Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Terry Pratchett Knighted!


This couldn't happen to a better chap:

Pratchett, 60, best known for his satirical Discworld fantasy series, becomes a knight, one of the queen's most important honours, and will now be addressed as a 'Sir'.

"There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job," he said. "I am of course delighted and honoured and needless to say, flabbergasted."

Watchmen Intro

Director Zack Snyder introduces the story, characters and stars of Watchmen.

Batman and Sons


Over at Welcome to Wayne Manor Batman has four sons, three of them Robins and one Batman Beyond, and Alfred.

Batman picks the kids up from school and tucks them in at night.

The kids play Superman.

Batman and family go to a picnic for the JLA and JSA families.

Two of the Robins are in a Thanksgiving play.

Batman hates parties and, apparently, kisses.

There are also pinups and more one-off strips, including the one from where I stole that picture at the top. Check 'em out.

The Black Cat, the artist, says this strip was inspired by Tiny Titans, I can see that. I hope more and more of these come out because characterization is pretty much spot on and it's all so funny. In a perfect world, DC would ask this person to do this as a comic every month.

Too bad it's not a perfect world.

The Night Sky

Today, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day posted a cool video of the sky in motion.


túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico!
from Till Credner on Vimeo.

And then I go and read yesterday's Overcompensating (it wasn't up when I checked yesterday) to read an explanation of how astronomy started.

Sometimes the 'nets sure is grand.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Online Comics on NPR

This is one of the reasons I love NPR: they have featured both Penny Arcade and Achewood. Now they need to do xkcd for a online comic trifecta.

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid

Keanu Reeves has is trying to get a live action Cowboy Bebop movie of the ground; he wants to play Spike Spiegel!

Another Good-bye


Eartha Kitt died last Thursday. She was 81.

She had one of the most outstanding voices, for speaking and singing, I've yet heard. Many will remember her for singing "Santa Baby." And others will remember her as Catwoman.

That's three. We can stop now, universe, right?

"trapped in a lamezoid magic dork zone"


It's the story of Lizzy, who accidentally ended up in "A Wonderland of Magic." She didn't like it there.

Also, there's a great Labyrinth joke.

Found it at Nedroid, home of Beartato.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Beautiful Stuff I Can't Afford, No. 2

Today, BSICA is presented by MCP Photoshop. I am a sucker for Photoshop actions (because I am a lazy, terrible Photoshop user and I know it) and these are nice. Like, I can make anybody look like a freaking supermodel nice. My favorite set is "Magic Skin" (in the "Retouching Actions" section). Check out those before and afters! Hot damn! Seriously- people will be disappointed when they finally meet you in person. Yeah, $42 isn't a WHOLE lot, but I'm not a professional photographer and never will be, I'm sure, so it's a lot for something that's just a silly hobby.

The Fall

The other night we were watching Zombie Strippers on BluRay. (Our inaugural HD Disc (the movie was bad (you knew that)))
Anyway... On it there was a preview for a movie called The Fall, which looks to be worth watching even if it doesn't turn out good.

This movie is already out on video. It's surprising I didn't know about it.

Monday, December 22, 2008

There She Goes...


Watch the horrors of puberty from 7 'til 16! (In a nifty animation.)

Beautiful Stuff I Can't Afford, No. 1

(But drool over obsessively anyway.)

Today's installation of BSICA is brought to you by Nervous System, an Etsy store. Etsy is home to numerous items of BSICA, but I can frequently stop daydreaming about it in a day or two. The Nervous System jewelry, however, I haven't been able to get out of my head. This is my kind of stuff- asymmetrical but with its own kind of pattern, and totally wearable without being something you'd see every day.


Friday, December 19, 2008

Dance Like a Monkey!

My Bologna has a First Name . . .

This post wins.

The Best of 1966 Batman/Bruce Wayne

For Richard:

The First Lady of Star Trek


Majel Barrett Roddenberry died last night, she was 76.

The picture is her playing Number One in the original Star Trek pilot. She was also Nurse Chapel in TOS and appeared as Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9 and she regularly played the voice of the Starfleet computers from the 60s until Voyager ended in 2001 and had been cast to do the computer's voice in the new movie. I don't know if she completed the work for the movie.

