Links posted in May 2007
May 31, 2007
Lunch at Kismet Cafe today was served with a steaming side of "Who did the best 'supernatural being/narrator shows you how things could have been so you appreciate how they are' bit?"
The canonical version is certainly Dickens' A Christmas Carol. But is it the earliest example? In any event, there have been many adaptations. The most well known variation of this story trope is It's a Wonderful Life. Some of our favorites from lunch are Zinc Oxide and You (from Kentucky Fried Movie) and the Simpsons "The World Without Zinc". Perhaps the funniest I have ever seen is A Case of Spring Fever (MST3K) which shows us a world without simple harmonic oscillators and features the irredeemably irritating and malevolent animated character "Coily." Commenters in the archive thread can't think of other old educational films that were being parodied...can you?
Map out your travels. Trying to decide where to take your next vacation? Why not use a personalized map of where you've already been? [more inside]
May 30, 2007
I'm running this relay and my team needs a good name! My company is sponsoring our team and my teamates want to make a funny name with the acronym S.R.S...
I thought who better to get suggestions from than some of the funniest and clever people I know. Well, you can't be any worse than some of the suggestions from my teamates!! [more inside]
May 29, 2007
A Fair(y) Use Tale. A short primer on Copyright law by some familiar faces.
Compulsive clickers unite! The helpful comment from Mr Flip may have been sufficient coverage of this issue, but after reading the above linked blog post, and the associated comments, I'm a little curious about what y'all's article reading habits are. [more inside]
May 28, 2007
May 27, 2007
Can you measure a professor's crotchetiness factor? If you could, would you publish it along with individual student graduation times and what-they-did-next? Do you want people to know the average time for certain professors to graduate students?
May 25, 2007
4.5 lbs of meaty goodness. As I once told Carl, I am going to do this one day. The neat new feature is that because of their web camera, y'all can watch live as I try (in the VERY distant future). So if your bored today, keep checking back to see the great food athelets challenge the steak. Have a good breakfast!
May 24, 2007
Interesting look at helping children succeed. It was interesting to read because I was raised with constant praise (except in spelling) and after reading this, I see some of the side effects in myself.
3M's newst product is excited to see you. I don't think that's a pen in his pocket.
May 23, 2007
Come Sail Away with Natedogg aka "Hey there is booze inside i am drunk". Let Styx and Natedogg carry you off on an ocean of song. [more inside]
May 22, 2007
In which a wordmonger's assay of jargon-sourced sesquipedalian obfuscation illuminates an unsuspected perplexity: the purveyors and utilizers of industry-specific commercially viable locutions are themselves facile consumers of same. Clearly they've recontexualized their linguistic paradigm space in order to capitalize on b-friendly meme sequestration.
May 21, 2007
May 20, 2007
Jane Mag says Show Us Your Tits - NSFW but not quite what you think, either. [more inside]
May 18, 2007
The charming travails of going on -- and going off -- antidepressants. A word to the wise, from someone who knows: there's apparently no FDA requirement to disclose the extent or severity of withdrawal symptoms for prescription drugs.
May 17, 2007
Movie Quiz #3!!! - the answers are easy to find but please don't spoil in the text below. (Quiz #2 [*], Quiz #1 [*]). [more inside]
Have we learned from history's lessons? - mostly, no.
So I handle website inquiries about our business and from time to time I'll have someone send in a comment or question in a foreign language. Today I had some smart ass send me something in latin. I've taken a stab using some online translators but a lot of these words aren't coming up. I can't tell if the person is a fan or a sarcastic critic. Unfortunately I do have quite a bit to do today and I can't afford to sit around and mess with this all day.
Anyone want to take a stab at dead languages? Here you are, the text itself: [more inside]
Soldier who uses MySpace to keep the fam up to date? Tough titty toenails -- the army doesn't want to pay your bandwidth bill. Ditto for Pandora and YouTube. The Daily Show weighs in.
The Codex Seraphinianus - read past the slightly fulsome prose to learn about a strange and beautiful encyclopedia of an imaginary world. Other places to visit include The Realms of the Unreal, the Voynich Manuscript, and Fritolaysia -- pack your Dictionary of Imaginary Places and perhaps someplace to keep your pressed fairies. Giraffes? Giraffes! [Thx, Cyn-C]
May 16, 2007
For some reason this blog entry made me think of AE. If only I could multi-tag.
May 15, 2007
As we left the movie night, some of us got to witness a little bit of Le Parkour action from the restless locals. I thought "how silly" and walked on but a phone conversation kept me from getting into my car immediately. Good thing, too, because I got to witness the magic of Campus Parkour Family Circus.
May 14, 2007
Number of cancer deaths by type. There was a question at lunch as to why breast cancer gets the biggest hype, including its own month. I thought that it wasn't the number one killer cancer in women. It is actually the third on the list. Download the pdf and scroll down to the table listing the number of deaths by gender and cancer type. Lung cancer and cancer of the digestive system both beat out breast cancer. However, I don't think anyone is going to give colon cancer its own month. What would the color of that month be? Certainly not pink....
May 12, 2007
Curt Schilling starts his own video game company, plans to launch WoW competitor. We all know that the former world series MVP, or as he is known on EverQuest, Scythehands Voxslayer, is somewhat of a, shall we say, enthusiastic, gamer. Just a bit of background into the principal players behind our Seinfeldian bet.
I know a lot of it is unbelievable because I'm a gamer. I know how awesome World of Warcraft is. I know how good the guys at Bioware are. I have four or five MMOs on my laptops, but I play one. I know what exists and I know some of the things we're doing is going to blow people out of the water.
The Boundary Stones of DC - an urban archaeology field assignment for the members of our DC bureau.
