firehose

#myozobituary is trending because author’s obituary, though stupid and funny, is actually terribly sexist pic.twitter.com/rjMUucJTQ7

— Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) January 30, 2015

Australian author and accomplished neurophysiologist Colleen McCullough published twenty-five books in her time, including the best-selling The Thorn Birds. She passed away at age seventy-seven on Thursday—but whomever wrote her obituary didn’t seem particularly interested in McCullough’s accomplishments.

Instead, her obit in this morning’s edition of The Australian began like this:

COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: “I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men.”

Ah, so she was a prolific writer and a talented scientist, but let’s definitely all talk about her weight after she dies! They don’t even seem particularly concerned about it; the obit is still up on their website. Other gems from the piece include calling McCullough a “supreme egotist” and mentioning that “[h]er novels consistently received patronising reviews from the highbrow critics.”

The incredible classiness and inarguable misogyny of the obituary did not go ignored by the internet, and #MyOzObituary has been trending on Twitter to some fairly hilarious results:

Although his beard looked like someone had glued it on & his hair would have been unconvincing as a wig, he married a rockstar #MyOzObituary

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 30, 2015

Having learnt the art of eating with one hand whilst typing with the other, she managed to become both fat and a best seller #myozobituary

— Thane Prince (@ThanePrince) January 30, 2015

Though her eyebrows resembled Fangorn Forest, she had no elegance, and she wore men’s clothing, at least she had kids. #myozobituary

— Ellie Ann (@elliesoderstrom) January 30, 2015

#myozobituary would be “Although she grew a disappointing arse, she nonetheless got laid & won awards.”

— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) January 30, 2015

With a decent rack but meh around the face, she nevertheless managed to land a man! She also wrote books, we hear. #MyOzObituary

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 30, 2015

Strongly resembling the wombats of which she wrote, she nevertheless was somehow not universally reviled by readers. #myozobituary

— Nightjar UrsulaV (@UrsulaV) January 30, 2015

“Hopeless, but at least he wasn’t a girl.” #myozobituary

— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) January 30, 2015

Overweight and with a tendency towards 5 o’clock shadow on the legs, she was able to science nearly as well as the men. #myozobituary

— Nicole Cloonan (@ncloonan) January 30, 2015

Here’s mine:

Despite her large nose & thighs, she still managed to hold down a man with his own TV show. She was a competent typist. #myozobituary

— Samquisitor (@SamMaggs) January 30, 2015

It is apparently still difficult for women to be respected for their accomplishments over their appearance even after death. What an absolute disgusting shame.

(via Daily Dot)

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Star Wars – Zen C-3PO

Teaneck, New Jersey artist Chris Milnes has created a fantastic collection of 3D printed Buddha sculptures that each portray pop culture characters from video games, movies, television shows, and comic books. Milnes has turned “the enlightened one” into well-known figures like Batman, Master Chief, Darth Vader, and more. His large series of sculptures are available to purchase online from the Etsy shop, muckychris.

Guardians of the Galaxy – Zen Groot and Rocket Racoon

Halo – Zen Master Chief

Star Wars – Zen Darth Vader

Zen Batman

Battlestar Galactica – Zen Cylon

images via muckychris

via Technabob, Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome

Working from home is a concept that gladdens some hearts and makes others sink. Businesses feel the same, and make different choices. Some, like global campaigning group Avaaz or airline company JetBlue, embrace working from home. Others—most famously Yahoo—ban it.

Of course, the internet made instant mass communication, and scaleable home businesses, possible long ago, but some remote-working tools, like online hangouts, video conferencing and group work platforms, have only recently become good enough to function really well for large scattered teams.

So you’re one of those people who’s tempted to work from home. But does that mean it’s right for you and your employer? Here are some pros and cons to consider.

