Bug pulled out of man's back, and other cool stuff.

Popsci.com has posted a gallery of Nature's Grossest Creatures, which includes the blobfish, medicinal maggots, a leech looking thing, and a bug that grows inside human skin (and gets removed in a video).

Not for the squeamish, or just about anyone else.

Wanna know where NOT to be?

NewScientist.com has an article that shows the Death map USA, a map which shows county-level hazard induced mortality. Basically, the counties in the country where natural disasters or hazards (like heat waves) kill the most people.

Fun stuff.

PODCAST - WAR Report for 12/11/08

Kris and Patrick are here to talk about some WAR!!!

...and how much it sucks. It's a long podcast, as we detail what we like, what we don't like and talk about some of our concerns for the game with the new 1.1a patch coming up. So click the links below and listen away!

Part 1 (~11 min)

Notable quote: "Ok, I'm just gonna stop bogging down the show because I don't think anyone cares what either of us has been up to."


Part 2 (~10 min)

Notable quote: "And I just want to say that I hope his legal issues sort themselves out so he can be back here with us soon."


Part 3 (~10 min)

Notable quote: "I hate zone locking. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Words do describe how much I hate zone locking."


Part 4 (~5 min)

Notable quote: "God. We forward to God on that email address."

Big News! Science Geeks Have Less Sex!

In one of the more absurdly obvious findings of the last millenium, researchers in Australia found that science geeks were more likely to be virgins than anyone else on the planet.

Well, actually they just compared them to art students, but still, I feel pretty comfortable with the extrapolation made in my above statement.

Here's the original article from popsci.com.

Playstation Home Open Beta

The Playstation Home Open Beta begins tomorrow. Unforutantely, I don't have a PS3 so I can't test it or even compare it to the PS3's online service prior to Home. So I'll have to leave that to others.

Here's some info from TGDaily.com.

And here's some info from PCMag.com.

Rock Band/Guitar Hero sales peaking?

This article on Wired.com suggests that is in fact the case. Are we looking at the beginning of a slow decline in sales and popularity for rhythm games?

"You follow me, camera guy?"

Anyone who's watched Discovery Channel lately has probably seen the Shamwow commercial. There's nothing more mesmerizing than watching the sublimely-hyper, headset-wearing, nasal-voiced guy who reminds me of Steve Buscemi praise the merits of a piece of miracle cloth. It's so catchy that my daughter reminds me to buy it every time it comes on.

Thankfully, the Popular Mechanics website has a recurring feature that tests the As Seen on TV items that clog our brains and beg for our money. Does it do everything it claims to do? Find out here.

And as an additional treat, check out this sorta NSFW ad for the Shamwow.

SNIPPET - Russel's Phone Call

That's right, our favorite off-air personality is back with an unexpected phone call to Patrick's house while we were airing. Why is he calling? What's 22 inches long? And why won't he ever stay away from Patrick's house for an extended period of time?

Find out here.

PODCAST - Crysis Game Review

From the "games that should have been reviewed two years ago" file, comes our game review podcast on Crysis. Chris weighs in on why this game makes his graphics loving pants go crazy.

Get it here.

Notable quote: "Your grandpa would probably feel right at home playing this game."

So do you hate MMO gold farmers too?

There's a fascinating article on Wired.com about IGE - Internet Gaming Entertainment, a company that for a few years in the middle part of this decade controlled just about all of the MMO gold farming in the world - and it's founder, a former child actor and dot.com investor named Brock Pierce. It's amazing how much I never knew about gold farming and the shady business environment that surrounded it.

Some interesting quotes from the article:

"There were times I came outside," he says, "and the sun hurt."


In the real world Pierce was just a 19-year-old washed-up child actor living far from home and going slowly broke. But in Norrath he was none of that. In Norrath he was the dark-elf wizard Athrex, and he was a champion.


The source of those profits, ultimately, was operations like the one owned and operated by 26-year-old Liu Haibin in Jinhua, China, which I visited a few years ago. With about 30 workers on staff, Liu was able to keep a gold-farming setup running around the clock. While the night shift slept upstairs on plywood bunks, day-shift workers sat in the hot, dimly lit workshop, each tending three or four computers.

