Drinking whiskey clear!
How badass is this? Jonas Brothers video director Steve Fatone hooked up an Xbox 360 to the giant new display at the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium and was able to play some Gears of War on it.
FWIW, the new screen measures 72×160′, or around 22x49m):
Read more about it (and see more awesome pics) at Engadget here.
A “blood chit” is a piece of paper or cloth issued to soldiers and (especially) airmen operating in areas where the local population speaks a language other than the serviceman’s own. The chit usually states, in the local language, that the soldier or pilot is working on their behalf, and to please give him food, water, shelter and\or medical attention, then give him any assistance in getting back to his or her military base. So if an airman was shot down in a strange land, he or she could simply find a local and hand them the chit. The civilian would then (hopefully) take care of the pilot and get him back an an American base. As an incentive for the local, rewards were usually offered for the safe return of the serviceman.
Here’s an example of a chit from the early days of World War II:
This was particular chit was issued to the Flying Tigers, a group of American pilots who volunteered to fly missions against the Japanese in China. This chit says: “[t]his foreign person has come to China to help in the war effort. Soldiers and civilians, one and all, should rescue, protect, and provide him medical care“. Another Flying Tiger chit read: “I am an American airman. My plane is destroyed. I cannot speak your language. I am an enemy of the Japanese. Please give me food and take me to the nearest Allied military post. You will be rewarded.”
Just a heads-up…
JaguarPC – the company that hosts this blog – will be doing some upgrades at their NOC in Houston tonight at approximately 23:00 EDT. This may result in slow performance or outages for this site for approximately 30-35 minutes.
Thanks for understanding!
Jim
You know those songs you instantly fall in love with? That happened with me and Au Revoir Simone’s “Another Likely Story”, the lead track from their newest album Still Night, Still Light.
The band, whose name comes from a line in the film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, formed in Brooklyn in 2003, and their music has been featured on Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, and a few other films and TV shows. For what it’s worth, film director David Lynch is a huge fan of the band (cite), and even had their tunes played at his wedding!
It’s easy to see why Lynch and others like the band so much: the gentle, airy electronic atmospheres the band creates are lush and inviting. It’s music that just sucks you in. It’s like these three girls have created their own fairy tale world (that’s not too twee) and we’re all welcomed to join them. Still Night, Still Light is its own universe, and although I don’t love it as much as I loved Emiliana Torrini’s Love In The Time of Science, this album comes close… very close.
I’ve had this tune on the iPod since I found it, always near the beginning or end of a playlist, so I could quickly find it. Listen to the lyrics closely… like The Cardigans, Au Revoir Simone might sound like a harmless pop band, but their lyrics are actually pretty dark:
[audio:au _revoir_simone.mp3]
Sad news:
Fire this morning heavily damaged the historic Georgia Theatre in downtown Athens, shrouding the central business district in smoke and knocking out electric and cell phone service to the area.
Firefighters were called at about 7 a.m. to the theater, located at the corner of North Lumpkin and West Clayton streets, when a man walking home through downtown smelled something burning and found smoke billowing from the theater doors.
Within an hour, the roof on the historic building had collapsed.
Dozens of big-name acts had performed at the Georgia Theatre — musicians such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Prine and Jorma Kaukonen, not to mention Athens-based acts like R.E.M., Randall Bramblett and Davis Causey.
via Fire destroys Georgia Theatre | Breaking News | OnlineAthens.com.
Back in 2008, candy giant Hershey changed the formulas of many of its “second tier” candies like Mr Goodbar. Today’s Mr Goodbar is no longer “peanuts in milk chocolate”, but instead “peanuts in chocolate candy” (which is actually “mockolate“, a confection made with cocoa solids but no cocoa butter, substituting instead much cheaper vegetable oil).
The new bars taste like crap, of course. However, like all good marketing wonks, Hershey’s PR people are falling all over themselves to tell anyone who will listen that people actually prefer the new, non-chocolate version of Mr Goodbar. If that’s the case… then why does this new product exist:
There it is… yet another sign that the end of the world is coming!
