Worst Possible New Vandalism Trend: Tipping Smart Cars

Back when I was a kid in Vermont, a rumored but never really proven vandalism past time was supposedly cow tipping. That meant going out into fields and knocking over unsuspecting cows who might or might not have been sleeping.

Possible dumb new trend: Tipping over
these little Smart Cars  

That could be rural legend, but now we have what might be the beginnings of a new "tipping" vandalism trend that is real: Smart Car tipping.

There were four instances of Smart Cars being tipped over in San Francisco recently, according to the Huffington Post.

It's unclear if these were random acts of vandalism or a reaction among locals with modest incomes revolting against all the rich techies moving to town and maybe driving up rents.

But knowing how the Internet and YouTube works, I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of Smart Car tippings. The cars are very fuel efficient, but also tiny and lightweight, and no doubt easy to tip over.

So a few obnoxious, drunk teens will be doing this type of thing until the fad runs its course in a few months.

Hey, how about tipping your waiters and waitresses instead?

Awesome Ant Photos That Are Completely Unappetizing, But Fascinating

Photographer Paul Quagliana has released some really awesome closeup photos he took of woodland ants squirting acid all over the place.

One of Pau Qualiana''s photos of ants spraying
acid to ward off predators 

It's less dire than it sounds. The ants don't spray acid at people to kill them. Instead, they squirt the foul smelling acid to ward of predators. 

According to The Daily Mail, Quagliana said:

"It doesn't hurt but it stinks and I imagine if it was to get in your eyes it would probably sting."

In order the capture the action, he set up his camera on a tripod, ensuring the sun was behind the ants, which had built a nest on a lot. "I then tapped the log and lifted my hand up and starting photographs," he said.     

Another of Quagliana's ant photos  

"I didn't see it when they were squirting the acid, but when I looked back at the images, the sun had captured the droplets."



The photos look like the climatic battle scene in some epic action/adventure movie.

Amazing what goes on in places we don't normally notice.
 

My Search For The Rare Great TV Ad Reveals A Few Finds

With my well documented hatred of most advertising because it's stupid, here's another effort at positive reinforcement, which I do from time to time, to tell advertisers how it's done.

A screen shot from an excellent Bell's Whiskey
ad in South Africa  

I still have not found the logic behind most television ads, which operate on the premise that if you irritate the viewer, they will buy your product.

Maybe I'm just weird because I'm the opposite. A well-done, engaging ad might encourage me to buy, otherwise, not so much.

So, in the interest of being helpful to the ad agencies, here's a few good ones, most of them found in an occasion series of articles about advertising at vice.com

First, we have this heartwarming one from Bell's Whiskey in South Africa, called "The Reader.":




Here's a great newer ad for the new citizenM Hotel in Times Square (yes, it's lower case "c" on "citizen" just to be different.

Like the ad. It's a great stop-motion feature with two towel swans. It plays up the cliches of luxury, romantic hotels. And it's a got a great punch line:





And here's a four year old commercial for Volkswagon, that reminds me of the song "Little Old Lady From Pasadena." It's pretty funny, and the song playing in the background makes it that much tackier, which I love:




Next we have this clever Russian ad from a few years back about a guy searching for an insurance company, and finding customer service at one company to be a bit lacking:





Often, public service annoucements are the best ads. This is no exception. It's from Reporters Without Borders. an organization that advocates for full, unfettered press freedom worldwide. They get their message across wonderfully with this ad. The music in the background makes the video even more perfect:

Nabisco Lovingly Tells Honey Maid Ad Gay Family Critics To Go Pound Sand

Nabisco, makers of tons of stuff, including Honey Maid graham crackers, released a bunch of warm, fuzzy ads last month talking about how families come in all shapes and sizes.

A still from the first Honey Maid ad that raised
the ire of conservatives. 

One of the families consisted of two gay dads and their kids, who of course love each other, AND Honey Maid graham crackers.

