…from Robert Krulwich, I learn of carnivorous furniture. (h/t @ferrisjabr).
My first thought? BalloonBaggers need to know.
You’re welcome.
__
Consider this an open thread.
Image: Francisco de Goya, A Butcher’s Counter, (Spanish title: Bodegón con costillas, lomo y cabeza de cordero), c. 1808-1812
Update: So I should read the blog and see that there already is an open thread? Well, yeah. But still: meat eating furniture, dudes.
Comrade Mary
Dude, it’s an open thread that starts with Krulwich. No worries.
agrippa
Sauve qui peut!
Nous sommes trahis!
dmsilev
Carnivorous robotic furniture? What could *possibly* go wrong?
dms
Laertes
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/mischief-or-justice.html
Okay, fuck it. See this? Friersdorf is the shit. He can make snotty references to Balloon Juice writers all day long for all I care.
Anyone wanna step up and show me something I can really hate him for?
Ash Can
That’s obnoxious.
Maude
I’d like to order a table made of Piranha Pine.
This is a novelty thingy. They just might make money.
Maude
@Ash Can:
Is it anything we can use as a rotating tag? I refuse to click on the link.
Citizen_X
DURACELL IS PEOPLE!
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but the cretinous stupid, it’s spreading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/08/bristol-palin-political-office_n_820148.html
Trinity
I would prefer to have never known of those inventions.
Oof.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X:
Oh, great, no spoiler tag for people who haven’t seen “The Matrix” yet…
Ash Can
@Maude: You mean the carnivorous furniture link? That’s what I’m talking about. I suppose there’s some dark humor in there somewhere (for which I’m just not in the mood right now, I guess), but I just find the whole idea distasteful.
Ash Can
@Villago Delenda Est: In her dreams.
scav
Ah, but the excuses for being late to work! A few flies short of an hour?
Linda Featheringill
Ahh, an open thread.
Through no fault of my own, idleness has been forced upon me today. So I read Common Sense [Thomas Paine]. It took me about an hour.
url: http://www.constitution.org/civ/comsense.htm
Wow. I understand that when it was first published [first half of 1776], about 150,000 copies were sold in a country with some 2 million people. That is a lot of books. It was read and passed around and read aloud in such places as pubs, and discussed by everyone.
I was surprised to find that it did not read like a political tract. It was actually a bit academic. It had history and organization and all kinds of goodies.
Paine was about half way through his writing of Common Sense before he put forth the argument that monarchies cannot be reformed because they are by their nature susceptible to the temptation to dominate. The only reasonable thing a people could do, therefore, was to separate from the said monarchy.
It was good reading. I highly recommend it.
Maude
@Ash Can:
I meant the Sullivan thing, the insult to BJ, shoulda been clear on that.
The furniture, the clock eats flies, is disgusting. It could have a large number of sales with the Tea Partiers.
Has anyone come up with the time flies motto? I can’t spell the Latin version.
scav
@Maude: Tempus fugit? I just checked the spelling and learned it’s Time Flees, which is what the flies apparently should have done. But seriously, why is a fly-powered clock any more disgusting that that a critter-fueled pet? or a squished and well-aged critter-fueled car?
Tom Levenson
@Maude: Tempus Fugit
I prefer this version: Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
(Why yes. I do have a ten year old at home. Why do you ask?)
Laertes
@Maude: I was unclear. Sorry about that. What I meant to write was this:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/mischief-or-justice.html
That’s a pretty great piece by Friersdorf, and it’s one of a run of great pieces lately. Anyone want to remind me why I’m supposed to hate him?
WereBear
@dmsilev: Wasn’t that a movie with Tom Selleck?
Or maybe it’s just the kind of thing Michael Crichton used to write… before he went crazy.
trollhattan
Also, too, man-killing Gladiator Chickens(tm).
[In my ongoing FYWP war with its recent refusal to post anything with a link in it, I’ve had to add a space.]
http://www.sf gate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/02/07/state/n150920S15.DTL
twiffer
i’m down with the fly eating lamp. the bugs fly up there and die anyway, might as well use them as food.
the problem with carnivorous furniture (beyond the unholy development of maurading packs of laz-e-boys) like the mouse-eating table though, is, well…where is it going to shit? i have a cat to eat mice (not that she does, she’s a kitten so she still just plays with the damn things until i notice and kill ’em), and she uses a litter box. i know the mouse will eventually wind up in an easily cleaned location. what is the table going to use? will it just shit on the floor? cough up pellets like an owl?
besides, a coffee table should eat potato chip crumbs and stale beer spills. make it useful, damnit.
