This Week in The Daily Show for March 5th, 2011 and the New Dead Island Game Trailer

Here is a great find by the Daily Show team of how when the issue is people making over $250K/year in business with giant benefits packages, 24 hour news pundits feel one way, but once you knock more than $150k/year off their yearly earnings and call them teachers, they are now treated as scum.
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When it comes to unions, any deal where it becomes virtually impossible to fire workers is bad, just look at the NY teacher rubber rooms where bad teachers just sit in rooms away from students all day and wait years before their disciplinary hearings… but that doesn’t mean that unions are bad and should be abolished and if you can’t reneg on Wall Street bonus contracts, why is it rational to do just that with union contracts? If you want to join a union, you should have that option. Unions for the public sector though are a bit tricky because the government can’t really fold and the money the workers get paid are not the politician’s money, it belongs to the constituents of the state, so any deal an official makes to increase longterm benefits only comes into play years after they are no longer on the hook for making the deal, while in the private sector, the owners that agree to these contracts are on the hook if they make a bad deal because the business could fail and have to close its doors.
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Here is an interesting interview with the Jordanian Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra’ad. King Abdullah has already dismantled the previous government, but I don’t think anyone yet knows what will come of his changes. The prince brings up some interesting possibilities, like what happens if the region unfolds into a battle between the Sunni‘s and Shia‘s on top of between the middle eastern countries that have already modernized vs the more conservative countries.
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Here’s just a bit of the absurdity what’s going on in Libya. With Muammar Gaddafi seeming to have lost his mind, although I don’t know how recent an event that actually is.
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Allison Stanger tries to explain just how much money is flowing from the US government to military contractors for her new book One Nation Under Contract. One point she brings up is that because there was no military draft, that changed the political discussion over going into Iraq and how we probably would not have gone into Iraq like we did if a draft was a possibility.
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Diane Ravitch talks about how complicated the issue of education is. How we stack up worldwide and what poverty does to education. Her book is The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I still think there needs to be a better way in a lot of these school districts to get rid of bad teachers, but it’s hard to put all the blame on them without dealing with the issues behind why the kids are doing badly in school. Teachers can’t make kids go to school and they can’t make them do their homework, sometimes the blame for why children do poorly in school is because of their family or their family situation.
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Lastly on a different note, thanks to the 404 episode465 (subscribe here) for letting me know about the new Dead Island video game trailer. I know the game won’t end up looking like this ultimately, but it certainly has piqued my interest.

Enjoy

Dany

The Daily Show and Colbert Report Weekly Roundup for October 3rd, 2010

Bill O’Reilly is a good sport and comes on to The Daily Show to promote his new book Pinheads and Patriots after all the Jon Stewart appearances on his own show.
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It is sad that boo-gate is more important than political ads that distort the views of political candidates like Taliban Dan.
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I have no problem with senators like Tom Coburn holding up bills, but I do have a problem the Senate having rules for secret holds to bills of any kind. I believe there are some topics so sensitive to national security that they be kept secret, but that’s about all that should be secret in politics, everything else should be open and exposed to harsh daylight for people to decide if they like what the people they voted into office are doing for or to the country
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Stephen Colbert tries to get Christine O’Donnell onto his local Delaware show, The Delawert Report.
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I guess when something is not a part of military policy, it never ever happens. Being gay or strait should have no bearing if you want to volunteer to be a part of the US miliatary, if you are brave enough to join and can pass the requirements everyone else has to pass, that should be all that is needed. It is cowardly that Congress is waiting until December, when the military survey on how best to integrate the policy change is finished, since it was undertaken in anticipation of the law being changed, not to ask the soldiers IF it should be changed.
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It is always interesting to hear the way a Supreme Court judge thinks, especially filtered through truthiness
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All I can say is flu season is coming, but Purell may not work so well against it.
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Here is an interesting look at the auto industry, from the man who was put in charge by President Obama, Steven Rattner, turning GM and Chrysler around after both companies almost failed with his new book Overhaul.
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No matter if it is A Few Good Men, The American President or The West Wing, I love Aaron Sorkin and he’s promoting the movie he wrote about Facebook, The Social Network.
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I love talking about good news, but this is not one of those stories. Greg Giraldo recently died and I’m gonna miss Greg, he was extremely funny, you can see him on his special Midlife Vices and these clips below.
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Enjoy

Dany

The Daily Show with Former Heads of State Bill Clinton and Tony Blair September 18th, 2010

This week seemed to be a stellar week for the Daily Show’s booking team. They were able to get both former President Bill Clinton and former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair.

Bill Clinton stops by for an interview, he even comes out with a list of ideas on how how to improve the economy, I highly recommend you watch this political master at work, especially clips 3 and 4 of this extended interview.
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Tony Blair has a new book, A Journey: My Political Life and he here he is on an extended interview with Jon Stewart to talk international politics while promoting the book.
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To keep the political theme alive, apparently ever since Andy Griffith did a PSA promoting some of the positive points about the passage of the recent healthcare bill, his popularity has plummeted.
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The politics just keeps on coming this week, I do love hearing about crazy local election candidates, I’d say more but “NOT the whiteman’s bitch'” already says so much.
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Stewart is holding rally to restore sanity on Oct-30-2010 just before national elections this November, it should be very interesting.
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Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf goes on CNN for an interview and all Rudy Giuliani and Fox News only heard threats
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Enjoy

Dany

Feeling Inadequate or Shy? Ask about Tequilla

Here is a great spoof on every television drug advertisement that ever makes it to air. Take special care to listen to the adverse side effects section.

