Holy headlines!

BYN oops wire

Great Googley-moogily! Check out this headline from Google News:

From the article:

U.S. military spokesman Capt. Steve Stover said the Holy Shiite tomb was undamaged and there were no casualties.

"We've got our Shiite together," he said. "We were worried the Shiite may have hit the fan back there, but now weve got the Shiites."

He said the military is currently investigating the attacks. "We're going to catch these guys, and then they'll be in some deep Shiite," he said. "The United States military takes this Shiite very seriously."

At least, that's what we're assuming tha article said. The Seattle Post Intelligencer apparently realized that it's not cool to make fun of ethnicities with funny-sounding names, and the headline was changed to "Officials: shrine escapes rocket damage."

Nothing funny about "rocket damage."

Valentine's Day special

BYN Spam wires

Here at BYN, our commitment to saving you time and money while lining the pockets of our shareholders has resulted in a number of corporate budget cuts.

Most recently, we fired our holiday special staff. The staff consisted of 12 middle-aged men and women - severely underpaid writers, online editors and photographers - all of whom had mortgages on new homes and childern in college. Still, after such failed efforts as "A very Nasty Halloween," "I'm dreaming of a Yellow Christmas," and "A Big Yellow Nasty salute to Martin Luther King," it was time to cut them loose.

Please understand that we are very, very sorry about those holiday specials. So sorry that for Valentine's Day, we sent nice little pink cards to the holiday special staff along with chalky candy hearts that said "Laid off." No flowers.

And that's why we were a little late on our Valentine's Day deadline. In fact, we weren't planning a special at all until one of our unpaid interns stumbled across this fabulous Spam e-mail:

RE: F---ing St. Valentine

What are you to do if you have bad erection? Especially
in the forthcoming Saint Valentines Day???
Don t worry, it is not the last of pea-time...
The most simple way is to visit our site, order the
medication and that is all you are to do!

Do not kill the clock!

What are you to do if you have missing holiday special? Don t worry, it is not the last of pea-time ...

Happy forthcoming Saint Valentines Day???

Super Vision

HDYN tech wires

In the not-so-distant future, glasses won't be just for nerds, dorks, dweebs, geeks, weirdos, goobers, superheroes protecting their secret identities and crappy emo kids who wear girls' jeans and don't really need glasses but think it's fashionable to accessorize in a way that mocks others' handicaps ("Yeah, I can walk. I just think the wheelchair looks cool. I guess I don't really need this hearing aid either ...").

What's all this about? Super Vision!

Wired News reports that the Department of Defense is pumping $3.5 million into a 40-year-old Virginian company that is refining a technology that will give people vision that is way better than 20/20. Hindsight be damned.

And this is all through glasses. No robot eyes required.

But what about the robot eyes? Wired's got you covered there, too. If you lose your rods and cones due to disease, the mere price of a brand-new Cadillac can buy you an elaborate system of sunglasses and microchips, which will help you see again. None of this is as cool as the Terminator's eye, but it's a start.

With any luck, the DoD's money will net us an army of supersoldiers with Super Vision and eye lasers. Sadly, however, no new developments in the field of x-ray vision.

All this leads us at HDYN Technological Journal to wonder what would happen if Clark Kent had a pair of Super Vision goggles. While glasses inhibit Superman's x-ray and heat vision, Super Vision is not one of Superman's powers. Assuming Superman's retinas (in regular vision mode) have similar limitations to human retinas, Super Vision glasses would allow him to resolve images with more visual acuity from greater distances.

But he could only do it as Clark Kent, because as soon as he puts the glasses on, he can't really be Superman anymore. It would be a dead giveaway. Maybe Superman doesn't need Super Vision.

But imagine a pair of glasses that could do for real life what HDTV did for television. The entire visual world becomes clearer, crisper and more immersive than you ever thought possible. Imagine the difference when you drive, hike or go to Mardi Gras. Woo!

Slashdot story

Face/Off part 2

BYN sweet fancy medicine wire

We at the Big Yellow Nasty very often sit around complaining about the media. Usually it's, "What have those losers done for us lately?"

Well, this time the media has come through with a photo of the world's first face transplant recipient. The photo was taken as 38-year-old French woman Isabelle Dinoire appeared in public for the first time to talk about the surgery that grafted a dead woman's face to her skull in order to replace her original face, which had been horribly mauled by her dog. Click here for the full story.

As the Big Yellow Nasty reported earlier ("Face/Off is science Fact," Nov. 30, 2005,), the similarities to John Woo's Face/Off are obvious. But unlike Face/Off, the real face transplant requires a lot of medication and physical therapy. It's important to realize that, as she regains feeling and control of her facial muscles, Dinoire will look better.

Reuters also reported that doctors think the media has sensationalized the story too much. Big Yellow Nasty thinks the media isn't sensationalizing the story enough, and we're worried that if mad scientists ever start re-animating dead people into zombies, the media will seriously undercover the news out of so-called "respect" for the zombies' families.

But we digress. Out of respect for Dinoire's family, we realize that it is important to de-sensationalize this story and not, under any circumstances, compare her face to a zombie.

That's why, unlike Reuters, we're not going to bandy about allegations that Dinoire tried to kill herself. Take that, the media.

And as for the sensationalism, blame John Woo. We sure do. We even blame him for all the sensationalism surrounding Mission: Impossible 2 star Tom Cruise.

Make sure to watch E! this week for an all-new Gastineau Girls, followed by a very special Dr. 90210. It'll be a TV event as Lisa Gastineau pretends to be sad when her more attractive daughter, Brittny, dies of an OxyContin overdose. But Dr. Robert Rey saves the day (and makes a fortune) when he grafts Brittny's face to Lisa's head. How much will Dr. Rey's wife, Hayley, starve herself when zombie-face Brittny-Lisa starts hitting on Robert? All this and Lisa Loeb, only on E!