Water irony - you has it.

If you were organizing a conference on water scarcity and climate change, would you give your speakers local, clean, largely sustainable, cheap tap water or overpriced plastic bottles filled with water from a distant tropical island?

At the Milken Institute's global conference this week, organizers chose to do the latter, providing speakers with bottles of Fiji Water. The irony wasn't lost on attendees:

"At a Milken Global Conference panel on water supply. The speakers are all drinking Fiji bottled water. Aaaargh," tweeted Paul Hyneck.

Fiji is an island where water supplies are scarce and locals have struggled to find clean, reliable supplies of drinking water. Meanwhile, Fiji Water owns the rights to the island's largest underground aquifer, drawing water into its diesel-fueled factory, bottling it using heavy-weight plastic, shipping it halfway across the globe and marketing the whole exercise as 'eco'.

Fiji Water - given out to attendees of a panel about "the most creative solutions being attempted to meet the water challenge in the United States and around the world."
Nice.
You pricks.

via Mother Jones

The tulip festival I dream about

I cannot stop laughing every time I look at this.
Thank you Clem Bastow.

DeLorean love

I wish movie ads were still this awesome. Aint nothing better than Michael J Fox casually explaining the theory of time-travel to entice me into a movie theatre.

WANT!

It's like a cross between a Dummie's guide and a car manual. For dogs. I like.

There's also a cat one.

Cat on cat action

My mum's cats went into epic cute overload on the weekend.

Trek Nation

This doco about the Star Trek phenomenon looks pretty interesting. Sure, it's using the same old technique of a son attempting to discover their father, but when that father is a crazy old bastard like Gene Roddenberry, it's got to have some interesting moments.

I feel sorry for the son. His name is Rod Roddenberry. That's just cruel.

via Laughing Squid

Windows? Who needs windows?

Oh my god! The interactive display/window/blinds from Back to the Future part II are finally here, and they are EPIC!

My head hurts just looking at this, but I love it! Now, if they can get it working on my widescreen LCD, tracking movement from my iPhone...

via Coudal

WANT!

Epic Muppet cupcakes are epic.

This is Spinal Tape

I've got to agree with Cory here - best product name ever.

Saturday night

This is how I spent my Saturday night - being loved to death by a Beagle and a Daschund.

Won't someone help them?

A tribute to the awesome bad over-acting from late night television commercials.
Love it.

via Kottke

Defeating Skynet!

GoogleSharing is a pretty ingenious new plugin and service for mixing up your search and browsing history with other net users and transmitting it to Google, so that you are harder to track. I couldn't find an independent source-code audit (which would be reassuring) -- anyone want to conduct one?

The GoogleSharing system consists of a custom proxy and a Firefox Addon. The proxy works by generating a pool of GoogleSharing "identities," each of which contains a cookie issued by Google and an arbitrary User-Agent for one of several popular browsers. The Firefox Addon watches for requests to Google services from your browser, and when enabled will transparently redirect all of them (except for things like Gmail) to a GoogleSharing proxy. There your request is stripped of all identifying information and replaced with the information from a GoogleSharing identity.

This "GoogleShared" request is then forwarded on to Google, and the response is proxied back to you. Your next request will get a different identity, and the one you were using before will be assigned to someone else. By "sharing" these identities, all of our traffic gets mixed together and is very difficult to analyze.

The GoogleSharing proxy even constantly injects false but plausible search requests through all the identities.

GoogleSharing (via BB via MacWorld UK)

Restoring Stephen Baldwin

I'm so easily confused by overly ironic yet actually quite serious advertising campaigns. This one for Stephen Baldwin is no exception.

Stephen has been forced into poverty by refusing to take acting roles he didn't like, and now it's up to the Christians of the world to save him so he can continue teaching the word of God.

As the Body of Christ, we are the greatest force on earth. What if 10% of the 159 million Christians in America gave a Token Gift? What if 10% of the worlds 2 billion Christians gave a token gift? What would the media have to say about such an event?

This looks like it's a big pisstake, but the company behind the website Restoring Stephen Baldwin is the same that produce his actual website.

Uhmm... what?

Murdochopolis

Best poster for the UK election so far!

via _Jameslloyd

WTF is Comic Sans doing in there!?

via theparissite

Nuclear Amazon goodies

You can now buy uranium ore on Amazon!

Which is super handy since those pesky activism keep getting in the way of uranium mines in WA and nuclear waste dumps in the NT.

Actually, it's the customer reviews for this product that made my day:

Patrick J. McGovern: I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, it was half empty.

