My Tumble Blog.
A lighter, more frequently updated version of this mess.

Reagan brings the smackdown!

YouTube summary:

"A quick scene from the 1964 movie "the Killers" in which Ronald Reagan (playing the sole bad guy role of his career) gets punched out by John Cassavetes."

Gallery of Japanese psychiatric art

Interesting collection of Japanese psychiatric drug advertisements. Link

Richard Nixon resignation outtakes

Nietzsche Family Circus

"The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote."

Link




Nietzsche Family Circus

The Degeneration of America - links of the day

Republican surrounds himself with children so he can't be asked about the Foley sex scandal:

Reporter: Congressman, do you mind asking the children to leave the room so we can have a frank discussion of this, because it's an adult topic. It just doesn't seem appropriate to me.

Reynolds: I'll take your questions, but I'm not going to ask any of my supporters to leave. [...]

Reporter: Who are the children, Congressman? Who are these children?

Reynolds: Pardon me?

Reporter: Who are these children?

Reynolds: Well, a number of them are from the community. There are several of the "thirtysomething" set that are here and uh I've known them and I've known their children as they were born.

Reporter: Do you think it's appropriate for them to be listening to the subject matter though?

Reynolds: Sir, I'll be happy to answer your questions, I'm still, uh...

The Degeneration of America - links of the day

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

Someone sends Olbermann fake anthrax, NY Post makes fun of him for it

The Most Isolated Country in the World

Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?

I'm gonna have to pass on this one...

Thanks Steve!
Podcamp Boston 2006
Zefrank

Subway Confessions

The other night while riding the 4 Train back home from work, I overheard a conversation between two homeless men. It was a interesting and unusually candid view into their lives.

This was one of the highlights:

"You know what I do? I smoke my mother fuckin' crack.
And if I wanna smoke my crack I don't pay for shit. I aint gotta pay for a damn thing! You know why?... GOD pays for it."

Make of this what you will.

Pearl Gross: Comedy on a Higher Octave

Watch the video

Is she a product of the sterile, insular monoculture of the American south?

Is she such a hard-core follower of her religion, that any attempts to produce funny, original material is stifled and deemed inappropriate by traditional Christian morals and values?

Is she just naturally unfunny?

Is she one of Jay Leno's writers?

Whatever she is, I find myself fascinated with her.

New Yorker Cartoon Editor on humor: (Found via Boing Boing)

The experience of humor is similar to the “ah-ha” moment of two things coming together. For humor, two things have to come together to produce the experience of laughter. Normal and abnormal; these things reconciled in a moment, and usually it’s a normal situation violated in some way that we can tolerate. You have to have something normal that becomes abnormal, or something that looks abnormal and then become normal.

So, normal: there’s a guy on the phone, saying “No, Thursday’s out. How about never - is never good for you?” Everything is normal - the office, the syntax of politeness - and yet the message is rude. We have a violation where we have a
normal situation.

Clearly a subject Ms. Gross has studied extensively.

Watch the video
Link to New Yorker article

Pin dropping can be hazardous

I'd like to apologize for my long absence, I know it sucks when bloggers go for long periods without providing any new content, so from now on I'll do my best to update this site more regularly - I've said this to myself before, but putting it in writing and posting it here gives it more weight.

Lots of thanks to Gill at Sometimes its Peaceful for making this blog "The Blog of the Day". And thanks to TheWeblogProject for linking to me in a post about people talking about the project.

I've been reading blogs for a long time, but I'm still relatively new at the content producing side of things, and I realize that this blog still has a ways to go. So feel free to leave any comments about things you like or don't like. It's very helpful.

Massive footprints of the microscopic

While recently browsing through the archives of IT Conversations I found this great installment of Tech Nation with Brian Greene, a leading expert on Superstring Theory and the author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos. He talks about his two books and delivers some of his trademark analogies and metaphors for explaining the sometimes hard to grasp complexities of astrophysics. The segment of his interview that I found particularly interesting is when he talks about one of his latest ideas for detecting the existence of superstrings. Strings-if they do exist-are far to small to be witnessed directly with current technology, and even indirect methods such as particle acceleration have proven to be ineffective. Greene suggests that the evidence of strings might in-fact be visible on massive scales spread out across the cosmos. He theorizes that superstrings could have left imprints in the universe when it was condensed into an unimaginably small size just before the big-bang, and as the universe expanded, the imprints of these ancient strings expanded with it, and might still exist today spread out across the universe, detectable by patterns in temperature variations. (He uses a brilliant inflated balloon analogy to explain this)

I have to admit, it seems a bit far fetched. Particularly when you consider that the pre-big bang universe was just one homogenized molten ball of matter with nothing even suggesting the galaxies and stars that would later develop, its hard to imagine that the footprints the strings left behind could survive in a recognizable and detectable form. And if these imprints do exist it might be extremely difficult to detect the temperature patterns across vast regions of space.
But one really cant deny the beauty of this theory. I hope my skepticism turns out to be short-sighted.