She also produced two science fiction TV shows based on notes left by her late husband and guest starred in them, too.

Two beautiful, vibrant women dead in two weeks. I sincerely hope that these sort of things don't really happen in threes.

What a Way To Go.

If you get me one of these for Christmas, I'll really know what you think of me.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Meet 'Cause of Meat?


Burger King makes meat body spray.

Yuck.

Presidential Economics

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." -- George Bush

(via Boing Boing)

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Syrian Lingerie

Sexy secrets of the Syrian souk
In other cultural contexts, this might seem something like a den of smut and vice - but Mr Nasser, a devout Muslim, insists it's more a public service and religious duty.

Attention Span Envy

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

shoes!

Friday, December 12, 2008

The Sporting Life

Raul "Lawn Dart" Ibanez was signed by a national league team today, so that he may continue to contribute gems like this and this to the world of baseball comedy.

In Case You Haven't Heard


Betty Page died last night. She was 85.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

When Child Protection Goes TOO FAR

Because of the recent problems with toy safety from mass-produced products from China, the Consumer Product Safety Commission passed the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which will effectively make handmade toys and clothes illegal, no matter where they were made.

Please go read about it over at Cool Mom Picks. This is distressing as a mother AND as a crafter. This act will go into effect in two months unless we can do something about it. There are individual and group letter writing campaigns to the CPSC and to Representatives. I plan to take part in several, and hope that you will do the same.

Not all handmade toys and clothes are appropriate or well made, but let's allow for a little consumer choice, here. Banning them completely is NOT the answer.

The Handmade Toy Alliance
Sample Letter
Write your Representative

Elvis, Eat Your Heart Out


Even more Mao.

Although the last looks more like Kim Jong-il, to me.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Maybe There IS A God?

MGA Entertainment has been legally forbidden to continue production of the Bratz dolls. Can I get a HALLELUJAH! AMEN!

I'm just sorry that it came down to a Barbie/Mattel contested copyright violation rather than real ethics or taste. But whatever- I'm not going to complain about what took those ho-bag toys off the shelves as long as they're GONE.

So Long


Last night, Geoff Johns announced that he's finishing his run on Justice Society of America with issue 26.

Newsarama has an interview with him about it.

Johns has been co-writing or writing (with the exception of two story arcs) a Justice Society book for nine years. He helped pull great characters and character concepts from obscurity and showed readers that there are no bad superheroes when written with creativity and passion.

Edit: A great look back at Johns on JSA.

FTW!



via chinaSMACK

$73

David Leonhardt gives some perspective about some numbers thrown around in the auto company bailout debate.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

A Song

Olive often imagined there was an orchestra in her heart. Music heard only by her except when her heart broke open and it spilled out into the world.



If you want context, even though that's not the point, read TWOP's recap.

I'm really going to miss this show. Five left until it's gone.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Mad Scientist Alphabet Blocks



These make me wish I had $40 to burn.

If you aren't familiar with World of Warcraft....

Here's a review of the newest expansion pack.

If you are new, skip straight to the comments to see what people get out of it:

That quest is one of the only humane in the game. Many of the quests are horrifying if it weren't cartoonish.

You get to torture a prisoner with electricity, throw molotov cocktails at starving trolls, poke young apes with a sharp stick to piss off its mother and many other disturbing things.

It's like they read a report from Amnesty International on Iraq and made quests with them!

And:

Loads of fun. You get to kill Nessingwary's people (that you used to pal around with) who are killing rhinos, and then down the road you end up having to kill the rhinos for Fizzcrank's quests!

It's all about the gold!


I miss it now...

Searching for "God"

StateStats:
...shows you how popular a Google search query is in each U.S. state, giving a ranking like the one you see in the left column. It then compares this ranking with other ways of ranking states, like average income or population density, using Spearman's rank correlation.
For instance, here are the states by popularity of searching for "God".


