Month: February 2006

More Cat Power!

Cat Power’s lead vocalist is not named Cat Power. Her name is Chan Marshall.

One of the band’s songs is featured in a Cingular ad (requires Quicktime).

There is also an apparently controversial video for the song “Living Proof” up at MTV’s execrable Overdrive area. You’ll need Internet Explorer, ActiveX, and the patience to sit through both an ad for Pantene Pro-Vitamin Shampoo and some sort of popup which displays an error message about license acquisition. The video sends up the bling-bling rap-video conventions, and also has track-and-field athletes dressed in full hijab, which I imagine is the controversial part. That or the woman dressed in a red latex bodysuit carrying a cross in the 100-meter dash.

The video is followed by an ad for Pantene Blond Expressions Shampoo that Makes your Blondness Even Blonder. I have no idea why MTV insists on shitting in its own data stream, but hey, they’re the ones who understand the 18-25 demographic, not me.

Science Policy (i.e. I have no content of my own today)

Brad DeLong links to ScienceBlogs.com coverage of the State of the Union address. He uses one of my favorite rhetorical methods: the phrase “and a pony.”

So, yeah, “double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years” sounds great. So does “If we reverse the polarity on the flux capacitor, we can generate an infinite amount of free energy, and a pony.” I’ll believe it when I see the pony.