White America rejoice?

I guess all those white people who threatened to riot (yeah...) when OJ walked in '95 can finally back off those claims, since he's now facing at least nine years in prison for his, uh, kidnapping of someone in a hotel room.

OJ talk always reminds me of a radio talk show clip I heard on the Ticket, a Dallas sports station. I don't know what station it originated on, but OJ was doing a tour to promote his book from a few years back, the "How I did it" book, or whatever it was called. During the tour, he was taking some calls on another local radio station and it was replayed on the Ticket.

He gets a call from a guy claiming to be a huge fan, and although I don't have any kind of transcript of what he said, I've taken the liberty of paraphrasing what this glorious caller said below:

"Hey, OJ, I'm your biggest fan. I remember 1973, the magical season, I was 6 years old and my mom took me to a Bills game. We were standing on the sideline before the game watching you guys practice, and my mom yells 'Juice! Juice!', because she wanted you to sign a football for me. Well, I got distracted, as all little kids do, but when I turned around not only had you signed the football, but you also lanced my mom in her side with a pitchfork and..."

And that's when he got cut off....

Awesome work, dude. Keep it up! :)

Apparently the Blackberry Storm sucks

According to this New York Times reviewer and his emailers, the Storm is a piece of junk. Which is sad, because I was hoping it would do well enough to entice me to buy it. Oh well.

Boy George guilty of handcuffing man to wall

See the story here.

On a similar note, I fully expect to see the exact same headline ten years from now, only with Russel's name in place of Boy George.

"I just broke the Internet"

For those of you who don't know, a major security vulnerability was discovered early this year in DNS, a flaw so major that it could have crippled internet security as we know it. At least, that's what this article on Wired.com says. It's a fascinating read, so I figured I'd relay for you tech geek junkies.

Enjoy!

PODCAST - Election Talk - Parts 3 and 4

As promised (a day late) here's the last two installments of our election talk podcast, which comes in at almost an hour.

Get part 3 here.

Notable quote: "That's a joke that me, Patrick and 2 other people know."
"Both our listeners?"

And get part 4 here.

Notable quote: "Be aware that I can take anything anybody says, cut it, and replay it ad nauseum."
"Okay. I'm sure our one listener will love that."


For reference, here's the links to previous installments:

Part 1

Part 2

PODCAST - Election Talk - Part 2

Here's part 2 of our (soon-to-be) award winning discussion on the recent election. Look for parts 3 and 4 tomorrow.

Here's the audio.

Notable quote: "I'd like to apologize to our black listeners for Patrick's shenanigans."


And for reference, here's Part 1.

The Swayze vs The Chuckster

You know, Chuck Norris has gotten a lot of internet buzz the last few years for being a badass. I'm sure you're all aware of http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/ and all.

But what about Patrick Swayze? The guy can deliver a roundhouse kick like nobody's business AND he dances like an angel. Sure, Norris was in a Bruce Lee movie; then he shaved his back, grew a beard and went on to stardom...but what did he REALLY give us? The same old tired stories, the same old tired character, the Total Gym and God.

Now look at the Swayze's list:

Red Dawn
The Outsiders
Dirty Dancing
North and South
Steel Dawn
Roadhouse
Ghost
Next of Kin
Point Break
Black Dog

I mean, do I really need to go on? The bastard beat cancer, for Pete's sake...while STILL smoking!

He would eat Chuck Norris for breakfast and shit out 2 Chuck Norris' for lunch! You don't FUCK with the Swayze!

Be nice.

SNIPPET - Chinese Crowd Control

Here's a piece of our forever-unaired first WAR Report, where we put the Catholics against the Chinese in our fantasy Race Wars MMO.

Here's the audio.


Notable quote: "I would say the Catholics are a crowd control class, given their large area of effect."