And here are the correlations:

MetricCorrelation with God
Obesity0.84 (Positive, strong)
InfantMortality0.65 (Positive, moderate)
EnergyConsumption0.51 (Positive, moderate)
VotedForBush0.47 (Positive, moderate)
Illiteracy0.41 (Positive, moderate)
Rainfall0.39 (Positive, weak)
ViolentCrime0.33 (Positive, weak)
Unemployment0.33 (Positive, weak)
Suicide0.08 (Positive, very weak)
Area0.07 (Positive, very weak)
PercentElderly0.06 (Positive, very weak)
Density0.04 (Positive, very weak)
Longitude-0.02 (Negative, very weak)
Age-0.21 (Negative, weak)
LifeExpectancy-0.33 (Negative, weak)
SameSexCouples-0.38 (Negative, weak)
Latitude-0.45 (Negative, moderate)
Frost-0.48 (Negative, moderate)
VotedForObama-0.51 (Negative, moderate)
Income-0.55 (Negative, moderate)
HighSchoolGrad-0.67 (Negative, moderate)

Hmmm.

D&D Chart


Here's a chart showing some history of role-playing games up to the release of AD&D 2E.

Found at Adventures in Gaming via W Wheaton.

Monkeys and Gorillaz

So, my lovely wife has recently started a rather Sinocentric blog. She's already made a couple of good finds. Notably, this:




There's apparently an opera in London based on this Gorillaz meets The Monkey King concept. All I have to add is that there needs to be a feature length version of this on DVD. I'd watch the hell out of it.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Volume of One Human Breath



Get yours (or mine?) here.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Prop 8: The Musical

Too good to not pass on.

Check-out that all star cast.

New Titles!


You get three pages of these:
The First
The Second
The Third

Fox Schadenfreude

This video should be played over and over to Ben Stein and the rest of Fox's clueless economic cheerleaders, Clockwork Orange style.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Art From Shadows

Get Caught Up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena

I've never been Rickrolled, so I had to look it up. There's plenty more where that came from.

How Web Comic Are Made


HijiNKS Ensue is made with a Cintiq and apparently has great commentary. (I didn't hear it because my supervisor thinks I can't work with headphones on.)


Octopus Pie is made with pencil, pen, and ink. The finished comic.

Both were picked up at Webcomics.com.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Epic Rickroll


via W Wheaton

I'd Watch This


John Candy as Divine as Peter Pan.

Batman Getting Punched


Comics Should Be Good give us 10 covers of Batman being punched.

Previously: 10 covers of Superman being punched.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Breaking Radio Silence for This Important Announcement

I have to give a HUGE thank you to the always delightful and lovable Alliya for pointing me toward this one:

Ann Coulter's Jaw Is Wired SHUT. That, my friends, is sweet news, indeed.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Looking Over My Shoulder

Apparently, when someone came to see me in my cubicle, I happened to close a browser or something. Somehow this was noteworthy, and had to be communicated to Management. WTF. I guess this was evidence that I don't work or anything all day. It doesn't occur to people that every open action has an equal and opposite close operation. Or they don't know I open and close windows all day long? I'm sort of pissed, and I wish names were named so I wouldn't feel like everybody I see is a potential shit-disturber.

My screens face the "doorway" where anybody can walk by, which makes me super-uncomfortable all day long. Considering the nature of my job it's not even a very smart setup, and my desk can't accomodate any other configuration, and my office can't accomodate my desk being any other way.

I could get polarized privacy screens on my monitors, but I also get to do a lot of creative work, and putting big tinted windows on your monitor doesn't facilitate good color correction.

Anyway, if I don't have exclusively Work Stuff on my screen, I feel vulnerable to some Fuckhead trying to ruin my life.

So, sorry if I've been quiet here lately. I love my co-authors, and I read their posts, although I don't get to watch their videos.

Until we have a more stable financial environment where people aren't trying to point fingers to save thier own ass, only other people in the company will be allowed to look at extracurricular sites. IT is everyone's favorite scapegoat.

Sorry internet, I hope you understand... I'll miss you.

Astro Boy Teaser



Osamu Tezuka's manga, 鉄腕アトム in Japan and Astro Boy to us English speakers, will have a movie next fall.

