Listen, son, we need to have a talk. This isn’t going to be easy for either of us. You are not my son. I’m sorry, I know this will come as a blow to you. But the fact is, no son of mine plays Oregon Trail like you do.

The first sign something was wrong was when I watched you choose the banker as your occupation to start a game. The banker? Really? Were you not aware that the banker has no point modifier?

For some time, I managed to convince myself that you preferred the banker simply because his vast resources allowed you to purchase the maximum number of oxen. I was sure that you were attempting to set a speed record of some sort. Of course, I knew that the game limited you to 40 miles a day regardless of the number of oxen, but I thought you would figure that out for yourself. But you weren’t about to figure anything out. Not about Oregon Trail, and not about life.

At Matt’s General Store, you picked a “logical” assortment of goods to ensure that your party was healthy and secure the entire way to Oregon. You even purchased clothing for the members of your party, for Christ’s sake. It was clear that you valued the banker’s fourfold cash advantage over the farmer’s point multiplier of three. And because of that preference, and many other choices along the trail, you are clearly another man’s son.

Can’t you see that Oregon Trail is a microcosm of life? I’m sure you’ve seen my high score on the computer: 8,040 points. Did you know that for years people considered 8,000 points impossible? You don’t get a score like that by playing it safe and taking the banker. You get a score like that by selecting the farmer, purchasing only oxen and ammo, setting a “grueling” pace, and feeding your party “bare-bones” rations.

How many gold medals would Michael Phelps have won if all he cared about was making it across the pool? How many championships would Jordan have if all he’d wanted to do was dribble the ball down the court? Sure, you can make it across the country in relative comfort. But let me ask you this: How many spare wagon wheels do you think Michael Phelps takes with him? Why not push a naked, starving family to the brink of collapse and hunt your ass off for food all the way to Oregon? Isn’t that what Jordan would do?

Son, when you make the decision at South Pass to head for Fort Bridger instead of the Green River, you’re making a choice to take the easy route. Why? Because you’re afraid the wagon won’t make it across the river? Son, Fort Bridger takes you 86 miles out of your way!

Maybe your fat, well-dressed pioneers are happy for the extra time on the trail, but I wonder how happy they’ll be when they make it to Oregon and all they have to start their new lives is a bunch of fancy clothing and a few spare wagon axles.

I once completed the trail having survived three broken wagon wheels. It took me 10 days to find an Indian to trade with for the third wheel, and I still scored 6,000 points. The other day, I saw you quit the trail immediately after your wagon capsized in the Kansas River. You lost only an ox and a hundred pounds of food. I drank myself to sleep that night.

Speaking of food, it almost seems like you don’t even like to hunt. When you do, you fire randomly at anything that moves. Let me make it simple for you, son: a bullet costs 10 cents, a pound of food costs 20 cents. If you’re not averaging a half pound of food per bullet, you’re wasting points. So I hope it was fun firing 10 times at that squirrel, which, I feel obligated to add, you never actually hit.

I can see that this is all very upsetting. I’m sorry. I know that this is a lot for an 8-year-old to absorb. I wish I were better at comforting you. Your real father, most likely a banker of some kind himself, probably is. I’m sure he also has a lot of money. I don’t—I’m just the guy responsible for the 8,040.

Son, you may not share my genetic material, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you grow up this way. So start a new game, select the farmer, try to think like Michael Phelps, and let’s see how many buffalo we can kill on the way to Oregon.

via McSweeny’s

Andy Warhol, Turquoise Marilyn, 1962

Andy Warhol began his career studying commercial art and later became successful creating illustrations and advertisements for a magazine. These achievements along with the bed ridden days of his youth, in which he surrounded himself with pictures of movie stars helped develop his personality and art style in later years. During the 60’s Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products (such as the soup can or coca cola bottle) as well as paintings of celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Consequently, becoming a large figure in the art movement known as Pop Art.

He became famous for creating “The Factory”: he switched to silkscreen prints which he produced serially, thus making art of mass produced items and mass producing the art itself! By having a smaller hand in the production of his work, he questioned whether the idea or the creation of the piece was most important in art.

Warhol’s subjects were instantly recognizable and had mass appeal to the American public. This however led to much controversy; critics were shocked that he so openly embraced mass media and consumerism.

