I accidentally spilled a glass of Tuscan Whole Milk down the front of this shirt, and my soul was torn from my body and thrown into heaven by a jealous God.

Amazon Customer Reviews for Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

Sales of this shirt have increased by 2300% since internet humorists began competing for who could write the funniest review.  The Tuscan Whole Milk link is pretty boss, too.

Now…  how does Mr. Cheney still have the power and influence to do such things?  Or is it just a matter of him having so much freetime now that he can spend all day googling his name?

Click it and Check out our take from 2006.

FARGO, N.D. — Musician Cisco Adler, once romantically involved with Paris Hilton among other celebrities, was arrested in Fargo, ND after allegedly punching a nightclub employee in the nose.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 19, 2008

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Hollywood actor and former British soccer player Vinnie Jones was arrested after a bar fight in downtown Sioux Falls, authorities said.

From the St Paul Pioneer Press, December 6, 2008

My money is on Vinnie Jones in any and every and all ‘dakota bar fight.  Motherfucker THROWS DOWN.

My two-week temporary position turned into a four-week one, then a six-week one, until Denton finally realized that my special brand of cock jokes were as good as Gizmodo deserved and made me the full-time editor. [...]

I planted myself in front of my computer from five in the morning until midnight, breaking only to shovel General Tso Chicken and delivery fajitas down my gullet. I gained thirty pounds. I couldn’t sleep at night, my back contorted with worry. My girlfriend and I barely slept together; she would gently try to coax me into relaxation, but I’d be too preoccupied with conceiving my next linkbait story to register her supplications.

I’d post 30 stories a day. Engadget would post 45. I’d post 45. Engadget would post 60. They were winning. [...]

I was fucking nuts. [...]

And I was about to be the first blogger to which Bill Gates would grant an interview. [...]

Engadget might have a small team of hardworking, talented reporters out-writing the rest of the industry and transforming the face of technology journalism, but could they insert penis references into thirty posts a day? I and my penis think not. [...]

We exchanged pleasantries which have been obliterated from my memory by terror. I sat down on the couch and removed my laptop — my brand new 12-inch PowerBook — and placed it on the coffee table between us. I will not lie and say that it did not seem like a small act of rebellion to record an interview with Bill Gates with my Apple laptop; it also felt like the twerpiest thing I could ever do and I regretted it immediately.

That sudden shame also knocked out a large portion of my snarkiest prepared questions. I literally scratched out “Does Steve Balmer eat babies?” from my notepad, leaving me with precious few questions to ask.

From Interviewing Bill Gates on Boing Boing Gadgets

I’ve read Joel Johnson at every site he’s written at for years.  Probably for four years.  I think he’s a great writer and I just….. like the guy.  The article he wrote for BBG is worth a read.  Super interesting.  Cock.

This also brings up my fascination with commercials. I like to think there is a dialog between myself and the television. I often talk to the person on the screen and answer rhetorical questions – this make commercials either a) somewhat sensible or; b) all the more ridiculous. I question the advertising team’s motives behind characters, and try to decipher the wording and the script. Why is the Nasonex (R) spokesperson a bee, and why does he have a terrible Spanish accent? I get the obvious bee/pollen/allergy connection, but the accent? Is Nasonex (R) able to alleviate allergy symptoms AND sex you up Antonio Banderas-style?

Here is my latest: ShamWow. i give this commercial 5/5 “head-ons,” for an exceptional level of annoying.

Transcript (italics are for my response):