JGabriel
@Villago Delenda Est: There is a seven year statute of limitations on spoiler tags, and The Matrix is well over seven years old.
.
JGabriel
scav:
Time’s fun when you’re having flies?
.
Sentient Puddle
Well, since this is an open thread, Austin has decided to ask the Internet for suggestions about a new name for the Solid Waste Services Department. The Internet has thus obliged, and the name with the highest vote count (by a giant margin) is the Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts.
Unfortunately, that name will likely be vetoed, but we can still dream.
scav
@twiffer: “unholy development of maurading packs of laz-e-boys”? I don’t know, maybe thinning the herd would help the general situation we find ourself in. Like the idea of the coffee table eating potato chip crumbs and stale beer spills, but am worried about what a junk food diet might do to it: too much beer belly and there’s no flat place to put your drinks.
scav
@JGabriel:
+!
Joel
The mouse consuming coffee table is gross.
But the fly-powered clock is kind of clever. If they could get consistent fly-burning technology online, Australia might be able to power the world.
cyntax
Flesh eating furniture can’t be any worse than this:
Maude
@Tom Levenson:
Oh, thank you.
Ten is a great age. I have been asked the most wonderful questions by ten year olds.
And the clock goes tick tock. Hee hee. Ticks, fleas, flies, what next?
I like four as a age as well.
@scav:
Flies are iggy, to me. Thanks for the flees. Could we change that to fleas?
@Laertes:
I should have read it, but making a fool of myself before the day is out is just too much fun. He is a decent writer.
piratedan
since this is an open thread…. I just wanna reccomend a movie…. Matewan, directed by (written by too) John Sayles. A bit of forgotten history and a gentle reminder of what businessmen can be capable of. Strong performances from David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, and a capable list of bad guys with Bob Gunton, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp. The music is also quite exceptional.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Villago Delenda Est:
Heh…
Seein’ as this is an open thread, I was just about to post a link to that very article…
Then I saw your lead in…
… and I immediately knew I had been scooped…
The Republic of Stupidity
That painting…
Rather stunning…
Looks a hella lot more ‘moderne’ than Goya (very tres 20th century…)
Love Goya, BTW…
I’d be thinkin’ that mebbe Francis Bacon was quite fond of that one too…
Amanda in the South Bay
Eh, color me unimpressed by the meat eating couch. Sometimes…well, I’m a little depressed and cynical now, its like a bunch of affluent engineers with time on their hands decide “hey, lets do something neat to become an internet meme and get mentioned on all sorts of tech blogs!”
BGK
Erm, I have a carnivorous couch whenever Angus is sitting next to me, and I happen to be eating. That boy will climb on my head if need be to get at whatever’s on my plate. He dragged off a slice of pizza last week.
chopper
that table just needs to speak with pierce brosnan’s voice and it would be perfect.
Mornington Crescent
There’s a confession app now available for download.
“It reminds users when their last confessions were and keeps track of sins they have previously confessed.”
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/02/08/technology-confession-app-catholic-church.html
Laertes
@chopper:
Oh hell yes.
scav
@Maude: I think it’s mandatory that we change at least part of it to fleas. Not to mention building the tick eating clock. Which inevitably brings up the Phantom Tollbooth and the importance of winding up your puppies before naming them.
El Cid
@Citizen_X: At least eating humans for some presumed nutrient or organic purpose would make sense rather than going to the phenomenal material and energy expense to breed and sustain humans for a vast net negative energy payback of a small battery. Not to mention that it would have been easier to recreate a battery factory.
Or maybe the fantastically advanced mechanical intelligent godlike civilization was actually really, really, really dumb and/or terrible at math.
Or maybe humans could have been bred to somehow magically self-create radiation enough to power a robotic civilization, but it makes it a bit more difficult to imagine a city of human escapees surviving at all, much less clustering in groups.
dmsilev
@El Cid: My theory was that the machines were using the humans for something else (computational substrates, perhaps), and the “human battery” thing was disinformation fed to the Resistance. In other words, the machines knew what they were doing, but the human “heros” were as dumb as posts.
dms
stuckinred
@piratedan: And James Earl Jones has the quote of the century!