The Verse


Want to see a map of the solar system where Firefly takes place? You can buy it, too.

(Via AICN)

To New York in About a Day

On her blog, Dorothy Gambrell, she who makes Cat and Girl, put together a map of the USA that shows the approximate travel time between the 50 most populous cities in the US, if we had a comparatively slow nationwide, high-speed rail system.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Crispin Glover's "Ben"

When Good Intentions...

... go SO, SO, FAR WRONG.



Intended to help toddlers become more "comfortable" with potty training, but, um- EW. I, for one, have no interest in my child anthropomorphizing his bodily functions ("NO, Mommy- Don't flush Mr. Poo!"), nor do I really want to send him to bed cuddling a piece of shit. I think we'll stick with cheering after he makes his deposits. It works just fine and I don't have to buy anything.

A History Prof's Plea to his Undergrads

Not a compliment to our (mine and Josh's) alma mater. I bring it up only because it reminded me of this schooling.

Cat on a Roomba

Sort of Goes With Otis's Post

Is it me, or is David Edelstein the best writer in the film critic business?

Check out his blog, at New York Magazine, and today's blog post where he looks at the new Twilight movie and does some comparing with the book.

FAIL!

ABC has canceled Pushing Daisies.

And another great TV show goes down too early.

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight

It's on talk radio, the coworkers are achatter about it, and I see a lot of Facebook statuses mentioning it.

Personally, I saw the last vampire movie I needed to see somewhere around 1995. ("I'm a vampire, but I CAN LOVE!")

What about you guys? fer it or agin it?

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'd Like Stuart Smalley In the Senate

Coleman vs. Franken!

Choose which ballots to dismiss and which to keep!

Speaking of (or in) Accents

Some are a bit off, but impressive nonetheless!

Ponder This


It is World Philosophy Day!

Idol Fail

Why can't I own a Canadian?

I can't believe I had forgotten to post about this classic. Truly one of my favorite websites, and all the more glorious because so many people can't seem to figure out that it's satire! Also, enjoy this fun little piece detailing some of the other biblical laws that appear alongside the passage about homosexuality being an abomination.

So you want to be a Cockney...

Accent Archives:
International Dialects of English Archive, Accents of England.
British Library Sound Archive, Accents and Dialects.
Listen and repeat.

Quick Question

Did GMail just change their appearance? Mine looks different and awful. Anybody else?

Lame Duck


He's shunned like the kid that smelled like pee in third grade.

Do Not Feed After Midnight


This undated handout photo shows a creature called a pygmy tarsier, believed for the eight decades to have been extinct. One of the world's smallest and rarest primates, it was rediscovered in Indonesia by Texas A and M University professor Sharon Gursky-Doyen in August. (Texas A and M University/Sharon Gursky-Doyen/Handout/Reuters)

The New and the Old



Rob Thomas, who many of you may know as the creator of the splendiferious Veronica Mars, is once again working with ABC to bring back Cupid, which he created and produced 10 years ago. Up there is the promo for the new series.

Down below is the first ten minutes of the first episode of the original version, starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall.



Of course, like so many other TV shows I've enjoyed, the original was killed after a short amount of time.

Here's to hoping that ABC will wake up and keep Pushing Dasies around.

I've found my replacement.

This solves all the IT problems using AI.
You'll see.

I Hope They're Right

(From GraphJam)

Scott Meets Family Circus

Decently funny.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wordle of Our Site

This is what we are writing about (omitting common English words and preformatted blogger junk).

This is fun...

Type in a zip code and see who all donated to prop 8, and what their stance was! Fun and disappointing, all at the same time. Sonorans gave $9,389.00 in support and $400.00 in opposition.

401(K)erblooey!

Looking at This Blog


Sometimes when I hadn't had time to dig up my own stuff, I just go here.

Cards as Weapons


Ricky Jay On Mythbusters

Let's All Chortle at The Joker's Boner



A hilarious round-up of the "Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels."

Killing the Living Dead

Here's a game based on Lovecraft's "Herbert West—Reanimator".