Vince: Hi, it’s Vince with ShamWow.
Me: Hi Vince!
Vince: You’ll be saying “Wow” every time you use this towel. It’s like a shammy, it’s like a towel, it’s like a sponge. A regular towel doesn’t work wet; this works wet or dry. This is for the house, the car, the boat, the RV. ShamWow holds twenty times it’s weight in liquid. Look at it! It just does the work! Why do you want to work twice as hard?
Me: If I have to work twice as hard, I just don’t work at all.
Vince: Doesn’t drip, doesn’t make a mess… wring it out. You wash it in the washing machine. Made in Germany – you know the German’s always make good stuff.
Me: Like national socialism?
Vince: You can cut it in half – use one as a bath mat, drain dishes with the other one, use one as a towel.
Me: That’s three halves, Vince. Better brush up on our 4th grade math.
Vince: Olympic divers use it as a towel. Look at that – completely dry [wipes arm].
Me: You must be sweaty as hell if your arm was wet AT ALL.
Vince: Put a wet sweater [on it], roll it up – it dries your sweaters. Here’s some cola. Wine, coffee, cola, pet stains…
Me: Unless it holds an entire box of wine, it’s of absolutely no use to me.
Vince: Not only is the damage going to be on top – there’s your mildew – that is going to smell.
Me: You’re right. After spilling cola or wine on my carpet, I would be crazy not to spray it with something. I’ll just suck 90% of it out with a towel, and live with the rotting stench and obvious stain.
Vince: See that? Now we’re going to do this in real time. Look at this – put it on the spill, turn it over – without even putting any pressure, fifty percent of the cola – right there. You following me camera guy?
Me: What is he, retarded? You’re standing in one place. Except for your overly enthusiastic shrugging, I think he’s got it well in hand. This is the type of job robots should be doing.
Vince: The other fifty percent – the color – starts to come up. No other towel is going to do that. It acts like a vacuum, and – look at this – virtually dry on the bottom. See what I’m telling ya? ShamWow – you’ll be saying “wow” every time.
Me: Terrible tag-line.

[people talking about their ShamWows]

“I can’t live without it! I just love it!”
“Oh my gosh. I don’t even buy paper towels anymore.”
“If you’re going to wash your car or any type of vehicle, you’d be out of your mind not to own one of these.”
“All I can say is – Sham-WOW.”
Me: What has Vince done to you? I hope it didn’t involve any probing.

[Back to Vince]

Vince:You’re going to spend twenty dollars a month on paper towels anyway.
Me: Maybe $5, tops.
Vince: You’re throwing money away.
Me: No I’m not
Vince: The mini ShamWows are for everything – everyday use.
Me: If that’s for everything, why do you get different sizes?
Vince: This lasts ten years, this lasts a week [holds up sponge]. I dunno – it sells itself.
Me: Why are you here then, genius? Take your hands-free mic and get the hell off my TV.

[Ordering information]

—

I explain: ShamWow is a towel. It holds more water than a paper towel. This is amazing, but not if you have to soak up oil, harsh cleaning products, or the leftovers from last night’s hedonistic blowout. You will still end up having to keep paper towels around for things you just don’t want to re-use.

Buy this, and you are retarded.

The IEM is an on-line futures market where contract payoffs are based on real-world events such as political outcomes, companies’ earnings per share (EPS), and stock price returns. The market is operated by University of Iowa Henry B. Tippie College of Business faculty as an educational and research project.  

Who can participate in the IEM?

The IEM is operated for research and teaching purposes. All interested participants world-wide can trade in our political markets. Other markets–such as the earnings and returns markets–are open only to academic traders.

Are the participants playing with real money?

YES. Trading accounts can be opened for $5 to $500. Participants then use their funds to buy and sell contracts. Traders therefore have the opportunity to profit from their trades but must also bear the risk of losing money.

Is the IEM regulated?

The IEM is an experimental market operated for academic research and teaching purposes. The IEM is not regulated by, nor are its operators registered with, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or any other regulatory authority.

Why would anyone operate a not-for-profit real-money market?

The IEM is operated by faculty at the University of Iowa Henry B. Tippie College of Business for educational and research purposes.

As business educators, we are concerned with preparing our students to be intelligent market participants. We and many of our colleagues at other institutions integrate the IEM into our courses. Students in these courses learn first-hand about the operation of financial markets and as a result become more well-informed traders in their future market interactions.

As business researchers, we are interested in market and trader behavior. The IEM provides a rich source of data for our research.

How does the IEM safeguard my money?

The IEM is operated under the auspices of the University of Iowa. You write your check to the University of Iowa and the funds are deposited to a University of Iowa account. When funds are withdrawn from your account, the University of Iowa accounting group (a group independent of the IEM) writes a check and mails it directly to your last known address. As a university operation, the IEM is subject to audits by university and state auditors.

Can I try out the IEM without investing money?

YES. Login to the IEM and follow the directions on the screen to log into the practice market. You will be able to do everything a trader can do, except trade in our real-money contracts.

