When you go to Comic Con or E3 you really rather expect to see a few “booth babes”, scantily clad women trying to lure people in.  It’s a common enough occurrence for a semi-professional environment.  But when Microsoft hired the Meter Maids booth babes for the 2010 TechEd in Australia, it was perhaps the wrong venue for scantily clad T&A.

Meter Maids, the booth babes for Microsoft at TechEd Australia 2010

There were, of course, objections from the attendants that the gold-clad hussies were objectifying women, blah blah politically correct rambling blah.  I mean yeah, they’re right.  But are women such a protected species that they’re no longer allowed the right to objectify themselves if they want to?  A more reasonable argument would simply have been that the blatant use of T&A does not belong in a fully professional environment.  Even if it is Australia, where people actually have a sense of humor.  And even if the Meter Maids are in fact local talent and even arguably a part of Australian history.

What really got Microsoft into trouble though was not this one questionably poor choice in attracting customers at the event.  No, it was Microsoft’s big mouth when they reportedly claimed to have had no knowledge that the Meter Maids ladies would be scantily clad in gold lame bikinis.  They claimed, and I quote, that they were, “unaware of their exact costuming until the day of the event, at which time it was too late to be addressed.“  Umm … what? One quick look at the Meter Maids website not only reveals all, as it were, but also the history of the Meter Maids is right there, explaining their historic costuming from Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast.  So right off the bat, Microsoft’s words were somewhat less than believable.

To top that off however, chief Meter Maid Roberta Aitchison rebutted Microsoft’s denial with her own side of the story, which was that, “The garments were chosen specifically by them over a period of 2-3 weeks of them looking at photographs of the girls,” and that, “They came back to me by email stating which garments they would like the girls to be wearing.“  Right then!

Microsoft still refused to admit that they simply made a mistake, standing by their word that they somehow had no idea that the Meter Maids would show up in something so provocative.

Un huh.

Yeah.

Who are you going to believe?  A Meter Maid, or Microsoft?

But wait, that’s not all! In a strikingly similar story of sexy women and male egos, we have the (in)famous rapper 50 Cent being booted from Twitpic for failure to adhere to their pictoral guidelines when he uploaded the following picture of a Kim K burger:

50 Cent and his (censored) Kim K Burger pic that got him booted from Twitpic

It’s actually a kind of funny picture, if, you know, you’re adult enough to look at it, somewhere not at work.  Searching for the uncensored version should be easy and entertaining.

The sad part is, I’m not even entirely sure what part of the picture is violating the terms and conditions.  You’d certainly have seen just as much had she been wearing a thong bottom.  And at the beach, that happens.  Kids are seeing that much every day.  She even has her bikini top on, not that it matters from that angle.  It might be “in bad taste”, but I’m rather failing to see where it could actually harm minors.  Still, this is a (supposedly) professional blog, so I’ve censored the image for you, just in case little Timmy is looking over your shoulder.

Now, again, just as with the Microsoft story, the looky looky was perhaps a poor choice for the venue.  It’s a simple enough mistake to own up to, and certainly wouldn’t have been any big deal if that had been that.  But this is 50 Cent we’re talking about, so of course that wasn’t that.  Open mouth.  Words come out.  It’s what he does after all.

The saga is, of course, on Twitter, where 50 Cent tweeted his suspension angst, amongst other pearls of wisdom.  The following quotes are, of course, censored.  They began with, “Twitpic just suspended my account damn They got 30mns to get it back or ima go haywire,” and went on with such wonderfully colorful tweets as, “Man they took my twitt pic down I told them motherFriends put it backI run twitter nWord don’t touchin my sh..Stuff.“  If you want the uncensored … stuff … just follow the previous link to his Twitter page, but be warned, it is most definitely not safe for work.

So there you have it.  Yes, parading women around like objects can indeed catch you some flack, especially if you’re doing it in a place where that’s really not the proper dress code.  However, opening up your big mouth to say anything other than, “Mea culpa,” is just going to make your little faux pas ten times worse.