(The ad also featured a tattooed rock drummer dad and an interracial family, which I'm sure helped send some extreme conservatives over the deep end.)

But the gay family raised the ire of groups like One Million Moms, who urge boycotts of every company they think promote sin.

I don't think there are one million moms who are members of One Million Moms and I think the few remaining must be dying of starvation because they've pretty much urged that we boycott everything, but that's another story.

This time, One Million Moms said they objected to Honey Maid's use of the word "wholesome" to describe the two gay dads and urged us all to write angry letters to the company.

I'm afraid I didn't write that letter because I was too busy driving to the store to buy Honey Maid graham crackers, so I'm sure One Million Moms will urge people send angry letters to me, too.

And a still from the second ad, which tells
conservative critics, lovingly, to go pound sand.  

But still, One Million Moms was pretty ticked at the makers of this ad.

They said:  "Nabisco should be ashamed of themselves for their latest Honey Maid and Teddy Graham cracker commercial where they normalize sin," wrote the group. "This commercial not only promotes homosexuality, but then calls the advertisement wholesome."

Maybe One Million Moms has a point. No, the two gay dads aren't the problem, and they do seem to be a nice family.

But if the dads feed their kids too many Honey Maid graham crackers and the kids get fat and unhealthy as a result, then that's not particularly wholesome.

However, it looks like the kids get the crackers only as a treat every once in awhile so it's all good.

This past week, Honey Maid acknowledged their conservative critics with a follow up ad, which perfectly, and lovingly, tells One Million Moms to go pound sand. It probably didn't hurt that positive reactions to the original ad outnumbered negative ones by a 10 to one margin, so Nabisco pretty much felt safe with the new ad.

It's a nice follow-up ad that has gone viral, is nice, and probably helped to sell even MORE Honey Maid graham crackers.  So the ad agency is doign their job well, too.

Here's the lovely ad:

Possible Hoax, But Runaway FedEx Truck Video Too Good To Pass Up

I really suspect the video you'll see in this post is a hoax.  

A home surveillance camera is purported to show
this runaway FedEx delivery van.  

Supposedly, it's a surveillance video of a FedEx guy delivery a package, but the truck isn't in park, and rolls down the driveway, across the street, through some trees, narrowly missing a house and ending up in some brush as some dogs gleefully look on.

The picture is too clear, the angle is exactly right, which tells me this is a set up.

But what the hell. I'm lazy. It's Friday. Set up or not, it's fun to watch. So watch:

Meteor Almost Smashes Into Norwegian Skydiver

In the summer of 2012, a Norwegian guy named Anders Helstrup decided to go skydiving.

A still from Anders Helstrup's 2012 skydiving video
in which meteor zipped past him during his descent.  

Like many skydivers, he had a camera attached to him to catch the drama of his descent to the ground. Those videos are always fun.

But what was that little black thing that whizzed by him, that thing that was about the size of a softball? That almost hit him?

A bird? More likely something that fell out of an airplane high above him that he didn't see?  He wasn't sure, but it was odd.

His camera caught that thing going by. It looked like a stone. He eventually showed it to geologist Hans Amunsden.

Turns out Helstrup was almost hit by a meteorite. And he was almost the unluckiest person on the planet, as had the meteorite hit Helstrup, it would have sliced him in half.

The chances are super tiny that a meteorite would occupy the same speck of the earth's atmosphere at the same time a skydiver with a camera was occupying that same speck of atmosphere, but there you go.

You can see for yourself the video of this at the bottom of the post.

First, we need to explain things a bit more.

It all seems way to farfetched to be true, but scientists who have studied Helstrup's video say there's no other explanation. It was a meteorite zipping past the camera lens.  This, apparently, is no belated April Fools Day joke.

But don't meteors burn and light up the sky as the enter the earth's atmosphere?

Yup. But after they get down to a certain elevation, the fire goes out and they go into what is called "dark flight."