This print was created when he first began experimenting with silkscreen, he wanted something that gave more of an assembly line effect, but with silkscreening every print still comes out slightly different. Warhol decided to do this Marilyn print on the occasion of her death in 1962. Her death began a whole series of different silkscreens he did; he would paint the canvas a random color then silkscreen her face on top, sometimes double it, sometimes multiply it in a grid. These prints call attention to the glamour, yet transient and vulnerable qualities of her life.

via wired:

Modern agriculture hasn’t just made beef cows beefier and corn cornier, it’s also made pot more potty.

The potency of marijuana, measured by the presence of its (psycho)active ingredient, THC, has tripled since 1987, according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

The new data from the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project — which is not just a group of your college buddies talking about the differences between now and the old days — was released in the 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The Department of Justice attributed the steadily rising numbers to “increased demand for higher-potency marijuana and improvements in cultivation techniques.”

The new pot is certainly a superior product to the shake of the old days, but it’s nowhere near as strong as some war-on-drug advocates have contended. The old White House drug czar, John Walters, has said publicly that marijuana’s THC content has “increased as much as 30 times,” which researchers say is not supported by the available evidence.

On the other hand, Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization lobbying to change the drug’s regulation, said that the average American pot doesn’t stack up with the tightly-controlled cannabis in Amsterdam.

“In the Netherlands, where marijuana for medical use is sold in pharmacies and grown to government standards of purity and potency, the minimal allowable potency is 15 percent THC,” Mirken wrote in an email to Wired.com.

He also noted that the potency of marijuana might not actually matter much, with smokers (and/or midnight tokers) adjusting their intake based on the bud’s THC content.

“A fair amount of data show that people who smoke marijuana adjust their smoking behavior in accordance with the potency of the material,” Mirken wrote. “This is just like alcohol drinkers, who commonly consume a far smaller quantity of hard liquor than they do of beer.”

Up yours, 70’s!

The outgoing US vice-president, Dick Cheney, last night gave an unapologetic assessment of his eight years in office, defending the invasion of Iraq, the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, secret wiretapping and the extreme interrogation method known as waterboarding.

In his first television interview since the presidential election in November, Cheney displayed no regrets and gave no ground to his many critics within America and around the world. He summed up his record by saying: “I think, given the circumstances we’ve had to deal with, we’ve done pretty well.”

Disputable.

There’s some other lies and exaggerations in the article. I’m so tired of these goons I’m not going to get too worked up over it.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Tracking my analytics, it seems that the less you post the less people visit. Strange correlation. I can’t promise updates. Some days I come home and don’t even turn on the computer. But I’ll always love you, faithful denizens.

This makes me think of two Hunter S. Thompson quotes, which seem like they could be combined into one somehow to describe the financial going-ons in the US. The emphasis below is mine:

“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”
—Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Costanza Bonarelli Bust, 1638

Bernini was one of the most famous sculptors and architects of the Baroque period in Rome. Much of the Baroque grandeur of the Eternal City—its churches, fountains, piazzas and monuments—can be credited to Bernini and his followers.

He began his career as a young man doing busts and worked his way up to architecture and full figure sculpture. He spent much of his mid 20’s creating four colossal marble statues such as The Rape of Proserpine and David. When he reached his 30’s he returned to busts, however, his work began to gain some subtly: a big change from the fireworks of his youth.

This bust was made during that time period of his life. Instead of trying to re-capture every detail, he was more concerned with giving the impression of life and character. Costanza Bonarelli was the wife of one of Bernini’s assistants and also his lover. It appears that this bust was not commissioned but made by the sculpture for himself. It is also unlike most busts of the time; since only the rich were able to afford it, busts were only made of rich, formally clad people. Since Costanza is an average woman, she doesn’t have an elaborate hairdo or any jewelry. Instead she is depicted without all of the ornamentation of 17th century women; the only aspect to focus on is the person.

I love this bust because I think it’s so sexy. You can see a little bit of her breast and her mouth is slightly open - you can almost imagine her breathing and moving. Unfortunately for Bernini, Costanza was also having an affair with his younger brother. When he found this out he went mad and tried to kill his brother. In the end, he ended up marrying another woman and having 9 children with her.

Starring Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney and more, via Funny or Die

Pretty funny. Am I finding this late, or was it made late?
Either way, better late than never.

Mouse over the image for alt-text goodness. Via XKCD: Alternate Currency