1.) Seeing more of your loved ones (but not too much)

Having children is one big reason to work from home, and some “family-friendly” policies are designed to allow employees to weave together work and home life. Parents who work from home can have breakfast with their kids rather than rushing for a train, and be there when children arrive home from school. A 2010 study found that family-friendly policies make people happier. They also make firms more successful, but only when combined with other effective management practices.

While more family time may be attractive, working from home doesn’t mean avoiding childcare bills. Mumsnet, an online forum for parents, is unequivocal: “You will be doing yourself and your employers / clients no good at all if you are working from your laptop at the soft play centre…looking after children is one job, doing a paid job is another.”

2.) Controlling your environment

For anyone who has worked in overheated, noisy or windowless office, being master of one’s own space is pure joy. You can look out of the window at the first leaves of Spring and—even better—open that window for some fresh air. Best of all, it’s peaceful. In  a 2014 Stanford study of China’s largest travel agency, Ctrip, home workers made 4% more calls than their office counterparts, which the study’s authors attributed to “a quieter and more convenient working environment.”

Exercise can also be easier. Increasingly we’re told to get up from our desks, walk more, stretch, and give our eyes a break from the screen. Many offices don’t make that easy. (Try simply lying on the office floor for a couple of back-relaxing minutes, and see what reaction you get).

3.) Losing the commute

If you spend hours on London’s overstuffed Tube each day, trek across a polluted Beijing or drive through rush-hour traffic to get to work, canceling the commute sounds like paradise. And it is—in some ways. You get whole, juicy hours handed back to you every day. But for some, those hours are then spent working rather than relaxing. Imposing boundaries becomes important, and finding ways to delineate workday from free time can help.

Another downside: Walking and cycling to work provides exercise, and the journey plus change of location can make for a useful break between work time and leisure. Home workers have to find ways to get out, jogging in the morning or arranging late-afternoon meetings away from the home, to break the day into distinct sections. Like so much of the working-from-home juggling act, it all comes down to…

4.) Discipline. It’s important. And loneliness can be a problem

Perhaps the word most associated with working from home is discipline. The need for self-discipline, to keep concentrating without the oversight of a watchful manager, is often touted. For some, that’s spurious: A quiet room at home, free from distractions, can be a better place to concentrate than a busy office. For others, it’s truly a challenge. The presence and energy of colleagues can spur some people on to work harder and achieve more.

At the end of the Ctrip study, half the people who had worked from home elected to go back to the office, especially those who had found lack of social contact difficult. Working from home isn’t for everyone.

After weighing the pros and cons, you still want to give home working a try. Now, comes the hard part: Selling it to your boss.

There’s plenty of theorizing about whether home working makes for lazier employees or happier ones, a more coherent team or one with no identity, but the Ctrip study was one of the first to apply scientific testing conditions to the question. The authors divided a group of 249 Shanghai travel center workers into home-working and control groups and monitored them over nine months. It’s conclusion: Home working led to a 13% performance increase. What’s more, Ctrip saved $2,000 a year per employee on office space, higher performance, and fewer people quitting.

The company rolled out the option to the whole all workers as a result of the study. Only some chose to, but in the self-selected group of home workers, productivity rose by 22%. Good evidence for your employer (unless that happens to be Yahoo).

We had no doubt the Force was strong with Tatiana Maslany.

Just last week we had word the star of BBC America’s Orphan Black was auditioning, along with Rooney Mara and Felicity Jones, for a role in one of the Star Wars standalone film directed by Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards. We were extremely excited about the prospect.

The hints were there as Maslany recently dropped out of a Broadway play due to “filming schedule conflicts,” but yesterday Total Geeks said they had it from a “source close to the production.” A source of our own also confirmed Maslany has indeed landed the lead role. We likely won’t hear who she’s playing for a long time but I’m just…

We’ll update later if official/on-the-record confirmation comes in but what do you think of the news, folks?

