Selling tampons to the media-aware

"" (Watch on YouTube)

via lilysea
Of course, it doesn't do anything to combat the problems it (very amusingly) highlights, and is thus part of the problem, rather than the solution. But it might still be the bleeding edge of change.
Some good commentary at Sociological Images. Favourite comment:

A commercial like this one seems to tell to my face : “F**k it ! We’re not even going to bother pretending we’re not trying to manipulate you into buying our product, because years of conditioning and exposure to commercials have by now left you incapable of independent thought and critical thinking. So instead, we’re going to tell you EXACTLY how we have been conning you up until now, and you’re still going to buy our product anyway.”

The whole of There Will Be Blood in one-minute, as an 8-bit console game

"Doctor Who Murray Gold - This Is Gallifrey" (Watch on YouTube)

Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo.

I'm sure that the existence of such things tells you something about our culture. Like how freaking AWESOME it is.

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-4-2010

• How Psychopaths Choose Their Victims
  (tags: psychology psychopath victims)
• Colgate Patents Traditional Indian Tooth-cleaning Powder Despite It Being Used For Thousands Of Years
  (tags: patents intellectual_property teeth india)
• Newspaper apologies for claiming Captain Kirk was in command of Captain Picard's starship.
  (tags: funny startrek media newspapers)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer files for bankruptcy. Will finally be able to get back to making movies.
  (tags: movies business)
• Brain differences in people with "autism gene" revealed by MRI scan
  (tags: genetics autism brain psychology)
• Awesome versions of Dr Who - Simpsons Style
  (tags: simpsons DrWho art)
• Scientists answer some tough energy questions
  (tags: energy uk renewables nuclear fusion)

Automated Translation is fun

Google Translate renders faux pas in English as faux pas in Norwegian. It renders faux pas in French as snuble in Norwegian. Snuble in Norwegian is translated as stumble in English.

From this article about HTC forgetting to put an Ø in the Norwegian version of the HTC Desire HD keyboard...

A form of nostalgia

A person should be careful with advice. Specific advice is not offensive. General advice is offensive. Telling someone to get a job, or that they should take better care of their life, or get help, without any specificities is to call someone incompetent without providing anything useful to them. It's a kick in the ribs, disguised as advice.

- eatsoylentgreen here.

I went into a massive lull on giving advice. The last few times people have come to me with problems I've ended up teasing their beliefs out of them, reflecting them back, and trying to help them decide what they actually want. And then, after a friend said "If I didn't want your advice I wouldn't have posted where you could see it and left comments on." (or words to that effect) I've been tacking back towards offering more of my own perspective on things.

And I think that the quote above captures something important - that different advice is useful for different people. That some advice is useful in general - but even then it's very unlikely to be useful or true _all_ of the time. And knowing when to break a rule is always the tricky bit.

I think part of me feels that if the correct course of action is obvious then my advice isn't needed. And if it's not obvious then my advice is unlikely to be that useful without knowing the situation in detail.

Of course, most people aren't actually looking for advice, they just want someone to talk to while they work things out for themselves. And that, I seem quite good at.