Everything Is Stupid

Archive for June, 2011

30
Jun

Worried You’re Too Jaded for Parenthood? No Need. You’re Unnecessary Anyway

This past week has been filled with a bevy of exciting news for jaded parents and parents to be… first and foremost, robots! Yes, pretty soon anyone with a fat enough wallet won’t need to ever speak to their own offspring again, and will instead be able to pass them off onto their new mechanical “friend.” Aren’t you excited? Korea’s Robot Institute has recently released this footage of their new Kiro robot in action. He has just wrapped up a three week gig teaching in a kindergarten class and creators think he is ready to start his world tour, visiting classrooms and imparting his many bytes of knowledge.

Kiro is the perfect “teacher’s aid,” as they are calling him now, while they continue to pretend that this isn’t a hostile robot takeover. He has stories to recite, vocabulary to teach, even internet capabilities so that parents can “check in” (don’t worry, it’s not mandatory)… and don’t forget his big, crazy blue smile! Kiro was originally designed to be a museum guide, but after the incredible revelation that kids like robots (who knew?!?) the designers decided to modify his skills to fit a classroom. As long as the kids don’t lose their fascination and become jaded by even wonder, it sounds like a can’t-miss!

According to research from Science magazine in 2009, robots are “well-suited to imitate us, learn from us, socialize with us and eventually teach us.” Wow! No doubt the kids will be in good three-pronged hands. Everyone knows children learn from imitation, so who needs humans when we can employ mindless, expressionless, blue glowing guys on wheels to show them what’s what? I defy anyone to contend that this isn’t the natural progression.

In which other ways might you be completely unnecessary to your children? Well, let’s see!

In Japan, for one, you can give your grocery list to a robot, who will do your shopping for you and even suggest items you should buy. No need for you to push around your little ones in those racecar-shaped grocery carts! Just leave them at home with the robot maid and head off to the casino! Japanese robots also clean floors, chop vegetables and serve sushi – so the kiddos at home won’t get dirty or go to bed without dinner. Not only that, but when you get home your robot can mix you a drink and then even go on security duty while you watch Charlie’s Angels reruns in bed.

The next morning, if sushi for breakfast isn’t your thing, your robot can make you pancakes and sausages. You might never have to lift a finger for your children again!

There are, of course, those jaded detractors who think robot intelligence will always be “artificial,” but if you ask me there’s nothing artificial about not having to fold your own laundry. In fact, there’s already a robot which does that, too! But act fast: U.S. Congressional leaders (you just can’t keep those go-getters down!) are already giving the National Science Foundation a hard time for investing in said invention. Darn those technological advancements! (Three tries to guess which side of the aisle the heat is coming from.)

If you’re afraid your robot will turn on you, you’re probably not jaded enough to be reading this blog. I mean, who the hell wants to fold towels? And if your kids end up loving that hunk of metal and cogs more than they love you… then, bingo! One less responsibility! What more do you want?

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posted by BexvanKoot in Technology Stupidity and have Comments Off
29
Jun

OKCupid Men are Overwhelmingly Ugly, Or OKCupid Women Are Too Stupid To Understand “Average”

We have another humdinger today from the karaoke bar of the internet, OK Cupid, which just loves mining its user data for information to make stupid, boring little line graphs for its “research” department, OK Trends. The most recent discovery made by the super-site is all about vanity in the inbox. Being the meat market that it is, OK Cupid lets users rate the photos posted by potential dates on a scale from 0 (being the least attractive, obviously) to 5 (most attractive), with points in between. At least it’s honest about the selection pool – “there are definitely, unequivocally no tens here!”

As can be expected, women’s ratings are pretty evenly distributed around the “average” mark of 2.5 (2 is “slightly below average” and 3 is “slightly above average”). More from the “not news” category: the number of messages a woman receives on a day-to-day basis increases drastically as she reaches the status of “most attractive.” To wit: two thirds of messages from men arrive in the inboxes of the top one third of the most attractive women. No big surprise there - guys like sexy ladies and are stupid enough to convince themselves that sexy ladies like them back. The real shocker of the day comes when the tables are turned and women are asked to rate the attractiveness of men.

A whopping 80% of the men on the site were rated somewhere less than average on the scale of hotness. So, you tell me: should all these men be wearing paper bags over their heads, or are the women of OK Cupid just blind and stupid? Unlike their unrealistic male counterparts, women send messages proportionately. Everybody gets to play! You’d think this seems sane until you realize the implications.