(image photoshopped by our very own Victoria McNally)

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rasputinette:

circuitfry:

archivealicorn:

Good fucking job, tumblr. Putting every single character in its own for quotes… oy vey

STAFF YOU DID WHAT

this is so beautiful and fucked up, i’m crying

The US victory lap on job creation is in full swing, with just 5.8% of American workers who want jobs unable to find one.

But as that number falls, there is looming specter behind it: The number of Americans who want to work—who are participating in the labor force—has been on a steady downward plunge to levels not seen since the seventies.

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This is a significant change in the economy, but it’s not entirely clear yet why it’s happening—while the large Baby Boom generation is retiring, demographers say that isn’t the reason we’re seeing a reduction in the labor force participation rate. That suggests the culprit is other social and cultural trends, and that maybe the shrinking participation rate actually isn’t a bad thing.

“What is our socially desirable rate of participation?” Nicolas Petrosky-Nedeau, a Carnegie Mellon economist currently on leave at the San Francisco Federal Reserve bank, asks. “The truth is, we don’t know. There’s an immediate reaction to think that a decline in participation is necessarily a bad thing, [but] you can imagine it as an improvement of society’s organization of work, and individuals desire not to work, and that is the best outcome.”

Bottom’s up, top’s down

Petrosky-Nadea and Stanford economist Robert Hall are trying to come up with an answer to this question by figuring out exactly who is leaving the labor force. Using a survey of Americans that asks whether and how much they work, how much they earn and how frequently they use government programs, they are able to break out labor force participation by income, with some interesting results:

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When Hall testified about this research before the Senate finance committee last week, his primary conclusion was that the government safety net is not leading the poorest Americans to avoid work: Households making an average of less than $935 a month, or $11,220 a year, between 1996 and 2013, have seen their participation in the labor force rise steadily over the last two decades. The lowest quartile of American earners, earning an average of $1,740 a month, or $20,880 annually, have seen their participation rate rise as well. One probable reason: Declining real wages at the bottom mean that more work must be done in each household to maintain the same standard of living.

Between the bottom quartile and the median income—$3,360 a month or $40,032 annually—the trend starts to diverge. The lower middle-income households have seen a small reduction in labor force participation, but that’s nothing compared to households in the high middle-income quartile, who earn up to $5,920 a month or $71,000 a year. Since 1996, the share of workers in those households has fallen by 7.2 percentage points, the highest of all. As notable: The top 10 percent of American earning households have seen their participation fall 3.6 percentage points.

What it means: The richest Americans don’t have to work as much as they used to, but the poor are working more to maintain their standard of living.

Factory workers and chilled-out teens

Take a look at the way labor force participation has changed between 1998-2000 and 2011-2013:

The first thing you note is that a lot of high-income teens aren’t working. They don’t have to: Their parents are probably prioritizing education over employment. Petrosky-Nedeau says teens make up 40% of the overall drop in labor force participation, and Hall notes that the bulk of the reduction comes from teens and young people in their early twenties.

Because so much of the drop occurs on the high-income side, Hall suggests that a government policy reaction—and particularly attempts to cut the social safety net—isn’t necessary.”A study of the data on the decline does not suggest the desirability of policy changes focusing on reversing the decline,” Hall told the Senate.

Hall suggests that maybe we are approaching that “improvement of society’s organization of work” Petrosky-Nedeau talked about earlier: Less work, more (screen-oriented) leisure. “Entertainment is a lot cheaper than it was 20 years ago,” Petrosky-Nedeau notes.

Take a look at changes in American time usage:

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Unequal organization

But several problems arise from this analysis. One is that there is some non-trivial number of working-age Americans who have left the workforce not because they can spend more time watching TV but because they have trouble finding a job they want: This hollowing-out of middle class jobs, often cited as manufacturing work replaced by trade or automation, that could be behind the plunge in labor force participation for upper middle-income Americans.

