Category Archives: Culture
iPhone 5 Fingerprints
Apple introduced two versions of the new iPhone 5 this week.
iPhone 5 Special Print Function
The upscale version features fingerprint recognition technology. You don’t need a password, just your fingerprint. The upside is you’re unlikely to forget your fingerprint. (You might be unlikely to forget. I’m not. I have ten fingerprints and it’s not easy to keep them straight. I hope I can still use one of them to type in the name of my first pet to get an email link where I can enter a new digit.)
The downside is, it’s kind of creepy.
An NSA secret slide presentation about how it accesses data from mobile devises was leaked to Der Spiegel. You can see it here. The first slide has a picture of the famous Apple 1984 Superbowl ad. The copy says:
Who knew in 1984 that this (Steve Jobs) would be big brother and the zombies would be paying customers?
Yikes!
But Bloomberg says not to worry. With the new iPhone you won’t be leaving your fingerprints all over The Cloud. That information is stored within the device and not accessible to nosy parkers.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus’ remains a leader in family entertainment. Her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards introduced American parents to a new power word for the day – twerking.
As usual, I missed the VMA show but, thanks to the web, still got to see Miley’s performance – and build my vocabulary. Her dance was weird. It reminded me of the guy in the creepy teddy bear suit in The Shining. But the full shock value was lost on me because, shockingly, I’ve never seen Hannah Montana.
So, for the choreographical merits I defer to the experts. Two of them Camile Paglia and Kathleen Parker, were not amused. But for different reasons.
Paglia found the perky twerky one’s attempted lewdness to be, “clumsy, flat-footed and cringingly unsexy, an effect heightened by her manic grin”. She considers Madonna, not Montana, to be the gold standard in this area:
“The greatest performers, like Madonna … know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value.”
Parker agrees with the mystery part:
“Provocation for the sake of provocation is rarely provocative. And sex in the hands of a Cyrus-gone-wild has all the appeal of rutting season at the zoo.
Whither mystery?”
What’s it all Mean?
The writer ladies part company on where this all leads.
Paglia laments, “Unfortunately, the media spotlight so cheaply won by Cyrus will inevitably spur repeats of her silly stunt, by her and others.”
But Parker hopes, “This time may be different. This time, even the young are offended…Just possibly, America has had enough. When all things are permissible, then permissiveness loses its allure.”
Here’s what a disillusioned and anonymous 11 year old Hannah Montana fan had to say, “I bet her dad is sorry he got her into music”.
NCAA
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel is so disliked that SEC coaches voted him second team all conference – after winning the Heisman Trophy as a freshman last year.
Now the NCAA is going after the disagreeable star for allegedly selling his autograph.
This fits a pattern – for the NCAA. Two seasons ago it suspended Ohio State student athletes for trading trinkets for Manhattan – just kidding – for tattoos. The NCAA wasn’t impressed by the fact that the the trinkets, given to the players by The Ohio State University, were the property of the players. Bobby Knight established that three Indiana University National Championship rings were his property when he eschewed tattoos and exchanged them for cash.
Now the governing body has taken the next step. It doesn’t believe Manziel own’s his name.
NCAA Faces Lawsuit
The NCAA could be on the ropes though. It is also fighting an antitrust lawsuit. The suit “accuses the NCAA of fixing at zero the amount that players can receive from video games and other products that use players’ names, likenesses and images”.
War on Women
Democrats created the “war on women” as a campaign issue against Republicans who didn’t want to pay for abortion and contraceptive coverage. Something fully supported by The Weiner The World Awaited and Filthy Filner.
In fact, Michelle Malkin notes on Twitchy that Planned Parenthood endorsed Filner in 2012 as a “long time defender of women”.
Of course, there is a history of women supporting bad boys.
Asylum with The Most Interesting Man in the World
Ed Snowden spilled the beans on NSA spying on American citizens (a now politically incorrect term since 12 million of us are not legal citizens).
Snowden has been provided asylum by former KBG man, and entertainer to the world, Vladimir Putin. Here are some whacky Vlady highlights including his latest fishing expedition.
All fun and games until somebody gets poisoned by dioxin and reporters start getting killed.