May 11, 2007
Mother's Day is Sunday Public service announcement for those who need it. [more inside]
A partial track listing for Guitar Hero Rocks the 80's.
[more inside]
Terrorism on the decline? I haven't heard many national alerts since the spat pre-election 2004. They seemed oddly timed then, and coincidentally beneficial to the GOP.
May 10, 2007
Alberto Gonzales, our Attourney General, delievers brilliant testimony. This is like one of us not thinking about uncertainty in measurement or something.
The Brewers have quietly assembled the best record in the majors - which means no more always-a-bridesmaid rides on other teams' bandwagons, natedogg; it's time for you to decide whether you'll do what it takes to get the Brewers to the playoffs. [more inside]
May 09, 2007
AAPG's current position on Global Climate Change has been debated for over a year and a new proposed AAPG Statement is available.
The online discussion of the proposal is under way and will assist the Executive Committee in deciding the Association's stance on this important topic.
See the comments or join the discussion in Members Only via www.aapg.org
Jail Paris Hilton Petition / Free Paris Hilton. At 4pm the count stood at 26,463 Jail / 15,732 Free.
No, really: this *is* why I'm hot. Leading researchers believe application of sophisticated analytical tools may lend insight in the recursive case.
Neill Cumpston reviews Grindhouse Fantastic:
It isn’t even a movie – it’s TWO movies with some trailers and stuff at the beginning, and also between the movies. The directors – more about them in a second (there’s TWO!) – wanted to recreate the way movies were back in the 1920’s, when you could sell a script that was one page that just said, “TITS THEN A MONSTER THEN MORE TITS THEN AN EXPLOSION THEN BONUS TITS” and everyone knew what you were talking about. Also, there’s zombies getting killed by a helicopter, which is not only cool to look at, but shows how the movie-makers did some research, to make things realistic.
A Short List of Long Takes - delightful and thought-provoking list but it is made immeasurably better thanks to youtube clips.
May 08, 2007
May 06, 2007
The Case for Impeachment Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson presents a good, impassioned list of the reasons for impeaching the POTUS. Most of these are well known, but it is a good rallying summary. He then debates with Sean Hannity. [more inside]
May 05, 2007
Grindhouse-era Movie Posters for Hollywood Classics - every SomethingAwful photoshop feature gone before was apparently in preparation for this, the finest and most sizeable work they've ever done. [more inside]
May 04, 2007
AE community created content challenge (AEC4). Create the Onion article that goes with this headline:
"Virginia to shed prudish image, changes name to Whoria."
[more inside]
Looks like the cards pitcher was drunk after all. Thank god this douchebag didn't kill anyone else in the process. Good riddance!
A link from splatnikGanglion You can also make your own, or instead find out what the US Gov't recommends to help you cut back. (Not advised if it's how you earn your living).
When you have a sudden heart attack and are without oxygen for 10 minutes, what exactly is dead? Not your heart cells it turns out. So why can't you recessitate someone after that much time has elapsed? Because the oxygen flowing into the cells kills them... This information could lead to better emergency techniques for heart attack victims.
Kindergarry Glen Ross. Certainly the second-best Glengarry Glen Ross homage of all time. (hear #1 here -- GGR @5:41). [thx Cyn-C]
May 03, 2007
Great Legends in Color - or, why red means stop and pink means girl.
This is, of course, from ColourLovers.com -- where people go to talk about colors, and their favorite colors, and whether it should be colours or colours, and how they use color, and which crayon kicks the most ass I guess. I know I should have long since become inured to the internet's remarkable affinity to the obscure, but I still get a frisson of "WTF, mate? Kangaroos!" when I run across highly developed sites like "http://www.colourlovers.com/" and "http://bevnet.com/" a.k.a. "The Beverage Network." Look for Natedogg to start conversationally dropping news & gossip gleaned from the pages of BevNET IBQ (Innovative Beverage Quarterly), a magazine that promises to feature "editorial content focused solely on beverage innovation" and incorporate "insightful reporting with the cutting-edge knowledge base of BevNET.com into a smartly designed, market-savvy package that will resonate with its demanding core readership of beverage industry professionals." Oh, and make sure to vote for your favorite color scheme (or favourite colour scheme even) while you're still hanging with the ColourLovers. Dot Com.
Telemarketer Prank - one of the best I've heard.
May 02, 2007
So now numbers are illegal - specifically, 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, or 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 in hex. Besides being the total amount (in yoctograms) of sediment needed to maintain the deltaic wetlands in coastal Louisiana, it is the "Processing Key" that will let open-source developers make Blu-Ray/HD DVD players. [more inside]
May 01, 2007
RIP Herbert Kornfeld, Accounts Receivable Supervisor - now tippin' on 44s and 1099s with his homie CPA-ONE. His strangely prescient last column will stand in memoriam to one of the greats from the old school:
Sleepless hours and dreamless nights and far aways / Ooo ooo ooo, wishing you were here. —Chicago, "Wishing You Were Here"
I be blastin' this def tune outta tha Nite Rida's sweet-ass factory-installed speakas a lot lately. Suckas always comin' up 2 me sayin', damn Dog, we thought you down wit' tha gangsta rap, not no Chicago VII. I say hell no, I gots mad hate foe that wack hip-hop shit. Hall N' Oatz, Neily D, that band that supply air: now that's tha mad slammin' shit, word dat. Tha H-Dog listens easy, always has, always will.
Fuck. Let's hope that this deal doesn't go through. Rupert Murdoch really doesn't need a name that actually has some credibility under his control. This isn't to say that the WSJ's editorial board isn't already insane and right wing--but if they start to blend that slant with their news division...
Is this the worst music video ever made? I can't think of one in its league, offhand.