The second question is about those chilled-out teens: Are they going to school, or just fooling around? With time spent on education not rising significantly and a dearth of early job experience, there is a fear that those teens may not be ready to work—or have the same earnings opportunities as their parents—when they hit prime age. Petrosky-Nedeau suggests that this may lead policymakers to think more about jobs training and apprenticeship programs.

The final problem is the opposite of the entitlements and social safety net question we’ve been focused on: Should society be worried about low-income people, and particularly low-income people over 60, having to work increasing hours to make ends meet? Shouldn’t everyone get to share in the new economy of leisure?

More to learn

Hall and Petrosky-Nedeau still have more to learn about how people make their decision to join the labor force, and how various combinations of household income and size, access to government programs, age and skill-level lead people to enter or exit the labor force.

But just in their preliminary work, you can see both the promise of the new global economy—the chance that we’ll be able to spend less time working and more time doing other things—as well as its peril—that those opportunities will be restricted to a highly-skilled minority.

Iceland is rising. Or, more precisely, the island’s “ice” part is shrinking, causing the “land” part to rebound from the Earth’s crust—a process that’s happening at a pace much faster than scientists had previously realized. In fact, its glaciers are melting so swiftly that parts of Iceland are rising as much as 1.4 inches (35mm) a year.

That’s according to research just published (paywall) by a team led by scientists from the University of Arizona. The study is the first to directly link the Earth’s accelerating uplift with global warming’s glacial thaw. As this process intensifies, the scientists warn, it risks upping the frequency of volcanic eruptions.

What’s new here isn’t the science itself, exactly. Glaciers are so heavy that they weigh down the earth that they cover. A while back, geologists discovered that where huge chunks of ice are thinning, the earth beneath them starts rebounding. And evidence suggests that higher latitudes are warming faster than the global average.

What scientists haven’t understood, though, is whether the ground’s bounce-back comes from glaciers that melted long ago—or whether this is due to recent climate change.

In Iceland, at least, global warming is the culprit, according to Richard Bennett, a UA associate professor of geosciences. He and his team figured this out by attaching GPS receivers to rocks all over Iceland, and then calculating how far the rocks traveled over time.

“What we’re observing is a climatically induced change in the Earth’s surface,” he says.

Even more worryingly, this change is happening way faster than previous research suggested. If melting continues at its current pace, by around 2025, some parts of Iceland will be rising at a rate of 15.7 inches a year.

There’s a literal downside to all of this—and it’s a big one. The thinning of the glaciers reduces the pressure on the rocks beneath, as Kathleen Compton, a UA geosciences doctoral candidate who led the research, told Time. the danger for Iceland is that high heat content at lower pressure creates conditions more likely to melt the rising mantle rocks—feeding more magma to volcano systems.

Bennett points out that the last time its glaciers got skimpy—about 12,000 years ago—Iceland’s volcanic activity leapt thirtyfold in some parts of the island.

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That’s grim news not just for Icelanders, but for everyone. In 2010, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull cost the global economy an estimated $5 billion. And while Bárðarbunga’s rumblings in August 2014 proved less eventful, it’s still erupting, and has set off another of the region’s volcanoes. More ominously still, the eruption of Laki in the 1780s killed a quarter of Iceland’s population, wiped out 23,000 Brits, set off famine in Egypt, and may have helped spark the French Revolution.

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Teammate Michael Bennett: "[The NCAA] says, 'We gave you a free degree.' That's like me owning a restaurant and saying, 'I'll give you a free burger."

Two of the Seattle Seahawks' best defensive players took on the NCAA in a pre-Super Bowl press conference Thursday, as cornerback Richard Sherman and defensive tackle Michael Bennett each had strong words for the collegiate student-athlete governing body. Sherman played his college ball at Stanford, while Bennett was a star at Texas A&M.

You can watch Sherman's portion here and Bennett's press conference here.

