Maxim100 list - bogus

Bol has a review of the Maxim 100 list, along with the actual list.

I quickly glanced at the list, & I don't know who most of these women are. However, I can easily tell this list is bogus, & heavily biased towards white women, as well as the waif/skinny body type.

Plain Janes that are 6/10s at best such as #10 Fergie, #15 Avril Lavigne, & #16 Ashlee Simpson, beat out actual beauties like #97 Kim Kardashian or the non-rated (WTF) Jennifer Lopez, Rosario Dawson, Vida Guerra, Monica Bellucci, or Serena Williams? Very BOGUS.

I understand that these lists are bound to be subjective, but these choices are almost objectively wrong to me IMHO.

Also Lindsay Lohan, although cute, doesn't deserve the #1 spot. She is not close to being to beautiful women, what Federer is to tennis (nh?). Just check the photo (from Wikipedia), is that the most beautiful woman in the world? Hell no, "you cannot be serious" (c) John McEnroe, & "doubt it", "not buyin it" (c) Bill O'Reilly.

I will give Maxim 1 prop (not "props") for putting Jessica Biel at #5, despite being more towards the vuluptous steez, than the waif-body type steez.

I expect the dude Fux will chime in with his opinion, as he follows this topic closely in his iCandy series.

Sudan Project at Direct Change

A guy Ken commented on my John Dau post, to publicize Dau's charity Sudan Project at Direct Change.

Also here's John Dau's blog.

I'm no expert, but if you're "in the market" for a charity, this seems like a good option where the good work done per dollar spent ratio would be quite high.

What Happened To My Country

My fellow blogging colleague Truth Hunter has been doing a lot of coverage of the 2008 Presidential Election on her site What Happened To My Country. A lot of intellectual & political etherings, as well as interesting opinions on the American political scene.

Check out WHTMC's great headlining quote at the top of the blog page:
"Thoughts from someone who remembers when we defended our borders, we respected the intellect of our president and enjoyed the esteem of the world. When the budget deficit wasn't beyond comprehension, and religion was spiritual, not political. When the right to privacy was the enforced law of the land and no one was above the law. No one."

Preach sister!

Al Sharpton, Hypocrite

Check out with Al Sharpton said about Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose religion is Mormonism

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation..."

One could say that the history of Mormons having weird discriminatory rules against blacks 40 years ago should be considered. It should be considered, but I don't think it removes Sharpton's comment of being bigoted.

I don't care what Sharpton said against Mormons, or what Imus said against the black women on the Rutgers basketball team. Both statements have bigotry & are offensive to some of society. But I think the 1st Amendment protects this speech. If you don't like it, boycott their businesses, and tell everyone you know to do the same. However they should not be fired on the whims of a few random people. This is what I do with mAnn Coulter & Michael Weiner "Savage", whose statements are 1000X worse that Imus or Sharpton IMHO.

What does OFFEND me is SHARPTON'S EPIC HYPOCRISY. How hypocritical is a guy who leads the charge to get Imus fired for Imus' statement, then a few weeks later says a similar bigoted statement against Mormons. Why doesn't Sharpton suspend himself? Sharpton will continue his public speaking as if he's not a hypocrite or bigot. Instead Sharpton will continue speaking on matters as if he has the moral authority of a Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela. FOH douchebag!

Al Sharpton, you are one of the WOAT, an epic douchebag, an extreme hypocrite.

Here's another guy's editorial.

idea for increasing conscious rap

An idea for how to increase the "conscious" rap fraction of the rap market

John Dau

I had the privilege of listening to a speech by John Dau, the keynote speaker at my bro's graduation ceremony at the U of M.

I get beat down & disappointed by the avalanche of douchebags, or even worse sociopaths, that are prevalent in modern society, even in the most important jobs (such as Gee Dubbz Bush).

It's great to hear the story of a real stand-up individual like Dau. It give me faith in my fellow humans to see such an inspirational individual.

Here's some links on Dau.

Dau has overcome as much adversity in his life as anyone I can recall:
1 In 1987 At age 14 his Dinka village was attacked. He was separated from his family, but an adult led him & some other kids as refugees. They were refugees travelling in Sudan & Ethiopia. They finally settled in Kenya
2 In Kenya at age 17 he started his basic education in the refugee camp
3 In 2001 he emigrated to New York state

Despite these hardships that are 100x what me & most of everyone has had, this guy has
1 raised $400K for a health clinic in Sudan. If you want to give to a charity, probably few have as much of a good done per dollar given ratio as Dau's charity
2 is about to graduate with his BA degree from Syracuse U
3 has a family, as well as got his mother out of Sudan to emigrate to New York

John Dau, you get props over here (c) The Beatnuts

Offshoring of local journalists

The 1st known example of offshored local journalism has happened, as a local news website for Pasadena, CA hired 2 journalists in India for 20.8K salary for the pair.