Nitrous McBread: Since buying this product from Amazon I am now invincible at croquet and can sing all of Andy Williams' songs (since 1974) at the same time. What's more, I'm able to change night into day with a small shake of my mandibles, and have just worked out how to make cheese on toast levitate. I would write more, but I'm needed in the ionosphere.

Mediocre Films: I'm always up for trying new low calorie snacks, especially sugar-free ores. But this one is just bitter and awful. They should be ashamed calling this a snack food! Plus, it gave me Cancer.

rgonzale: What a total ripoff! I ordered this 2 weeks ago and the postman never delived it. (In fact I think he quit because we have a new postman now.) If you order this make sure you choose the "extra special handling" shipping option.

Christopher Brinkworth: I bought this for my cat and put it with a flask containing poison, in a sealed box. Do you think he likes it ? I've not opened the box yet.

Foxtel is screwing with my head

There is some sick bastard with a damn good sense of humour who works in programming at Foxtel. Take these examples:

Hoarders (a show looking at excessive hoarding, collecting, consumerism and trash)
When does the Bio channel decide to do a marathon of Hoarders?
Clean Up Australia Day - the one day devoted to cleaning up trash.

Border Security (a show devoted to making middle Australia feel good about their racist attitudes to immigration)
When does the Lifestyle channel decide to do a marathon of Border Security?
Australia Day - the celebration of white invasion of Indigenous Australia.

Worse still are the adverts that are allowed to slip in to highly inappropriate programs.
Here's some that we've seen (I'm sure there are more):

• Advert for beer, aired during an episode of Intervention featuring an alcoholic (a show that documents extreme addiction and the interventions their friends and family hold).
• Advert for cat food, aired during an episode of Hoarders featuring a crazy cat lady who had 40 cats forcibly taken from her home and put down.
• Advert for baby formula, aired during doco about extreme breastfeeding.
  

Also, why the hell was a sympathetic documentary about transgenderism featured on the Crime channel?

Fucking Foxtel programming guy. Stop it!

Signs you are no longer a hipster

Now that we're all educated as to the governing principles of hipsterism, the evolution of the modern hipster and the strange meat obsession that plagues the hipsters of today, I'm glad someone has realised the era of the hipster cannot last forever.

It is time we woke up from the pool of ironic cheap beer, removed our RayBans and tight striped sweaters and realised the key signs that you are no longer a hipster:

1. You haven’t worn your hoodie in a few weeks.
2. Ditto goes for your trusty beat-up Converse.
3. Those American Apparel ads are starting to creep you out.
4. You can’t remember the last time you read Vice. Or Nylon, for that matter.
5. Last time you went to see a band, you wished: A) you had ear plugs in and B) there was
6. some place to sit.
7. You go to bed before midnight at least five days of the week.
8. You’re not quite sure who Lissy Trullie is exactly.
9. You got a gym membership, and actually go on a fairly regular basis.
10. You’re not hung over right now.
11. You use Facebook to connect with your family.
12. The Selby is not in your place.
13. You can’t remember the last time you checked out last night’s party pics.
14. Fashion people sound like pretentious snobs, whereas there was a time when you didn’t feel this way.
15. Instead of going to boozy brunches, you prefer to do lunch.
16. Seems to you, Kari Ferrell deserved to go to jail.
17. You haven’t a clue who Kari Ferrell is, actually.
18. You went to art school, but you’ve been working a 9-to-5 office job for way longer at this point.
19. You celebrated Christmas and other major holidays.
20. You finally quit smoking.
21. You wear headbands around your crown, not your forehead.
22. You have to admit it, Opening Ceremony is insanely overpriced.
23. You stopped pirating music and movies and pay for them instead.
24. You opened a savings account.
25. You let your blogspot go.
26. You’re not really sure how to buy drugs, not that you would want to.
27. Your hair is all one shade and length.
28. Urban Outfitters feels like the juniors section. You realize the store actually is one big juniors section.
29. You purchased curtains and/or cloth dinner napkins.
30. You are engaged to your roommate.
31. You went to a gallery opening, and actually looked at the art.
32. Instead of the $2 Pabst, you spring for the $6 microbrew from upstate.
33. You own property upstate.

We've got company

A montage of all cinematic utterings of the phrase "We've got company." Which is only funny because it's another one of those phrases that is never actually uttered in real life.

Petrol burger, anybody?

Well this is comforting - apparently some soy-based fake meat products are processed by dunking them in a toxic, unregulated petroleum by-product.

In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein. Says Cornucopia Institute senior researcher Charlotte Vallaeys, "If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane."

If you've heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline--the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible for two-thirds of our national hexane emissions. Hexane is hazardous in the factory, too: Workers who have been exposed to it have developed both skin and nervous system disorders. Troubling, then, that the FDA does not monitor or regulate hexane residue in foods. More worrisome still: According to the report, "Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted."

