Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Hilarious News- Weiner Headlines
I’m sorry to our regular readers who expect reviews of the latest in tech, web design, the search marketplace, and search engine optimization. This post has none of those. In fact, it is by far and a way the lowest of the lows that our blog will ever stoop too. That is fair warning, so if you wish to retain the dignity of this blog, do not read on.
Anthony Weiner had a penis published on his Twitter account. That’s right, A. Weiner’s penis was published on his Twitter account. (I’ve yet to see the denial that it was a Weiner penis, just that it was the result of a hack). As such, I’ve decided its only right that someone aggregates all the amazing headlines this has generated. Feel free to email, comment, etc, and contribute your own. I’d prefer you stuck to real ones, but if you have imaginary diatribe that’s worthwhile then I would probably accept that.
Weiner Headlines List
- Weiner drops Wisconsin speaking engagement- NY Daily News
- Ambitious Weiner sees media strategy backfire-AP
- Weiner’s wife puts on brave face amidst Twitter photo scandal.-NY Post
- A. Weiner’s bulging controversy a classic example of abysmal damage control – NY Daily News
- Weiner controversy will not go away- AP
- Weiner photo likely meant for porn start- Politico
- Weiner’s a wimp- NJ Star Ledger
- A. Weiner vs. Chris Christie- ABC News
- Clinton still trumps Weiner, Edwards, in sex scandal
- Cantor, Boehner split on response to Weiner photo
- Weiner’ Calls Police on CBS Reporter
- Cantor to Weiner: ‘Come clean’
- Look what a mess A. Weiner has made
- Dem leaders to Weiner: This has to end
- Weiner’s Spectacular Wife- MSNBC
- House’s Weiner apologizes over inappropriate photos
- How Weiner could survive
- A. Weiner: Stick a fork in him, he’s done
On that note. We’ll end. But this is hilarious. Sometimes life is funnier than fiction.
Google Updates Their Image Search
This week Google updated their image search. They integrated a few different features that have been included into the main search results. Images may now appear in a tiled style of layout and have hover previews. You will see a larger thumbnail and have access to more information for every image. Read full post.
Memorial Day- Thank you!
Today is Memorial Day, and before I went out to a few barbeques and did some yard work, I wanted to say a big thank you to a few individuals in my life who have served our country and always demonstrated the highest level of character and attributes befitting of our armed services.
First off, is a recent loss in my family, Auntie Em (Emely Sholseth). Auntie Em passed away last year. During her life she served extensively in her community as an educator and earlier, served in the United States Air Force. Auntie Em was always dedicated to first ensuring that the needs of those around her were met, before focusing on her own requirements. Her generosity, passion for her grand niece and nephews, and her desire to see the values of her upbringing passed on, made an indelible mark on my life and the lives of my brothers.
Secondly, I would like to thank my grandfather, Harold ‘Hal’ Martin.
Grandpa Martin served in the Air Force and later as a commercial airline pilot
Grandpa Martin served as an Air Force pilot before I was ever born, but his time in the service undoubtedly helped to shape him as a husband, father, and grandfather. Growing up, his expectations and belief in his grandchildren sometimes seemed stifling or difficult to reach. But, looking back as an adult, I can honestly say that the sense of confidence he had in each of us made us better people. We’ve all managed to maintain high educational standards, are working successfully as contributing members of society, have or will attended college, etc. There wasn’t necessarily anyone else who was willing or able to ‘keep on us’ so that we could reach that outcome.
Thank you very much Grandpa Martin for your service!
Live Stream of President Obama’s Osama announcement
Purported to be announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, below is a live feed from the White House. Announcement to be coming any minute.
Osama Bin Laden dead- Finally?
Osama Bin Laden has finally been killed
Finally.
One decade later.
Countless innocent lives, and killed servicemen and women.
Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11th attacks on the United States, instigator of one of the worst conflicts in American history, has been killed.
Multiple sources within the intelligence community and the White House are reporting that Osama Bin Laden is confirmed dead. Apparently, Osama bin Laden was killed by a missile strike just over a week ago.
