Frescorts

BBC reports about rentafriend.com and discusses whether it's a good idea or ruining humanity. Clearly this has already been covered by Bryan Fuller.

Now all we need is a hug machine:

Census 2010

I just filled out my Census 2010 form. Don't forget yours! Because participating in constitutional law is awesome.

Ultimate Pluto Platter

Inventor of the Pluto Platter dies:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/12/2818587.htm?section=world

BBC World News

I've spent a lot of the last few snowed-in days listening to BBC online (through NPR, but I tend to listen early morning and late evening, when things switch to BBC). I feel very informed about Chilean politics and international car recalls now, but this is what tickled me the most: There was a story about Google's new social networking programming, and I cannot tell at all where the reporter was from. What UK accent makes you pronounce "Google" like "Giggle"?

On forced smiling and severed feet

Smiling, language stereotypes, and a Ren & Stimpy reference:
Random discussion about whether languages that make you smile more also make you happier and a
hat that stabs you when you don't smile

Meanwhile, this sounds like something out of a TV crime drama or a mystery novel (via boingboing, obv):
Seventh Severed Foot Found in BC

Seven Deadly Sins

Someone at Kansas State just mapped the seven deadly sins in the US (measured by statistics like STD rates for lust and thefts for envy). Apparently my new home in Washington DC has got them all covered.
Link to wired.com

Some M&Ms are better for you

You may have thought that M&Ms were all the same -- reds are really no different from greens or blues or whatever. Just a silly artificial coating that most certainly does NOT prevent them from melting in your mouth instead of your hand. But science tells us otherwise: the dye from blue M&Ms (and blue gatorade) can reduce spinal injury in mice (and turn them blue). Pretty cool, huh?

Summer break is over

Since I start work again in a week, I'm going to write off the last two months as summer vacation from my blog (and, frankly, facebook, and most other forms of communication). And now I'm back. With this non-media posting. Oh well -- I guess it takes a while to get back in the swing of things:

Someone is suing Denny's to force them to label the sodium contents of their food. While I'm generally all for information, I think a lawsuit is the wrong way to get it. Over at The Atlantic website, Marion Nestle says that this is about consumer choice -- you can add salt at the table to low-sodium food, but you get no choice if the food is high sodium. Umm... no. Consumer choice is deciding whether to go to Denny's at all. If you can't tell that fast food is salty without being given sodium mg information, you've got health problems a lawsuit isn't going to fix. So go to Denny's, or not. Ask them to publish ingredient information on the threat of not buying their food otherwise. But don't sue, man. It's just going aggravate the lives of my fellow law clerks.

Japan reminding me of France, for the first and only time

This story about young urban Japanese men and women getting jobs in agriculture reminds me of an excellent French film about a young woman who does the same: The Girl from Paris (more meaningfully called "Une hirondelle a fait le printemps" in French, which means "A swallow [the bird] made the spring"). Definitely worth a watch

The Windy City is mighty purty

OK, this isn't really movie or television related, but to me it is entertaining. I don't know what it is about Illinois, but I don't get angry at corruption there, just amused. I find the Daleys, Al Capone & the rest of the Chicago Outfit, "vote early vote often," and even Governor Blagojevich strangely loveable. Maybe it's because even in corruption, Chicago & Illinois are misfits (how bad do you have to be to be ostracized by the Five Families??). Maybe it's because I watch too many old gangster movies. Maybe it's because the corruption there is always so ridiculously outrageous (What makes a governor think he can get away with a "corruption crime spree?" And let's not even talk about Chicago city aldermen, or 3 others of the last 7 governors.) Or maybe it's just that I love Chicago so much that even its state can do no wrong. So even while on one level I'm very sad about Governor Blagojevich, and apalled by what he did, it doesn't make me love Illinois any less.

Movie Analogy

These imposed sartorial standards in China remind me of, of course, the ridiculous hoop skirts on Siamese women in this movie.

Intellectual Property Update

Last week, a great website finally went out of beta testing: hulu.com. There, in a completely legal medium, I can watch tv shows and movies for free. I can even post them on websites, email them to people, or share them in other sites (like myspace or facebook) with customized start and end times. They have limited commercials through them, but so far seem less annoying that the studios' own websites for tv shows (although it still annoys me that it doesn't archive all the episodes for some shows, like Psych). And yes, the movie selection is pretty crappy so far. But let's give some props to network executives who do something other than whine about piracy, and instead work to serve consumers in a way that the extreme lack of quality control in the world of piracy is worth it.

And, besides, some of the movies and TV shows are good. Take, for example, Sideways or The Usual Suspects or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Or, for less high class fare (but more likely something you decide to watch on a whim, which is what streaming access is for, right?) you can try out some guilty pleasure-type movies, like The Skulls. Yes, I'm embedding it. Because I can.