Basically you shoot zombies. Click quick if you're out of bullets and hit shift to use the shotgun once you find it and some ammo.

Because It's Something I Can Imagine Josh Doing



From Anotherrandomday. Really annoying site, but some funny stuff.

Are you a rich asshole?

If you are, you can rent a home in DC during inauguration week for outrageous amounts of teh moneys. Have a place in DC? Stay on someone's couch and rent that shit out to Rich People, for enough $ to pay your rent for several months! Makes me wish I had a place in DC, although then I would probably have to deal with a dead hooker in the closet when I got home....

A Review of Chinese Democracy

GNR's Chinese Democracy, to be exact. And not by me, oh no- I am TERRIBLE at reviews. No, by Chuck Klosterman.

A fun read, but I can't say that I'm in a real rush to have a listen.

Want to Try a Cuppza?

I really don't. But I'll watch you try one.

How about some bacon ice-cream? Apparently it is powerful enough to destroy entire sections of consumer choice theory.

(Note: one of the contestants on last year's Top Chef made bacon ice cream and all the judges loved it.)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Magic and the Brain

The spotlight shines on the magician’s assistant. The woman in the tiny white dress is a luminous beacon of beauty radiating from the stage to the audience. The Great Tomsoni announces he will change her dress from white to red. On the edge of their seats, the spectators strain to focus on the woman, burning her image deep into their retinas. Tomsoni claps his hands, and the spotlight dims ever so briefly before reflaring in a blaze of red. The woman is awash in a flood of redness.

Whoa, just a moment there! Switching color with the spotlight is not exactly what the audience had in mind. The magician stands at the side of the stage, looking pleased at his little joke. Yes, he admits, it was a cheap trick; his favorite kind, he explains devilishly. But you have to agree, he did turn her dress red—along with the rest of her. Please, indulge him and direct your attention once more to his beautiful assistant as he switches the lights back on for the next trick. He claps his hands, and the lights dim again; then the stage explodes in a supernova of whiteness. But wait! Her dress really has turned red. The Great Tomsoni has done it again!

The trick and its explanation by John Thompson (aka the Great Tomsoni) reveal a deep intuitive understanding of the neural processes taking place in the spectators’ brains—the kind of understanding that we neuroscientists can appropriate for our own scientific benefit.
Read the entire thing to get an explanation and a great deal more. There is a great deal of neurological trickery involved in magic, chief of which are the various species of inattentional blindness, as Richard Wiseman demonstrates:

Flexy FactBook

Here is a neat flex dashboard showcasing data from the C.I.A.'s World FactBook.

Driving Tales

Over at Comics Should Be Good, a Comic Book Resources Blog, each week contributer John Seavey takes a look at the storytelling engines writers and producer create to keep pumping out stories for TV shows, movie franchises, and comic books.

This week he looks at Firefly, and it's fantastic.

Check out his description of the column and then check out his blog for the archives. (Clicking on the tag "Storytelling Engine" will only bring up the last 20. The first ones started back in December of 2006.)

Remakes


What was once Escape to Witch Mountain has now become Race to Witch Mountain.

The kids appear to know what they are. There is no harmonica. Winkie appears to be missing. But there's Los Vegas, a flying saucer going through a tunnel, and an alien bounty hunter.

Disney already did a crappy remake in 1995, why must they do it again? (I mean beside the money reason.)

Where the Wild Things Are

Ain't It Cool News has a lengthy interview with Spike Jonze about his next movie, Where the Wild Things Are.

I only skimmed the interview because I really wanted to see the stills of the movie at the end.

Day Off!

Yup. I'm not working from not at work today. I've taken the day off to play some much needed catch-up on academic matters.

Monday, November 17, 2008

SketchUp 7 Released

Elex and I have used SketchUp to model our main office-- it is fun and most features are free. The new release has dynamic components that preserver relationships that were a bitch to maintain in earlier versions (e.g. the regular spacing of objects stretched in the model). Cool.