President Barack Obama is expected to make a statement this evening on the matter.
I can honestly say that this is the only time I’ve felt relief and or some measure of happiness to hear that someone is dead. I don’t take pride in saying that at all. It is just the reality of the situation. Some measure of justice, and some measure of closure seems to finally have been achieved with bin Laden’s death.
I hope that these reports are true and are accurate, and if they are, I hope that this bring some closure or satisfaction to the victims of 9/11 and the many men and women who sacrificed their lives as a result of his actions (you can argue the true cause of the war that you want, but his actions were the match to start the fire).
SNOW tonight in Washington?
Give me a break-
Just watching some weather forecasting for the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest. A cold front coming in from Alaska may deliver some snow to the north end this evening!
Isn’t it mid to late April? Someone, please tell me it isn’t like this all the time? While Joel, our founder and lead SEO, sits happily at his computer in warm Los Angeles, I’m here in the Arctic north trying to drum up some web design and search engine optimization clients in a spring snowstorm! Arghh!
I must have drawn the short end of the stick.
Jesus as an openly gay man- Guardian UK
It’s first cup of coffee time, which usually means I find an interesting article that has that headline screaming out at me, and I offer a response. These articles or topics generally have little to do with web design or LA SEO. Most of the time I look at the intent of the ‘journalist’, the depth of analysis of the ‘topic’, and the strength of their ‘argument’. In fair warning for this one, I am a Christian, so my opinion will invariably be skewed from that perspective (but since this is not an appropriate platform, I won’t be preaching from here). I will also point out that majority of our online marketing agency is not, including our company founder Joel. The original article can be found here- at the Guardian.co.uk.
The story, written by Michael Ruse, offers up a little splash that was sure to grab my attention and likely that of many other readers.
First of all, I want to note that I understand that Mr. Ruse is writing strictly from a hypothetical sense- his subtitle is “What if the newly found codices provided evidence of Jesus’s same-sex activity?” I’m not going to accuse him of blasphemy or go on a crazed rant on how insulting this whole thing is. I firmly believe that if the majority of Christians believed their God was the Almighty Creator of the universe, they wouldn’t spend as much time screaming and ranting about small issues that they can’t resolve on their own…
As to the intent of the article- obviously he is challenging the rather firmly held belief by many people that homosexuality is an abomination in God’s eyes. His final argument that Jesus being gay would do nothing to change the whole of the message of Scripture is aimed at that point. Is that a somewhat rosy and over simplified analysis? Yes. I think that anyone with a thorough understanding of the ‘homosexuality is sin, is not sin’ argument that occurs within the church understands that this is a much more convoluted subject to address in 800 to 1000 words, or whatever Mr. Ruse used.
I am rather disappointed on the strength of the article. I’m open to considering the opinion’s of others but a lot of the article stretched into needless hypothesis- “over-possessive mother, hostile father, gay son”, etc added nothing to his primary question. I did find it interesting that he uses a classic nurture stereotype to present Jesus’ supposed reasons for being gay. This seems like a rather shallow attempt at humor (?) from what is almost assured to receive some explosive secondary coverage.
In the end, I think that Mr. Ruse failed on several points. He didn’t expand his article or dig deep enough to support the hypothetical, and by doing so, left the editorial to be a wholesale work of fiction, rather then a well constructed argument. Look at Dan Brown, and his whole series on the history of the Catholic Church (Angels and Demons, The DaVinci Code). He spent a great deal of time constructing support for the arguments his characters presented in his book. In the end, the arguments held enough water to garner a significant discussion outside the circles of fiction readers. By publishing this article, Ruse failed to offer anything more then the question presented at the very beginning of the article, and the substance of people’s reactions would likely be the same. Ruse also failed to address anything beyond the fictional hypothesis other than one summary paragraph.
