ANIMALHYPE: Ants - The Super-organism

Check out this massive leaf-cutter ant colony, which was filled with 10 tons of concrete and then excavated over the course of several weeks to reveal its structure:



That's some serious business! On a related note, have you ever read Leiningen versus the Ants?

ANIMALHYPE: Chimpanzees Using Tools

Surely you've heard about chimps being pretty smart, and able to use tools to accomplish certain tasks, right? Similar to how they can use a stick to catch termites, here is another demonstration of chimpanzee intelligence at work.



Obviously this particular chimp thought long and hard about how best to use that frog! It's mind-blowing! Just remember, by some estimates chimps and humans share more than 98% of their DNA. (And now you know why men show up in the emergency room with their penises stuck inside a vacuum cleaner.)

GAMEHYPE: Air Traffic Chief

Similar to an older post on online games - tanks - here's another one. How many airplanes and helicopters can you land without crashing them?

Try to ignore the "warning" message - if the guys at freeonlinegames.com were that worried about people stealing their content they wouldn't have put an "embed this game in your website" link on it, now would they?



Another simple, but totally addicting game. Watch out for Air Force One!

OILHYPE: Aegis Oil Loves the Caribou

Who is Aegis Oil? The fictional oil company bad guys in 1994's On Deadly Ground, whose CEO (played by Michael Caine) personifies everything that's evil about the Big Awl bidness.

It's disappointing that a lot of what this movie was against 16 years ago has not changed. Keep in mind that 1994 was just 5 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but here we are today, facing what's quite possibly already the worst unintentional oil spill in human history: the Gulf of Mexico Oilpocalypse (consolidated Times-Picayune coverage).

For now, let's not get into the details of what happened, or the various implications of the accident, other than to point out one thing: the shortcuts taken by Aegis Oil in trying to get their rig operational and those taken by British Petroleum or its parters, Transocean and Halliburton (big surprise seeing that name involved in this, eh?) on the Deepwater Horizon involved the same device: a blowout preventer. Let's also ignore for the moment the pictures of a half-billion-dollar drilling rig on fire and sinking, or of the massive environmental damage the spill has already caused, or the toxic chemicals being used to keep the oil off the surface of the ocean.

Let's even ignore the corruption (sex, drugs, and rock & roll) at the US government bureau, the Minerals Management Service, that facilitated BP drilling this particular hole in the first place. Nor is it useful for the purposes of this article to learn that the MMS is still granting these permits, even though the President said there would be a moratorium on them and the associated "environmental waivers". It takes a lot to get the outrage meter pegged these days anyway, especially if you've been paying any attention to the ongoing rape of the little guy by global corporate interests.

Instead, why not have a look behind the scenes of an Aegis Oil public service commercial being filmed? This will be more instructive than any of the spin or hype you're likely to hear from anyone at BP:



Just keep that approach in mind the next time you hear something like this:

(AP) FOURCHON BEACH, La. — BP's chief executive said Monday that he had underestimated the possible environmental impact of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, walked along oil-soaked Fourchon Beach and said he had underestimated the possible environmental effects.

"I'm as devastated as you are by what I've seen here today," Hayward told reporters after he spoke with cleanup workers in white overalls and yellow boots, some shoveling oily sand into garbage cans. "We are going to do everything in our power to prevent any more oil from coming ashore, and we will clean every last drop up and we will remediate all of the environmental damage."

In the meantime, for something useful, have a look at the different data overlays in Google's special oil spill crisis response site. Because it's pretty clear now that the public isn't getting the full story of how much oil is washing up on the Gulf shores.

UPDATE: Things may be even worse than some people thought. See here. Also check this video, showing the "nightmare" effect of the dispersants:



As another diver said, "It’s death in the ocean from the top to the bottom."

MOVIEHYPE: Ronald Reagan Slaps a Bitch

Not much more to add to the title:



This is from The Killers (1964).

MUSICHYPE: Too Much

Frickin blogspot -- screwed up my groovy post about the Old Who (coming soon) so tonight all I have patience to try to post is this. But this is enough...



