From YouTube, via The Superficial

And yet, the farce continues. It’s reminiscent of other legal documents that most people just blindly initial in a few places and sign at the bottom: apartment leases, car rental agreements and credit card applications. The rationale being that some legal documents are boiler-plate: we know what a standard lease says and by signing it without reading it, all we’re saying is “we’ll play by the standard rules”. But while most leases are standard and the expectations widely known, the same doesn’t hold true for software. There’s no standard End-User License Agreement, or Terms and Conditions, and they could say anything.

For example, the Flash license doesn’t allow maintaining a copy of it, even in backups; since most backups are automatic, you’re violating the license without even knowing it. “That’s ok, Adobe isn’t gonna come after me for accidentally backing Flash up.” And that’s true — at least not until they have a reason to. But when they do, watch out: the whole point of the license agreement is to give the software maker leverage. If they for some reason do want to sue you, they can dig up so many infractions of their 3500-word license that you’ll have no choice but to capitulate. Because given enough rules, everyone will be guilty of breaking some of them, just due to sheer statistics.

From The Register

One of them was with the Philadelphia Fox affiliate anchors, who start the 90 second interview by asking “Why should we care?”, end it on a bathroom water sports joke, and then follow it up with another 90 seconds of straight up laughing their asses off, wondering how E! would get 13 episodes’ worth of material from him. The best footage local news has produced since they covered the Shake Weight.

See also:

• LA News Station Covers The Shake Weight
• L.A. News Programs Freak Out Over 50° Weather
• Why Local News Sucks
• Look Up In The Sky, It’s Florida Man!

From YouTube, via The Superficial

Since marriage is usually a religious rite, in a country with nearly unlimited religious freedom the government’s interest in marriage should only pertain to secondary issues of taxation and arbitration (inheritance, custody, distribution of assets, etc). Given that, the various prohibitions on marriage by government have never made any sense from the standpoint of civil rights. The issue first came to a head in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court invalidated miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Almost fifty years later, the Court is now poised to invalidate the prohibition of gay marriage. If it does, marriage licenses will only have the power to prohibit polygamy and violations of age of consent.

A federal suit challenging Utah’s polygamy law was brought in 2011 by the cast members of the Sister Wives reality TV series, and a decision should come soon. Regardless of the outcome, an appeal will likely be made to the 10th Circuit, and then the Supreme Court. Which brings us back to the current gay marriage case: Justice Sotomayor, who will likely vote for legalization of gay marriage, asked attorney Ted Olson, who is arguing that gay marriage is a fundamental civil right, if any restrictions on marriage can exist. His answer was a “yes”: polygamy can be banned because it’s a law prohibiting conduct, whereas gay marriage bans are based on discrimination of a class of people based on their status as homosexuals. Given that both arguments can be applied to both gays and polygamists, it’s a very weak one.

The Brown Family, from TLC’s ‘Sister Wives’

Prohibition of interracial marriages was based on racism — the view that non-whites were lesser versions of humans, maybe even sub-human, and it would thus be almost as morally wrong for whites to marry them as it would be to marry animals. The prohibition of gay marriage and polygamy is based on religious beliefs. The concept of age of consent is based on a parental desire to prolong the chastity of childhood beyond its natural end at puberty. None of these legal prohibitions have anything to do with the government’s monetary and arbitrative interest in the private, and usually religious, institution of marriage. All four prohibitions are based on the moral fashions of certain periods in our history — fashions which are now changing. In fact, marriage itself is increasingly being seen as an outdated fashion, made pointless by the ease of divorce.

It’s also important to note that legal prohibitions of marriage have little bearing on reality. Whether or not they’re allowed to marry legally, interracial, gay, and polygamous couples/triples/etc still act like they are married for all purposes that matter: they live together, they have sex, they share expenses and have children. The only differences are legal, and therefore artificial: they have to jump through hoops to get certain rights like hospital visitations and power of attorney, and are denied certain benefits, like sharing insurance plans. It’s reminiscent of other toothless prohibitions, like those on alcohol and drugs. If 20th century legislation has taught us anything, it’s that it is almost impossible to legislate morality in a free country: as long as they have the right to privacy, the people will do what they want in their own homes.

Of course, our right to privacy is increasingly being threatened by technology, and it is now easier than ever for a fascist state to impose moral dictates on its population. Which in turn means that it is now more important than ever that our laws not curb the freedoms upon which America was founded.

See also:

• So You Want To Marry Your Gay 14-Year Old First Cousin
• Utah Polygamy Law To Be Challenged
• Why Privacy From Government Is Necessary For Everyone
  

via NPR

So of course, three days later, a parody with men was made. This time, the men described themselves to the forensic artist, and women also described them, for a second drawing:

See also:

• Straight Men Are Fine With Gay Men Marrying Their Girlfriends
  

It’s not on his website, but the cartoon was drawn by Bruce Beattie.

From YouTube, via Happy Place

Via FAIL Blog

The only weird thing is that when you click on some cities, it pops up with a “People of this region” dialog box, except that what it really means is “People that having been in this region”. For example, in the screenshot above, Robb Stark is most certainly not of the Twins. He just passed through there a couple of times. Robb Stark is of Winterfell.

See also:

• HBO Updated Its Game Of Thrones Maps For Season 2
• A Map Of Thrones
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 3 Extended Trailer
• Sociopathic King Joffrey Was A Sweet Little Boy In ‘Batman Begins’

Scott May daredevil stunt show. Photo by John Wright.

Secondly, the people who thought they were good at multitasking were impulsive and sought out risks just for the thrills. Why? Because they can’t help “multitasking”: impulsivity and risk-taking also indicate lower self-control, which means that this group is not as much made up of multitaskers as A.D.D-ers. Not the real disorder, but the 21st century word for being scatterbrained: when they see a shiny new toy, they can’t help but play with the new toy too — due to the lack of self control. After that happens a few times, they find themselves spinning seven plates at once and call it multitasking — even though they suck at it.

Now, the study was done on college kids, and since everyone can get better at anything with enough practice, maybe by the time they’re middle-aged, the impulsive people are actually great at multitasking, and probably even less impulsive simply because they’re older. This logic is supported by a previous study that showed bilingual people are a lot better at multitasking while driving, because they have more experience jugging multiple pieces of information, via thinking in two languages.

Speaking of multitasking while driving, it’s worth mentioning that the study had a no-texting-while-driving slant to it. The NPR article covering the matter repeated the fact that texting while driving is more distracting than being drunk while driving. They also mentioned how everyone is texting and driving now, which would make you think there are all kinds of texting-related accidents, since half of us are basically driving around drunk. Unfortunately for the fear-based media, the insurance industry’s own data shows that accident rates have actually dropped since everyone started texting. Which really makes you think about the worth of these studies.

See also:

• Being Bilingual Is Great For The Brain
• Driving While Smartphoning Is Worse Than Driving Drunk Or High
  
• Bans On Driving While On Cellphone Reduce Cellphone Use, But Not Accidents
• Scientific Studies Should Be Taken With A Giant Grain Of Salt

From Plos One, via NPR