Aloha Airlines announced yesterday that it is filing for bankruptcy an halting passenger service for all its flights after today. So if you are currently on vacation in Hawaii and you flew with Aloha–Aloha bitch, you’re stranded! That’s totally messed up. Hawaiian Airlines stepped up and said it would take all the Aloha passengers it can on standby for free, but only for four days through April 3rd. |
Tyra Banks and Brady Green Needless to say, Tyra freaked out and called the cops. He was asked to leave the studio but he came back a while later. At that point, cops rained down on him and he was arrested for stalking, harassment, and criminal trespass. The man that was arrested was later identified as Brady Green, 37, from Dublin, Georgia. He allegedly has been terrorizing Tyra for months by attempting to contact her with multiple letters and phone calls. He was released by a judge under his own recognizance after appearing in court. |
Creepy woman. Check it out if you have some time. What I really like about the animation is that it appears to be truly random. She doesn’t have that many facial movements, but they all seem to be very well randomized. At this rate it seems we are very close to having virtual actors that appear lifelike, not like Buzz Lightyear. Via BoingBoing. |
A Texas woman was forced by TSA gangstaz to remove her nipple piercings with pliers before boarding a flight last month. The woman hired Gloria Allred last week, so the TSA almost immediately changed their procedures to allow for visual inspections of nipple rings in the future. The truth is that if the woman had not hired a high-profile lawyer nothing would have happened. I don’t mind the TSA doing their jobs, but a lot of them have this "gangsta" mentality lately. We should stop all of this oppressive behavior, since it does nothing to make us safer in the skies. Are nipple rings all that dangerous? |
We returned from Washington, DC last night and really enjoyed the history of the city. We were blessed to have pretty good weather while we were there so we got a chance to see the monuments without rain or snow, which would have sucked! I just posted the photos taken during our trip onto Flickr. I hope that I’ll get a chance to add tags and captions to the photos soon. Here’s my favorite from the set, check them all out is you have some time.  |
The L.A. Times ran a front page apology to Diddy for the story they ran last week in which they implicated Diddy in shooting Tupac Shakur outside of a record studio in New York (see previous post). Here’s an excerpt of the public apology: "The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used…We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents…and in the story." |
I am glad that I am flying United this Friday when I return to San Francisco. Why? American Airlines canceled at least 200 flights today after doing "more thorough" inspections of their MD-80 aircraft. The MD-80 aircraft were made by McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach and were put into production from about 1979 to 1988. Needless to say, the planes are old. Given the age of their planes, wouldn’t it be nice if American *always* performed thorough inspections, not just on special occasions!? I am just saying. |
Home prices in the Bay Are dropped 13.2% year-over-year, with a median price of $706,880. The Bay Area is defined as San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano counties; it excludes Napa and Sonoma counties. The interesting thing is that studying recent San Francisco home sales, it seems that prices are flat compared to prices last year. It would be interesting to see official figures for San Francisco alone. |
A huge ice chunk collapsed off the continent of Antarctica today. The chunk of ice was part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an ice shelf that has been steadily shrinking over the last 15 years. Scientists had believed that the shelf would collapse in about 15 years, but the ice shelf had other plans. The collapse will not raise sea levels in the rest of the world but is a sign of worsening global warming. Yikes! |
The big blue ugly eyesore in the same frame The writer says that the hotel has assurance and confidence. Yeah, like a forty-five-year-old bucktoothed Vegas hooker with a new face lift. It’s both sad *and* ugly. The writer says that it could be worse, but we, and by we I mean the SoMa residents that walk past it almost every day, don’t see how. What do you think? |
Thomas Beatie, Thomas Beatie, a person that was born a biological woman, had sex change surgery, and is now living as a man, is having a baby because his wife is unable to do so. Here is an excerpt of the story in The Advocate: Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire. Damn, you have to wonder how many heterosexual husbands would be willing to do this for their wives if it were possible? |
I finally got around to getting photos from Fleet Week (October) and our visit to Hawaii (December) off my camera and posted them on Flickr last night. We are still in the process of taking and sorting all of the photos we are taking in Washington, DC and I will be posting those later. |
Melissa and I are heading off to Washington, DC this morning. I have to be there for a privacy conference that starts on Wednesday, so we decided to head there early and be tourists in the District. We didn’t realize that we were heading there on Easter weekend, which may mean that a lot of things will be closed on Sunday, but oh well. We’ll see whatever we can, I guess. I will post photos of our travels upon our return. |
