This is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in my life. Can we please focus on laser guns, and work on the creepy, unstoppable dog robots if and only if we perfect those? I think we’ll be glad we did.

More info on Boston Dynamics’ BigDog (and clearer video) on their website. Via Pop

For all the people who said they liked Barack, but he just didn’t have a plan, or who thought he was a good public speaker, but lacked substance, you’ll be happy to know that you can kindly shut the fuck up now.

Here’s a short documentary about the making of Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards.” In short, they used no cameras or lights, just a laser imager. It’s pretty fascinating.

You can also play around with the visualizations on your own, here.

This is the cover for the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, drawn by Barry Blitt, ostensibly in response to a FOX News teaser that described this moment as a “terrorist fist jab,” and the hoopla that followed.  I gotta say, this cartoon seems to have fallen well short of “biting cultural satire” and landed in “just as offensive as the thing it’s making fun of” territory.  Which is to say that it doesn’t go far enough.

Confused?

A good analogue would be a joke from a recent episode of Family Guy, a show which thrives in the aforementioned territory like lawn jockeys at Jessie Helms’ house.  Stewie complains that “this party is worse than a Mexican funeral,” and the scene cuts to a coffin stuffed with about a dozen bodies while the priests reads a long list of Spanish names.  Now, if this were a comment on the terrible conditions poor people are forced to live (and die) in, that would be satire, and it might have been intended as such.  The problem is that the joke serves just as well as a racist one, and nothing in the joke seems to be poking fun at people who hate Mexicans. It’s just a joke about Mexicans.

For comparison’s sake, it would be extremely difficult for the targets of Stephen Colbert’s satire to embrace anything he says (unless you’re Tom Delay). Even George W. Bush understands Colbert as an attack on conservative bullshit, and he’s twice as dumb as he is evil (which is to say, “very dumb”). Colbert understands that satire works by exaggeration, not just mimicry.

Nothing on this New Yorker cover is unbelievable.  It’s the exact sort of thing I’d expect to see on the front page of Drudge Report.   You’ll notice that Blitt tried very hard to push the joke, throwing a burning flag in the fireplace and a picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall in a desperate attempt to say, “Hey guys, look, it’s gotta be a joke.”  But again, these represent real attacks being launched at the Obamas’ patriotism, and simply reproducing them without modification, without some kind of comic exaggeration, is not satire. It’s doing the other side’s job for them.

UPDATE: I’ve been waiting for Michael Shaw’s analysis, and as usual he does not disappoint.

Barack did his best Jon Stewart impression today, responding to Phil Gramm’s recent bonehead statement that America was only in a “mental recession,” and that we are a “Nation of Whiners.” Obama is like a kid in a candy store.

Man, we are never going to get Gulf War III: Bomb, Bomb Iran off the ground if those assholes in the graphic design department don’t get their acts together. Sheesh!

As the above illustration shows, the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.

Oh, really? But surely major news outfits vet their images to prevent these kinds of embarrassments, right? They wouldn’t just eagerly present any old…wait, what:

In a sentiment no doubt echoed by news organizations everywhere, an MSNBC editor acknowledged that the four-missile picture was initially welcomed with open arms. “As the media editor working the msnbc.com home page yesterday, I was frustrated with the quality of a fuzzy video image we published of the Iranian missile launch,” said Rich Shulman, the network’s associate multimedia editor. “So I was thrilled when the top image crossed the news wires.”

Maybe you’re thinking, man, that Bush guy will stop at nothing! Sure, he would do something like this, but what pisses me off is that he doesn’t have to.  The news media is more than happy to ratchet up tension with Iran because, frankly, Iraq just isn’t selling ads any more.

At times like this I like to remind everybody about a little thing called the Spanish-American War.  When they tried to tell Bill Hearst he couldn’t have his war because shit in Cuba just wasn’t that bad, he famously replied, “You just get me the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”  Now there was a true patriot. And a rich one, to boot.

Best idea since this idea:

 Barack Obama travels a lot, but many babies live in places he hasn’t been. That’s why he’s now accepting babies by mail. Send him your baby, and he’ll kiss it and send it back to you.

They also have a gallery of Obama-themed baby photos. (via Coudal)

I mean, the answer was always there, right in front of us. While we’ve been sitting here bickering over the small stuff, John McClane has been out there saving our asses from inscrutable foreign terrorists and the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Some facts from the campaign website:

In 1988, John McClane defused the hostage crisis at Los Angeles’ Nakatomi Tower.

In 1990, John McClane thwarted  a terrorist plot to seize control of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.

John McClane has defeated terrorists in elevator shafts on numerous occasions.

With credentials like that, I think your decision in Novemember should be a lot easier.

As elated as I am, I’m getting tired of hearing stories about how shitty the Republicans have it in the upcoming elections:

That prospect [Mississippi sending a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 25 years] is a window onto a remarkable political trend that has been eclipsed by the fireworks surrounding the 2008 presidential contest: Democrats are running strong Senate campaigns in states such as Mississippi, Alaska and North Carolina that Republicans have long taken for granted.

[…]

The overall political climate, shaped by the sluggish economy and President Bush’s low approval ratings, is souring many voters on Republicans. The party has been hobbled by a stampede of retirements by senior Republicans, including Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott.

After eight years of raping anything that wasn’t nailed down, after eight years of following the feverishly demented fiscal policies of a trained chimp and a guy who he affectionately refers to as “turdblossom,” when people finally start noticing that those guys talking about Jesus all the time are sex-maniacs and thieves, when all the money’s finally gone, the LAT has the nerve to describe the economy as “sluggish.” As if nobody’s been in charge. As if these things just happen. The economy isn’t sluggish, it’s been pillaged.

All this poor little rich boy narrative does is fuel the idea that Republicans are somehow the underdogs against all those slick, East coast liberals.  It’s perverse and it’s dishonest, and it’s seeping into the presidential contest:

Asked Saturday what he thinks about McCain’s apparent pride in underdog status, Obama told reporters traveling with him: “Two years ago, John McCain was the putative Republican nominee who has been part of the Washington establishment for years and who touts all his Washington experience, versus me. So the notion that somehow I’m the heavy favorite in this race belies recent political history and a lot of American history. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Wait, what was that last part again?  The part about American history? Oh, is pretending that the rich old white guy is the underdog a racist thing to do?  Oh, heaven forbid!

Spend a few days in western Europe talking about American politics and you discover that you are in deepest Obamaland. Not much different from Berkeley, California, or the South Side of Chicago.

As a woman put it to me in Paris: “We want America back.”