Dave Matthews Band "Too Much"

MUSICHYPE: The Old Who

Smashing through Pinball Wizard on their electroblasting firespitting hitech stage I love these guys -- pasty old 102-year-old (or whatever) Pete and congested old Roger still rocking through the pain and sadness and terror and life of it all...



The Who at Super Bowl XLIV

But then you go back, and see what once was... The Who, still whole, in their late prime. Daltrey's voice cracks the heavens, Townshend's guitar roars and wails like a flight of dragons, and Moon and Entwistle drive forward with a crazed yet controlled energy.


The Who - Teenage Wasteland (May 25 1978)

MUSICHYPE: Jumpin' Jack Flash

Imagine it's 1969 -- no one's ever heard any Matchbox 20, Parliament, Rage Against The Machine, Michael Jackson, Shania Twain...

Check out footage never seen before (by me, which is what really matters) of the ROLLING STONES in Prime Time -- The World's Greatest Rock 'N' Roll Band. As I like to say about Barry Lamar Bonds, "We will never see his like again in our lives..."



MICK! KEEF! AAAAAAHHHHH! I wanna scream like a little girl!




















The Rolling Stones -- "Jumpin Jack Flash" circa 1968(?)


I know I know -- I'm old and in the way... but if anybody can point me to some young punk who has the stage command and sheer ferocity of my boy Mick I'll eat my fedora... all of this going without saying that all the cool kids know it was Keith who drove this f*ckin powerhorse engine.

Damn I love the Internet!

POLITICSHYPE: Showing The President Who's Boss

Yesterday, in a stunning display of arrant contempt, 3 of the big-bank CEOs who had been summoned to the White House blew off the President of the United States. Mr. Obama was expecting them at a televised meeting of their peers so he could be seen to be lecturing them on how they needed to increase consumer lending, among other things.

(An aside: in case you've forgotten, the big banks were given $700 billion late last year in order to resume lending to consumers, among other things. Unfortunately, there were no strings attached to the deal, and as a result, the banksters are able to borrow money from Uncle Sam at 0% interest while lending it to you at 30%. Have a look at your latest credit card statement to see this in action, or wait until tax time rolls around in April. You'll pay one way or the other.

(They were also supposed to stop paying outlandish bonuses, but as you'll no doubt see in a couple of weeks, that won't happen either. Now you know why many of the big banks paid back their obligations to the government just recently - since they're no longer subject to limits on executive compensation, they're going to do it again.)

As the New York Times describes it:

Putting Obama on Hold, in a Hint of Who’s Boss

President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. "Well, I appreciate you guys calling in," he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street’s top brass on Monday.

He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup.

Their excuse? "Inclement weather," according to the White House. More precisely, fog delayed flights into Reagan National Airport. That awkward moment on speakerphone in the White House, for better or worse, spoke volumes about how the balance of power between Wall Street and Washington has shifted again, back in Wall Street’s favor.

Ah, the old bad weather excuse. Try that out on your own boss the next time you're called on the carpet. Make sure you stand him up on national TV too - nothing like losing face on the world stage. Just to twist the knife a few times, the Daily Show went after this too, in a Clusterf#@k to the Poor House piece:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Flight Delay
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

This obviously makes the President look bad, at the very least. More informed readers should now realize that the man in the Oval Office, whoever he is and whatever his political persuasion, is a bankster tool. Is this the "change we can believe in" that brought record numbers of new voters to the polls last year? Are you now over your 2008 Hopium high? If not, have a look at Matt Taibbi's latest article, Obama's Big Sellout (NB: Taibbi's full of shit when it comes to 9/11, but the axes he grinds against the banksters seem pretty accurate so far).

President Obama said last Sunday night that he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street." Well, actions speak louder than words, and anyway, doesn't this remind you a little bit of Bill Clinton's famous Presidential one-liner?

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."

Tell you what, you can keep the "change" - I'll keep it real.

COMEDYHYPE: Support T.W.A.T.

Like the poster says:


Don't be a filthy terrorist, support T.W.A.T. (The War Against Terror)!