jazzsequence

Category: asides

  • Humble Oil (now Exxon) Predicts the Future in 1962 Ad

    “EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!” “This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies – if converted into heat – could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second! To meet the nation’s growing needs for energy, Humble has supplied…

  • James Cameron invited to a brainstorming session on stopping the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico

    Federal officials are hoping film director James Cameron can help them come up with ideas on how to stop the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. via Obama launches criminal investigation of oil leak – Salt Lake Tribune. Wait…what?? First Kevin Costner generously donates his glorified vacuum cleaners that he’s been developing secretly…

  • ABC News underwater video footage of the BP oil spill

    I’ve been keeping up with the oil spill mostly from coverage on HuffPo, but I hadn’t seen this. This just makes it obvious that we’re going to be paying for this blunder environmentally for a long, long time. via Repower America

  • Lady Gaga doesn’t care if you steal her stuff as long as you go to her shows

    I’m blissfully out of touch with most of what could be considered modern “pop” music, so I have very little opinion about Lady Gaga, per se, other than the fact that she seems a bit like an insane, overblown hybrid of Madonna and Britney Spears at their peaks.  That said, she says some things about…

  • The web is a distraction engine

    Author Nicholas Carr: The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains | Wired Magazine. This article has forced me to think hard about a couple things: 1) that I should reconsider my notification settings for Twitter and other social media.  As the article says, most of those live, up-to-the-minute updates aren’t actually all that interesting; most of…

  • matt’s state of the word

    matt mullenweg’s keynote speech from WordCampSF 2010 p.s. i’m a shameless matt mullenweg fanboy

  • franklin roosevelt’s second bill of rights

    watched mike moore’s capitalism: a love story last night.  this speech from FDR stuck with me.  in fact, i cried as i was watching it.  what if FDR had been able to enact these propositions?  would sarah palin exist?  would g-dub?  would we be billions of dollars in debt and our entire economy and social structure…

  • OpenOffice.org no longer the FREE alternative to Microsoft Office

    it’s finally happened. months after Oracle’s acquisition of  Sun Microsystems — developers of the free Java platform, among other things — the formerly free alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite is now the cheap alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite. anyone who knew about the acquisition wouldn’t be too surprised by this, however it’s still sad to see.   OpenOffice was…

  • the cost of offshore drilling

    the oil spill in the gulf of mexico made the front page of huffpo today with some terrifying images of the destruction to the native wildlife, many of which came from Greenpeace who flew down there to document the disaster. but these two striking photographs of the drilling platform on fire with the simple caption “the cost of offshore drilling”…