Glued Together

In case we are not already close enough, my friends, there's Glue:
Glue (formerly BlueOrganizer), connects you with friends around things you visit! Glue works automatically as you browse popular sites about books, music, movies, wines, restaurants, gadgets, stocks, actors, tv shows and other everyday things around the web.

The Glue Bar appears right on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought!

Spatter!

Gnnnngh... another Photoshop Disaster.

Google Flexes Too

SearchMash Flash Interface
The Google-built experimental Flex interface for Google search.
(Warning: it crashed my browser)

Star Trek XI

The full trailer for the next Star Trek movie is out.

It's very pretty, but.... Well. Yeah. It's pretty.

Note to Self: Need More Flare


Many-Eyes is fun, but if I really want geek cred I need to learn how to create unique visualizations in Flare, the platform on which Many Eyes is built:
Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques. Even better, flare features a modular design that lets developers create customized visualization techniques without having to reinvent the wheel.
Here is a Corporations by Political Contributions visualization made in Flare.

Govt. Land Ownership Map

Click for embiggening.

Plundering the Comics

Hollywood, in there never ending quest to mine creative resources from any and all, has 75 comics being made into films. Films include live action remakes of classic anime:
  • Ghost In The Shell (2010)
  • Akira (2011)
  • Ninja Scroll (2011)
and prequels:
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
  • X-Men Origins: Magneto (2009)
and sequels:
  • Iron Man 2 (2010)
  • Spider-Man 4 (2011)
  • Sin City 2 (2010)
  • Sin City 3 (2010)
Let's hope the suck ratio isn't to high. Also, this beats remaking remakes.

Evolution of Amazon's Shopping Cart Button.

I a little surprised to find myself reading this whole article, rather than just skimming and looking at the pictures. But I reassured myself a third of the way down by saying to myself "Well, somebody wrote all of it, so I'm not the biggest freak."

It's a nice anecdote of e-commerce evolution.

FLOW CHART!

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis
(That's their title.)

Letter and Number of the Day

Jane Espenson (writer of Dinosaurs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, and other things) gives a lot of advice at her blog on how to write for TV. Today, she posted a letter from someone who works on Sesame Street and their writing process.

I'd Have To Say...

... that this is pretty distracting:

Summers and Geithner

A lot of people voted for Obama, based on the economy. Here's a little information about two prospective Treasury Secretaries.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Beards

This makes me think of Elex.

Psychology of the Con

Here is a nice piece about the psychological dynamics of con games, including the author's account of falling for a classic pigeon drop:
Here's what happened to me. One slow Sunday afternoon, a man comes out of the restroom with a pearl necklace in his hand. "Found it on the bathroom floor" he says. He followed with "Geez, looks nice-I wonder who lost it?" Just then, the gas station's phone rings and a man asked if anyone found a pearl necklace that he had purchased as a gift for his wife. He offers a $200 reward for the necklace's return. I tell him that a customer found it. "OK" he says, "I'll be there in 30 minutes." I give him the ARCO address and he gives me his phone number. The man who found the necklace hears all this but tells me he is running late for a job interview and cannot wait for the other man to arrive.
...
Here is a video of the pigeon drop in action:

While were on the subject, here is the classic Three-card Monte/Matchbox Shuffle games:

I have see Three-card Monte live on Venice beach, along with other scams and it amazed me that people fall for them. Many years and psychology classes later I understand the simple truth: people are consistently, in some simple ways, suckers.

Google and Prediction on Search

Google has a site devoted to displaying predicted flue occurrence in the US that outperforms the CDC:
We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.
This is a great application of prediction and trend analysis that is open to the benevolent(ish) dictators at Google. They have terabyte upon terabyte of our search data that analysts, marketers and many others put to less humane ends, so it nice to see something like this once and a while.

Fortress of Solitude


Click for embiggening. Ok, it's really a gypsum formation in a Mexican lead mine, but hey it sure looks like it.

Lolfedchairs



From this Economist's View post.

The Bush Legacy


That sums it up America America-- two in the Bush, one in the tush.

Update
: For the curious, here is the context.

If Cute Could Kill



This French kid is so damned cute, this video could be dangerous to your health!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

I Just Can't Let It Go.