See if you can follow this: Hershey decided that using milk chocolate to make Mr Goodbar was too expensive, so they opted to change the Mr Goodbar formula to use mokolate instead of chocolate. Hershey’s PR reps claimed victory… but “so many people loved the new Mr Goodbar” (sarcasm) that now the company is using the Hershey brand to sell a new product that amounts to the old product… instead of just going back to the old Mr Goodbar formula in the the first place!
In case anyone from Hershey is reading this, it’s stuff like this (not to mention your complete embrace of mokolate) that keep me an M&M Mars fan. As a kid, I ate enough Hershey bars to sink a battleship… but now I’d rather eat a 10 year-old Milky Way bar than anything from Hershey!
You really think anything will come of this in BillyGrahamland?
RALEIGH, N.C. — Proponents of legalizing marijuana use to relieve pain and suffering in some patients are getting a day at the North Carolina Legislature to speak out.
The House Health Committee scheduled a committee meeting Thursday to discuss a bill that would allow people with debilitating medical conditions to possess an adequate supply of the drug and not be prosecuted.
Hmmmm.. maybe if they moved the capital to Asheville…
So I signed up for Twitter a couple of months ago, mostly just to give you readers one more way to stay in touch with me. I installed a WordPress plugin called Twitter Tools that automagically adds a tweet any time a new post is added here, so people using iPhones or Blackberries with Twitter apps will be able to use it like an RSS feed.
Other than that, though, I don’t personally use Twitter all that much. I use ping.fm to add tweets and to update my statuses on Facebook and MySpace… and I also satisfy my voyeur impulses by occasionally checking out what celebrities are up to on Twitter.
As you might know, dozens of celebrities use Twitter, and almost anyone can add them to their “Twitter contact list” (or “follow them”, in Tweetspeak).
Some celebrities, like Al Gore, use Twitter mainly to disseminate information; most of his posts simply say “read this article” or “watch this video”. Other celebs, like Richard Branson, user Twitter as a marketing tool (typical tweet: “get 50% off fares to Miami this week on Virgin Atlantic!”). Other celebs – like Lost and Fringe creator JJ Abrams – set up accounts ages ago and never seem to update them. Still others, like Britney Spears, farm out tweeting to assistants, and it’s blatantly obvious that it’s not the actual celebrity doing the tweeting there.
Below is a list of the celebrities I follow on Twitter. In most cases, these are the actual celebrities themselves (and not assistants). They’re also people that post interesting stuff (unlike, say, Al Gore, whose feed is not much more than a link farm, really):
Jamie Oliver – British celebrity chef.
Dexter Fletcher – British actor, best known as “Soap” in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but also Hotel Babylon and Band of Brothers.
Sarah Silverman – Comedienne and actress.
Mindy Kaling – Writer, producer and actress (“Kelly Kapur”) from The Office.
Rainn Wilson – “Dwight Schrute” from The Office.
Stephen Fry – English actor, writer, comedian, author, television personality and film director.
Good news from the broadband front:
Proposed legislation would require large broadband providers to submit volume usage pricing schemes to the Federal Trade Commission for approval. If the FTC determines a pricing plan is imposing rates, terms, and conditions that are unreasonable or discriminatory the agency would be given authority to can the plan.
Prompted by the grassroots support for his opposition to Time Warner’s proposed broadband cap plan pricing scheme, U.S. Rep. Eric Massa introduced June 17 the Broadband Internet Fairness Act (H.R. 2902) to require the phone and cable companies to disclose their pricing plans to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).
I’ve been letting these consumer interest stories pile up for a while now, so let’s get right through these, shall we?
– The FDA is urging consumers not to use Zicam Nasal Gel or Zicam Nasal Swabs, as there have been “more than 130” reports of people losing their sense of smell (sometimes permanently!) after using the product. I reported on this a year or two ago, but the FDA’s “official report” urging consumers not to use the product only came out recently.
– The people that run Molson, Canada’s version of Budweiser, are just jerks! For ages, the company has had a policy of giving three free cases of beer per month to their retirees. But now the company is discontinuing that policy, in hopes of saving a lousy $900,000 a year. What cockgobblers! Couldn’t they just not run commercials during one sporting event and pay for that program all year?
– Microsoft is discontinuing Microsoft Money, the company’s popular personal finance software. No reason was given for the announcement.