Category: Funny

Stephen Colbert Revives His ‘The Word’ Segment With ‘Trumpiness’ | Crooks and Liars

No Comments

The Republican National Convention has proven such a clusterf%$# that Stephen Colbert revived his conservative pundit parody character for a new episode of The Word:

Stephen Colbert brought back his famous ‘The Word’ segment from his Comedy Central days for his first night of coverage of the Republican National Convention, and he did not disappoint. From ‘Truthiness’ to ‘Trumpiness’, Colbert explained that’s how far we’ve devolved in just a decade.

It was not his best “The Word”, but it was pretty good.

Comedy writers must be in paroxysms of bliss over recent developments.

The Libertarian Candidate Has the Best Campaign Slogan

No Comments

I do not support the Libertarian candidate for President, Gary Johnson.

He’s on record wanting to slash Medicare and Medicaid, repealing Obamacare, etc.  the whole Libertarian shtick.

If he were running on the VP candidate, and his running mate Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, I might consider it, but not in the current configuration.

That being said he has the best campaign slogan of the season.

Heh.

Time for a Massive Campaign of Civil Disobedience

No Comments

The elitists at the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council have decided to ignore the will of the people and name their new research vessel after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, though they did throw a bone to the general public:

The UK’s new £200 million polar research ship will not be called Boaty McBoatface. The decision was announced early on Friday morning by the UK science minister, Jo Johnson. Instead, the new ship will be called the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough—a name that also picked up a few votes in the same poll that saw Boaty McBoatface come out way on top.

Showing at least a little bit of political savvy, Jo Johnson didn’t completely discard the people’s choice: RRS Sir David Attenborough will be outfitted with a number of remotely operated underwater vehicles (see gallery above), and one of those will be called Boaty McBoatface. Hopefully they’ll paint a dorky face on the front of its torpedo-like frame.

………

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) had originally planned to name the new ship via an online poll. Shortly after the poll began in March, James Hand, a former BBC radio presenter, proposed the name Boaty McBoatface. The name went viral and quickly picked up tens of thousands more votes than any other. The final tally was 124,109 votes for Boaty McBoatface, 34,371 for Poppy-Mai, and then a handful of others at around 10,000 (Sir David Attenborough picked up 10,284 votes).

………

Yesterday, following the naming debacle surrounding the ship, the UK’s parliamentary science and technology committee began an investigation into “science communication” and NERC’s approach to naming the ship.

You have to hand it to the science minister: if you’re going to take a huge political hit by ignoring the public’s choice, naming the ship after one of the few universally loved Britons is really quite smart. No one’s going to complain about a ship being named after Sir David—and it’s his 90th birthday this weekend. Damn you, Jo Johnson, damn you!

This is an outrage, and clearly it must not be allowed to stand.

Boaty McBoatface Wins!

No Comments

And the crowd goes wild:

The internet has spoken — and “RRS Boaty McBoatface” is the people’s choice to name a $300 million state-of-the-art polar research ship.

Over 7,000 names were submitted to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) poll which closed April 16, but “Boaty McBoatface” won easily with 124,109 votes. 

It all began when the NERC invited the public to christen the 129-meter long icebreaker, the largest and most advanced British research vessel to date.

They asked for names that were inspirational, such as a historical figure or a landmark.

However, after former BBC presenter James Hand cheekily suggested the Boaty moniker it quickly became the crowd favorite over more traditional names like “RRS Henry Worsley” after the British explorer who died in January while attempting a solo, unaided mission across the Antarctic.

………

It spawned countless silly riffs.

A UK train service from Portsmouth to Waterloo was briefly renamed “Trainy McTrainface” much to the amusement of its passengers.

………

There’s no guarantee that they will follow through on the public’s choice but whatever its name, the vessel will be setting sail for Antarctica in 2019.

I think that an MP should bring this up during question time, because it would be epic.

Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape. Don’t Piss into the Wind

No Comments

Don’t rely on internet polls to name something:

A state-of-the-art research vessel in search of a name is getting some help from the general public and their top choice is flying in the face of British nautical convention.

Britain’s National Environmental Research Council (NERC) launched an online voting contest, asking for inspirational names of historical figures, landmarks and movements to christen the £200-million ship ($375-million CAD). The internet responded, and the current frontrunner is none-other than RRS Boaty McBoatface.

The 15,000-ton, 128-yard-long Royal Research Ship is currently under construction on the coast of Merseyside and is gearing up to be launched for a research mission to Antarctica in 2019.

The much more appropriate RRS Henry Worsley, RRS David Attenborough and RRS Pillar of Autumn are the current runners-up, though Boaty McBoatface is outpacing its closest competitor 10-1 with over 22,500 votes.

The online poll has proven to be so successful that NERC reported the high traffic caused the website to temporarily crash Sunday.