In the last few weeks, Intrade.com, which is based in Dublin, had consistently given John McCain as much as a 10 percentage point edge in his chances to be elected president compared with other large online overseas betting sites. These include the British-based Betfair.com, as well as the Iowa Electronic Markets, a research project at the University of Iowa that allows bets of $500 on election results.

The political explanation — that someone was trying to game the system to give Mr. McCain some momentum — has the advantage of at least appearing rational to economists. Increasing a candidate’s perceived standing would be something of value to offset the irrational decision to waste money buying a share in Mr. McCain for more than the absolute minimum price.

On Thursday, the chief executive of Intrade, John Delaney, responded to allegations that there had been market manipulation — in essence, that somehow Mr. McCain was being favored by artificial means.

Mr. Delaney conceded there had been erratic behavior — including spikes in the direction of Mr. McCain and away from Barack Obama “by up to 10 points.” And he said “trading that caused the unusual price movements and discrepancies was principally due to a single ‘institutional’ member on Intrade.”

“The surprising thing is not that there was some manipulation, it is that it was sustained,” said Forrest Nelson, who teaches at the University of Iowa and has followed Intrade as well.

These developments, he said, go against his instinct that a large market like Intrade with millions of dollars in bets — as opposed to the total $250,000 wagered at the Iowa markets — would be less likely to be an outlier in its odds for candidates.

David Rothschild, a Ph.D. candidate in business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has tracked these markets. He said of the institutional trader on Intrade: “If their job was to hedge bets, they were not doing a very good job at gaining these positions at a minimal cost. They are overpaying for these positions. I don’t know if they are doing it to manipulate the market, but they are not doing a very good job at minimizing their costs.”

The political explanation — that someone was trying to game the system to give Mr. McCain some momentum — has the advantage of at least appearing rational to economists. Increasing a candidate’s perceived standing would be something of value to offset the irrational decision to waste money buying a share in Mr. McCain for more than the absolute minimum price.

Continue Reading: NY Times

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area–European culture since the sixteenth century–one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words–in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same–only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possiblity–without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises–were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

From Michel Foucault: the final two paragraphs of The Order of Things [Les mots et les choses] (1965)

THE PROBLEM WE ADDRESS

Today, 70% of all consumer time online is spent viewing content created by other consumers. As exciting as this development is, the explosive growth of social media and user-generated content has created a significant problem for marketers, publishers and advertisers all of whom rely on business tools and strategies that were created to monetize an Internet more closely resembling Henry Luce’s magazine model than the Internet that we know today. To make matters worse, the legacy advertising technologies that marketers today rely on generally fail to tap the unique opportunities afforded by social media and user generated content. The result: advertisers are disillusioned with the promise of social media but are still longing for a solution that properly addresses the significant audience (and obvious engagement) represented by the explosion of social content.

Media6° is the solution to the “social media problem”.

THE SOLUTION THAT WE PROVIDE

Our patent pending algorithms and methods connect a brand’s existing customers with user segments composed entirely of consumers who are interwoven via the social graph. These bespoke Media6° segments are both completely customized for each advertiser and enormously scalable. They reflect high degrees of homophily, the tendency of like-minded individuals to cluster with other people who strongly resemble them.

These Media6° audiences, sharing powerful demographic and psychographic traits, have been proven to respond to advertising messages at rates dramatically higher than other targeting alternatives.

Media6° is the ideal partner for brand marketers seeking large audiences displaying the highest levels of response, engagement, word of mouth and collective behavior.

CONSUMERS

Media6° believes that the best advertising solutions are those built from the ground up to protect consumer privacy. To that end, we are committed to these principles with regard to our interaction with consumers:

We do not collect or use any personal information about any consumer.

We do not attempt to discern the content or subject matter of any content page.

We help consumers to readily opt-out of Media6° cookies both at our site and through industry programs managed by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).

From the website of Media6°, a marketing firm specializing in online advertising.

Let’s break down what Media6° actually does. It’s fascinating, it’s brilliant, and it amounts to no less than the erasure of man.

Media6° (note the Stanley Milgram reference in their name) works with companies who want to advertise on the web. They’re in the business of collecting data, basically, which they then use to strategically place advertisements. In order to collect that data, they place 1 x 1 px squares on pages across the web, but most importantly, they place them on social networking sites like myspace, facebook, and linkedin. They don’t do so through any insidious means: they purchase advertising space from those sites, and when those sites go to retrieve an ad from the ad server, they report identifying information via the cookie that Media6° has embedded, as this is how cookies work.