An Op-Ed from the President of the Human Rights Campaign.

Pie Graph

Best pie graph, ever.

Obama's CTO Priorities

Barack Obama is going to appoint the nation's first Corporate Technology Officer (CTO). What should be the top technological priorities of the administration?
  • Ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral?
  • ensure our privacy and repeal the patriot act?
  • Repeal the Digital Milennium Copyright Act (DMCA)?
  • Open Government Data (APIs, XML, RSS)?
Go vote and the results will be sent to the new administration!

Musical Context


This is Alanis Morissette's version of "My Humps." Which is delightful and funny.

Here you can find the original version from the (craptastic) Black Eyed Peas.

Speaking of Robert Jordan...

Slashdot told me that there are going to be games, and movies based on The Wheel of Time Series.
BTW, the series is supposed to be finished by Brandon Sanderson and released next year. Also, I'll probably never read any of them. :P

Not to be hyperbolic...

But this camera is probably the best advance in cinema photography in the last 50 years. Going digital wasn't worth it until now.

It's not just me, is it?

That is a picture of NOPPON (ノッポン) the official mascot for the Tokyo Tower.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Amazon's Mechanical Turk Web Service

Incorporate a network of humans into your software. Slightly unsettling, yet interesting.
Now I can break all those CAPTCHA's

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans.

WOW.

I love street art- music, free-form graffiti, stencils, murals... I think it's just awesome. But this guy... wow. I would SO love to see that stuff in person.

The New/Old Enterprise

The first full shots of the Enterprise from the new movie.

From here.

I can't let people think that Heels is the closest thing to a Trekkie in this bunch.

Face Like a Frog

I found this just by accident.

Music By Danny Elfman

Edit: The related videos are wierd and awesome too, i you get to the end of this one.
I found this. Note: I haven't watched this entire follow-up video.

YouTube could steal your life, but drugs will influence your animations.

Like Dancing on Ice and Fire

HBO has ordered a pilot based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and probably the rest of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. (Variety's report and George R.R. Martin's blog.)

Ain't It Cool News says that Martin himself will be one of the writers on the show.

With that in mind and at least three more books, and a novella, to come, fans of the books must be asking, will his "high" fantasy series end up like Robert Jordan's, extended far past the original planned number of books only to find the last one written by someone else?

Brak / Blur

Line Graph for Otis

By request, I have created a visualization where you can see countries overcoming one another in projected GDP:
Control-click to select and unselect countries for bar graph display.

It's Just the Truth!

engrish, t-shirt, when-i-sht
more the engrish!

Sharing

Oh my goodness, they are so frakkin' ADORABLE.

Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures
see Sarah Palin pictures


(Sometime later we will address my obsession with swear-words that are not swear-words.)

A Visualization by Johnny Logic

Whipped this up with some data from Wikipedia, which in turn came from the IMF.

More? Seriously?

My geeky darlings- you have heard of this, yes?



I suppose I have made no effort to keep track of the Star Trek related "things," but I honestly thought that Star Trek was, well... kinda over. (Is this sacrilegious? I apologize. I am of the ignorant on matters relating to Star Trek.)

But, if you are one of those who loves all things Star Trek, I hope, for your sake, that this is really good. The actors look very, um, dewy.

Want One!

I love both pie and Excel.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

My Weird Little Korean Doll Thingy 2

Not too bad.

My Weird Little Korean Doll Thingy

Almost exactly what I'm wearing today.

A Change-up We Can Believe In

Another electoral stunner today, as Tim Lincecum has one the Cy Young award.

Lincecum is a biomechanical freak who looks about twelve years old and can walk on his hands. How he generates upper 90's heat from his tiny, little pixie-man body is (sort of) detailed in this SI article.

The other notable aspect of this is that it is a sign that statheads are gaining more influence in baseball. There was a time when Brandon Webb's 22 Wins would have assured him the Cy Young, but now more people are have been convinced by the stathead movement that wins are much more luck based then things like ERA and strikeout to walk ratio.

So Tim Lincecum's victory is victory for intelligent data analysis and against judging people based on their appearances.

USA! USA!