Thrillbillies indeed

Dig it, babies.

I think it's ironic that many psychologists never realize how friggin nuts they are.

I read this segment from an article on cracked.com. Holy crap it's funny (yet tragic).

John Watson established the entire psychological field of behaviorism by gallantly conducting experiments on babies. Evidently, getting a baby to work on back in the 20s was easy: You just grabbed one that belonged to one of the hospital's employees... an employee who, it should be noted, was not involved in the experiment. Apart from their relationship to the subject/lab rat, of course.

For this particular experiment, Watson took a baby named Albert and exposed him to rats, monkey masks and burning newspaper. Then he stopped fucking around and began the actual experiment.

Little Albert would be introduced to a series of fluffy white objects, such as a white rat, a white rabbit and a swatch of white fur. Initially, Albert possessed no fear of these things. During subsequent exposures to the same objects, Watson would hammer a steel bar, creating a terrifying racket. In time, whenever Albert saw anything white and fluffy he cried with fear. This is science.

Watson's goal was, of course, to see if it was possible to condition fear in an infant. You know, because prior to this infants were regarded as cold, unfeeling machines, incapable of emotion.

Working tirelessly alongside his assistants, he scared a child for 31 days before returning it to the hospital drenched in terrified excrement (evidently it was just a rental). Unfortunately, Watson spent the entire experiment scaring the shit out of Albert with the hammer of Thor and never got around to actually correcting any of the tremendous psychological damage he was causing, thereby dooming Albert to grow up as a man who pissed his pants at the sight of a cotton ball.

As if this wasn't enough, it turns out Watson had wanted to do more. He lamented that he didn't have the time to condition both fear and arousal in Albert by stimulating the child's erogenous zones during the experiments, because back then getting an infant to shit all over his own boner was considered the pinnacle of behavioral research.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

It's being hailed as the single best licensed game ever made. Or my favorite quote from Joystiq.Com's review "It will birth you anew in its magnificence." It's got the Joker voiced by Mark Hamill. It's got Batman in his truest comic form as I imagine him in my head. I don't even have it yet and I'm already giddy. By the way I ordered the limited edition that comes with a real batarang. You never know when you'll need it.

Now if only they could teach him how to push a bobsled...

Usain Bolt shattered yet another of his world records at the world championships in Berlin by recording a time of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meter sprint. Watching the video, I'm still amazed at how completely relaxed he looks before and during the race in comparison to his competitors. And the margin of victory is freakin' insane!

As Bolt said, "I'm on my way to being a legend."

Not everything Star Wars related is necessarily good...

Women in bikinis reciting lines from Star Wars seemed like a good idea...until you actually watch it. "Even I get boarded sometimes" has taken a whole new meaning in my head for some reason now.

I guess that's one way to know if she's the one...

Saw this on kottke.org, and thought it was hilarious. This story is pure gold. Give it a look if you've got a few minutes to spare:

The best episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon I ever saw...

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is in that category of films that's a bit hard to review. No one in their right mind is expecting greatness from a movie directed by Stephen Sommers (The Mummy), much less from a movie based on a line of toys. Still, Transformers and its sequel Revenge of the Fallen turned out to be a wonderful spectacle of CGI eye candy and quite entertaining. And considering I played with G.I. Joe way more than Transformers, I was hoping some nostalgia for one of my favorite toys as a kid would allow me to escape and have some fun with this in the same way. Even the actors themselves weren't kidding themselves into thinking this was some sort of genre defining movie. Back during production of the film adaptation of G.I. Joe in which she portrays the Baroness, Sienna Miller succintly summed up exactly what to expect: "Guns, tits, ass, and no acting!" And honestly, I think she was spot on.

The plot of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is pretty straightforward. Destro creates the ultimate terror weapon, his henchmen (Baroness, Storm Shadow, Zartan) steal it from NATO, and the G.I. Joe team (General Hawk, Heavy Duty, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Breaker) along with their new recruits (Duke, Ripcord) are tasked to save the world from Destro's nefarious plan. In the background is the Doctor, who seems to be the real brains behind Destro's organization with a backstory that isn't all that hard to figure out before the "big" reveal towards the end of the film.

For the most part, I thought the casting of the film was actually quite good. Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols look hot, Ray Park in his Snake Eyes outfit looks ninja cool and his moves are even cooler, and they don't give Channing Tatum too many big words to say. Wild Willie...er...I mean, Dennis Quaid pretty much calls in his performance, but he's not asked to do a whole lot either except look leader-ly and whoop and holler when the Joes win the final battle (that was pretty much a blatant knock-off of Star Wars--dogfights, sword fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, General Hawk at the main base with a big holographic globe watching the battle unfold).