Obama, Guns and You

So, last weekend, I went to the Fort Worth Gun Show. My mom wanted to buy a little gun to have around the house...in case she was burgled by little people. Anywho, we get to the gun show early and there is a HUGE line to get in the place. Behind us, this good ol' boy is talking on his cellphone and says, "Man, you should see how many people are here. Yeah, he's got everybody scared."

Of course, the "he" he was referring to is our President Elect Barack Obama. You see, anytime a Democrat takes office, it automatically means that there's going to be a huge change in gun control. The general feeling is that ammo will be taxed out the wazoo and assault rifles will be banned and it will be much harder to get handguns. Some real hardcore, gun-toting Republicans even believe that they will actually take your guns AWAY. And it all boils down to us not being able to defend ourselves when the shit hits the fan. What shit and what fan, I'm not exactly sure.

Now, I'll give you the reality. No private citizen needs an assault rifle. Anyone that says they do is hunting more than deer. They'll never pass a huge tax on ammo, simply because there's a huge lobby against it. And money still buys votes in D.C., no matter what party is in office. And is it really so unbearable to have to wait 7 days for a handgun? I mean, really? Finally, I don't even want to imagine the carnage that would ensue if the government actually tried to take people's guns away...and neither do they. Don't be ridiculous.

Now, for the other side. I'm a proud gun owner. I own a handgun (sweetass Glock .45) and a longgun (equally sweetass Browning 12-gauge). The only thing tough gun laws prevents is honest people getting guns. Oddly enough, most of your criminals don't buy guns legally. Tough gun laws might prevent some crimes, like the Virginia Tech shooting...but those are incredibly rare. Any murder that is a crime of passion would occur whether the murderer had a gun or not. And don't even bother pointing out how few gun-related murders they have in Great Britain, because they also have a way higher rate of violent crimes than in the U.S.

You see, folks, criminals don't really care HOW they commit their crimes, just so long as they can commit them.

PODCAST - Election Talk - Part 1

Last week we did a podcast about the Presidential election, including the weeks leading up to the election, the election itself, and the reactions to it in the weeks following. It's a long podcast, nearly an hour, so we broke it up into 4 parts for easier listening.

Here's Part 1 of the podcast, where we talk a bit about the lead in to the election itself.


Notable quote: "Kind of like American Idol President."

The Greatest News Ever!

AICN is running an interview with Ron Howard where he says the possibility of an Arrested Development movie is 'closer than ever.'

How's THAT for a morning pick-me-up!

The New XBox Experience

For those of you waiting for the new XBox Live + Netflix service offering, your time has come. Microsoft updated its XBox firmware this morning at 2am Pacific, releasing what it calls the New XBox Experience, which includes a redesign of the menu system (the blades are gone) and incorporating Netflix into the service.

This is something we'll be following closely, and you can probably expect a podcast about it shortly.

Read more about it here.

UPDATE: Here's a really cool AICN article about it that includes screenshots. Take notice of the link/report near the bottom that says some Sony movies are curiously unavailable for streaming...

Nintendo DSi information

Well, by now the DSi has been released in Japan, but no word on the exact U.S. release date yet. For those of you who need some hardcore DSi info, check out the list of links below:

Here's some DSi sales information courtesy of PC World.

A little preview info, also from PCWorld.

More preview info, from Wired.com.

A Wired.Com review of the DSi.

Here's an article about the patents Nintendo owns that relate to the DSi. Speculate away!

And, last but not least, the Nintendo DSi Wikipedia entry.

USB 3.0 Spec released

Yesterday, the USB 3.0 Promoters Group announced that the USB 3.0 specification was complete. What does that mean to the rest of us? Faster and more-powerful USB, that's what. This article lists some benefits of the new spec, which allows nearly 5.0 Gbps data transfer.

Top 5 selling games of 2008

According to this article on Gamasutra.com, the Wii seems to have made quite the mark on the top-selling games list, especially Wii Play. There's some interesting talking points here, notably the popularity of the Wii (which we already know), the explosion of casual gamers (or family gamers), and the fact that GTA 4 is the only non-Wii game on the list.

Weird.

