Dear PopSci,
Why do you allow scam artists to advertise in your magazine? Are you really so hard up for money that you need to allow these people to share space with you just to survive?
You have published articles about how bad science does bad things for people, and then right at the end of the magazine you allow a scammer to purchase a full page ad telling people how they are drinking filth and how the only pure water they can count on comes through them.
Your sister magazine, last month, did multi-page piece on which "As Seen On TV" products were bullshit and yet at the end of the magazine there are ads for penis growth pills and fake natural cures. Why don't you go after your own advertisers if you want to pretend to care about your readers getting scammed?
I remember back in 8th grade It used to be amusing to flip to the back of your magazine and see what crap idiots were being scammed into spending money on. Over the past couple of decades you have become more than a magazine of "possible future cars" and you have started publishing articles on real science, real trends, real inventions and real science.
I don't expect you to do the Good Housekeeping thing. You don't have to verify and give a thumbs up to every product you have an ad for in your magazine, but when you put your sights on real science and allow ads for "Magic Sex Pheromones" - you come off looking like douchebags.
The worst part is that you will break up your major articles so that people are forced into the quack medical ads, or scientific conspiracy theory ads, if they want to read the rest of a really good story on global climate change.
Yes I know this helps you sell ads. But maybe you'd sell ads to the right people if they didn't have to associate themselves with worthless coins collections, crappy watches, penis growers, water purifiers and miracle heaters that must break the laws of physics to do 1/2 of what the ad claims.
Get your act together.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Stepping Out (a nostalgic ramble)
Yesterday was just one of those days.
It's hard to even put into words how everything can come together on certain days to bring you right back to where you were when you were a kid. Just driving up the road to get some lunch I found myself remembering the first warm days of the year when I was in Jr. High. I remember jumping off of the bus, on to my bike, and riding it down to my friends house making sure to leave my jacket at home because I would not bow down to the cold that would come after dusk. That would mean admitting defeat. It would mean admitting that it wasn't yet summer.
I was once called an idiot for being nostalgic, for holding on to the past the way that I do.
At the time, I was shocked to hear it. Not because I agreed with the statement but because people could actually think that way. The past should somehow be shoveled into a garbage bag and put out on to the street instead of having it's place in your life? I always felt that they should be treasured. Especially the good moments. Especially the events and people who changed your life. Especially the moments where you felt alive - physically or mentally.
But of course, you can't tell me something like that without it sticking in my brain. When I stepped outside yesterday it was also a cause for me to step outside myself to think about what made me who I am, and it kind of hit me finally. Why am I generally more nostalgic than everyone else?
For example, I have an old video game collection that includes Atari 2600 games, Intellivision, and Colecovision. I collect those little LED Football games from the late 70's. I have a giant plastic tub full of Transformers, and another one full of Legos. I have two different boxes of papers, notes, pictures, fliers and random crap from me teenage years. I have two video tapes of my friends and me hanging out and drinking beer. I even have a Star Wars coin-op in my basement because, when I was a kid, it was my favorite arcade game.
I like finding old friends, saying hi just to see how they are doing. I've recently found a lot of old friends and I genuinely enjoy catching up, either through email or through a few empty beer bottles down at Jacks. Hell, I'm flying to Vegas in March to hang out with some old friends who live there.
Most people aren't like me. I accept that. But why am I like this? Like I said earlier - I think I figured it out. It has to do with where I grew up. Monongahela, Pennsylvania, population 1700. The part of Monongahela I grew up in, the number was closer to 50.
That means that while everyone else in my graduating class of 400+ kids had an entire community of kids to hang out with - I had something like 4.
Of those 4 only one of them was in my grade. Only one other Senior was on the school bus with me during my Sr. Year. (He wouldn't have been in my graduating class if his mother didn't force him to repeat 2nd grade!)
So imagine my early teen years - being isolated meant that you kind of had to hold on to your friends. If Kirk pissed me off there was no walking away and hanging out with someone else. We had to figure out our differences and deal with it. (Or walk another 5 miles to find someone else to play army with.) When he got his first girlfriend and disappeared for a few months, I didn't just hang up on him when he called and wanted to hang out again, I came down and we picked up where we left off.
Yeah sure over the years he and I drifted pretty far and now days we barely see each other, but when he called me last year and asked me to come camping with him, there was no doubt in my mind we should hang out, yet again.
That is kind of like how I've treated my entire life. Old friends are still friends. Old memories are still a part of me.
These things made me who I am, and if a warm day in the middle of winter makes me think about jumping on my bike to hang out with a friend - I have no problem being a nostalgic idiot.
It's hard to even put into words how everything can come together on certain days to bring you right back to where you were when you were a kid. Just driving up the road to get some lunch I found myself remembering the first warm days of the year when I was in Jr. High. I remember jumping off of the bus, on to my bike, and riding it down to my friends house making sure to leave my jacket at home because I would not bow down to the cold that would come after dusk. That would mean admitting defeat. It would mean admitting that it wasn't yet summer.
