It's just like Starsky & Hutch

Oftentimes when I vid Starsky & Hutch, I'll get all excited because there's some awesome physical stunt that's so perfect for the vid, and then when I actually go to clip it, I pause and I'm like - who is that guy? Because the guy performing the stunt is so painfully not either David Soul or PMG. And now the clip is just unusable.

To my great sorrow, I just had that same experience in Supernatural, trying to vid Sam's great leap into the pool in Playthings. I'll never be able to look at that clip again.

Sigh.

Of interest

A Site for the Videos You Don’t Want Everyone to See

Some people post videos to YouTube and Facebook with the hope that they will go viral. But for many others, the idea of the whole world viewing a personal video is a nightmare.

VidMe, a new video site going live on Wednesday, is for the latter group. It lets people share videos privately with only a chosen group of friends; the videos cannot be forwarded or downloaded.

“The real main thing was creating a service that puts privacy and control in the center of the sharing experience, as opposed to an afterthought,” said Greg Siegel, founder and chief executive of VidMe.

The wrong headline

Gore Was Accused of Sexual Advances

A massage therapist accused former Vice President Al Gore of “unwanted sexual contact” at a hotel in October 2006, but no charges were filed because of lack of evidence, law officials said Wednesday.

She alleged he later tried to have sex with her.

“I did not immediately call the police as I feared being made into a public spectacle and my reputation being destroyed,” she said. “I was not sure what to tell them and was concerned my story would not be believed since there was no DNA evidence from a completed act of rape.”

Look. Believe it, don't believe it. Care, don't care. But this is not an accusation of "sexual advances." Jesus Christ.

Oh, also? Gotta love Salon's "reasons" not to believe her. "The cops didn't investigate! Therefore it must be a lie!"

Of course they did

BP Relied on Faulty U.S. Data

BP has come under heavy fire from Congress and environmental groups for its lack of readiness to handle a worst-case spill. But that criticism has overlooked a key fact: BP was required by federal regulators to base its preparations on Interior Department models that were last updated in 2004.

The government's spill models have been at the center of years of debate among scientists that study oil spills. ...Researchers have spent the past decade trying to improve modeling of oil spills. The biggest challenge: to update the models to reflect the new reality of deep-water oil drilling. Spills thousands of feet below the surface behave very differently than spills on the surface. Underwater currents, for example, can grab plumes of oil and transport them far from the scene of the initial spill, scientists say. Deep-water releases tend to break into smaller oil slicks, further complicating efforts to forecast where they'll go.

MMS said in early 2000, in a notice to lessees, that it planned to require oil companies operating in deep-water to use new oil-spill predictions specifically designed for deep water.

That regulation never came into effect. Oil companies today still base their contingency plans on the government's models, designed only for surface spills.

Most useless poll ever

In other news, most voters said they would be less likely to vote for members of Congress who advocated the kicking of kittens.

Seriously, given the incredibly arcane provisions under debate and the bullshit carefully crafted justifications lawmakers are offering for leaving the status quo in place (a liquidation fund is a bailout! Boon to tort lawyers! etc), does anyone think this poll means anything?