JIHAD MILKSHAKES
November 20, 2009
by VICE UK
Anjem Choudary, the man behind Islam4uk, wants to turn Buckingham Palace into a mosque, impose sharia law in the UK, and destroy Britain’s porn industry. We took him for a milkshake (his favorite is chocolate). Watch the movie here
Robot GFs and BFs
November 19, 2009
by MOTHERBOARD
In an attempt to totally alienate the last remaining tech-literate members of their audience, The Daily Telegraph ran a story today asking a fairly laughable question from the most ridiculous angle. Namely, the UK’s other paper of record wonders whether society will tolerate relationships between robot and human. The time to take a stand on the issue is now, they warn; before the robots wise up and start demanding their goddamn “rights.” They even found a “legal expert,” Anna Russel from the University of San Diego, to weigh in on the subject. Russel agrees that the lawyers today, clearly having solved all other problems, should start arguing the pros and cons of accepting robots into society. While the article mentions that we may soon create super intelligent machines, it never fully acknowledges the fact that these machines will quickly surpass our intelligence. Maybe Russel want’s a voice in this debate because she realizes that the best lawyers of the future will be machines. Better we restrict their rights than they ours, no? At this point we’re left with the article’s original question about society tolerating a human/robot tryst. Of course, the real question is why on Earth would a super intelligent machine be interested in romancing humans? Wouldn’t that be sort of like bestiality for an advanced AI machine? But, then again, we evidently need laws against that, too.
Read more stuff like this on Motherboard.
URBAN DRILLING
November 19, 2009
by VBS Staff
We Americans love oil. It keeps us warm, powers our economy, coats everything we eat, and goes into the production of nearly every consumer good. We even bathe in petroleum based products. But there’s a catch: we’re running out. Oh, and burning it creates atmospheric pollution that destroys the climate and makes the Earth inhabitable. For the most part, people can block that second one from mind but running out of it Texas tea is harder to ignore – especially with these gas prices going through the roof, amirite?? Watch as VBS cruises the streets of Beverley Hills to discover the latest insane LA fad: urban oil welling. It’s a cross between hide and seek and Monopoly, except real life and the players are mentally ill.
WOE LOGO
November 19, 2009
by JAMES TENAFLY
Ten years ago Naomi Klein’s seminal anti-branding tome No Logo was released into the welcoming embrace of jaded semiotics students everywhere. A tenth anniversary edition released by Picador books this week opens with a new introduction by Klein. In the new opening, Klein levels the Obama administration with a dispassionate and brilliant critique, drawing comparisons between the President and Nike shoe company circa 1999. If you’re not interested in dumping money on a book that will be at the library in three weeks, listen to Ms. Klein on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. During the course of the interview, she audibly upsets several callers, compares the president’s base to consumers attempting to purchase a solution to the catastrophic problems facing humankind, and suggests that only apocalyptic climate change stands a chance to redeem our world. Thanks for the scoop, public radio!
GRAVITY IS SO RUDE
November 19, 2009
by JIM FORREST
Not only is gravity holding you down, it’s also holding you back.
The shock wave of universe expansion from the big bang and subsequent black hole collisions are still rippling through space and time, making that stuff that pulls apples from trees to bonk scientists on the head and come up with wild theories. This, thinks some scientists in Paris, is probably the reason you can’t be in several places at once, even though that’s not true for the subatomic particles that make you up–you’re just too heavy and too big. In other words, quantum physics thinks you’re fat.
NYC: GO TO THIS TONIGHT
November 18, 2009
by DIXON MYAZ
There’s an ongoing debate over the merits of seeing bands live. Some people claim that shows are too expensive and boring, that bathroom lines are too long, and that it’s more fun to listen to albums with your friends at home. Others argue that only in a live setting does one truly experience music, and that “Slayer, dude, SLAAAAYER!” While both sides make convincing points, it seems that, ever since Vice threw that Bad Brains and Jesus Lizard show on Halloween, public opinion has been firmly in the “I love going to shows” camp.