Sherman:

"No, I don't think college athletes are given enough time to really take advantage of the free education that they're given, and it's frustrating because a lot of people get upset with student-athletes and say they're not focused on school and they're not taking advantage of the opportunity they're given. I would love for a regular student to have a student-athlete's schedule during the season for just one quarter or one semester and show me how you balance that. Show me how you would schedule your classes when you can't schedule classes from 2-to-6 o'clock on any given day. Show me how you're going to get all your work done when after you get out at 7:30 or so, you've got a test the next day, you're dead tired from practice and you still have to study just as hard as everybody else every day and get all the same work done. Most of these kids are done with school, done with class by 3 o'clock, you've got the rest of the day to do as you please. You may spend a few hours studying, then you may spend a few hours at the library checking out books and doing casual reading, and then you may go hang out with friends and have a coffee. When you're a student-athlete, you don't have that kind of time. You wake up in the morning, you have weights at this time. Then after weights you go to class and after class, you go maybe try to grab you a quick bite to eat. Then after you get your quick bite to eat, you go straight to meetings and after meetings, you've got practice and after practice, you've got to try to get all the work done you had throughout the day you've got from your lectures and from your focus groups.

And those aren't the things that people focus on when talking about student-athletes. They are upset when a student-athlete says they need a little cash. Well, I can tell you from experience, I had negative-40 bucks in my account. Usually my account was in the negative more time than it was in the positive. You've got to make decisions on whether you get gas for your car or whether you get a meal for the day. You've got one of the two choices.

People think, ‘Oh, you're on scholarship.' They pay for your room and board, they pay for your education, but to their knowledge, you're there to play football. You're not on scholarship for school and it sounds crazy when a student-athlete says that, but that's those are the things coaches tell them every day: ‘You're not on scholarship for school.'

Luckily, I was blessed to go to Stanford and a school that was primarily focused on academics, so it was a blessing. It was a little bit better. As Jim Harbaugh would attest, we were also there for football. But there were still guys like Andrew (Luck) who majored in engineering, an incredibly tough road to take when you're in football, because a lot of the classes conflict with your time as a football player. You have an engineering class from 2 to 3:30, there's no way you can do both. You can't go to meetings and take your engineering class from 2 to 3:30, so what do you do? What do you do? Do you switch your major or do you tell your coach, ‘Hey, I've got an engineering class from 2 to 3:30 and I have to go to that.' That's a conflict of interest. That's what people don't realize. But it's not something that hurts the bottom line in a lot of people's lives, so I don't think it'll be something that will be addressed.

Bennett:

"I think the NCAA is one of the biggest scams in America, because these kids put so much on the line, and they study hard, they play football as hard as they can, but if they don't crack the NFL, then [the NCAA] says, 'We gave you a free degree.' That's like me owning a restaurant and saying, 'I'll give you a free burger.'... I'm just giving you something I already have. Athletes don't get enough credit, and a lot of the schools don't really do anything for the guys after they graduate. I think there are very few schools that actually care about the players.

[...]

"When I was in college, I'd be going to class, some student comes to me and says 'I pay your tuition.' I'm like, you don't pay my damn tuition. My mom paid my tuition when she worked two jobs, and I woke up every morning at 6 a.m. and I worked hard. To think about it, it makes me so mad and irate that people are so simple-minded when it comes to something like that."

H/T Deadspin

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is shutting down.

I liked many aspects of TUAW. They had an enjoyable "voice" and I've seen many Apple product launches through their eyes. I also appreciated that they did attribution right and links went to actual products, not to more TUAW articles. They seemed to respect their readers.

A quick search of my Pinboard account shows that I have 118 TUAW bookmarks. That's a lot for a mainstream news site. I only have 128 Macworld bookmarks.

