I noticed with some dismay that Google adSense served a banner ad for the Church of Scientology earlier today. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer tools to filter contextual ads, so I am unable to prevent these ads from showing up on the site.

For the record: I consider Scientology and its membership to be fucking lunatics - a filthy pseudo-religious cult populated by thugs, idiots, and con-artists. And those are their good points.

I understand this is not a unique position, but I want to make absolutely certain that everyone understands that we do not approve of these ads, or the organization they represent. Likewise, if you see any ads promoting political candidates or religious organizations, these are likewise an unfortunate side-effect of our adSense based advertising system.

As a matter of full disclosure, I (meaning me personally, not Yellow Menace) do support several atheist / secular humanist organizations, including the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and the Council for Secular Humanism. I refrain from running ads for these organizations, however, as I don’t believe they have any relevance to the subject matter of our website. So if you do see banner ads for these, or similar, organizations adSense will once again be the culprit.

Sorry for the mid-morning rant…

Every day when I scour the internet for stuff to blog here at Yellow-Menace I come across yet another preparatory measure Beijing is taking to welcome the world to their fair city for the upcoming Olympic games. While most of them, like the innumerable security precautions being set in place, are pretty sound - I wonder if some of them are actually having the opposite effect. More to the point, do some of these measures actually draw attention to Beijing’s flaws, rather than obfuscate them?

For instance: when it was noted that Beijing restaurants and hotels were being instructed to take dog off the menu, my first reaction was ‘Mmmm-kay…gotta post this…’. My second reaction was, ‘Wait, I didn’t even know they ate dogs in Beijing.’ No doubt they didn’t want any wide-eyed gwailo tourists gawking at the canine cuisine on display, but in announcing that no dog would be available to eat, they spelled it out in neon letters across the internet.

Some of these preparations are so silly as to make me doubt their veracity: I’ve heard stories of artillery pieces and surface-to-air-missiles being set up around Beijing to disrupt weather patterns in case rain threatens the festivities, bald taxi drivers being banned from servicing commuters, and more.

In the end, I think all this maddening perfectionism does is highlight the very issues they’re trying to sweep under the rug.

I didn’t have much interest in the recent raid-on-Vegas flick 21, but after reading this, I’m even less interested.

My wife (who is African American) and I have lots of really fun discussions about race relations in our household. Some of these arguments discussions center on the contrast between black racial sterotypes and asian racial stereotypes, and while I will concede that - on balance - the stereotypes of Asians are by and large easier to deal with (’Asians are smart / know kung fu / are nerdy’ vs ‘Black people are criminals / not as smart as white people / live off the system’), a stereotype is still a stereotype.

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I stopped by my local Gamestop tonight to take advantage of their ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free Offer’ which crops up once in a while and among the titles* I snagged was a used copy of Ninja Gaiden Black, the classic Xbox beat-em-up which was recently released as an Xbox Live download. While the virtual version goes for something in the neighborhood of $15, the copy I found at Gamestop was a solid $25. Of course, I didn’t hesitate for a second to pick it up. Why?

‘Cause it’s that damn good.

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I’m sitting down right now watching Imagine, the John Lennon biographical documentary, and once again I’m reminded of my seething hatred for his widow, Yoko Ono. Here are ten reasons for said hatred (with assistance from my brother, who shares this hatred).

1. Bed in the studio.
2. Julian who?
3. John Lennon kiddie undies.
4. Single-handedly ruined what could have been a great performance in the Rolling Stones’ Rock n’ Roll Circus.
5. It’s impossible to even simply enjoy Lennon’s memory (which she steadfastly curates.)
6. The 1990 tribute concert.
7. She makes Japanese people look bad.
8. Her incessant chattering.
9. Her “art”.
10. C’mon - she’s Yoko Ono.