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Light and Melatonin

For those of you who have a hard time with the short days and long nights, I found this great primer on Seasonal Affective Disorder and how to use lightboxes and melatonin to regulate your circadian rhythms.

Sanchez still at it

More fun with Matt Sanchez.

Tom Cruise Redux

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has some more background on the Church of Scientology, including some links to other indoctrination videos.

Gawker has already received a note from Scientology’s lawyers claiming that posting the Tom Cruise video is copyright infringement. Let’s see how long Gawker holds its own in this fight.

Kevin McCullough makes a big ass of himself

Right wing nutjob Kevin McCullough makes a big, fat, puffy-eyed ass of himself when he attempts to warn parents of the dangers of the video game “Mass Effect” Here’s an excerpt (you can practically hear McCullough masturbating as he writes):

It’s called “Mass Effect” and it allows its players – universally male no doubt – to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to “engage” and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game “persons” hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.

Now, I will admit, that sounds like a pretty damn good game to me and it’s available on XBox! Actually, it’s the game contains an implied, that is very soft-core, lesbian sex scene. Oh my!

McCullough’s description of the game is almost completely and entirely incorrect. To push his agenda McCullough made up details about the game! Then he uses his demented fantasy as a straw man amidst laughable attempts to explain himself, without retracting his column naturally. He’s too thick-headed and prideful to admit he made a mistake. Read the comments, the wrath of the gamers is something to behold!

Dan Sandler of the Orlando Sentinal puts it well:

What is the lesson to be learned here? Always learn the agenda behind a person’s writing before you even think about believing it. Then do your own research and see if that person is telling the truth. The world if full of lies, liars, and the scum who perpetuate those lies. Don’t be one of them.

Which one is McCullough, a liar or the scum who perpetuates the lies?

Wacky

Most crazy awesome video ever; Tom Cruise reflecting on life with Scientology. Difficult to watch. It’s even weirder if you just listen to the sound. Creepy ass laughing.

The Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel

Good news via Gothamist: the Oak Room is going to reopen. Those who have been there know it is one of those classic grand old New York spaces and an irreplaceable artifact from a another era. Hopefully the update will be respectful of the the room’s great past. Hopefully the new menu will be an improvement as well.

Loudness Wars

The loudness wars are back and they’re in Rolling Stone. They’re always the last to know, that Rolling Stone. Also, the imminent death of the music business predicted in The Economist. The majors are realizing they will simply have to give music away for free if they want to stay afloat. Who knows how long they can even sustain that?

Bittorrent Tracker Blocking

It seems like the RCN is doing something to interfere with bittorrent tracker communications. The issue seems to only be with tracker communications as downloads and uploads continue to work. There is a workaround, which is to use The Onion Router (TOR) to route tracker communications. Here’s how to do it with Azureus:

  1. Download and install TOR
  2. Run TOR. Not setup is really necessary, it starts working right out of the box (NICE!)
  3. In Azureus, choose “Options” from the “Tools” menu
  4. Expand the “Connections”menu in the lefthand tab
  5. Choose the “Proxy Options” item from the list
  6. In the right hand part of the window, check the boxes for “Enable proxying of tracker communications” and “I have a SOCKS proxy”
  7. Enter “127.0.0.1” in the Host text box and “9050” in the Port text box
  8. Click the “Save” button in the lower left corner of the Azureus window
  9. Restart Azureus
  10. You are back in business, congrats.

David Lynch, Problem Solver

Funny impression of David Lynch and great parody.

Black Books

Great quotes from the series Black Books with Dylan Moran: Season 1, Season 2.