Article

In an Attempt to Drive Me Insane, They Gave Feckless the Nobel

What?

OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew criticism as well as praise.

The decision to bestow one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, provoked gasps of surprise from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

Gasps... Are you sure it was surprise?

In a further attempt to make me go tinfoil-hat-crazy, Hamas had a very sensible statement:

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best.

"Obama has a long way to go still and lots of work to do before he can deserve a reward," said Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. "Obama only made promises and did not contribute any substance to world peace. And he has not done anything to ensure justice for the sake of Arab and Muslim causes."

Isn't it interesting that this comes after failing to get mean on Iran's intent to produce nuclear arms?!

But hey, check the excuse list to see that you can win through sheer points-for-effort.

"for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East"

Mr. Feckless himself joins such ethical giants as Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Yasser Arafat. On second thought, it's kind of fitting as I look at the weird history and weird laureates of the Nobel, which is named for a man who's death was celebrated by the French and who invented dynamite.

It's getting to the point where if you made up the most ridiculous thing about Feckless that you could think of, it just might be tomorrow's headline.

RIP – Moose the dog

Old news, but I just found out… Moose, the Jack Russell terrier, best known for playing Eddie on Frasier, died back in 2006. He received the most fan mail of anyone on Frasier. Take that, Hyde-Pierce! He was the youngest of 4 in his litter, but he was the biggest, hence the name. When he died, he was 15 and a half, which made him 78 in dog years.

Source: imdb

Chuck E. Cheese-burglar

And I thought working at a bank was scary...

An Orlando Chuck-e-Cheese was robbed by three men at gunpoint on Monday.

Site Update

Since the fallout with Google, I've been furiously working on a replacement site for this one.

That's been eating up the time that is usually reserved for researching fun facts. Hence the complete lack of content lately. (Though that doesn't explain the lack of content from my co-bloggers... ahem...)

We're close to a re-launch though, and I hope you'll like it. There are a number of cool new features coming. But, alas, I'm not sure if the SOX clock will make the transition. Oh, well.

More soon.

Obvious Science Update of the Day: Self Reviews Worthless

Ahhh, the self review. The bane of any corporate worker's existence. You hate writing them, and your manager hates reading them. Trust me. They do.

Turns out, they aren't even useful. Science says so:

Researchers at Cornell found that the worst performers (in a variety of categories) often rated themselves and their performance, in most cases, far above average. But get this: Top performers rated themselves lower than their performance merited.

Here’s what the researchers reasoned:

The reasoning for these behaviors is fascinating. Poor performers lack the skills to perform–which are the same skills required to evaluate their performance. They don’t understand that they don’t understand, and so believe their abilities compare positively to their peers.

On the other hand, Top performers incorrectly assume that their competence is shared among their peers–leading them to rank themselves lower than they deserve.

My experience finds this to be 100% true. In my last corporate position I had 10 (or was it 11?) direct reports. The losers gave themselves the highest marks, while my superstars were unnecessarily harsh on themselves.

As a manager, the conversation with the superstars was much easier, and way more fun. It's great when you get to deliver the "significantly exceeding expectations" review to someone who doesn't expect it.

The other conversations, not so much. When they are starting from an "I'm awesome and exceeding expectations" perspective and you're coming from a "you suck and I'm doing everything in my power to get your job eliminated so I don't have to go through the tedious process of firing you" perspective, you will struggle to find common ground.

Not missing that corporate job at all at the moment.

Read the whole report form Cornell here.

Today's Polanski Roundup

I'm not sure why I'm so interested in this story. I guess it's because I really can't get my head around the fact that there are people who would excuse the rape of a child because the rapist is a movie director. Anyway, here's your roundup for today...

More From the Horse's Mouth
From the rapist's memoirs - he vividly describes sex with multiple other underage girls, and goes into the details of the night in question.

I won't excerpt it here. The excerpt at the link also spares you the most gruesome details. But there's enough to get the point. It certainly doesn't smack of remorse.

Feminists for Child Rape
Via the LA Times:

"My personal thoughts are let the guy go," said Peg Yorkin, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things."

Interesting how everyone's a fiscal conservative all of the sudden. It's about the cost, or something.

A Growing Consensus?
Both stories that I already linked above mention that the faux outrage is concentrated among the "artistic elites" in both France and the US, and that rest of us are rightfully appalled.

Reason has a roundup of their own:

That comes one day after a similar editorial in The New York Times, and two days afer the hometown L.A. Times. An incomplete roll call of unsympathetic commentators would include Steve Lopez, Richard Cohen, Eugene Robinson, Peter Bradshaw, Joan Smith, Kerry Dougherty, and many more. Deserving special mention among that list is this brutal deployment of the English language by Salon's Kate Harding: "Reminder: Roman Polanksi raped a child." Even the French government is allegedly dropping its support, and one can more than seldom hear a discouraging word at the telltale heart of Polanskiphilia, The Huffington Post.