According to the Norwegian news agency NRK:

"When a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere, it slows down and ionizes molecules around it; it is this blazing track across the sky that is called a meteor.

When the light disappears, the meteorite enters the state called "dark flight;" it then no longer travels at an angle, but falls straight down."

'It has never happened before that a meteorite has been filmed during dark flight; this is the first time in world history,' said Amundsen." (the geologist)

Analysis of the video, which shows part of the rock as a sphere, part of it recently fractured, as a classic meteorite, Amundsen said.

Helstrup and the geologists kept this whole thing hush hush for the past couple of years because they were hunting for the meteor on the ground and didn't want the hunt screwed up.

But so far, they haven't found it, so now they've opened up the search to the public by releasing this information.

Here's the video. It's a report by NRK, and it's in Norwegian so you won't understand what's said, but you'll definitely get the gist, and see the meteor:

Sports Guys Lose Perspective, Say Incredibly Dumb Things About MLB Player's Parenting Decision

Every once in awhile, some rabid sports, not many, but some,  fans lose perspective.

Congratulations to N.Y Mets second baseman
Daniel Murphy, a new dad. His first parenting
success is that he didn't take parenting
advice from clueless sports commentators. 

They riot when their team loses, as if overturning a car makes things all better when their hero fails to score a touchdown.

They get offended when somebody tells them to chill because "it's only a game."

They send trollish death threats to baseball players when they strike out in the bottom of the ninth.

And then you get sports commentators like Mike Francesca who is really, really, REALLY mad at Daniel Murphy, a second baseman for the New York Mets.

In case you haven't heard, Murphy decided it would be a good idea to be with his wife while she gave birth, and missed a couple of games as a result.

Well, that's a high crime in some sports circles. The entitled Francesca, and like minded folks, seem to believe Murphy owes them appearances in the baseball games they want to watch, much more than he owes his wife the courtesy of being there when the couple welcomes a new member of their family.

It's not as if they had to cancel Mets games in Murphy's absence. They carried on without him, as most workplaces do when guys take a few days off from their jobs for paternity leave.

Oh, but in Francesca's world, t's the job of a professional sports players like Murphy to totally blow off their families.

Francesca said: "What are you going to do? I mean you are going to sit there and look at your wife in a hospital bed for two days?... Your wife doesn't need your help the first couple of days you know you're not doing much the first couple day with the baby that was just born."

Except, um, getting to know your new kid? I guess to Francesca, kids are just frilly accessories that the wife wants, but not something for a macho ball player. It's as if Murphy was making a big deal over a cute little black cocktail dress or something. Real men don't want to spend time with their kids, apparently.

For the record, Mets management had no problem with Murphy taking a couple days off for paternity leave. So I guess they're wimps, too. That Murphy missed fewer games than anybody else on the team last year apparently doesn't matter to Francesca.

According to NBC's Today, another sports announcer, Boomer Eliason was equally appalled with Murphy.

Eliason said Murphy should have insisted his wife have a C-section before the season started.  "Quite frankly, I would've said 'C-section before the season starts. I need to be at opening day. I'm sorry, this what makes our money, this is how we're going to live our life. This is going to give our child every opportunity to be a success in life. I'll be able to afford any college I want to send my kid to because I'm a baseball player," Eliason said.

Or, the kid will be a total failure because his father keeps abandoning him to play ball. And who says Murphy wouldn't make his salary as a baseball player even if he takes two lousy days off? Geez!

UPDATE: Eliason later apologized for his remarks, giving what seems to me some sincere remarks. And he reached out to the Mets to apolhgize to Murphy, which is a good thing.

Obviously, most people don't agree with over the hill jocks like Francesca. An unscientific "Today Show" poll said Murphy did the right thing by taking a couple days off to be with his wife.

Yes, Francesca, Major League Baseball is important and lots of money is involved. But no, nobody owes you time on the baseball diamond.

Stick to sports, will ya, fellas? Because your parenting advice really, really sucks.