Rubénerd!

If we needed any further proof how breathtakingly out of touch some people are, look no further than this contributed article to Forbes If I Was a Poor Black Kid.

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently.

[..] I'd use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books.[..]

Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.

Jaw, meet floor. Could he have been any more condescending if he tried?

The story has generated over 75 pages of comments on Forbes, not to mention dozens of articles written in response. I think Cord Jefferson from GOOD put it best.

Marks believes that the only thing low-income minorities have to overcome is terrible teachers and a lack of technological knowledge; the rest of their problems stem from outright laziness.

UPDATE: Not appreciating the irony in his article heading, Gene Marks has changed it to If I Were a Black Kid. The original title is still in the permalink.

Photo from the Kheel Center, Cornell University Flickr account, also found through Cord Jefferson's article.

How to further destroy a brand, show how utterly and bafflingly out of touch you are, and create a subject that generates video parodies in less than 12 hours, within weeks of grounding your entire fleet over a pay dispute after your CEO rewards himself with millions. It's genius.

To enter tell us 'What is your dream luxury inflight experience? (Be creative!) Answer must include #QantasLuxury.TCs http://t.co/WDTO0FKG

Better get Cale Sandle Lands on this one, or whatever that git's name is. Personally, I wouldn't mind some new pajamas, though I don't know how they'd compare to the Singapore Airlines ones. Those are some fluffy garments, let me tell you.

UPDATE: SMH is referring to the incident as a hijacked hashtag. Class.

So I checked Technorati.com this evening, that former darling of the blogosphere (do people use that term anymore?) I joined in 2005. Four of the twelve top stories were about American politician Anthony Weiner and his schlong. One third.

It's so disappointing that for all the blatant ratings grabbing and race-to-the-bottom journalism we accuse the mainstream media of pushing on us, blogs seem to be following the same path with vapid news stories that just aren't news. At least when I post pointless entries, they're cute! But I digress.

I guess a sex scandal sells, it's why Clinton was impeached and not Bush.

I really don't understand why there's so much Fox News satire out there, they do a good enough job of humiliating themselves without any outside help.

Is it screenshot or screencap?

That screencap above was from Glenn Beck who claimed Egypt was in New York State. Well okay he didn't say that, he actually said "New York is about the size of Egypt". No joke.

Now, I love maps. As a kid my parents used to buy me atlases and globes and wall maps for birthdays and other celebrations that involved the capitalistic exchange of gifts. I was obsessed with them. I still am. I often wonder to myself had I not got into computer science or if I were born before the age of electronics that perhaps I would have tried my hand at cartography. What a deeply fascinating field! I'd probably have to go outside to do that though. Hmm, spanner in the works.

That said, it doesn't take someone with relatively intimate global geographic knowledge to know New York State is nowhere close to being the size of Egypt, not in population and certainly not in land area. My sister is knowledgeable in other fields and never really caught the geography-interest bug, but even she laughed out loud when I told her about this.

This is a big, big gaffe

A quick check on Wolfram Alpha returned these results:

New York State	122,283 square kilometres 47,214 square miles	19.38 million people
Egypt	995,450 square kilometres 384,345 square miles	84.47 million people

That's right, New York State is only a fraction larger than 12% the size of Egypt. That's not even close!

(122,283 / 995,450) * 100 = 12.28 (4SF)

Am I splitting hairs about this?

Perhaps, but Mr Beck is an anchor of a television programme on an alleged news network watched by millions, most of whom I imagine never question anything he says. If Glenn tells me that Egypt and New York are "about the same size", then it must be true!

Even if he were reading from a script (I don't know, I don't watch his show), the common sense part of his brain should have alerted him to this obvious absurdity of what he had to say, and he would have corrected it on the spot. Which leads us to two inevitable conclusions: either he made a slip of the tongue and didn't notice (unlikely given he had a graphic created to demonstrate his point), or he's as breathtakingly ignorant and knows as much about Egypt as his host network.

If you haven't seen these already, Fox News in the US has run this same map of the Middle East twice now:

I end this post the way I started it. I really don't understand why there's so much Fox News satire out there, they do a good enough job of humiliating themselves without any outside help.

Thanks to Firedoglake and Media Matters for America for the screenshots, or screencaps, or whatever they are.

This isn't a technology related story, but then again Avatar had a lot of fancy CGI depicting floating mountain things and this is about something just as plausible in the real world. Emphasis added by me:

Hank Johnson, Georgia's Congressman, stated during a committee meeting that the addition of more U.S. troops to the tiny island of Guam might cause the island to tip over and capsize. When the news first ran the story, many thought it might be an April Fools Day prank, but watching the video, all concerned were all business and Johnson was very seriously laying his case for the island.

As that senator said too Bill Maher in Religious: "you don't have to pass an IQ test to serve in government!". No kidding.

Personally, I don't know what is more scary: that someone with this level of intelligence can be elected into public office; that someone thinks islands are buoyant; or that someone thinks adding people to an island the size of Guam -- even if the dang thing floated -- would capsize it.

Evacuate Singapore, it's screwed!

At 541km^2, Guam is only a fraction smaller than Singapore which manages to support just under five million people in 710.2km^2, and last time I checked it ain't sinking! That said, there is that joke in Malaysia that if Singaporeans keep building massively tall buildings and cramming more people into it eventually it'll drift away and sink. I suppose that's the difference, the Malaysians are kidding!

I hear Sarah Palin wants Hank Johnson on her ticket for the presidential elections of 2011 or whenever the are, you-betcha!

It's that nonsensical idea we thought common sense and overwhelming evidence against its effectiveness would kill once and for all, but here we are on the brink of the introduction of the Great Firewall of Australia. Whooptie-friggen-do.

From Liam Tung's ZDnet Australia article Mandatory ISP filter due mid-2011:

Mandatory ISP filtering legislation will be introduced around the middle of 2010, after which there will be a one year period to implement and activate the filtering technology.

Also from ZDNet Australia, Colin Ho made similar remarks to what I've been saying about Australia's global standing in his article EFA: Filtering 'damages Australia's reputation'

Civil rights and online free speech lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today criticised the government's internet filtering report, claiming civil rights implications should be the focus rather than the technology's impacts on internet speed and performance.

"It damages Australia's reputation as a free and open democracy and as a technologically advanced and savvy 21st century country" ~ EFA vice president Colin Jacobs

I've talked about this issue many times before using the nocleanfeed and great australian firewall tags.

In case you're unclear as to what my response has consistently been throughout this debacle, allow me to demonstrate with the help of my friend Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya fame.