Hot Air also covers that beat.

Uh, I don't think so, Harvey...
Harvey Weinstein, on the other hand, claims that Hollywood has the best moral compass. No really, he did.

In an interview, Weinstein said that people generally misunderstand what happened to Polanski at sentencing. He's not convinced public opinion is running against the filmmaker and dismisses the categorization of Hollywood as amoral. "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said. "We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe."

Oh Great, Another Petition
Big Hollywood, who has their heart in the right place, is attempting to marshal support for a counter petition. Sorry guys. I'm not sure why we're still clinging to the petition thing as if they've ever changed a mind in the last 30 years. But A+ for effort.

A Fellow Victim's Opinion
The must read of the day is this article by Robert Goolrick. The author, victim of child rape, makes the following point:

From where I sit—and I have sat exactly in this same spot for sixty years—the rape of a child is absolutely the equivalent of first-degree murder. Roman Polanski is a murderer, the murderer of a child.

And there you have it.

The Polanski Roundup

As promised, a roundup of the latest on the buzz surrounding Hollywood's favorite rapist.

From the Horse's Ass... er, Mouth:
We'll start with the man himself. This gem of a quote from 1979 (right after he fled the country) resurfaced today. You see, he's not a bad guy. Everyone likes little girls.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Uh, speak for yourself you sick bastard.

The Petition:
Z already covered the list of the morally challenged who signed this ridiculous petition. The only thing I'll note is that child rape advocate Wes Anderson has a kids movie, The Adventures of the Fantastic Mr. Fox and his Quaaludes, coming out soon. So, probably avoid that.

Oh, Whoopi:
Whoopi Goldberg, T-Mobile Spokesman, tries to explain that Polanski didn't really commit "Rape Rape" (no really, she did!) leading Jim Geraghty to suggest a new slogan, of sorts:

"Because in a head-to-head matchup against other phones, your product rapes the competition, but it doesn't rape-rape the competition.

What if?
Over at ABC, a Jesuit priest reminds you that if it were Father Polanski that we were discussing, things would be different:

“Imagine if the Knights of Columbus decided to give an award to a pedophile priest who had fled the country to avoid prison,” Father Tom Reese, S.J., points out. “The outcry would be universal.”

A Rare Moment of Sanity:
Kirstie Alley wants to make sure that we know that not everyone is Hollywood is morally bankrupt. Noted.

R.I.P. Anne Applebaum's Career:
Despicable Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has apparently decided that career suicide is the way to go. Start here (or here) and follow the links for a round up of her reprehensible behavior.

The 3 second version: Her husband works for the Polish government and has lobbied on behalf of Polanski. She failed to disclose this conflict of interest, and instead of apologizing and moving on, she traded her spade for a steam shovel and just kept on digging.

Credit Where Credit is Due:
The commenters over at The Huffington Post aren't buying it.

And... (is the world ending?) I agree with an editorial in the New York Times!

That's as much as I can stomach for now.

RIP, Saturn

It's over.

General Motors said today it would shut down Saturn after respected Detroit businessman Roger Penske shocked GM and 350 Saturn dealers by saying that his plans to buy the storied brand had fallen apart.

The announcement came a day before GM and its dealers expected the deal to be finalized. The failure could cost as many as 13,000 jobs at dealerships nationwide and GM.

A few years ago I'd have felt bad. Today the news hits me as a solid Meh.

For the record, 5/8 of the cars The Wife^® and I have owned were Saturns.

Cats Can See Computer Screens

More specifically, the mouse cursor.

I know this, as the new cat, known as "Orange Cat", was chasing the arrow around the screen today.

Catnip

Catnip, technically called Nepeta, is a genus of about 250 plants. It is related to mint. Nepeta is known better as catnip because of the effect it has on cats.

While the effects can vary, catnip is said to affect about 2/3 of all cats. Some cats get aggressive, some get mellow, and other get goofy. One of my cats is not affected at all. The other gets goofy.

The effect is hereditary. As an interesting aside, most Australian cats are not affected, as the effectiveness has been (unintentionally) bred out of the cats there.

In the cats that are affected, the cause is the smell. It interacts with their brains to cause a euphoric sensation. After a few minutes, the smell wears off (almost like a temporary tolerance is built up) and the cat goes back to normal. After a few hours the tolerance is gone and the fun can begin again.

Source: here and here.

The Dumbest Parents Come From Sweden

Yeah, this sounds like a good idea...

A Swedish couple believe so strongly that gender is a social construction that they do not reveal whether their 2.5-year-old is a boy or a girl.

Only those who have changed the toddler's diapers know if "Pop," which is not the child's real name, is male or female. "We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mold from the outset," the tot's 24-year-old mother told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. "It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead."

No, moron. What's cruel is that this poor kid will have to grow up with you as parents.