They then collect information about where this individual user travels, and when they’re on a social networking site, this allows Media6° to see that person’s local social network by getting the cookie information from those users, too. Sociologists have found that people have between five and fifteen people with whom they actually associate as friends, i.e., more than acquaintances. The rest of a person’s friend list basically operates like a rolodex, but obviously, it binds a little more than that since it’s an interactive and semi-public bond (this is probably worth another essay). That means when we say network, we’re really talking about five to fifteen people. Here’s the reason for collecting the data, from a short article written by Media6° co-founder David Honig:

In fascinating research conducted in 2004, Chris Volinsky,the director of statistical research at AT&T Labs Research, undertook a study with Foster Provost, a New York University business professor, and Shawndra Hill, then an NYU graduate student and today a professor at the Wharton School. What these researchers discovered was remarkable: Any person in contact with an existing customer of a firm is three to five times more likely to respond to a message from the firm. Birds of a feather do indeed flock (and buy) together.

Even more significant, the researchers recorded these results in a direct-mail channel that involved neither an explicit nor an implied endorsement by one consumer to another – à la the troubled Facebook Beacon. In essence, the researchers found that by analyzing which customers communicated with each other, using inbound/outbound pairs on the telephone grid, they could identify “network neighbors” in the telephone social graph.

If they found one network neighbor to have responded to a particular direct mail offer, then sending the same offer to his network neighbors resulted in a three- to fivefold lift above any targeting technique not informed by this network-neighbor data. The researchers explained the results this way: “Social theory tells us that people who communicate with each other are more likely to be similar to each other, a concept called homophily …. Linked consumers probably are like-minded, and like-minded consumers tend to buy the same products.”

In other words, Media6° uses cookies on social networking sites to identify a person’s network. Those same cookies, when placed in the checkout page of a company’s website, can tell Media6° when one of their user IDs has bought a product. Then when someone in that user ID’s network visits a website populated by Media6° advertisements, the ad server pulls the advertisement for the product purchased by someone else in the network–that is to say, it pulls the advertisement that will be most effective in selling a product, as seen in the excerpt above. Also worth noting is that Media6° doesn’t advertise on social network sites because people are much more likely to tune out banner ads in that context. They collect data there and advertise elsewhere. Media6° is quite open about all this, and in addition to offering an opt-out link on their homepage, they provide a Relevant Reading section on their website, which is where I found David Honig’s article linked to above.

Now I want to note a couple things. First, I’ve been using the pronoun “they” to describe Media6°, and in some sentences this is appropriate, and in others, probably not. No person–no human–is actually looking at these cookies. Moreover, no computer program is looking at any personal data on anyone’s myspace page or even gathering anyone’s name. This is a computer running a program that takes the user ID information gathered by the embedded 1 x 1 px squares, runs it through an algorithm that makes sense of that data, and then eventually uses that to inform an ad server which ad to place on a page when a certain user ID visits. That’s it. All of the information that those of us using social network sites fill our pages with, whether sincere or tongue-in-cheek, is completely irrelevant to Media6°. While this in no way does away with the importance of demographic information for other methods of advertising, the most effective way to advertise products in 2008 does away with actual people and only sees them as nodes in a network.

Please don’t understand this as hyperbole. I mean this with complete sincerity and as much as Foucault did when he made his prediction: We are witnessing the erasure of man. I don’t say this fearfully or even as a negative evaluation. I’m not saying man is going to disappear in a vernacular sense, and to completely understand what I’m saying would require a rigorous recapitulation of The Order of Things, which while tempting is not something I’m going to do here. If I believed in an epochal view of history and thought there were epistemic breaks, I would be forced to say that at this moment we are witnessing such a transformation, and it means nothing less than the extinction of the anthropos.

[Please note: I'm not a tech guy; I'm a theory guy. If I've made any errors in explaining precisely how Media6° operates, don't hesitate to correct me. This is the web, of course, and revisions are easy.]

And only this.  And only this one time.  Holy jebus.

via Boing Boing (via dlisted)