Midichlorian Rhapsody

"Star Wars"-themed parody of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". This video is composed of 100% WIN.
 

What's my line? Crumpet.

I imagine it would have been difficult enough for the celebrity panel of the game show "What's My Line" to guess the occupation of the guests based upon "yes" or "no" answers to a few questions, but what if the guest was an individual with a highly varied and idiosyncratic resume?

Wonder no more...via Roger Ebert's excellent blog, a snippet from the 1950's era show with none other than Salvador Dali as the guest. Amazingly, the panel manages to guess correctly based on what can't be anything more than an intuitive leap. Appropriately surreal, to say the least...



HT: Roger Ebert (via Twitter)

Humanity in the midst of horror

I can't embed it, but this video of a 90-year-old WWII veteran recounting an experience from his time shortly after the D-day invasion is both incredible and a wonderful example of the power of our shared human values in the face of despair and loss. Please take a moment to give it a look; you won't regret it.

Oh, please note that the video will start playing when the page has loaded. Completely SFW, but it might start up a tad loud...

Cami Secret Parody (Boob Apron)

I know I shouldn't laugh...but it's funny...



HT: Patton Oswalt

Steven Wright FTW!

One of Steven Wright's one liners: "I got this powdered water - now I don't know what to add". Hahaha....Wait, what?

Scientists have developed what they're calling "dry water", a powder that contains a drop of water surrounded by a silica compound.

Scientists believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Tests show that it is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide as ordinary water. Dry water may also prove useful for storing methane and expanding the energy source potential of the natural gas.

"Powdered water" is something I certainly never thought I'd see. But we still don't know what to add...

HT: Derren Brown

Creationism Propaganda for Children Caught on Camera

Watch this and weep; weep for the children and our collective future...

Wrong for America!

Mr. Kant is obviously an evil Socialist/Nazi/Godless/Tax-And-Spend Liberal intent on remaking our great country into *gasp* EUROPE!



The horror...the horror...

Neil deGrasse Tyson: What NASA Means to America's Future

Neil Tyson (director of the Hayden planetarium) is one of most eloquent and passionate advocates for science and science education we have today. In this brief answer to an audience question, he gives the best rationale I've yet heard for why continued funding for NASA is so vitally important.

Thought for the day...

"The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known.

The pale blue dot."

An excerpt from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. He's referring to a photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot (a portion of which is posted above), taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

via Gizmodo

John Stewart PWNS Glenn Beck

Anyone familiar with Glenn Beck knows that the man is a world-class ass clown. But absolutely no one takes him down better than John Stewart. To wit, part I:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

And part II:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Complete and total WIN. I've said it before; if we didn't have John Stewart and Steven Colbert, we wouldn't have any real news reporting at all...

GENIUS!

Personally, I find the idea of chatroulette kinda creepy, but this is hilarious! The guy improvises songs about the people with whom he connects:



via twitter: @petersagal

Again?

*sings* "I like calling North Carolina ho....WTF WEATHER?!?!"


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Umm...obesity epidemic anyone?

File this under "I'm too lazy to walk in from the next parking space"...



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Batman!

Someone in my twitter feed (wish I could remember who!) posted a link to this Batman! comic generator. It contains one scene from a classic (judging by the artwork) Batman! comic and allows users to enter dialogue for Batman and Robin and then generates the scene with the user entered dialogue. Hilarity ensues. Of course, I couldn't resist creating several and posting them here for the benefit of posterity. First, the obvious:

1337arts

This is so cool! A trio of MIT students built and launched a camera equipped helium balloon that ended up rising over 17 miles into the outer atmosphere. The camera was loaded with software that directed it to take pictures at five-second intervals and recorded the near 4 hour ascent and approximately 40 minute descent (after the balloon popped at about 93,000 ft.).

Read the story and see the time-lapse photo show at: 1337arts

Posted using ShareThis

TED

Technology. Entertainment. Design. Those are the words/concepts that comprise the acronym TED. From philosophers to activists, from actors to politicians, from Nobel laureates to great chefs, TED conferences bring together and present some of the world's most amazing people. TEDGlobal 2009 is currently underway in Britain and some of the talks should be online within the next few days (including what's sure to be an amusing/informative one by Stephen Fry), but you can always find something interesting or entertaining in the TED archives of past conferences. Case in point: the video embedded below of a charming humorous anecdote related at TED 2008 by the incomparable John Hodgman.

Math Humor

Found on the 'net. Will be humorous to anyone with a mathematical bent, but they made me think specifically of a certain math geek I know...

From XKCD (an awesome webcomic):



And another I found on Atheist Nexus:

Must See TV

This aired back in March, but I had forgotten all about it until I found it again at The Dreaming. Two of my very favorite people, Neil Gaiman and Stephen Colbert discuss Neil's Newberry Award-winning The Graveyard Book. Gaiman is infected with the same sort of dark humor as Colbert and it makes for quite the amusing interview:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Neil Gaiman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

About The Graveyard Book I can't say enough good things. I bought it the week it was released, read it in a couple of days and it's one of the best things Mr. Gaiman has written (and that's saying something). Although intended for children (ages 9-12), the book has deep meanings and morals that are just as applicable for adults. This is the sort of book that parents should read aloud to their kids because both will profit as a result.

Speaking of reading aloud, the audiobook version (read by Gaiman) also won two Audie awards, including book of the year. I bought that too and look forward to listening to it on the way to the beach next week. But you don't have to purchase the audiobook to experience this; you can watch & hear Neil read the book in its entirety at Mouse Circus.

Funny O' The Day

Oh, I know how she feels:
Yesterday's Mythtickle, via Pharyngula.

Memorial Day 2009

For citizens of the United States of America, today is the day we set aside specifically to remember the men and women who have throughout our history fought and died to earn and preserve the freedoms we enjoy today. May their courage and bravery never be forgotten and may all of us strive to be worthy of the heavy price with which our liberty has been purchased.


Graphic is by Cox and Forkum