Yep. What you see right there is a limited edition custom pair of Air Force Ones with Barack Obama’s mug and “Yes We Can” slogan. We should have seen this coming. These things are so awesome that I am going to let them fuck up my front page for a bit. Couldn’t let myself scale down the size of these bad boys.
→ No CommentsTags: Horrible Mistakes · Politics
Anytime you hear the word megathrust, you know shit is about to hit the fan. Seismologist Kim Olsen of San Diego State University, published a research study in the Journal of Seismology on the potential damage a megathrust (his words) earthquake will have on the Pacific coast. The conclusion: more damage than all Michael Bay movies combined. He warns that this megathrust earthquake happens once every 400 or 500 hundred years and that planning for it could help the estimated 9 million residents on the coast.
“One thing these studies will hopefully do is to raise awareness of the possibility of megathrust earthquakes happening at any given time in the Pacific Northwest,” said Olsen. “Because these events will tend to occur several hundred kilometers from major cities, the study also implies that the region could benefit from an early warning system that can allow time for protective actions before the brunt of the shaking starts.”
As a boy, I watched shows like Unsolved Mysteries and Hypothetical Natural Disasters: Freak the Fuck Out before going to bed, wondering when some crazy shit was going to happen. It’s reassuring knowing that supercomputers are still pumping away, producing new and ungodly ways for us all to die.
Biggest lesson learned from all of this: Juan de Fuca, the man whose name graces the fragile plate that will produce this megathrust, was not Spanish. He was Greek and changed his name to explore. Kind of like Ron Mexico
To read The Daily Green’s report on the report, go here.
→ 1 CommentTags: Technology
Zubaz are back! Holy shit, fuck yeah!
Yes, Consumerist.com is reporting that the once fashionable, always painfully ugly sartorial choice for old, fat men who watch way too much football is making a comeback. Twenty years since they first destroyed humanity, they are back to scar yet another generation of young athletes already embarrassed by their flatulent dad yelling in the stands. Now dad can have pants five sizes too big with crazy zig zag lines!
Originally conceived to be a loose fitting pant alternative for the weightlifting set, something went horribly wrong when a group of 300 lb Wisconsinites saw they could buy them in Packer Green and Gold. Thus set off a chain reaction of super large, mustachioed men rushing to Dick’s, Modell’s and The Sports Authority (was that even around back then?) to pick up their new pants of choice and change the course of our nation.
Check it out. They come in all NFL team colors. Crazy Jim who came to every high school sporting event even thought he didn’t have a kid rocked Giants Red and Blue. They were choice.
It’s the perfect gift for your depressing, underachieving uncle.
Buy them here. Or just go to laugh at the old Dan Marino ad.
→ 2 CommentsTags: Horrible Mistakes
A few months back, Fast Company had an article about personal finances and how a new start-up company was looking to bring some fiscal responsibility to our sad little “generation debt”. It’s Aaron Patzer’s dream that his slick and easy to use Mint.com will be the twenty something’s version of Quicken.
Excited, I signed up, putting both my Brick and Mortar checking account and my online savings in. After a few seconds a sweet graph popped up, showing my spending for the past two months. It was both exciting and depressing to see where exactly my money goes (almost half in rent, and another 1/3 in student loans, bills, internet).
The intuition of the product is the key factor. Patzer says most young adults would not want to sit down for hours logging in their financial information, so the site is set up to take care of processing that information into categories, albeit with some slight bugs, so you can take a hard look at your finances.
Only three months in, I am exceedingly more aware of what and where I am spending my money. My plan is to find close to $200 of wasteful or unneeded spending and then invest that money into my high yield savings account.
Mint.com is snappy, intuitive and increasingly offering more functions. Just last month they added the option of including money market accounts and now have a feature where you can split up your ATM transaction into separate categories. My hope is that they will take the thousands of recommendations of adding student loan payments to the mix, something that every one in my generation is dealing with and pays on a monthly basis.
Check out Mint’s blog for more information: Mint Edu
→ No CommentsTags: Life Hacking · Technology · What's Good
Daily Kos has a great post up today listing the 15 bills Obama sponsored or co-sponsored that have become Law as well as the amendments he proposed that were adopted by the Senate. Seems the rhetoric on some media channels about him being all talk and no action is mistaken. Here are a few of the bills that became laws.
Two addressed foreign policy:
Promote relief, security and democracy in the Congo (2125)
Develop democratic institutions in areas under Palestinian control (2370).
Two addressed openness and accountability in government:
Strengthening the Freedom of Information Act (2488)
Full disclosure of all entities receiving federal funds (2590)
To read more, check out the full post: I found the BEEF - Obama’s Senate Record
→ No CommentsTags: Politics
It probably started when I got my first pair of Reebok Pumps. Its that feeling of invincibility that can only come when you lace up a pair of new kicks and hit it hard. When I got my first pair of Pumps, it was only a few days before the elementary school Presidential Challenge, the yearly physical performance test to prove that you are not a fat ass or retard. I thought for sure it was going to cut a full second off of my shuttle run time or maybe add a few inches to that stupid sit down and reach on the wooden board thing. But it didn’t. What it did was give me the confidence to go at it full steam and I sure did. Coach huddled us all around, telling us the importance of the Challenge, how President Reagan personally signs the certificate of each and every child who reaches the 90 percentile. I didn’t give a shit. I was busy pumping the fuck out of my shoes, making them so tight calves should have exploded. Get me on the Olympic rings! Where the fuck is the pull up bar? Let’s do this!
Why was I so pumped up? Did I really feel like I was one of the top athletic specimens of the 8 year old division? Fuck no. I had new shoes on. And this little magical recipe still gets to me today. I laced up a new pair of running shoes yesterday, some Brooks which I guess is a premier running company or so the guy at Jack Rabbit said and went for my first run of the year. The placebo effect came in full force. I felt like my feet were properly aligned, that I could do know wrong and I already had a sharp advantage of my 2007 self. I hit the L train route that is a solid 10K, the one that goes by all the stops in Brooklyn and is usually the one I take if I want to people watch. But that didn’t matter. With my new kicks I had no time to stop and look at fugly hipster girls. I was dipping. I finally called it off to get a water at a bodega and when I looked down and saw 12.5K I was ecstatic. It was a few seconds later when Lance Armstrong came on and said I just finished my longest and best timed run ever. Holy Shit! Getting new gear still has magic.
Now the real trick is here. Can I maintain that sort of improvement of the long haul? Can I cut out the shitty foods and get up to a marathon? Nike has a fun little application where you can put in your New Year’s running goal on their site. Mine is If I Don’t Run a Marathon in 2008, I will shit my Pants. It’s real cool to see that in their flash program. And I will shit my pants if I don’t finish a marathon. I swear.