Wisdumb: Smart and Not-So-Smart

I don’t know that Peter Schiff is right about everything he says (in fact, I believe his gold prediction never quite got where he said it was going), but I do know almost everything Ben Stein and Art Laffer said was wrong. Ben Stein in particular - what a douche bag. “You’re simply wrong, you’re simply wrong about that” he tells Peter in regards to the housing lending market. What an ass. I think I have to give him the biggest douche award that I have previously given to Chris Angel.

Just to add some insult to Mr. Stein, here is how his movie (Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed) did against Bill Maher’s Religulous (according to Box Office Mojo as of today’s date):

Ben’s movie came out first, played in twice as many theaters and made half as much money. Loser!

My wife has suggested to me that my position on Valentine’s Day being only for couples who date and not for married couples is incorrect. As such, I must consider doing something to honor this ‘holiday.’ Luckily, I found this movie which opens on VD:

I saw both of these ads via Ads of the World. The Tom and Jerry ad is for a pest control service and was created by a Bolivian ad agency, while the Mr. Roarke and Tattoo piece is for a laser tattoo removal service created by a US agency.

Anyway, I think both of these are especially clever and it reminds me of one of my favorite billboard executions I have ever seen (displayed below is a print ad version as I couldn’t find the billboard image).

Boiled down, I guess these concepts are really nothing more than visual puns… but, I like them. Does anyone know of others?

I imagine the developer’s pitch went something like this:

Songsmith Creator: Do you know how everybody just loves that Muzak elevator music? Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could just blather anything you want and some Muzak was automatically created to go along with it?

Microsoft Product Manager: Wow, that sounds amazing! Could you add some nearly useless slider controls that make marginal changes to the music so completely talentless people could feel they were somehow creative?

Songsmith Creator: You betcha!

The title of this post comes from the Big Fat Blog blogger and cartoonist Brian McFadden. In his post, he suggests that the next time you write out a bill, you should draw stink lines and flies on it to make yourself feel better. I’m guessing he wrote that line as just sort of a throw-away amusing snippet… but I believe he in fact penned something with a bit more “zen-like” wisdumb than he realized.

 Anyway, the comic on this particluar post is ok, but if you are not familiar with Brian’s wit and genius, check out this particular Big Fat Whale comic that I previously posted about.

A Wired article details the Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008. As I read about amazing medical breakthroughs, new supercomputers than can perform more than a quadrillion operations per second, exciting new environment and energy related items, what is the item I am most intrigued by? New carbon nanotube technologies that can create incredibly light and strong materials such as a paper that is stronger than steel.  Why does this impress me so much? Because it means we are that much closer to being able to create an actual Iron Man suit!

UPDATE: I think this breakthrough - wireless electricity - certainly deserves to be on the list.