Alone in the Opinionsphere

Apparently I am the only person on the entire planet who actually thought Ben's kid's dress was cute. I find that weird. I understand the people who thought it was plain, because most of the details were very subtle, but seriously, how can I be the only person who thought that a) lavender was a nice alternative to pink and b) it suited the girl's colouring really well?

Eh, oh well.

So, there's no PR this week, so I'm going to go ahead and try to get episodes 2 and 3 filled in, and then starting next week I'm going to try to actually get readers, gasp, by submitting my write-up for episode 7. Maybe I'll even throw in a "highlights" section for the pre-runway bits.

PR S7, E5: "Run for Cover"

I didn't get to this last week because I was too busy gaming. :)

PR S7, E6: "A Little Bit of Fashion"

Okay, I'm a little behind here, so let's go with the newest first and then I'll try to work some more on the skipped ones.

Okay, let me get this straight

The right-wing positions are as follows:

"Socialized medicine" is bad. The government should make sure Medicare stays viable.

Government-run anything is not as good as privatized anything. The government is handing the Moon to Russia and China by leaving space exploration to private companies.

More government spending is always bad. The two wars we're fighting need more funding and staffing.

I mean... seriously. Why haven't any of them had their heads explode yet?

PR S7, E1: "Back to New York"

Since I've got some time and the inclination today, let's start back-filling those earlier episodes' dresses. This is going to be based primarily on the stills and whatever memory I have of how the outfits moved. I'll try hard to keep my later knowledge out of it but I can't guarantee that I won't be affected by knowing who ends up auf later.

PR S7, E4: "Design your Heart Out"

Okay, I've decided to belatedly start doing a little summation of Project Runway outfits and what I thought of them (and the judging). Maybe I'll go back and fill in the other episodes, but let's start with the most recent.

Jon Stewart Batters Blogs

So, as is my custom after Project Runway, I watched The Daily Show tonight. (I usually don't remember to turn it on the other days of the week; thankfully, the site has all the video available.) During the show, Jon Stewart did a segment on the headings of blog posts when discussing... oh, let's call them critiques of certain people. Mainly people blogging about his own critiques, though he went over a few related ones. These headings were noteable for using violent words (e.g., eviscerate, maul, hammer), and he was poking fun at this tendency.

Now, I'm not saying it wasn't funny, because, well, it was. However, I did think it was strange he was concentrating on blog headings specifically, because the practice is one that newspapers have engaged in for years in their headlines. I suppose it could be more noticeable with blogs, because whereas people who read the paper are unlikely to read more than a couple a day, blog readers frequently follow several dozen blogs. I imagine it's also more likely in political blogs as those frequently are covering disputes or discussions between people with widely divergent opinions.

But, eh, I don't know... I guess it just seemed weird that a guy whose job is basically dissecting news wouldn't at least mention that the blogs were following in newspapers' footsteps with such headlines. And when I say "weird", I mean "for some reason I've been thinking about it since the show aired 5 hours ago". Or possibly, when I say "weird", I mean "my brain".

Project Runway is Back!

And by that, I don't mean "a new season is showing" (though, of course, it is). I mean that so far, at least, it's an interesting season!

Um... WHAT?

So, I'm over at Passive-Aggressive Notes, when I come across this entry regarding a note put on the artificial sweetener drawer at some office. The note reads "HOW ABOUT GOING TO THE GYM INSTEAD" [ALL-CAPS and lack of punctuation preserved from original].

My initial reaction was: But... what? I mean, you... Do you... Ummmmmm.

Or, translated: Seriously, what the hell? Did non-overweight people stop using artificial sweeteners? Was there a memo? I wouldn't have gotten it, being overweight, but... was there?

Because, I mean, even leaving aside diabetics (and contrary to popular opinion, it's possible to be skinny and diabetic), what about someone who is generally in reasonable shape who just is trying to keep their unnecessary calorie intake to a minimum? I mean, sure, unless you're a serious coffee fiend or drink a lot of tea you probably aren't using a lot of calories of sugar, but even a moderate coffee-and-or-tea drinker could easily be adding 100, maybe 150 calories a day that way. Even if you aren't "dieting", that's not a bad reduction. Or if you don't care about that, it's not a bad way to reduce calories in one area that you can use to have a bigger piece of pie or a couple ounces of pretzels without increasing your overall intake.

Seriously. Do people ever stop to think... about anything?

It's like people who mock someone ordering a diet coke with their fast food. It doesn't matter how many calories the food has, you still are consuming fewer calories if you skip the sugared soda. That's how math works: when you subtract a number from a starting value, your result is a smaller value than the one you started with. (Unless you subtract a negative number, but food typically doesn't have negative calories.)

Nappus Interruptus

Things that will wake me up, guaranteed: The sudden cessation of all white noise in the apartment coupled with the sound of four separate UPSes beeping.

Luckily, the power outage was only for a bit over an hour, as our heat depends on the power and it's, um, not warm out.