Thanks to No Agenda #227 (subscribe here) for providing the link.

Enjoy

Dany

Verizon Wireless Hits AT&T Where it Hurts… Their Highspeed Network Coverage

Verizon Wireless has come out with some pretty scathing advertisements recently and now, they have started cranking out a fresh set of new Christmas themed ads… sure it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, but the early bird catches the worm, right?

Now I still think the iPhone on AT&T is still going to sell better than gangbusters this holiday season, but now AT&T‘s biggest competitor is really taking their ad campaign hard at AT&T‘s sparse 3G internet network availability.

Thanks to Engadget for pointing this out!

Enjoy

Dany

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRIqIWxhTIQ&feature=player_embedded

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? – The Guild

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OK, anyone with any geek credibility already knows who Felicia Day is since she was on the last season of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, she starred in Dr. Horrible and she created and stars in The Guild. Now she and the cast of The Guild have produced a great geek oriented music video that feeds on the MMORPG theme that The Guild is based on.

Enjoy

Dany

Macworld and CES 2009 Opening Keynotes by Apple’s Phil Schiller and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer

This week has brought us two very important keynote presentations. First there was the Macworld 2009 keynote by Apple‘s Phil Schiller (the last keynote Apple will give at Macworld) replacing Steve Jobs, who has traditionally given this keynote, then came the opening of CES and Steve Ballmer delivering this year’s keynote, a job that Bill Gates had traditionally filled in years past.

It was very interesting seeing both lectures for their similarities: all the cool hardware and software they were promoting, and the differences: Microsoft made a concerted effort to show off many different hardware and internet vendors, not just their in-house products.

Watch the 135 minute Macworld 2009 keynote here or get the HD version (subscribe to the iTunes podcast here) and watch the 123 minute CES 2009 keynote here.

Enjoy! I actually think the Steve Ballmer keynote (watch it here) was more interesting to watch, especially since they showed off some cool flexible e-ink reading technology.

Dany

Slumdog Millionaire Review

I saw Slumdog Millionaire on the advice of Lindsey the newly anointed movie buff. The movie was extremely entertaining and funny, but it will be a bit violent for some people. The people I went with were watching a few of the more violent scenes with hands over their faces to block out some of the harder to sit through torture and scenes of violence.

The story overall was entertaining, funny, sweet and uplifting though… and after hearing the M.I.A’s Paper Planes song all over NYC at EVERY single bar with a jukebox, hearing the song here in director Danny Boyle‘s film was extremely surreal (video above). I thoroughly enjoyed this film where the Indian police are trying to figure out, using any means necessary,  how a slumdog could know enough to make it all the way to the final question in the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and why this slumdog wanted to win, and no, it isn’t just for all the rupees involved.

The only issue with this movie is that I feel the same way I did after I saw Boyle‘s Trainspotting and Sunshine, I really enjoyed myself, but I knew I do not want to rewatch this film, the only one of his movies I’ve ever seen more than once is 28 Days Later… (watch the full movie here on Hulu) and after seeing both the long and short versions of that movie, I don’t feel like ever watching THAT movie again either, even though I liked that zombie movie as well.

The other problem I had though was with the movie theater I saw Slumdog Millionaire in. I saw the film in City Cinemas’ CC East 86th Street theater here in NYC and the official showtime was listed as 7:10pm and we had gotten to the theater early, but promptly at 7:10pm, the lights dimmed and the they proceeded to play 5 minutes of commercials before the actual movie previews started at 7:15pm. It would be fine if before the published movie start time, the theater was playing commercials, but once it’s showtime, the movies previews should be starting, not the commercials. I know that Roger Ebert has even complained of this same issue both here and here. Movie tickets are getting more and more expensive and we currently had to pay $12.50 per ticket here in Manhattan and we didn’t pay to see commercials start once we were expecting to watch the movie. I do not have a problem with movie previews starting at showtime, I consider the previews a key part of the movie-going experience in theaters, but NOT commercials!

So, after the film, I went and found the theater manager and politely complained about this, explaining that I enjoyed the movie, but didn’t appreciate having the commercials start when we should have started watching the previews at 7:10, she said she had no control over it, since the computers were preprogrammed to do this, but she gave me the name and phone number of the person in the main office to talk to about this.

I will call on Monday and will keep note of my progress with this issue. This used to be an issue at all the theater chains, but I know that AMC/Loews changed their policy of at one point showing 15 minutes of commercials after the published showtime, so now their listed showtime actually indicates when the previews begin.

Dany

Scariest TV Commercials to hit the Internet

Thanks to the Digg Reel (subscribe here), I’ve found me some scary tv commercials through Esquire… so scary, in fact, that they’re quite compelling and harder to turn away from than a car wreck on the side of the road.

Enjoy the drunk people the bad acting and the Schwarzenegger-esque accents.

Dany 

1970’s Chrysler Cordoba – Ricardo Montalban and Corinthian Leather

I could tie this article to the current financial crisis and the potential bailout of the big 3 US automakers (GM, Chrysler and Ford), but in reality, I just heard Leo Laporte and Dick DeBartolo talking about Ricardo Montalban and I just love this commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba, especially after finding out that the term Corinthian Leather really meant absolutely nothing while listening to episode 644 of the Daily Giz Wiz (subscribe here).

Enjoy the soothing style of Ricardo Montalbán.

Dany