It appears that, much like many things on the internet, the meme started as a joke:

A man who suggested naming a new £200m ship Boaty McBoatface has apologised.

The suggestion has attracted more than 27,000 votes in an online poll of names for the Royal Research ship, causing the website to crash.

Former BBC presenter James Hand said he found the list of possible names “really funny” so decided to “throw one into the ring”.

He “apologised profusely” to the Natural Environment Research Council.

There is no guarantee the ship will be given the name that tops the poll, with the final decision to be made by the chief executive of the NERC.

Other names in the running are RRS Pingu, RRS Usain Boat and RRS David Attenborough.

A NERC spokesperson said staff were “very much enjoying hearing everyone’s ideas”.

Mr Hand said: “I read the story about naming the ship on the BBC website on Thursday and some of the entries were really funny – my favourite was Clifford The Big Red Boat.

“I thought I would throw one into the ring. By Friday night it was leading by a couple of thousand, and when the site crashed on Sunday it was leading by 8,000. It’s been utterly bizarre.”

Boaty McBoatface is 25,000 votes ahead of the second place suggestion, RRS Henry Worsley.

The boat is being built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead on Merseyside and when completed in 2019 it will study ice sheets, ocean currents and marine life as part of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey.

“I’ve apologised profusely to the people behind the website,” the former Good Morning Jersey host said.

BTW, you can go to this link to vote.

I have already voted for Boaty McBoatface, because I am an asshole.

Funniest Lad Mad Cover in Pakistan of the Day

No Comments

Pakistani actress Veena Malik just appeared nude on the cover of FHM India sporting ink on her left arm saying “ISI”.

This is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service which has been accused of supporting terrorists in South Asia, and they are not amused:

In this month’s issue of FHM India, an international men’s magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn’t wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, “ISI,” for Pakistani’s secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The cover headline: “Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!”

Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: “India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo.” And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan’s media and in its living rooms.

In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman’s body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI — something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan’s loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo’s location on Malik’s body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

………

Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India’s own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. “In India, you say, ‘The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,’ They blame all of their problems on ISI,” says Sharma.

Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don’t laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. “The problem,” he says, “is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?” Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. “We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony,” he says.

………

But this isn’t just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the “ghairat brigade,” or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan’s honor against enemies — perceived and imagined — the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad “without honor,” or more aptly the “shameless brigade.”

To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, “I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan’s problems are the result of someone else’s meddling.”

I am sure that there are some deeper sociological points here, but this tempest in a teapot also amusing as hell.

Return of the Mad Sh%$ter

No Comments
The funniest thing ever posted to the internet is an essay, “The Attack of the Mad Sh%$ter” a hilarious essay on an instance of fecal sabotage at what was then Texas Instruments.

Well, it appears that literal poo flinging in the workplace is far more common that I had anticipated, and now we have a lawsuit challenging an employer demanding DNA samples in order to identify a dung defiler:

Who was the “devious defecator” leaving their “offending fecal matter” across an Atlanta-area warehouse that stored and delivered products for grocery stores?

That’s how US District Judge Amy Totenberg described the issue as she ruled (PDF) in favor of two employees who were forced to give a buccal cheek swab to determine if their DNA was a match. But a match was not to be had. The two sued, claiming that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibited their 2012 tests by a forensics lab hired by their employer, Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services.

Employees Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds are expected to go to trial against their employer on June 17 in what could be the first damages trial resulting from the 2008 civil rights legislation, which generally bars employers from using individuals’ genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions. The Office of Management and Budget has said the “potential misuse of this information raises moral and legal issues.”

Ahead of trial, Judge Totenberg set aside Atlas Logistics’ claims that the “genetic information” at issue wasn’t covered by the law. Atlas Logistics asserted that GINA excludes analyses of DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites if such analyses do not reveal an individual’s propensity for disease. The judge ruled that the “plain meaning of the statute’s text” is satisfactory for the case to go forward despite the tests at issue not revealing disease propensities.

But how much is a breach of this act worth to the warehouse workers Lowe and Reynolds? Phrased differently, what’s the monetary value of falsely being fingered as the “devious defecator”?

According to Atlas Logistics, the answer is a combined $200,000 for both plaintiffs. Days ago, the company offered that deal (PDF) without admitting wrongdoing. “This Offer includes any and all damages sought by Plaintiffs in this matter and is inclusive of attorneys’ fees and taxable costs,” Atlas Logistics attorney Dion Kohler wrote.

The plaintiffs, however, said the offer was a load of doo doo. “We are not taking the offer,” Amanda Farahany, the plaintiffs’ attorney, told Ars in an e-mail.

When asked how much damages they were seeking, Farahany replied, “We are asking that a jury determine the value of this important right.”

I have to agree with the plaintiffs:  Employers are not entitled to the genetic information of their employees.

It’s also funny as hell.