Virtual Cheating

This article on USA Today talks about a couple who are getting divorced after the guy was discovered cheating in Second Life.

See if you can spot the two words in the article that REALLY stood out to me...

Wrath of the Lich King

So I guess this comes out today/last night for World of Warcraft. I'm sure people care, I'm just not one of them. I did find this PCMag.com article about the launch last night interesting, specifically the following quote:

"Though retailers like 7-Eleven have been selling copies of World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King for several days..."

7-Eleven? Since when do they sell games?

WAR Report - 11/12 T4 action (Lag anyone?)

I guess since one of our goals here is to cover our activities on the Iron Rock server while playing Warhammer Online, I would be remiss if I didn't mention anything about the T4 action in Greenskin lands last night (11/12). We'll cover this in more detail in our next WAR Report podcast, but I'll give a brief rundown of the action for those of you who missed it. At least for as long as I was logged in.

I hopped on around 9pm (central) and got word that Thunder Mountain had been taken by Order and that Black Crag seemed to be next. I joined an alliance warband, lead by Percane, and we proceeded to get stomped continuously by the horde of Order warbands roaming throughout the zone.

Sometime around 10pm, Black Crag flipped and the fight was on. Butcher's Pass, the Greenskin fortress zone, was now open, and the 60 min timer to take the fortress had started!

The battle began slowly, though. Order didn't even show up until 15 minutes had already counted down, which was fine for Destruction, since a good number of us weren't even sure how to get to Butcher's Pass. But we all found our way as Order arrived and proceeded to work their way through the north gate of the outer wall. With somewhere around 25 minutes to go, they breached the north gate and everyone retreated to the inner keep.

Unfortunately, this is where the major problem of the night set in... LAG.

That's right. The battle was ruled by some pretty severe lag. I didn't crash, but I noticed many others dropping out throughout the course of the battle. Destro managed to hold off the attackers at the inner keep, and finally port out and wipe them, but the intense lag made the whole battle a 'mash-your-buttons-and-pray' type of affair.

It was indeed an Epic Battle. Unfortunately, it was accompanied by Epic Lag.

Here's some discussions about the night's events:

VN Boards
Warhammer Alliance

Obama and American Soft Power

Here's an interesting article on the International Herald Tribune, a news site that I don't frequent as much as I used to - primarily because the ads on the site seem to peg 100% of my PC resources when viewing it in Firefox.

Regardless, it's a good article about Obama's chance to help the U.S. reclaim it's 'soft power'.

A good read.


And as an added bonus, here's another article about bananas in Europe.... fascinating stuff.

Bill Simmons - The Sports Guy

Simmons is one of my favorite sports writers around, mostly because he's hilariously funny. He writes for ESPN.com's Page 2, and I try to catch his new stuff as often as I can.

So I submit this link to his latest story, a ranking of all NFL teams, less as a pertinent sports story and more so you just have a link to his article. So, here you go.

Here's a preview, regarding the Cleveland Browns...

"I remember this past Sunday when Fox's Rich Gannon said, "You can't second-guess Romeo Crennel here." I won't even tell you the context. Just know that, yes, at all times we are allowed to second-guess Romeo Crennel. Even if he's single-handedly disarming three gunmen during a bank robbery as I'm lying on the floor with my hands behind my head."

And one more...

"At least one network needs to stick laptops in front of its guys. My preference would be CBS, if only for six straight weeks of Shannon Sharpe joking he has never seen a computer before and doesn't even know whether it's turned on properly as everyone overlaughs except for Bill Cowher, who will be glancing at his e-mails to see whether Jerry Jones e-mailed him yet with the subject heading, "What about $35 million for five years?"

Beware of job interviews

Here's a story I hadn't heard before, about a guy who hacked into Valve's network and posted the source code for Half Life 2 on the web. Apparently, he was German, and Valve coordinated with the FBI to set up a fake job interview to get him into the US, where he could be arrested.

Here's the story...

Batman suing Batman

In entertainment news..

Apparently there's a city in Turkey named Batman. Who knew?

View the article

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