The story says that 1 of the journalists is a graduate of Cal-Berkeley. Assume that that journalist is even getting the majority of the pay, say 15K. There is no way that whoever funded that Berkeley graduate's education, say 80K+ cost, will ever get a ROI on that 15K- salary.

American journalists, never had job security or good pay anyways unless they became a big-name TV douche-bag like Katie Couric or Bill O'Reilly, and those lames are not real actual quality journalists anyways. However, American journalist opportunities are further ethered if they have dudes in India with American journalism degrees "taking their yobs" (c) redneck character on South Park.

Can our douche-bag politicians stop listening to PhDee economists, and put in incentives to hire Americans, and tarriffs/taxes to hiring offshored workers? Offshoring is somewhat inevitable, but damn can't we at least have laws that discourage offshoring. You douche politicians work for the AMERICAN PEOPLE, not MNCs or foreign nationals. Pls remember that.

WOAT25 Rap Album List

Belize made his list of the Worst 25 rap albums of all time (eg the WOAT25), keeping the standard of 1 album per artist. Belize asked me to make a list.

So I wasted 30 minutes of my life & made my own WOAT25 list, with the following rules/guidelines:
1 1 album per artist.

2 exclude albums that don't have rap vocals on the majority of the beats. In other words, I'm excluding instrumental rap, & albums with many singing vocals made by Artists that are usually rapping on their other albums (eg Gnarls Barkley - I actually like their album, I'm just using it as an example as an singing album made by rappers).

3 did the list very quickly. My thought is it's not worth time over-analyzing a list of albums that suck & have long since been exiled to the Recycle Bin for permanent ethering.

4 These albums aren't worth explaining WHY they suck individually. Check the RYM links for details, on a few of these I have written a review. If I don't have a review, check the other RYMers' review who say the album suck, their reasons are likely to be similar to mine.

5 I put more emphasis on beats then rap vocals & subject matter. Most of these albums have annoying beats. The rapping usually sucks also, but for some albums may even be OK.

6 The list is organized by tiers of albums which received 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 out of 5 stars on my RYM site.

7 Historically I didn't listen to that much music. Usually I'd only check for an album if I heard a single that I really liked, or a friend recommended it. Thus, there are probably many horrible albums out there I never heard of that are "more worthy" & "more worse" for inclusion in this list. Even if I could live 1 million years, I would have no desire to "seek out" these albums to get a better "comprehensive WOAT list".

MY WOAT25 RAP ALBUM LIST

TIER 1.0/5 STARS The beats are horrible, & the rhymes suck also
1 Vanilla Ice 1990 To The Extreme
2 Kriss Kross 1992 Totally Krossed Out
3 Young Buck 2007 Buck The World

TIER 1.5/5 STARS The beats suck & the rhymes range from horrible to mediocre
4 Don Omar 2003 The Last Don
5 Diddy 2006 Press Play
6 R. Kelly & Jay-Z 2002 The Best Of Both Worlds
7 MC Hammer 1988 Let's Get It Started
8 Pitbull 2006 El Mariel
9 Canibus 2005 Hip Hop For Sale
10 Fat Joe 2006 Me Myself & I

TIER 2.0/5 STARS The beats generally suck but a few might be good, the rhymes range from horrible to OK
11 Lil Wayne 2005 Tha Carter Vol 2
12 Swollen Members 1999 Balance
13 Sage Francis 2005 A Healthy Distrust
14 Missy Elliott 1999 Da Real World
15 Timbaland & Magoo 1997 Welcome To Our World

16 Snoop Dogg 2006 Tha Blue Carpet Treatment
17 E-40 2006 My Ghetto Report Card
18 Spank Rock 2006 YoYoYoYoYo
19 Anotha Level 1994 On Anotha Level
20 Tha Alkaholiks 2006 Firewater

21 Kardinal Offishall 2005 Fire & Glory
22 Memphis Bleek 2005 534
23 Proof 2005 Searching For Jerry Garcia
24 Terror Squad 2004 True Story
25 Glue 2006 Catch As Catch Can

Digital Photo Questions

I'm looking for the 2 following websites or software apps to manage digital photos. I prefer free/open source options, natch. If you have any expertise, pls hit up my comments with your opinion/expertise/analysis:

1 A website to share/archive digital photos to friends/family

2 A software app that allows one to define names, and then tag names to each digital photo. I feel this will be good for me in remembering the names of acquaintances in say 5 years later in digital photos

Help me out yall if you know anything here, in the comments.
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UPDATE Lifehacker commenters have some advice here

Federer fires Coach Roche, rolling solo for RG & Wimby

Roger Federer has fired Coach Tony Roche, & will play without a coach at Roland Garros & Wimbledon.