We all make mistakes.  Own up to them.  People will respect you more for it.

Sometimes things go according to plan and everyone marvels at your awesomeness.

And sometimes not.

This epic fail took place in Alice Springs, Australia, when a space balloon that was sponsored by NASA didn’t exactly launch as planned.

Epic Fail - Space Balloon

The balloon would have ascended twenty miles, to the very edges of space, where it could have then measured cosmic gamma-ray emissions.  All very neato high-tech spacey type stuff.

Only … that didn’t happen.  It never got off the ground.  Well, almost never.

The multi-million dollar payload was destroyed when the launch of the balloon went something less than expected, in spite of the very calm winds at 8am that morning.  The truck-sized payload smashed into a parked car that was very fortunately unoccupied, easily flipping it over.  The car next to it however wasn’t unoccupied, and gave Stan and Betty Davies, the surprised occupants, quite a scare.

“I think if it had hadn’t have been for the other gentleman’s car being there we’d have been somewhere else by now.  We were expecting to be wiped out,” said Mrs. Davies.

Fortunately, miraculously, no one was injured in the incident.

Well, except for the payload of the balloon which was reported as being in thousands of pieces.

That however doesn’t stop the researches from being hopeful about making another launch.  The Balloon Launching Centre still plans to go ahead with another launch before the end of May and all of the pieces of the payload are being collected in hopes of salvaging as much of the instrumentation as possible for the relaunch.  More information about the story is available from ABC … no, not the American one, the Australian one.

I guess one could say, it wasn’t exactly rocket science.

It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes, it’s not.  Sometimes there are rather useless inventions created.  Such as this:

It’s a rather useless machine really.  Much like many the ex-spouse, all that it does is turn itself off as soon as you try to turn it on.

Somehow though, it is mesmerizing.

If you’d like to build your own Most Useless Machine EVER then have a gander here for step-by-step instructions.

It’s Saturday, so how about a fun story for a change?

Those wacky Japanese are at it again.  This time it’s using industrial robots as chefs to cook a mean noodle soup!

Yes, that’s right.  Kenji Nagoya, owner of the noodle shop, is positively delighted with his move to “hire” a couple of robots to make soup.  “The benefits of using robots as ramen chefs include the accuracy of timing in boiling noodles, precise movements in adding toppings, and consistency in the taste.”

The robots also reportedly put on entertaining shows throughout the day.  They do everything from spinning plates to holding sword battles.  And why not?  What else is an industrial robot good for!

It’s almost enough to make me want to visit Japan.

Kind of.

On the US Homeland Security website was a statement made by Secretary Napolitano that showed a real commitment to eradicating the H1N1 Virus (aka “Swine Flu”) menace.  That, or a need for being committed … to a padded room.  And I quote:

“We’re also actively monitoring travelers at our land, sea, and air ports. We’re watching them for signs of illness, and we have appropriate protocols in place to deal with those who are sick. Precautions are being taken to protect travelers and border personnel. Anyone exhibiting symptoms is being referred to an isolation room where they can be evaluated by a public health official before proceeding to their destruction*.”

* = The emphasis on destruction was, of course, mine.  Not Secretary Napolitano’s.

Sadly, with all of the other fearmongering going on, as it read the statement was, most unfortunately, somewhat believable.  That said, yes, it was indeed a typo.  Perhaps it was just a misclick in a spellchecker.  Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue / finger.  Whichever the case, if you follow the link to the statement now, you will find that this typo has been corrected.  The word was supposed to be “destination”.

Or at least, thanks to it being noticed, it’s supposed to be “destination” now.

One never really knows.

But it goes to show that at the very least, proofreading is very much a lost art.  Spellcheckers are wonderful tools.  Even grammar-checkers, which are becoming more and more prevalent in office software, are merely imperfect tools, not replacements for real live intelligent thinking people.  Let this be a lesson, perhaps, in more ways than one.