Good luck to all the writers from TUAW and pox on AOL.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

jones_supa writes: Phoronix notes how it has been a long time since last hearing of any major innovations or improvements to VirtualBox, the virtual machine software managed by Oracle. This comes while VMware is improving its products on all platforms, and KVM, Xen, Virt-Manager, and related Linux virtualization technologies continue to advance as well. Is there any hope left for a revitalized VirtualBox? It has been said that there are only four paid developers left on the VirtualBox team at the company, which is not enough manpower to significantly advance such a complex piece of software. The v4.3 series has been receiving some maintenance updates during the last two years, but that's about it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Japan, things are advertised specifically for women — and it’s still considered okay.

Dear @DAVID_LYNCH, I’m ready to party… pic.twitter.com/4D0A3T7pCn

— ANDREW W.K. (@AndrewWK) January 28, 2015

Single-minded party person Andrew W.K. has begun campaigning via Twitter for the role of Bob in David Lynch’s upcoming third season of Twin Peaks (the original Bob, Frank Silva, passed away in 1995). Partying has never seemed so damn fine.

Considering that Silva was originally just a set decorator on Twin Peaks and was allegedly cast only after Lynch caught a “frightening” glimpse of him in a mirror (rude, but also correct), Party Bob doesn’t seem so far fetched. In celebration of Twin Peaks’ new commitment to party party party, here’s Andrew’s seminal hit “Party Hard:”

(via Uproxx)

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Reddit user mbingcrosby created a Google Maps-style mockup of Middle Earth from the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien, including walking directions from the Shire to Mordor. As the map notes, Orcs and Trolls present series potential traffic delays. That’s why, as Google Maps itself insists, “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

image via Imgur

via reddit

“A Chronological Compendium of Watches” is a new chart by Pop Chart Lab featuring 47 hand-illustrated varieties of laudable timepieces throughout “horological history from 1530 to present day”. Signed and numbered prints are available to purchase online.

From the Rolex Submariner to the Audemeras Piguet Royal Oak to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duometre, this array of accoladed analogs & digitals features coveted cog-run keepsakes, revealing centuries of meticulous design and precise, to-the-second engineering—a crowning testament to how we like to keep time on our side—or more precisely, on our wrists.

images via Pop Chart Lab

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Link (thanks, acutewinnipegosis!)

The Daily Show opened Thursday night by skewering the NFL for how it's handling Marshawn Lynch at Super Bowl media week. Jon Stewart's commentary cut right to the heart of the matter. You know how the league is talking about fining Lynch for his hat?

"Classic NFL for being more worried about what's on top of a player's head than what's going on inside of it."

Stewart also put context on the reported $500,000 fine Marshawn would have faced for not showing up a media day.

"That's 'My company poured dioxin in a river money'"

Watch the whole thing, because the Patriots and DeflateGate aren't spared either.

It's DeMarcus Cousins' arrest day everyone! What are you doing to celebrate? Oh, you haven't heard that's a thing? Well take a gander at this:

Today's the day!! Let's all show him some love!! @ClayTravisBGID

A photo posted by DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) on Jan 30, 2015 at 6:51am PST

That's Clay Travis, analyst for Fox Sports, avid Tennessee Volunteers fan, and ace legal savant. He made the hottest of takes five years ago, back when Cousins was still at Kentucky.

Boogie hasn't forgotten.

Today's the day!! Let's all show him some love!! @ClayTravisBGID http://t.co/t54K0tC6Pn

— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) January 30, 2015

Let me guess: Travis' next tweet will be "The day's not over yet."

Why won't anyone do something about this?

DeflateGate, Marshawn Lynch and the media, Richard Sherman's strong words for the NFL...these are all scandals manufactured to distract you from the real scandal, which is that the Puppy Bowl is a sham. The NFL's foremost canine competition is an ill-conceived, rigged event, and its blatant corruptness is a slap in the face to:

- Fans

- Competitors

- Advertisers

- Viewers who bet $18,060 out of their daughters' college fund on Shyla the Great Pyrenees to win MVP even though their wives said not to because Shyla was a sure thing after all her preparation and if that bet paid off there would be enough money for a down payment on the party submarine AND the girls' college fund so what's the problem Ellen seriously just trust me on something for once

That's just a few kinds of people who have been ROBBED by this mockery of organized sport. Don't believe me that the Puppy Bowl is an abject sham? Well, I can prove to you that the Puppy Bowl ref is an unabashed game fixer who is very likely on the take.

