Super Punch

Cute art toys at Noferin

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:36 PM CDT

Made of wood, limited to 200 pieces, and coming soon.

iPhone's true cost to consumer is $1,237

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:31 PM CDT

Owen Thomas points out that the monthly fees really add up.

Porn judge throws his son under the bus

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:19 PM CDT

When caught with deviant porn on his website, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski initially "defended some of the adult content as 'funny' but conceded that other postings were inappropriate." Now he's decided to blame it on his son, accusing him of posting the material.

But who is responsible for naming the son, "Yale?"

Not surprisingly, Fark has the best headline: That judge presiding over the pr0n obscenity trial? Yeah, he's a furry

Johnson and Johnson marketing contact lenses to eight-year-olds

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:15 PM CDT

Shirley Wang for the WSJ:

With stents and anemia drugs under pressure, Johnson & Johnson is looking for growth wherever it can find it. Are your kids ready for contact lenses? J&J's Vistakon division sure thinks so.

[snip]

The typical bespectacled kid who switches to contacts does so around 15, Sneed said. "Our goal is to get contact lens wearers in earlier and staying longer," he said. "In the future we believe contact lens wearers will range from 8 to 60 years of age. Dropping the entry-level age is integral to growing the category."

Via.

Sushi Ornament heads plus Playmobil bodies

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:04 PM CDT

Far as I can tell, these are customized Playmobil figures with sushi heads. More photos in this gallery.

*Previously: Horse sushi.

Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 10:00 PM CDT

Flickr link. See also, and this.

A fun game would be going to Olive Garden and charting the ways they pressure you to buy wine

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 09:50 PM CDT

Doug Shaw:

Have you been there lately? It's different now.

[snip]

The present purpose of the Olive Garden is to sell you their wine. That's it. The food and the commercials exist to get you there to sell you wine. The chairs are there so you have a place to sit while you buy their wine. The tables are there so the wine has a place to be. The air-conditioner is there so the wine doesn't go bad. (They don't want the wine to go bad, because they would sell less. If it still sold, they wouldn't care if it went bad. The point is to get you to buy it.)

Go visit the link to read the whole thing, go here for Olive Garden's response, and here for reader comments. Via.

Superman Riding a Dinosaur

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 09:46 PM CDT

Devil Dinosaur, that is. Chris does his best to keep the meme alive, with a hand from Joel Carroll.

Fascinating article about Cuban baseball players

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 09:39 PM CDT

Fascinating article by Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame. Here's a sample:

That's how Gus Dominguez had become a sports agent. He took an interest in these Cubans when no one else did, and so he became, by default, their guy. The players in Cuba learned of Arocha's success—and saw the Cuban government's decision not to punish his family—and thought, If he can do it, I can, too. In 1993, two years after Arocha defected, the Cuban national "B" team flew to Buffalo, New York, for the World University Games. Eddie Oropesa, a 21-year-old pitcher on his first trip abroad, sneaked out of the college dorm in which he was housed, but couldn't find the cousin who was supposed to be waiting. Terrified, he wound up wandering around some graveyard in the dark. He ran back to his room and stared at the ceiling. The next morning, as the team warmed up, Oropesa handed his spikes to his good friend shortstop Rey Ordoñez, then dashed for the fence behind home plate. It was at least 12 feet high, but he went up and over in his stocking feet. "I didn't know where my cousin was," Oropesa recalls. "I just started climbing the fence. I heard Rey shouting, 'Oropesa! Oropesa! Oropesa's gone crazy!' But I didn't look back. When I hit the ground I just started running." Newly liberated, he heard Gus Dominguez was the man to see. "I wanted to leave not because I thought I could play baseball," says Oropesa, "but because I didn't want my son to go through the experience that I had. And the only way for him to get out was for me to get out first." (Dominguez helped Oropesa extract his wife and son from Cuba three years later.)

Here's another:

That night a stuffy, windowless van drove him from his apartment outside Havana to a beach in Matanzas, a few hours away, picking up along the way 21 other people who would ride out on the same boat. Among these were the four other baseball players: Francisley Bueno, Allen Guevara, Yoankis Turino, and Osmany Masso. The motorboat was just big enough to hold them, but the ballplayers were still treated as the first-class passengers. Racing from the shore in the dark, they nearly collided with what they feared was a Cuban police boat. "The driver said some people would have to jump out into the water, to slow the police boat down," says Osbek. "They would have to stop and pick up the people. They were trying to decide who would jump out, and the driver said the baseball players had to stay in the boat, because we were the most valuable. Then everyone on the boat started swearing they were baseball players, so they wouldn't have to jump out."

Read the whole thing.

If you haven't read Moneyball, I highly recommend it, even if, like me, you find baseball boring. There's some very cheap used copies at Amazon.

Cute Video Game Avatars

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 09:36 PM CDT