All in, I think that this was an ill advised attempt by Mr. Ruse to be the topic of discussion. His article doesn’t have enough quality to garner serious thought or contemplation because he presents no real arguments, just a simple what if question. I think the fact that he wrote this without rationale or logic shows that he is looking for an emotional response for his readers, and if this hovers on the first page of Google News for a while, I’m sure that will happen. Sadly, I think many of those reactions will be stupid and just as baseless as the article.
Perhaps Mr. Ruse had to get something in by a deadline and threw this together. Like many journalists these days, he seems to be aimed at readership numbers (page views) rather than at actually contributing meaningful insight/opinion to the broad discussions of our cultures. I wish that he had spent more time constructing something other than an attention grabbing headline however.
April 7 7.4 Earthquake in Japan, Tsunami warning issued
Just heard tell that another sizable earthquake has hit Japan and has resulted in another tsunami warning being issued.
Keep your support and efforts to help coming! There is tons of work to be done, and the nuclear reactor and radiation still poses a monumental health risk to the people of Japan.
We’ll post more if we hear that this was anything more then what they consider to be a more normal quake.
The LuluLemon Killings- A response to Slate/Root
The article I’m responding to can be found here.
LuLuLemon murderer and victim
Wow. Let me say, that I for one am concerned about the quality of all of our journalistic outlets. I am talking about every news magazine, news network, newspaper, anywhere on earth.
For the last three years, I have been reading news religiously from my laptop as the precursor to my day. Before I go to work at our LA web design firm, I like nothing more then to sit at my computer (in fact, its the same one I work on), and review the happenings from around the world. Shockingly, in the past year and half particularly, I have seen mainstream media sell out wholesale to the likes of the Huffington Post and other garbage news outlets. Some of the news editors at major papers like the NYT have opened up with both barrels on the HuffPost concept, while not admitting that their ‘top news stories’ listings on their sites are frequently written by the most imbecilic and unjournalistic hacks on their staff. This post from Root (which is Slate by the way), is just another example of a news organization giving a pen and paper to everyone and letting them have their try at being a news reporter.
Points of issue that I take with the article, in no particular order.
1. Right off the bat, the title. The LuLuLemon Killings? Plural? Who else was killed other then Jayna Murray? Lets not make this sound like a serial killer is on the loose. One person was killed.
2. “When Bad Things Happen to White People”? Do we need to make this about race? I was content to ignore the fact that a black woman killed another white coworker because she was caught shoplifting from their employer, LuLuLemon. My first thought when seeing the news and hearing the eventual charges filed had nothing to do with the race of the suspected murderer. It was, man, LuLuLemon is really not the type of place I could see a murder occurring. But this, this was in poor taste. Making this look like it was a story that got big because the victim was white, is a very thin line to draw.
3. That brings up point number three- the story got big when the victims were attractive young women(one black and one white) working in a relatively crime free, wealthy, high profile neighborhood. They ‘both’ were sexually assaulted and both were tied up and beaten (one to death) according to the original reporting. You can’t say its a story about white victims getting all the attention, when both of the women were getting the attention. I think it has more to do with the affluence of the neighborhood, the seediness of the accusations, and how photogenic the victims are (yes, I believe our news media is shallow enough to use prettier victims to their advantage).
4. LuLuLemon is hardly a peace loving yoga blah blah blah store. My wife and my sisters in law are all big LuLuLemon Athletica purchasers/shoppers. But I guarantee you, they would laugh at the idea that the store is about a spiritual yoga lifestyle. LuLu Lemon sells on the notion that yoga is a lifestyle, and they aim it squarely at middle class and upper middle class shoppers. They rely on sexuality, buzzwords, and branding to sell their product. I know a lot of serious yoga practitioners who would be p*ssed by the notion that LuLuLemon represents a yoga lifestyle, regardless of how green their product or energy conscious their company. According to my wife, the clothing is comfortable, well fitted, and one of the first athletic attire companies that was sensitive to fit and shape, so that she felt like she looked good wearing them to workout, or for quick errands.
Alright, there is my morning rant, and my first cup of coffee covered. Cheers!