Maybe it’s that women are better at judging attractiveness with a real live man in front of their face, or maybe it’s that OK Cupid guys are just really unfortunately ugly, but to me it seems women really believe that most guys aren’t living up to some secret ideal handsomeness they have contrived in their heads - but they’re willing to go out with them anyway, spending the rest of the doomed relationship sitting in judgement or imagining someone else during sex. Sad but true, the more attractive a man happens to be, the less likely it is that the least attractive women will respond to their mail. Now, to me that seems beyond stupid - women who spend their entire days deciding that most men aren’t hot, then completely ignoring the ones who they think are? Seriously, does this whole thing reveal the secret yearnings of women to wish men into unsightliness? Stop it!

Sure, men might be vain and stupid because they prefer to try and get with women they have no chance with in the first place, but at least they know what “good looking” means as it applies to real humans in the real world. Women seem to consider anyone who doesn’t fit the criteria for Sexiest Man Alive to be “below average.” Perhaps a check of the dictionary is in order, ladies.

av·er·age
–noun

1. a typical amount, rate, degree, etc.; norm.

For future reference, this means that 80% of people can’t be less than normal, just in case you didn’t catch that.

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posted by BexvanKoot in Relationship Stupidity and have Comments Off
28
Jun

Jaded Model Seen Without Makeup, “Career Ruined”

In recent developments that mark the beginning of perhaps the most ridiculous lawsuit of all time, 35 year-old Swedish model Caroline Louise Forsling is suing cosmetic company Estee Lauder for $2 million for not photoshopping out her wrinkles in a recent ad for Plantscription serum by Origins, thus “irreparably” damaging her career. Can I just point out the perhaps jaded point of view that, if your career can’t survive with you being seen without makeup, maybe you shouldn’t be a model in the first place?

Alas, the beauty industry depends entirely on its ability to con women into thinking that they can achieve a standard of beauty that doesn’t exist. The controversial ad showed one half of Forsling’s face as is, without makeup and with her hair pulled back from her face. The other side has been manipulated with computer software to smooth her wrinkles and “lift sagging contours.” Forsling says she has never used the serum and did not consent to having the test shot used in the company’s advertising. For some reason, neither of these points makes up the mainstay of the court case. All Caroline seems to care about is that people have seen her as she actually appears. Gasp! No wonder she’s jaded!

This isn’t exactly the first time that the unrealistic manipulation of women’s bodies has made waves in the media. Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. has been making documentaries about the issue for more than three decades, and, with the invention of Photoshop, the battle seems to be one of the uphill variety. The “Killing Us Softly” documentary series chronicles the issues that women and girls face when they become totally jaded by the images they see every day.

At their annual meeting recently, the AMA adopted specific policies to deal with a problem that seems to be growing as fast as models fake-waists seem to be shrinking. I’m probably overly jaded on the subject, but somehow it seems to me that making policies on things that a group has absolutely no say in whatsoever might not have quite the desired effect. Winners of the “State the Obvious Award” this week, they released the following statement:

The appearance of advertisements with extremely altered models can create unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image. In one image, a model’s waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist. We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.

 

The photo mentioned above is a Ralph Lauren ad showing a woman who, were she real, would probably be a 6’6″ tall size zero with a 36D chest, a 20 inch waist and the most massive head that anyone has ever seen (and we all know that’s not the case). Examples of this kind of gross body dysmorphism are everywhere, and Ralph Lauren is the worst kind of repeat offender, turning women into jaded walking skeletons of the most frightening variety, and their constant presence on blogs like PhotoShopDisasters.com has led to a legal hissyfit of their own, because evidently it’s wrong to explain to people that women are supposed to have ribs and hips and stuff. PSD has enjoyed sharing with its audience tips and tricks for “fixing” images of unrealistic models to make them appear as if they actually have all the bones a body needs to stand upright, but Ralph Lauren doth protest.

Who needs those bones anyway?

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posted by BexvanKoot in Pop Culture Stupidity and have Comments Off
28
Jun

Hate Your Job? Guess What – Your Boss Has Facebook Too, Stupid

People getting fired from their jobs - or failing to get hired in the first place - because of indiscriminate Facebook posting isn’t exactly news, no matter how much AOL wants to pretend it is by publishing articles ”revealing” that (shock and awe!) potential employers actually check the internet before interviewing people. No matter how stupid your boss may seem, it’s a safe bet that at least one person in the upper echelons of your organization knows how to use the internet. In fact, in the fall of 2010 a survey showed that already 7% of employers had fired someone for a post to a social networking site. It’s called “getting dooced,” named for Heather Armstrong, who was fired nearly a decade ago for satirical stories about coworkers on her personal Dooce.com blog.