A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum)
RIP:
Martin
That’s awesome! Better than carnivorous would be scavenger furniture. I’d like a composter with a motor to automatically turn it, powered by meat trimmings. Also a poop powered Roomba that roams the yard looking for poop.
El Cid
@dmsilev: I’m all in favor of interpreting movies’ dumbest aspects in ways that make more sense, whether such explanations seem to have any basis in the film whatsoever.
It still presumes that the human resistance is as dumb as bricks, because they seem to realize that a big pile of people are not energy enough to power their hidden city or their vehicles. Or that they had any grasp of science whatsoever.
Or that they were in on the conspiracy of talking about their role wrong, or that the right explanation had been bred out of their brains so that they could never put that argument to any evaluation.
The 2nd and 3rd films are for me enough proof that the Flying Wallenchowsky Brothers made sure that no one would conceive of them as brilliant enough to hid that twist in there.
fucen tarmal
what? this is news?
i have a t.v. that has been capturing bullshit for years, in fact, its become so next-level efficient, it actually captures enough bullshit, that one might think its actually making bullshit, or at least made of bullshit.
where does the source bullshit come from, for this t.v./bullshit multiplier? know one hardly knows.
Paul in KY
@BGK: Angus looks like those old rich dudes in ‘Trading Places’! I wouldn’t want to tell him ‘no’ about anything.
He has the ‘cruel sneer of cold command’.
Paul in KY
@dmsilev: Dan Simmons has some of that stuff in his books ‘Hyperion’ and ‘Endymion’. When people are in cyberspace, the machines are using their brainpower to do all types of nefarious things.
geg6
My friend, a union rep in New Orleans, just sent me this video via email with the title “THESE PEOPLE VOTE.”
http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fJuNgBkloFE
It is truly frightening, the thought that these people vote.
daryljfontaine
The SyFy movie is writing itself in my head as we speak…
FURNIVORE!
Somebody see if Lorenzo Lamas is free.
D
daryljfontaine
@BGK: My mom has owned various cats through the years that were ballsy enough to steal slices of meat from between the slices of bread in the sandwich she was holding at the time.
D
Paul in KY
@daryljfontaine: You should trademark that title.
piratedan
@stuckinred: that movie is just so chock full of scenery chewing its incredible, Sayles didn’t cheat anyone in the cast from what I can tell.
A Humble Lurker
Yeah, this is a bad idea. I mean, I could maybe see fly powered lamps or clocks, but why do we need a table to eat mice? Setting aside how gross it is, what is the purpose of that? Is it just a mouse trap you can lay your drinks on? What the hell does a table need the nutriment for? It’s not powering anything. Also on the idea of robots eating human corpses: hell to the no.
On the plus side, all these ideas would make kick-ass sci-fi horror movies. Human-eating robots? So yes.
scav
@A Humble Lurker: And, much to my shame, it’s only now that I get the whole upside down backwards proof of concept by exception to the rule meaning of the table. Build a better mousetrap. Only it would have been even better to my mind if they’d built a mouse-eating doormat.
twiffer
@cyntax: every military weapons/robot/whatever project proposal should have a “what could possibly go wrong?” section, to be reviewed by a panel of sci-fi authors.
droog
Now is a good time to stop being a couch potato. The couch will get a craving for spuds.
tamied
This could solve all of our energy needs of the future! Picture a vehicle powered by gallons of mosquito larvae. I mean, no one likes mosquitoes. Who would miss them? And they’d be cheap to raise.
skippy
meat furniture?
perhaps you missed the meat nativity scene last christmas?
Hob
I wish Robert Krulwich would just write a blog and stop doing radio– I can’t fucking stand Radiolab. It’s partly an irrational distaste for his voice, but also I hate the cutesy way he always pretends to be confused/surprised by what the other guy is explaining (“So, wait– what you’re saying is that the earth goes around the sun?”), and they tend to gloss things over in whichever way sounds most entertaining even if it’s a misleading explanation. And his jokes are never, ever funny.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
I am verklempt with validation.
.
.