Steven Sommers and the writers take the right approach in this movie by making it essentially an action-centric film with lots of explosions, high-tech gadgets, and fights that defy the laws of physics. I was pleased to see that they even tried to make some of the technology for G.I. Joe a bit believable using ideas that are in the early phases of development already today (e.g. invisibility cloak). The writers even manage to explain how Cobra manages to get all these nameless soldiers to fight their battles without complaint (i.e. nanomites that allow for mind control), which always perplexed me as a kid when I would watch cartoons--perhaps a bit silly, but explains a lot nonetheless. And in some sense, this movie felt a lot like the old cartoons, save for the fact that people actually die in this film rather than miraculously parachute out of danger. Whether you feel that's a good thing or bad, I leave that opinion to you.

It's when the film stops having fun, and tries to be serious when the film breaks down. Granted, the draw for me to G.I. Joe as a kid was always the backstories behind each character, but the way they sort of tried to incorporate flashbacks for each of the main characters really slowed the pace down, and didn't add much to the movie at all. The story itself hinges on the background between Duke, the Baroness, and Cobra Commander, which was kind of silly, and wasn't helped by the fact that Channing Tatum and Sienna Miller had absolutely no chemistry. And Zartan? He's still the dumbest villain ever. EVER!

In the wrong frame of an adult mind, this was probably a laughable film, best enjoyed at 2:00 AM with a few too many beers. But G.I. Joe was never really meant for adults. I think this movie targets exactly the right market--young boys who still play with toys. Had I been ten years old, I probably would have been talking about this movie for the next month. Do you need to go rung out and see this? No. But if you've got nothing to do on a weekend afternoon, or when it comes out on DVD, it's kind of fun. And in the end, this movie comes down to one question: Ninjas and hot chicks in tight leather--do you really need anything else? Just for that, I give it a...

AHHHH! WHY NOW?

So I'm moments from walking out the door on a date, and I'm stricken with diarrhea. So the question is do I call and cancel without providing a reason, or do I "suck it up" as it were.

I'm going for it. Wish me luck.

Oh no, were having Mexican food. :(

Let's pour some salt into that wound...

I think Wander posted this trailer for Halo 3 awhile back. Obviously, this game has been out for quite some time, so this isn't the reason why I'm posting the video again. I'm really just putting it up to remind us how awesome a big-screen version of Halo might have been with Neill Blomkamp directing a full-on movie since he was in charge of this trailer. And when you see his movie District 9 this weekend, you'll probably be cursing Microsoft even more for screwing the potential movie deal up a couple of years ago. Oh, what could have been.

The things people will do for "The Beast"...

The chase scene for this must have been amusing to watch:

Man gets DUI riding lawnmower for beer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
08/04/2009

BELLEVILLE— With a revoked license because of a previous drunken-driving conviction, Dennis Cretton shouldn't drive.

But authorities say that didn't stop the 49-year-old Belleville-area man from drunkenly driving up to a gas station for more beer --on his yellow riding lawnmower.

Cretton has been charged with felony aggravated driving under the influence after neighbors reported he was weaving in and out of traffic on his lawnmower Friday night.

When deputies tried to stop him, authorities say Bretton drove the mower into his home's front yard, his 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best spilling onto the ground along the way.

Cretton is free on $10,000 bond. Calls to his home went unanswered Tuesday.

Farewell John Hughes

You were my favorite comedy writer and one of the best directors in the game. Your films defined my life. Thank you.

Pucker up...

Bacon Lip Balm seemed like a good idea when I first read about it, but then after I thought about this concept for awhile, it occurred to me that this might give the sensation of spreading bacon fat on your lips all day. That could get kind of gross.

More incentive to make lots and lots of money...

Conventional wisdom says that hot women marry rich and successful men. Not necessarily rich, hot men. Just rich men. How else to explain visually odd pairings such as Donald Trump and his trophy wives or Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova? From an evolutionary perspective, this sort of makes sense. Women want men who are successful so that they may provide for their children. So how do women ensure that their offspring are well cared for and their genes survive? According to a recent study from the University of Helsinki, they have lots of hot daughters. From The Times:

In a study released last week, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts. He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.

This builds on previous work by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who found that good-looking parents were far more likely to conceive daughters.

And not just daughters--hotter and hotter daughters:

Kanazawa said: “Physical attractiveness is a highly heritable trait, which disproportionately increases the reproductive success of daughters much more than that of sons.

“If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.”

Depending on how you look at it, this could bode well for future males, and may give them a bit more impetus to strive for greatness.

A little late to the party...

During my recent trip to Los Angeles, I skipped the FM radio and kept the tunes streaming in from the satellite via Sirius XM U. Phoenix, which Firecracker George posted about awhile back got some pretty heavy play, as did plenty of other slightly less mainstream bands including this group, Animal Collective. I downloaded the rest of the album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, at it's got some pretty awesome tracks that incorporate that synthesized wall of sound rave-like kind of atmosphere. Kind of interesting to me that we're getting back to that 80's style of processed electronica after a decade or so of acoustic, "unplugged" music in the 90's.

Anywho, give this album a listen if you get the chance. Apparently, it's already been out for a few months. By the time I catch up with all these new bands, the pendulum will swing back to bare folk music. I am so not hip.