Forget for one moment the saving grace of customizable privacy settings on both Facebook and Twitter. All it takes for your “private” internet moments to get loose is one stupid move by a “friend.” (This is something I think people should be a bit more conservative about, by the way. I mean, that dude you met that one time at that open mic night who is constantly posting about the “new cosmic awareness of light and energy,” who you spend most of your time hoping you will never see again, is not your “friend.”) Either way, a single screenshot and one tiny retweet is all it takes for your stupid “just for friends” joke to go completely viral. It doesn’t matter what you try to do: once something is out there on the internet, it’s out there forever. Just ask Weiner: the once-Congressman’s current job prospects end at playing an extra on Entourage or working for Hustler‘s internet porn division. Don’t expect your own personal tweeting like a twit to go quite so well.

So, what else should you avoid when it comes to the internet equivalent of drunk-dialing?

1. Bitching and Whining or Having Their Back

No one likes a whiner for an employee, but talking shit about the company you work for isn’t the only kind of shop talk that can get you into trouble. Unless PR is part of your job discussion, trying to defend a company you love can render your desk clutter the mere depressing contents of a small cardboard box. Whether you are complaining about how annoying your crap-ass job happens to be, or talking about something stupid your boss did today, save it for your next night out at the bar.

2. The TMI Moment

Speaking of the bar, keep those photos to yourself. And if you can’t trust your friends to keep stupid photos of you off of Facebook, at least change your privacy settings so your boss isn’t notified every time a new one is uploaded - especially if you plan to call in sick so you can make it to your next Fairy Dress Up party.

3. “We’re Just Not That Into You”

While I personally don’t really get the drive to work with people who would fire you (or not hire you) because of simple ideological differences,we all do what we gotta do, right? If your boss happens to be a die hard “Palin for president” supporter, you probably don’t want him to see your rantings about her being the most stupid woman on television. If you get fired for calling someone stupid, well…. Hello, Pot? Meet Kettle.

Even in Canada, employers know how to make the magic electric box full of gremlins paint pretty pictures on the screen. Running wild and drunk in the street over the result of a stupid hockey game? Fail (unless you are the couple in this iconic photo of the year – you guys are awesome). Getting fired over pictures of your looting ass? SUPER fail.

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posted by BexvanKoot in Pop Culture Stupidity,Technology Stupidity and have Comments Off
26
Jun

Dead Animals In the Water Supply – Bet You Feel Stupid Now, Portland

What is the grossest thing you can think of that might be hiding in your city’s water supply? Animal, mineral, bodily fluids? News that a 21 year-old man was caught urinating in one of Portland, Oregon’s open air water reservoirs at Mt. Tabor has sparked some serious controversy about conservation, health, and the truth about what is really flowing out of your kitchen faucets. The young man involved in the incident has yet to be charged, and has admitted to the stupid drunken act of peeing in the pool, thinking that it was a sewage treatment area. Does anyone wonder just exactly how foul Portland’s water must smell if passersby think that it’s actually sewage? Gross.

After being criticized for the decision to cost the city more than $35,000 in replacement and disposal fees by discarding the “tainted” water, the administrator for the local Water Bureau, David Schaff, made it clear that this was a political, not a health decision, when he admitted that the Water Bureau regularly finds dead animals floating in the city’s water supply and does nothing about it at all. “This is different,” he said. ”Do you want to drink pee?”

Well, no, I don’t… but I don’t usually want to drink the rotting and putrid flesh of random dead animals either, stupid. The disinfection process that Portland uses, putting both chlorine and ammonia into the H2O, is meant to continue to get rid of the nasties in the water even after it’s sat in open air containers for goodness knows how long. Take a moment to think about what “open air” means in this situation – not just random drunkards and dead animals, but birds flying overhead and leaving their mark, frog fornication, dogs running in to swim after lost toys and slobbering over sticks… Need I go on?

So, exactly just how gross is a bit of urine in the water supply? Let’s take a few minutes to do the math. The average human bladder contains about 16 ounces of urine at the time of necessitating emergency emptying into the closest open waterway. The water in the Portland reservoir totaled 6 million gallons at the time of this particular incident. One eighth of a gallon of urine to eight million gallons of water is a factor of about 64 million to one. Still with me?

Okay, now hang on while we examine the numbers a bit more… we’re going to get a bit metric here, just to be precise, okay? Don’t feel stupid if you get a little lost - just trust me on this one. A large tumbler glass might contain close to 500mL (probably less – 500mL is almost two cups – but we’re being generous here today). You would have to drink approximately 12,800 of these large glasses (say it with me, that’s more than twenty five thousand cups) of water directly from this specific reservoir to consume even 1 drop (0.1mL or 0.00338140227 US fluid ounces) of urine. Parents consume more urine from being shot in the mouth by their baby boys while changing a few months worth of diapers.

So, was it stupid for Portland to have emptied the reservoir over this one drunken incident? You be the judge.

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posted by BexvanKoot in Corporate Stupidity,Plain Ol' Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity and have Comments Off
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