Does this guy know Melissa and I were walking past a couple of homeless guys today and they approached us excitedly and asked us to clarify a debate they were having. Since this was a welcome change to being harassed for money, we both agreed. They surprisingly had an American history question: Which country burned down the White House during the War of 1812? One homeless guy debated that it was the British, the other that it was the French. Melissa and I both didn’t know the answer off the top of our heads, but we suspected it was the Britsh since the French were busy with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, not in the U.S. In order to settle the debate definitively, I busted out my BlackBerry to get the answer from the Internets. Sure enough, a quick Google search found that it was the British that burned down many public buildings in Washington, DC, including the White House, near the end of the War of 1812. The homeless exclaimed, "God bless the Internet!" Indeed. All in all, the interaction was quite refreshing and informative for all involved. I really had no idea that the homeless were interested in these types of academic pursuits. So I have to ask, do the homeless in other cities debate politics, science and quantum mechanics? I wonder. |
After Steve Irwin’s death a few years ago, I wrote a satirical post surrounding a true incident in which a stingray jumped onto a boat and stabbed a man in the heart. That man survived. Yesterday there was another freak incident in which a stingray leaped into the air striking a woman on a moving boat so hard that she fell back, hit her head, and died. While stingrays jumping out water is not unusual, stingrays flying out of water and hitting stationary or moving objects is very unusual. What a strange way to go. |
Apple is reportedly in talks with content providers about making iTunes completely free for customers that decide to pay more for their iPods or iPhones. Surely, Apple is willing to share or give the additional device markup to the music publishers in exchange for the content. I doubt the publishers would take a flat fee, since their royalty contracts with the artists are not structured this way. If Apple can get the publishers to agree to this it will be great for those who are purchasing their iPods or iPhones for the first time. I would think that the added premium on price will likely pay-off in the long run. My guess is that it would be a $249 premium for a device lifetime subscription. But what about those, and I am not one of them, who have already purchased hundreds if not thousands of dollars in iTunes music? Frankly, I doubt that this subscription model will even happen given the "old school" thinking and artist contracts that publishers still have. Stay tuned. |
 Diddy ready to let about 20 lawyers rain down on the LA times. The LA Times ran a story on their website this morning allegedly linking the 1994 attack of Tupac Shakur at a New York recording studio with Sean “Diddy” Combs. The sad thing is that the story claims that the story is based on FBI records, interviews with people at the scene of the 1994 shooting, and statements to the FBI by an informant, but none of the sources are on the record! What kind of shoddy journalism is that! Don’t we expect more from the LA Times, or is it just another blog!? Diddy put out a statement denouncing the story, saying “The story is a lie…It is beyond ridiculous and completely false. Neither (the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.) nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during or after it happened. … I am shocked that the Los Angeles Times would be so irresponsible as to publish such a baseless and completely untrue story.” Frankly, I am shocked too. I am not trying to pick sides here, but if you are going to accuse someone of attempted murder, you better have enough information and sources to back it up. If I was Diddy, I would sue the hell out of the newspaper for libel! I am sure that this will not be the end of this brouhaha–stay tuned! |
There is rumor that The Bionic Woman (TBW) has been canceled after only 8 episodes! NBC Universal denied the rumor a month ago and said that production on the show would resume after the writers’ strike. Well, the strike is over and the show’s production has not resumed. Smells like death for the show. Everyone expected a shortened season due to the strike but expected the show to be renewed for at least a second season. What’s interesting about this is that TBW was getting higher ratings than Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, yet Fox will be bringing Ms. Connor back next Fall. It seems that NBC brass has decided to kill their extra investments in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre outside of Heroes. Heroes is still by considered a hit show even though its ratings have dropped, maybe that has scared them a bit. Perhaps the production costs of TBW far outweighed the ad sales and it was simply a business decision. Who knows? But this is all speculation on conjecture and rumor. If the rumor turns out to be true then shame on NBC for killing a pretty good show with a loyal following. |
Bette Davis, the original psycho-biddy. Function: noun We watched the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? a few nights ago and can honestly say that "crazy chicken" does not even begin to describe Bette Davis’s character in the film. Just the clumped mascara she wore alone is enough to give you the willies. |
George Lucas and his Lucasfilm team are working on an animated film that will be released in August called Star Wars: Clone Wars. The full-length theatrical release will be followed by an animated series that will air on the Cartoon Network. I know what you are thinking, "if it is animated it’s going to suck." But after taking a look at the film trailer and production video, I can honestly say that I am now really excited about both the film and the subsequent series. |