(Cindy Ord, Getty Images)

Dan Schachner is the Puppy Bowl's ref-for-life. Yeah, it's just one guy and it's always him. Can you think of another major sporting event that has the same ref every single year? No, because that would raise all kinds of red flags and people would make a big stink about potential corruption. And yet no one says a word when one man has free reign to manipulate the Puppy Bowl unchecked.

And in case you think Schachner keeps getting to officiate because he's an even-handed, scrupulous judge of the game ... nope. From an old interview:

Favorite Puppy Bowl VIII Moment: Watching our MVP (Most Valuable Puppy) carry a chew toy across the goal line for the third time. I celebrated by blowing my whistle and jumping for joy; he celebrated with a "puppy foul" in the end zone. It was at that very moment that I knew I was witnessing history.

Favorite Penalties to Call: "Unnecessary ruff, ruff, ruff-ness," "Unpuppylike conduct," "Illegal Use of the Paws," "Illegal Retriever Down Field" and "Excessive cuteness on the Field."

The ref celebrates plays during the game itself. How is that acceptable? And what kind of ref has "favorite penalties"!? If an NFL ref told us he loves calling pass interference, wouldn't we be highly skeptical every time he did so?

That's not all. Schachner also trains with the athletes:

So we're okay with a ref fraternizing with competitors in the lead-up to the game, probably developing relationships and biases in the process? Schachner is, by his own admission, not an objective viewer of the game, and yet he's the one who makes the calls, determines the outcomes, and denies MVP awards to worthy puppies like Shyla.

Oh, and how about this, via The Washington Post:

Schachner, a veteran TV host who freely admits he's not a real referee, loves it. "I'm the only human (on camera), so for people who need constant attention and validation, this is great," he said laughing.

Yeah, this guy keeps getting officiating jobs, including one in the notoriously shady Celebrity Deathmatch, despite openly admitting he's not a real ref.

I mean, I don't know what else to say. If you're not appalled already, then we have to go to the tape. I could pick pretty much anything from Puppy Bowl X to show you what a joke of a ref Schachner is, so here's a play I picked at random:

Tell me that wasn't unnecessary ruffness. Tell me one dog trying to eat another one isn't TEXTBOOK UNNECESSARY RUFFNESS. No call. Nothing.

It gets worse. I'm sure you were as dismayed as I was about Shyla's MVP snub in 2014. We all remember Shyla kicking the first field goal in Puppy Bowl history:

Instant classic. This was a Puppy Bowl legend's defining moment -- the kind of thing that validates those who wagered $18,060 on her greatness -- but somehow not enough to earn Shyla the MVP trophy she deserved.

You know who got MVP? Ginger. The same Ginger who clearly indulged in marijuana -- a banned substance -- before the game:

Look at those eyes. (And never mind Mr. Schachner's reptilian avatar/probable drug pusher congratulating Ginger for her unearned award.)

The drugged-up Ginger's defining moment in Puppy Bowl X wasn't a great play or anything -- she didn't make scoring history like Shyla did. No, she just committed a ton of penalties, including terrorizing the ref:

That's your MVP. Someone who literally attacked the official and bit his whistle. You'd think that would count against her, but remember, this guy is, in his own words, "not a real referee."

Of course, we don't know the extent of Schachner's perversions because the broadcast of the game is edited:

The Puppy Bowl players are untrained dogs, given their age, and that means that there's unavoidably a great deal of pooping on the field. Toporoff said the pups defecate as much as every 20 seconds at times, but it's easy to fix it all in post with careful editing.