Listen to Moira Gunn interview Brian Greene on Tech Nation

TheWeblogProject. An open source movie about blogging

"TheWeblogProject is designed to be a completely different movie, because featured stars, producers, fundraisers and actors of TheWeblogProject movie are the bloggers themselves. TheWeblogProject is different from a traditional movie in several other respects:

It will be distributed, FREE, via P2P and via the Internet Archive, under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

It will be Folksonomy-enabled.

Open source: complete source footage will be distributed to all supporting bloggers for unlimited remixing."

Brilliant. I love seeing these creative uses of open source licensing.
Lets hope the prank porn submissions are kept to a minimum.

More info on The Weblog Project

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple

These three Lectures given by theoretical physicist Hans Beth in 1999 basically sum up all of the developments of quantum mechanics in the 20th century.

"Intended for an audience of Professor Bethe's neighbors at Kendal, the lectures hold appeal for experts and non-experts alike. The presentation makes use of limited mathematics while focusing on the personal and historical perspectives of one of the principal architects of quantum theory whose career in physics spans 75 years."

"Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple"

Fly the Repressive Skys

Thinking of taking a trip to North Korea? Look no further. The "Korean Friendship Association" (sort of the official fansite of the DPRK) is organizing a very specal delegation to the DPRK this summer and they've put together this super-slick flash movie that highlights all of the countries' limited attractions. It includes plenty of government approved, generic (stock photography?) photos of the lush countryside and Pyongyang's drab, boxy architecture. Plus fun multicultural relay races! I guess their not so bad after all.

The site claims:

"This trip is unique in its kind because for the first time in history the vistor will have the opportunity of not only visit main monuments and spots of the DPRK, but to share a part of life in North Korea by helping the citizens in their daily affairs and share with them work, dances and meals."

Sign me up.

Link to flash movie

North Korean propaganda posters
Korean Friendship Association website

Good sportsmanship?

I wonder what the FCC has to say about this.

Yahoo! sports news

KANA HAKKLIHA!

Those crazy 1980's Estonians! Its amazing what a little soviet occupation can do to a country's attitude regarding avian cruelty.

Watch this bizarre and freakish Estonian TV commercial for minced chicken meat.
(Keep in mind this is not a re-edited version of some old commercial, this is the way it originally aired)

I still think its ten times better than the average McDonalds ad.

See more of these fascinating Estonian commercials here

Oh sure, we know 'The MTVs'. We're totally down with it. No diggty.

One of the goals that many advertising campaigns strive for is the ability to connect with their target audience. Problem is, a lot of advertising execs lack the creativity and most importantly, the knowledge of the culture they are trying to reach, and thus we end up with misplaced urban slang circa 1986, or completely silly failures like this one.

"Hey, I know you like that McDonalds cheeseburger, but I gotta ask.... would you hit it?"

Weird and Unusual Wikipedia Articles

This is why I love Wikipedia. You'd never find this kind of stuff in any so called "real" encyclopedias.

Link

A charmingly antiquated video of Steve Jobs introducing the original Macintosh in 1984

"Never trust a computer you can't lift!" Link

It's Funny Because it's True

You know, it's interesting that despite all the differences in London's municipal system compared to New York's, it appears that London's public transportation system has a suckage level thats right on-par with New York City's MTA.

Listen to the song "London Underground" by Adaption (Not Safe For Work)

If you're in NY, simply replace every mention of London Underground with Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and you have a spot-on musical commentary that accurately reflects the feelings many of us are having towards the MTA these days.

...And he Really Means it This Time

"As Slow As Possible", one of the many compositions by the late experimental composer John Cage, originally written in 1985 as a 20 minute piece for piano, is currently in the very first stage of it's longest performance ever. The concert began in 2001, the first sound was produced in February 2003. The final note won't be heard until 2639.

From the ASLSP site, translated from German:

"In 1985 ASLSP was created as a version for the piano but in 1987 John Cage changed it for the organ at the suggestion of the organist Gerd Zacher. 10 years after that, in 1997, on a symposium for organs in Trossingen, the question how one can understand „as slow as possible” and how one should perform the piece came up. Organists, musicologists, organbuilding workers, theologians and philosophers talk about the technical, the aesthetic and the philosophical aspects that can meet the title and the piece. The question of how to realise the opus leads to the conclusion that „as slow as possible” can be thought and played indefinetly – at least as long as the life of an organ is and also as long as peace and creativity in the following generations exists."

Link to official website

The thought of this at first makes me feel more than a bit pessimistic. But it also gives me an equal sense of optimism just knowing that there are people in this world that are forward thinking enough to even consider putting on such an IMMENSE thing like this with the intention of it being completed.

Whether its successful or not, I think this is a brilliant project that I'm sure John Cage would approve of.

Saturn and several of its moons

Amazing stuff.

More images from the Cassini-Huygens mission here

Lewis Carroll's Scrapbook

Bjork's insane Triumph of a Heart video directed by Spike Jones

What do you believe is true even though you have no way of proving it?