I don’t have a whole lot of interest in seeing the new movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but the commercials playing on TV are playing a great track off The Cinematic Orchestra’s album Ma Fleur called To Build A Home. You should probably just go ahead and buy it now.

Max Shreck (played by Christopher Walken – how did this terrible movie attact so much talent?!) was convincing the Penguin to run for Mayor of Gotham City. The Penguin is not really sure this is a good idea, but then inspiration strikes: He needs a platform!

PENGUIN: A platform?

PENGUIN (framing the space in front of him with his flippers): Stop global warming. Start global cooling. Make the world an ice box.

SHRECK: I like it!

Think about this for a moment: This was a joke line in a major summer action movie nearly twenty years ago. The idea of Global Warming was mainstream enough that the writers could a) assume their audience was familiar with it, and b) understand the situation well enough to know that the Penguin’s proposed solution was clearly ridiculous.

So here we are, nearly twenty years later: We have progressed from Batman Returns through Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. How far have we progressed dealing with Global Warming?

It’s time to vote for somebody who will make a real difference on Global Warming: Oswald Cobblepot for Mayor!

Speculation as to whether the film was a “hoax” or not seems to miss the point to me. Rather, I see this project as an attempt for Banksy to tease out his own personal understanding as to the definition of art, and to maybe teach us something about it at the same time – a reasonable goal for someone whose most acclaimed work typically involves the willful destruction of other peoples’ property! And maybe that very introspection – arriving at understanding of creation through creation – that’s what it means to be an artist?

It’s a fairly simple process, and actually takes advantage of the generally-hated-by-most-people User Account Control (UAC) in Vista and 7 to block an unwanted action by a program.  And people say it’s nothing but annoying.

(Note: These instructions are for Firefox on Windows 7 or Vista; anything else and you’re on your own.)

1. Download the Flash updater directly from here.
2. Close all browser windows (including any opened by Prism).
3. Run the updater.
4. Start your browser back up.  Adobe will now sneakily try to install their awful download manager on your system.  This will generate a UAC prompt asking for administrative permissions to install.
5. Click “No” on the UAC prompt to stop the installation in its tracks.

Screw you, Adobe.  You’re in the Hall of Shame for trying to install backdoor software with critical security updates to a ubiquitous web technology.  And win one for UAC!

Despite my general distrust, though, I still harbor a hope that most of the sites I regularly visit aren’t bad actors.  When it turns out they are, it’s a bit of a shock.  When it turns out to be one of the oldest names in net publishing, it’s really disheartening.

Wired News has a really cool article on lasers blasting mosquitoes out of the sky.  When you copy-and-paste from that article, it hijacks your clipboard and changes what you copied.  Try it yourself!  (Of course, if you’re running NoScript, you’ll need to temporarily allow all scripts on the page.)

From the article, copy:

The laser lights quickly located the mosquitoes in flight.

And then paste:

The laser lights quickly located the mosquitoes in flight.

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/death-star-laser-zaps-mosqitoes-dead/#ixzz0fKgTWFBU

Yup, they hijacked your clipboard, and added a tracking link.  Who the hell does that?

Wired, you’re officially in the Hall of Shame.

And now, here are the plot points of my imaginary episode. Determining which are real and which are fake is left as an exercise to the reader.

1. A small-town mayor is suspected of having a lot of drugs.
2. The jurisdiction of the police is fuzzy, overlapping with several neighboring towns.
3. The police are issued a warrant.
4. The police execute the warrant, knocking down the door, shooting two dogs, and discovering an unopened package containing 32 pounds of marijuana.
5. While recovering the body of one of the dogs, which escaped out back, the police also discover a dead body in the back yard. It is identified as a big-city lawyer with 2.5 kids all in an expensive prep school.
6. The police uncover an elaborate plot involving the mayor, the dead lawyer and a big-city drug dealer to use the mayor’s house as an exchange location. Police arrest the drug dealer.
7. It turns out that the warrant was a standard search warrant, and not for a no-knock warrant, thus making the search illegal. The mayor’s attorney gets the drug charges (32 pounds!!) thrown out, and the murder rap is also teetering, and Jack McCoy the district attorney gets to say “fruits of the poison tree” like six times.
8. The DA figures out how to put everyone away, using a clever legal tactic and impeccable oratorical skills. Everybody gets 25-to-life, and the DA rubs it in their faces with a semi-smug, semi-stoic head wobble. The end.

For those of us too lazy to go to the site every day, there’s even a nice RSS feed to stick into your favorite reader.

Anyway, yesterday’s APOD was, I think, the best one ever. Courtesy of that dancing guy, the July 22nd picture is actually a movie; and rather than being about astronomy, it’s about things closer to home.

Take five minutes, and check it out. Totally worth it.

One study found that up to 70% of people who had genital herpes got it from their partner when they had no signs of an outbreak.

So, what I want to know is: What about that other 30%? Did they just not notice? Were they drunk? Or is there some sort of oozing-sore fetish I haven’t heard about?

Amusingly, the tubes have breathed new life into Garfield – by removing Garfield from them. Now, I know that this old meme is old, but my mom hasn’t heard about it yet, and the only way she’s going to is by reading it on my lame-ass blog.

Also, today’s posting particularly good.

The Candle Cannon: Behind the Scenes movie is also excellent. And for a small dose of air-vortex humor, there’s a short rendition of the Three Little Pigs, which, it turns out, is about 1/3 the length of the real story.