Yes, it is

Thank you, Kevin Melrose. You CAN see Dr. Manhattan's peepee in WATCHMEN.

Is this a new milestone for comic book movies?

Stan wants to make Posh and Becks crimefighters

Piffle story of the day which allows the mind to wander. Stan Lee thinks David and Victoria (Posh) Beckham would be good for a TV show or something:

"There are so many ways to do it," Lee says. "We could make them a crime fighting team where the soccer is just a facade. Or we could make them spies or we could make it a comedy where one of them wants to be an adventurer?"

Sounds interesting, right?

Here's how it would work.

"He's a very attractive, personable guy and she's a very attractive, interesting looking girl. I haven't met the Beckhams yet but I think we could do a great show."

Seriously who could not look at photos of this kind and not be inspired to cast the duo as crime fighters?



This superstar couple exudes the kind of dark, moody drama that would make a superduper comic book!


We can see the rogues gallery now: "The Red Card" and "Botoxin." Or a miniseries called "The Case of the Missing Trousers." "Secret Crisis: The Offsides Rule Explained." That sort of thing.

Why women hate Sarah Palin

She’s better at artfully draped scarves than they are.

MEDAL OF HONOUR equalized the sexes?

Playing video games erases the spatial acuity gap between men and women at least according to one study where men and women participated in an "off man out" game in which men scored much better than women. However, then video games entered the picture.

They asked some of their volunteers to spend ten hours playing an action-packed, shoot-'em-up video game, called “Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault”. As a control, other volunteers were asked to play a decidedly non-action-packed puzzle game, called “Ballance”, for a similar time. Both sets were then asked to do the odd-man-out test again.

Among the Ballancers, there was no change in the ability to pick out the unusual. Among those who had played “Medal of Honour”, both sexes improved their performances.

That is not surprising, given the different natures of the games. However, the improvement in the women was greater than the improvement in the men—so much so that there was no longer a significant difference between the two. Moreover, that absence of difference was long-lived. When the volunteers were tested again after five months, both the improvement and the lack of difference between the sexes remained. Though it is too early to be sure, it looks likely that the change in spatial acuity—and the abolition of any sex difference in that acuity—induced by playing “Medal of Honour” is permanent.

Social networking now bigger than porn

Reuters reports that people are now more interested in potentially hooking up with someone over the internet than in watching impersonal films of people hooking up:

Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru. Bill Tancer, a self-described "data geek," has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that we are, in fact, what we click, with Internet searches giving an up-to-date view of how society and people are changing.

Some of his findings are great trivia, such as the fact that elbows, belly button lint and ceiling fans are on the list of people's top fears alongside social intimacy and rejection. Others give an indication of people's interests or emotions, with an annual spike in searches for anti-depression drugs around Thanksgiving time in the United States.

Amazing

I give up. Maybe Sarah Palin is the greatest human ever to live:

Speaking from Palin's Anchorage office, Leighow said Palin dealt with the plane and also trimmed other expenses, including forgoing a chef in the governor's mansion because she preferred to cook for her family. The first family's travel is an expected part of the job, she said.

So you're telling me, she not only trimmed the bacon from state budgets, but cooked it up in a pan, and never let her husband forget he's a man?

Is America ready for a woman?

You know, I have never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but the unleashed hatred against this woman is so virulent and irrational I'm beginning to think there is no "frontlash" for this backlash to be against.

Don't believe me? Do a google image search for Hillary.

If you have safesearch turned off like I do, you'll see every unflattering angle and photo ever of Hilary, photoshopped naked pictures, nasty cartoons, faked images of her and Bill having sex.

Only 6 of the 21 images could be considered neutral or positive.

Now search George W. Bush. Only 8 of them are humorous or negative. Even liberal sites post flattering pictures but with negative captions. This picture isn't even on the front page.

Barack Obama? A satirical "rapper" caricature, a traditional caricature and the rest are smile smile smile smile smile. Heck, there's even pictures of him on the beach.

Let's try Rudy Giuliani, another politician who people really really hate. 11 negative/satirical pictures, including the drag pictures, which some may think positive but probably weren't in context.

John McCain? 6 cartoonish or unflattering. (There are also pictures of him after his rescue from the Viet Cong and one of his wife who I'd never seen. She's pretty hot!)

Admittedly, Hillary is not very photogenic, which adds to the number of very very bad photos of her. One look at that Wellesley graduation photo above (from a site called nohillary.com) and you know she has always struggled to look good.

Like I said, I'm not a huge fan -- Hillary has a sense of entitlement and expediency that I dislike and distrust. But guess what...so does everyone else! She's not much worse than any of the other candidates on that score. Heck if I was going to go with character, John McCain is the only one who really rates -- and he's a wackadoo just like the rest of them.

What about Barack? I like him. He's got 19+ charisma. And he's obviously highly intelligent and principled.

Do I think those principles would last a moment in the Oval Office?

No.

For a control, I tried an image search on Condoleezza Rice. 6 photoshopped naked pictures, 2 cartoons, one unflattering angle. 12 neutral or flattering images. Only Rudy (and Hill) has fewer.

Is there a gender issue here? You bet. As this weeks New Yorker points out, a few weeks ago Chris Matthews was complaining Hillary laughed too much. Now she's crying too much. She's too mannish; she's pandering to women. She's not feminine enough to get elected; America would never accept an emotional woman any way. Nothing she does can win.

By now, Hillary is a symbol. She's the whipping girl for whatever you don't like about the Demoratic party. And maybe for everything you don't like about a strong female authority figure. Hillary is in uncharted territory here. America doesn't like powerful women (Hell, I'm not sure anywhere does.) Oprah Winfrey, Nancy Pelosi, Janet Reno, Condi. Not only are they picked on for their positions and views, but every single aspect of their appearance, wardrobe and interaction is criticized. Ad nauseum.

There's no society in which women are not judged on their appearance. (Well, maybe places where rigid sharia is practiced, and look how those turned out.) That's human nature -- and women buy into it. It's accepted. Can we move beyond that just a bit to accept substance in a female authority figure? I have no answer for that.