Astonishing. The puppeteer behind Alf (Paul Fusco) stays in character through the bloopers and is generally pretty funny and quick-witted.
Then, he drops the N-bomb.
Like, a bunch.
Some commenters on BadTVBlog say that he is probably riffing on a contemporary episode of L.A. Law, but it’s still pretty startling thing to hear.
Ah, Alf, I’ll never look at you the same way again. Also, you cannot eat my cat.
(via BadTVBlog)
Here’s a provocative question: What if the tea-party protests was made up of angry black people instead of angry white people?
It’s asked, with examples, in this blog post. In part:
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic?
To be clear, although I don’t agree with any tea partier I’ve seen yet, I support their right to protest until they drop from exhaustion. But have you noticed that the people who scream loudest about needing tolerance are often the people who are least tolerant themselves?
The facial-recognition software on the new HP laptops does not recognize black peoples’ faces.
According to this Star article, HP says the software uses “standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty ‘seeing’ contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”
When they said that Obama would usher in a post-racial world, I don’t think commercials like this one are what they meant.
As the YouTube page has it:
For those of you who think this video is racist, we’d like you to distinguish between “racist” and “racial”. Racism is “hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.” Racial is “of, relating to, or based on a race”. This video is very obviously racial as opposed to racist. This video doesn’t promote or feature hatred or intolerance. Rather, it’s the very opposite. This commercial promotes inclusion and reconciliation, if not in a comical way. To point out the obvious, the irony in this video is that it’s completely ridiculous for people to relate furniture to their race.
Thanks to my friend Kris, who sent along a link to CNet, which featured it here.
When does the desire for truth — especially in a movie — end up having to give way to modern sensibilities and political correctness?
Peter Jackson’s about to find out. He’s trying to remake a movie called The Dam Busters, about a crazy Second World War raid that involved “skipping” bombs across the water to take out Nazi dams. Google it, it’s a crazy tale.
The problem is the hero of the story, pilot Guy Gibson — well, actually his dog.
You see, the dog’s name was Nigger.
According to one story I’ve read:
Stephen Fry, who has been commissioned to write the new script, was asked to suggest alternative names, but David Frost, the executive producer, was reported to have rejected all the options. He was reported to have said: “Guy sometimes used to call his dog Nigsy, so I think that’s what we will call it. Stephen has been coming up with other names but this is the one I want.”
Matthew Dravitzki, Jackson’s executive assistant, told The Dominion Post in Wellington: “To stay true to the story, you can’t just change it. That name is talked about a lot, but we have not made any decision yet.”
In recent television screenings of the original film in Britain, the dog’s name was edited or altered. In a version for US television, it was overdubbed as Trigger.
Apparently, the dog’s name is said 12 times in the 1955 original film, and it’s not glossed over at all in the book that the film is based on.
I can see this controversy overshadowing the rest of the film, and it seems like an easy detail to change — it shouldn’t have any bearing on the realism of the movie at all. But I can also sympathize with the desire to keep things as historically accurate as possible.