I was once called an idiot for being nostalgic, for holding on to the past the way that I do.
At the time, I was shocked to hear it. Not because I agreed with the statement but because people could actually think that way. The past should somehow be shoveled into a garbage bag and put out on to the street instead of having it's place in your life? I always felt that they should be treasured. Especially the good moments. Especially the events and people who changed your life. Especially the moments where you felt alive - physically or mentally.
But of course, you can't tell me something like that without it sticking in my brain. When I stepped outside yesterday it was also a cause for me to step outside myself to think about what made me who I am, and it kind of hit me finally. Why am I generally more nostalgic than everyone else?
For example, I have an old video game collection that includes Atari 2600 games, Intellivision, and Colecovision. I collect those little LED Football games from the late 70's. I have a giant plastic tub full of Transformers, and another one full of Legos. I have two different boxes of papers, notes, pictures, fliers and random crap from me teenage years. I have two video tapes of my friends and me hanging out and drinking beer. I even have a Star Wars coin-op in my basement because, when I was a kid, it was my favorite arcade game.
I like finding old friends, saying hi just to see how they are doing. I've recently found a lot of old friends and I genuinely enjoy catching up, either through email or through a few empty beer bottles down at Jacks. Hell, I'm flying to Vegas in March to hang out with some old friends who live there.
Most people aren't like me. I accept that. But why am I like this? Like I said earlier - I think I figured it out. It has to do with where I grew up. Monongahela, Pennsylvania, population 1700. The part of Monongahela I grew up in, the number was closer to 50.
That means that while everyone else in my graduating class of 400+ kids had an entire community of kids to hang out with - I had something like 4.
Of those 4 only one of them was in my grade. Only one other Senior was on the school bus with me during my Sr. Year. (He wouldn't have been in my graduating class if his mother didn't force him to repeat 2nd grade!)
So imagine my early teen years - being isolated meant that you kind of had to hold on to your friends. If Kirk pissed me off there was no walking away and hanging out with someone else. We had to figure out our differences and deal with it. (Or walk another 5 miles to find someone else to play army with.) When he got his first girlfriend and disappeared for a few months, I didn't just hang up on him when he called and wanted to hang out again, I came down and we picked up where we left off.
Yeah sure over the years he and I drifted pretty far and now days we barely see each other, but when he called me last year and asked me to come camping with him, there was no doubt in my mind we should hang out, yet again.
That is kind of like how I've treated my entire life. Old friends are still friends. Old memories are still a part of me.
These things made me who I am, and if a warm day in the middle of winter makes me think about jumping on my bike to hang out with a friend - I have no problem being a nostalgic idiot.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Ruining Of The National Anthem
Am I the only person who is tired of seeing R&B singers fuck up the National Anthem?
I don't know when it started, sometime in the 80's I suspect, but it became popular for R&B artists to fuck up the national anthem. Some of you may not have noticed, but the word land should take less than 15 seconds to sing and should contain 45 different notes.
"...And the LAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAANnnnnnnnnnnnnnNNNNnnnNNnNnnnnNNnnnddd"
I can't argue that most of these performers have fantastic singing voices. Some are even phenomenal artists who write their own music. I'm not saying that these are talentless attempts to sing, I'm saying that I don't want to hear someone trying to 1-up Mariah Cary's 40 second vibrato of the word "free" by doing their own 45 second version, with twice as many pitch changes.
So they have changed the notes, changed the tune, changed the timing... may as well complete the cycle and change the words too...
Oh, say, can ya see, by the sun's big bright light,
What so proudly we saw at the twilight's gleam-gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, we put up a hell of a fight.
For the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly ga-gleaming?
And the rockets' red glare, big ass bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof in the night that our flag was still there.
UH HUH UH HUH!
O shit, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
For the land of the free and the home of my homies?
I don't know when it started, sometime in the 80's I suspect, but it became popular for R&B artists to fuck up the national anthem. Some of you may not have noticed, but the word land should take less than 15 seconds to sing and should contain 45 different notes.
"...And the LAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAANnnnnnnnnnnnnnNNNNnnnNNnNnnnnNNnnnddd"
I can't argue that most of these performers have fantastic singing voices. Some are even phenomenal artists who write their own music. I'm not saying that these are talentless attempts to sing, I'm saying that I don't want to hear someone trying to 1-up Mariah Cary's 40 second vibrato of the word "free" by doing their own 45 second version, with twice as many pitch changes.
So they have changed the notes, changed the tune, changed the timing... may as well complete the cycle and change the words too...
Oh, say, can ya see, by the sun's big bright light,
What so proudly we saw at the twilight's gleam-gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, we put up a hell of a fight.
For the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly ga-gleaming?
And the rockets' red glare, big ass bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof in the night that our flag was still there.
UH HUH UH HUH!
O shit, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
For the land of the free and the home of my homies?
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