This is a group of graduate biology students who decided, out of frustration, to come up with this parody of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”
Everyone who has ever dealt with the laboratory aspect of biology knows what they’re talking about and can tell how hilarious this is.
Credit for this goes to my good friend Elia Haber, current biology masters student and future scientist galore! 😀
Enjoy!
Twitter has just suspended two third-party twitter app developers: UberTwitter and Twidroy, for violating company policy.
According to a statement issued by Twitter, these companies allowed “direct messages longer than 140 characters … [and] changing the contents’ of users’ Tweets in order to make money.”
Twitter also mentioned that it has been in talks with the companies that developed these applications since April 2010 about their policies infringement and that it decided to announce all of this via its support center because many users were going to be affected.
Here’s the full Twitter statement.
We ask all developers in the Twitter ecosystem to abide by a simple set of rules that are in the interests of our users, as well as the health and vitality of the platform as a whole.
We often take actions to enforce these rules; in fact, on an average day we turn off more than one hundred services that violate our API rules of the road. This keeps the ecosystem fair for everyone.Today we suspended several applications, including UberTwitter, twidroyd and UberCurrent, which have violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways. These violations include, but aren’t limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money.
We’ve had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010, when they first launched under the name TweetUp – a term commonly used by Twitter users and a trademark violation. We continue to be in contact with UberMedia and hope that they will bring the suspended applications into compliance with our policies soon.
I found this out today and thought it’s interesting enough to blog about it.
1) Go to Google Translate.
2) Choose your input language as English, output as Arabic. Type in: Israel Will Finish.
3) Take out the resultant translation and translate it back to English. Check out the result.
4) Try out any other country. I’ve tried Lebanon and the U.S.A.
You can’t blame the interlingual variations for the difference you see here. Thoughts?
I was intrigued by an article I saw posted on Twitter about how Miranda Lambert might be the current queen of Country Music. I wouldn’t normally feel the need to reply to such articles but the writer specifically took a jab at Carrie Underwood by saying the following:
She’s not taking a Louisville Slugger to anyone’s car, Ã la Carrie Underwood.
There is nothing personally I don’t like about some healthy competition in Country Music, especially among the female artists. After all, queen or no queen, they are all underdogs in this overwhelmingly patriarchal industry.
However, I felt that I need to point out somethings to the writer of the article, concerning Carrie Underwood. I will make point them out succinctly.
– Both Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert have started from reality TV-shows. The difference between them is that Lambert’s show is especially designed for country artists: it takes less to be noticed. Carrie’s show is broader, granted, but it makes it especially difficult for a female singer to be noticed. Carrie won her show, Lambert did not.
– The alluded Carrie Underwood track, “Before He Cheats,” is not her only hit. It might be her biggest hit overall, but she has 13 other hits under her belt, 12 of which have gone to #1. Lambert has 2 #1s.
– Unlike Lambert who followed up her biggest hit “The House That Built Me” with a song that was even referenced in the article as one pertaining to Lambert’s beauty, “Only Prettier”, which barely made the top 10, Carrie Underwood followed up “Before He Cheats” with a song that spent 3 weeks at #1: “Wasted.”
– The writer made a big deal of how Miranda Lambert’s debut album spawned a hit and was certified Platinum. Need I mention what Carrie Underwood’s debut album managed? 7x Platinum and 4 #1 singles, is it?
– Carrie won Best New Artist at the Grammys, Lambert did not.
– Carrie has brought legions of new fans to the country music genre, I don’t believe Lambert has had that effect – or at least as broadly.
– Carrie has won Entertain Of The Year twice. No other female has ever done that. And Lambert doesn’t look close to doing so. The writer boasts about her selling out an arena for her tour. Well, Carrie sold out hundreds of those arenas for her Play On tour. Millions of fans attended. I don’t need to cite sources for this, right?
– Revolution might have been the more critically acclaimed album but does the certification of “queen” involve a bunch of critics or the fans? Play On (2x platinum) has outsold Revolution (1x platinum).
– Miranda Lambert has won the CMA and ACM Female Vocalist Of The Year this past year. But let’s not forget who won those awards three times so far.
– The writer mentions how Lambert shows “no signs of stopping.” Does Underwood show any signs of stopping? She is busy writing her fourth album right now.
It’s nice when country artists start to get recognized, especially after struggling. And I personally have nothing against Miranda Lambert. I really appreciate her music. But no one came out and declared Carrie Underwood the new country queen when she won her first CMA Female Vocalist or when her album was having record breaking sales or when she won her first Entertainer Of The Year. She was always viewed as the country girl from Oklahoma who got lucky on that outsider show called American Idol. But what really makes a true country queen is the love fans have for her. And we, the fans, have shown our dedication for Carrie over and over again. I’ve taken time to write this, haven’t I?
The awards might have stopped pouring in. But they will come. Just wait… I have faith that Carrie will deliver a breath-taking fourth album. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Carrie Underwood is vastly taken for granted in the Country Music scene. And she just doesn’t seem to care. She seems unfazed, continues to smile and give out her best. And for that, she is a true queen.
The Fighter is a 2010 biographical boxing movie about the life of boxer “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his brother Dicky (Christian Bale).
It is a ferocious movie, sometimes violent, other times funny. And ultimately, it is a movie about the values of family more than anything else. In their tightly-knit community of Lowell, Massachusetts, the people who are cheering this fighter are ultimately the same people holding him back. And regardless of the many boxing games that you will get to see and the many adrenaline-pumping moments you will sit through, this is a movie that is sentimental. It is the story of a man, whose occupation happens to be bloody, and his quest to find himself: failed marriage, career going bad and a messed up family… this is his quest to make something out of his life. The family conflicts in this movie are even bloodier than the battles of the ring and ultimately much more interesting to watch.
The mother, played by the brilliant Melissa Leo, is running a matriarchy. Their father figure is weak to say the least. Melissa Leo, the current frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress race at this year’s Oscars, immerses herself in her character immensely that at times you think they got this woman from some grocery store, taught her the lines and threw her in the movie. She embodies Ward’s mother in a real way that is also raw and haunting.
Christian Bale, the frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actor race, as Micky’s older half-brother Dicky, is the bad brotherly influence that you cannot escape – and ultimately always seek to impress. He used to be a hotshot boxer as well but lost it all in a spiral descent filled with drugs and whatnot. He wants to resurrect his career through his brother and in doing so, Christian Bale really shines. The sunken-eyed, pale and thin character he portrays is done so well at times that his performance is scary.
Amy Adams, as Micky’s girlfriend Charlene, is also nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards. I believe Amy Adams is one of the best new talents to come to Hollywood and this movie is yet another vehicle for her to further cement this belief. She is gorgeous, as usual, and plays the supporting girlfriend who wants to protect Micky from his own family in a raw, gut-wrenching manner. You can’t help but like her in the movie. And she is my favorite in the Best Supporting Actress race, albeit not the favorite to win.
Mark Wahlberg’s performance is low-key compared to his costars. And it’s precisely that which makes it really good. His subdued performance is the equivalent of his character. And as his voice gets stronger throughout the movie, so does his character’s. This low-key performance also symbolizes his internal struggle between staying faithful to his family and his responsibility towards himself.
All in all, The Fighter is another must see. And if you think all my reviews are ultimately about must see movies, it’s because 2010 has delivered movies of such a high caliber that not watching them would be, ultimately, a disgrace to the art of movie-making.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 