This is a good thing, because it means it’s totally cool for you to go to tonight’s show at Mercury Lounge. Playing are our buddies CAVE, who make weird, droney, sunny, electronic music that may or may not have lyrics. I think they might listen to progressive rock? Basically, they’re really hard to describe, but they have a song called “Raven’s Hash” and if the idea of a song called “Raven’s Hash” appeals to you, you will probably like them. Times New Viking, the best band whose name is a font joke, and The Axemen, who once made an entire album in protest to a New Zealand milk company (seriously), are also gonna be kicking out the lo-fi jams all night. I know you had plans to stay in and watch America’s Next Top Model, but I promise you’ll have a much better night if you Tivo Tyra and go to this show instead.
IRRADIATED MONKEYS
November 18, 2009
by GABI SIFRE
It’s been a while since NASA recruited our hairy cousins for space travel, but with all this talk of going to Mars, monkeys are back on the chopping block. NASA is looking for a few good squirrel monkeys to irradiate over the course of a few weeks. The experiment’s designed to determine how much radiation, ever present at high levels in space, primates can withstand as they travel to the Red Planet. Animals of the twitchy, sewer dwelling variety got juiced in earlier trials, so now NASA scientists want to move onto the expensive, human-like imports. It’s unclear whether the monkeys will actually be shot into space, but NASA’s been pretty biased toward human astronauts since the Apollo 11 days.
So what happens if these little critters survive the cancer test? They spend the rest of their days being pampered at Harvard’s McLean Hospital; one of the few medical facilities whose intake sheet lists at least half a dozen famous artists at any given time. Sounds like an awesome way to spend their monkey winter years.
UNFRIEND IN THE OED
November 18, 2009
by ALEX PASTERNACK
Just as we were still getting used to not! and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the Oscars for words apparently took place over the weekend and chose a new Best Picture: unfriend. Explains the judges, the Oxford English Dictionary, “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook” (which was itself WOTY in 2007). Meanwhile, the Olde English Dictionary went with the more standard term, Whopper Sacrifice.
Read more of Alex’s review of the word Oscars on Motherboard.tv
COBBLER ADDENDUM
November 18, 2009
by VBS Staff
On Monday, we shared RJD2’s personal cobbler recipe with you. After reading about our failed attempt, RJ wrote us with a few extra instructions. For those of you bold enough: take his cooking wisdom from the internet into the kitchen! From RJ:
Gotta point one thing out: the egg goes in the FILLING, not the topping.
Once you fuck this dish up enough- and I did SEVERAL times before finding my groove (and yet I still botch it occasionally)- you realize that the “wetness” of the topping is the CRUX of the ENTIRE DESSERT! It’s the part that is most easily botched, and actually really hard to get right, at least the way I do it. You’ve gotta go by feel. You must also violate a golden rule of baking and check halfway through. Thus my acknowledgement that this is not the “right” way to do a cobbler, just a way I can fumble my way through. Sorry, I cant help but feel responsible!
Check out RJD2 on Electric Independence.
I DESTROYED BANKSY’S RAT
November 18, 2009
by LILAS GREEN
A long time ago I lived in an old London warehouse with a guy called Steve, who was a questionable character and a cocktail of mental illnesses. Steve and I were both penniless; I worked full-time for a respectable fashion label but got awful pay for incredible PR, sales, and marketing skills, whereas Steve was a bum and deserved to be broke. On the outside of our building, near our front door, was some graffiti: a Banksy rat. The most famous of Banksy’s work, the one in all the coffee table books, the one that drew in hipster tourists every day to photograph it. I liked the rat. It made me smile a little each morning as I left the house.
One night Steve’s drug dealer came over. He was also some kind of art collector. While snorting blow or some kind of flour mixed with bleach or whatever it is that dirty coke dealers give you now, he started telling Steve and I about how much the small graffiti rat on the side of our building was worth. Then he told us that if we get it off the wall all in one piece he can sell it for us for “about £50,000,” he says. And now I’m thinking, fuck, I could live off that money for a long time. I could be one of those people who gets their hand blown off when the printer in the office explodes and gets a lump sum of compensation money, except I don’t even have to have a fucked-up hand: I just have to sell out and be a bad person. At the time that sounded just fine.
Read the rest at viceland