Yeah, they definitely only edit out the defecating and don't lay a finger on Shyla's highlight plays that should have earned her MVP and put cash in the pockets of people who predicted her greatness and just want to have money for a party submarine and put their daughters through college. Noooo reason to doubt them there.

Those people deserve a fair Puppy Bowl. We all deserve a fair Puppy Bowl unsullied by favoritism, drugs, and systematic corruption. If I'm the only one brave enough to speak up about this travesty, so be it. FREE THE PUPPY BOWL.

The Internet's preeminent fantasy Puppy Bowl expert gives you tips on how to draft your team.

It's Super Bowl week, but more importantly it's Puppy Bowl week. We're mere days away from the big matchup between Team Ruff and Team Fluff.

And for the second straight year, you can pick your Puppy Bowl fantasy team. And for the second straight year, this is the best resource for your fantasy Puppy Bowl information. I received a lot of heat for my picks last year, after I advised readers to stay away from Mandy, the Dachshund/hound mix, who ended up having a breakout game with three touchdowns and three takeaways.

In retrospect, I can't believe my oversight. I've spent most of the past 350 days in the film room analyzing these puppies -- a tall and unnecessary order, considering they're all under four months old. And I'm confident these picks will get you to the fantasy Puppy Bowl playoffs in your fantasy Puppy Bowl league.

First, a look at the scoring:

Touchdowns: 7 points (rather than the conventional six in most standard scoring systems)

Field goals: 3 points (remember not to take a puppy kicker until the last few rounds of your fantasy puppy draft, especially since puppies can't kick field goals so far as we know)

Takeaways: 3 points (you'll want a scrappy pup)

Tackles: 2 points (not worth a whole ton of points, but a fundamentally sound/playful pup can rack up huge numbers with lots of tackles)

Penalties: -2 points (the real x-factor here -- penalties are given for dogs that play too rough or poop on the field, which really could be any pup)

Now let's move on to the pups.

Must-start puppies

Titan, American Bulldog mix

He's got size, he's got speed, and look at his toy security skills. Titan might not be the leading scorer in fantasy Puppy Bowl, but he's a solid bet to put up points across the board. Cant miss pick.

Miss Martian, coonhound mix

Coonhounds are hunting dogs, bred for their speed and ability to track stuff. Miss Martian's got drive, a nose for the ball and enormous flippy-floppy ears! Flop, flop, flop, flop, (tousles back of Miss Martian's head). Good girl. Flop, flop, flop, dawwwwwwwwwwww!

Chicklet, Australian Shepherd mix

Aussies are energetic, playful, and versatile working dogs with a lot of athleticism. Chicklet has the potential to be this game's MVP.

Papi, corgi mix

OMG! LOOK AT HOW CUTE PAPI IS HE'S ADORABLE!

Puppies to avoid

Falcor, clumber spaniel

This dog has bust written all over him. While other dogs sprint around the field racking up points, Falcor's gonna be lounging around waiting for somebody to rub his belly. Questionable work ethic. Maybe not Puppy Bowl ready.

Cara, Shih Tzu

Look at this dog. You are literal human garbage if you think this dog is going to score touchdowns.

Bubba, chihuahua mix

You don't bring a knife to a gun fight, and you don't bring a chihuahua mix to Fantasy Puppy Bowl. This is serious stuff here. Are yippy noises worth points? I didn't think so.

Keno, terrier mix

There's upside here, but it's a risky pick to take a dog that will clearly be physically overmatched against larger dogs. Can Keno squirm her way into the end zone a few times? Sure. Is it likely? I don't think so.

"There was an issue on that play where on the previous play, [Cameron] Fleming had reported as an eligible player," Blandino said. "And on the Solder touchdown he went back to playing an ineligible position. That’s illegal. That’s an illegal substitution. So that’s something we discussed with the crew. Bill [Belichick] was made aware of it. So we’re going to be looking for that, make sure we follow the proper mechanics so that doesn’t happen again."

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