Month: January 2005

CNN reports that “Anheuser-Busch is pulling an advertisement planned for this year’s Super Bowl that would have poked fun at last year’s infamous ‘wardrobe malfunction’ that exposed Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime show.” Budweiser’s web site is apparently showing the ad, but I suggest checking out one of the links listed a bit down the thread at Metafilter. One comment in that thread makes the somewhat cynical but altogether plausible point that perhaps this is all a publicity ploy by Anheuser-Busch:

Step 1 – Create false controversy. “Free speech” and “censorship” are usually a good way to start.

Step 2 – Revel in the free buzz as people trip over themselves to defend you and attack the other side.

Step 3 – Profit!

Who knows… In any case, the commercial is pretty funny and not at all offensive, so I think this is much ado about nothing.

I had no idea, but apparently Matt Groening’s Life In Hell characters were used in an Apple Macintosh ad around 1989. Check out a slideshow of the complete booklet.

Starwars.com has posted the opening title crawls from the entire Star Wars saga, including the upcoming Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith.

CNN reports that “An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors.” You can’t make this stuff up… 🙂

bloggingsundance.com predicts that the movie Murderball will be a winner after its debut at the film festival. What is Murderball, you ask?

Murderball is the story of the rivalry between teams of rowdy, “don’t feel sorry for me,” quadriplegic rugby players who create Mad Max-inspired wheelchairs and slam them into each with such force and speed that NASCAR fans would cringe. All of this carnage in an effort to get a ball—and two of the wheels on their wheelchair—across the goal.

Oh, and this is a documentary. Really. More details in the link…

I’ve mentioned Wikipedia a lot lately, mostly because I think it’s a cool place to find information as well as just browse around. One interesting place to start is the Unusual Articles entry…

Google is previewing Google Video, which allows you to “search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results …[and] look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show.” There are more details at the About Google Video page…

Google has also raised the word limit in its search boxes to 32 (from 10), allowing for more complex and customized searches.

Update: I should have mentioned that Yahoo also released its own video search a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t thorougly tested either one yet, so YMMV.

This post is a follow-up to my previous one in which I wrote about conservative organizations’ condemnation of a video of cartoons featuring SpongeBob SquarePants (among others), claiming that it “promotes homosexuality in children.” However, RobotJohnny.com has discovered a far more insidious threat that has obviously escaped these groups’ attention: Bugs Bunny. 😉

That someone had to even create that page as a satirical response is pretty sad, although it is pretty funny…

Slashdot reports that AOL is about to terminate access to Usenet. Let us all rejoice; the Eternal September has come to an end! 😉

Update: Metafilter has some comments. Me too! 😉

MSNBC reports that

The week he died, science-fiction humorist Douglas Adams was honored with an asteroid named after one of the characters from his classic “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” [asteroid Arthur Dent]. Now, almost four years later, Adams has his own name in the heavens as well — thanks to a campaign in which MSNBC.com played a part.

It was almost as if it was fated to be: the asteroid with the provisional designation 2001 DA42, which carries Douglas Adams’ initials, the year in which he died, and the illustrious number “42,” has now been renamed “Douglasadams.” A fitting tribute to a gifted author who died before his time…