Full article here.

Look at this fucking time-travelling hipster

This photo was taken in 1940. Some people say the guy wearing sunglasses on the right side of the photo is a time-traveller because his hair, shades, clothing, and camera didn't exist at the time.

In actual fact, he's in his correct time but it's still a cool idea. We really should be analysing historical photos looking for proof of backwards-travelling time tourists.

Outatime

This guy is my new hero. He built a time machine. Out of a Delorean!?

Copying is not theft

Awesomely creepy pro-piracy animation. Awesome.

Red Cross hearing test

Woah. Talk about a powerful campaign. Check out this new online campaign from the Norwegian Red Cross. (Hard to describe - best to just try it yourself)

Vigilantelope – Prophecy of the Quantum Child

Those that read my review of Vigelantelope’s epic production Tale of the Golden Lease from last year’s festival will understand my anticipation at viewing what they had to offer in 2010. Unfortunately, the sheen seems to have fallen from this seemingly up-and-coming comedy group, as Prophecy of the Quantum Child fell rather flat and disjointed.

That may be a tad harsh, as Propechy of the Quantum Child is certainly a very fun show – not necessarily attributable to the comedy, the songs or even the performance of the four protagonists. The saving grace of this performance is its genuine nature, the honesty with which these four men prance about on stage for your amusement, all the while fully aware that they look ridiculous.

The story takes you on a time-travelling expedition to save humanity from the terrors of a killer cyborg army and a ravenous doesn’t matter hole (much, much worse than a black hole, naturally), all the while filling the stage with bad puns, silly wordplay and a multitude of quick character and costume changes.

Whilst the boys’ style of cheesy prop jokes, purposely bad costumes and sets made of cardboard is certainly fun and refreshing, the whole production had a feeling of being stitched together with loose concepts and awkward scripting. The style that made their 2009 show such a success (full of spontaneity and silly, fun humour) has returned but without the spark that made their individual characters so likeable and generally endearing.

The musical talent of Vigelantelope is one key aspect that will amaze – from a touching duet of tribal man love to the incredible stylings of the dancing Dandy Lion, their lyrical stylings are certainly impressive. If you missed their brilliant performance last year, do try to catch them this time around – this is one comedy group that is not afraid to laugh at themselves (or their cheap props) and their mirth and silliness definitely rubs off on to their audience.

First published in The Pun

Assisted suicide site turns to pirates for help

EPIC WIN!

Exit International is an assisted suicide education group in Australia, whose average member is over 70 years old. The Exit International website will likely be blocked by the Great Firewall of Australia, so Exit International has turned to Australia's Pirate Party and asked for help in producing a slideshow explaining firewall circumvention for seniors. It's a pretty informative slideshow -- teachers could just as readily use it for schoolkids in class in a teaching unit on getting access to legit educational materials that's mistakenly blocked by school censorware.

via BB

About to nom

It's 12:48am and I'm about to nom into two giant homemade veggie burgers.

Just FYI.

Kooky's Return

Woah. This looks awesome!

Jakub Dvorský, creator of the brilliant game Machinarium has now turned to film for his gritty, spooky and yet totally endearing creations, with the trailer for Kooky's Return just released.

Double Down confirmed

Update on previous rumours of disgusting American food creations - the Double Down is real!

The Consumerist reports on the abomination that is the "Double Down," a mysteriously tempting (and potentialy lethal) new food item being tested by KFC:

For those coming late to the story, it's bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. And now, many months later, I'll finally be able to get my hands on one.

KFC announced the decision to go live with the Double Down yesterday, but we weren't sure they weren't playing a April Fools gag. But no, they truly are going nationwide with the delicacy on April 12.

The sandwich will be available in two forms. The Original Recipe sandwich will set you back about 540 calories, 32g of fat and 1380mg of sodium. The not-as-bad-for-you Grilled Double Down totals 460 calories, 23g of fat and 1430mg of sodium.

For reference, an average male is recommended to have a daily intake of 2500 calories, 70g of fat and 2300mg of sodium. Therefore eating just one of these horrible beasts of the fast food world gives you 1/5th your calories, twice your fat and over half your sodium for one day.

Photoshop becomes self-aware

Well, that's it - I'm out of a job.

Also, 1000th post! Cool.

Obama + Awesome Things

Dean Trippe has posted a wonderful galley of photos featuring Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things.

This is the single greatest use of the interwebs. Ever.

via Laughing Squid

If Calvin took Ritalin

So very, very sad.

via Laughing Squid

Pedo cake

Best. Cake. Ever.
If you don't get it, go learn your interwebs.

via BB