Sunday, September 30, 2012

Paul Ryan Accidentally Attacks Torture In A Statement About His Tax Plan

In an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace, after Wallace brings up the Obama campaign's claim that the Ryan/Romney tax plan will cost five trillion dollars, Paul Ryan says, "Look, this just goes to show: If you torture statistics enough, they'll confess to what you want them to confess." He goes on to refuse to answer Chris Wallace's request for actual math to show how his plan can possibly be "revenue neutral."

This statement is significant because the metaphor Ryan uses actually harms the Republican case for legalizing torturous interrogation tactics like waterboarding. According to him, the Obama campaign waterboarded Ryan's tax plan's numbers until it gave harmful results.


Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Time To Write An Article About Singer-Songwriter Emily Earle Before Everybody Else Does


Next week, a young musician named Emily Earle will be on NBC performing her blind audition for The Voice and she will probably get through to the next round. I first saw her perform in Manhattan during my 1L spring break after dragging my girlfriend to a bar somewhere around Avenue B. I don't remember why I wanted to go to this bar so badly, but it wasn't because of Emily Earle because I didn't know who she was or that she would be performing there.

Anyway, she was very endearing and she has a good voice. Her drummer/back-up vocalist was very good at his role too and it's a shame that she had to leave her backing band behind. I talked to them after the performance and they told me she was leaving for Nashville the next day to try to make it down there. I think she has a good shot because of her talent and because she has a charm that will carry over to television very well. Plus one of her bandmates told me that her uncle is accomplished country musician and producer Steve Earle, so Emily's pretty set.

Here's her most popular Youtube video right now: 


Watch for her on The Voice next week.

Update: Well, she made it through. Here's her interview right after her blind audition: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtpaob_the-voice-after-the-blind-audition-emily-earle_shortfilms



Friday, September 7, 2012

Failed Moodstring Design Attempt #1

Click to enlarge.


This was going to be on the "splash page" for the social networking/self-improvement/data collection site I'm working on, meaning people who haven't registered or logged in would see it when they visited the site. Yeah, I don't know, it hasn't gotten positive responses.

I had the lines continuing throughout the three images, to show how all three things will interact on the site, and a lot of repeating colors. The red, yellow, and green are important because those will be used to represent moods on the site. The map picture is what I think the map overlay feature will look like on the site, where you'll be able to see the moods of different countries at whatever time and date you want.

I guess I need to go more modern. I've been wanting to use that baby picture in something for two years now. I took it at the Glenn Beck rally (obviously I wasn't attending as a supporter).

Maybe I'll go for a more hand-drawn look. The site will be full of cartoons anyway. I could make a cartoon background instead of trying to look like every other major social network and start-up website.

Small update on the "legitimate rape" viral definition thing. In addition to all the other news sources that have used it, a Mother Jones article about men defining rape closed with my fake definition. The article has about 2000 tweets and 2000 Facebook likes, which indicates that it was read by hundreds of thousands of people. Very glad to be part of the national conversation about rape, as long as my satirical definition doesn't start getting taken seriously by conservatives.