friday fun
jdupuis | December 4, 2009Please forgive the ScienceBlogs nepotism this time around, but by far the most amusing thing I've seen on the Internet the last few weeks is SciBling Chad Orzel's video of the Bohr-Einstein Debates. With puppets, of course.
Anyways, let's let Chad explain:
Back during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised to do a re-enactment of the Bohr-Einstein debates using puppets if you contributed enough to claim $2,000 of the Hewlett-Packard contribution to the Social Media Challenge. I obviously aimed too low, because the final take was $4064.70, more than twice the threshold for a puppet show.
So…
jdupuis | November 27, 2009Actually, not jackass, but asshole, but this is a family blog, at least as far as post titles are concerned.
In any case, Scott Berkun's Asshole driven development post on practices in the software industry from a couple of years ago is so true that it almost passes from being funny to being sad. Yes, in my previous career, I was a software developer in the insurance industry and while I had a couple of great bosses (you know who you are!), there were a couple who were...
Well, read on:
Asshole Driven development (ADD) - Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole…
jdupuis | November 20, 2009I like to cook. I have a few standard, signature dishes where I more or less freestyle every time I make them -- beef stew, chili, quesadillas, pasta sauce.
I also like to try new things. For example, I'll probably be making Tyler Hamilton's lamb shank Irish stew this weekend. So yeah, the first time I make something I usually follow the recipe pretty closely; and I find a lot of my recipes on the web.
But, at the same time I also own a fair number of cookbooks which I do like to use for their recipes and, more importantly, for a bit of immersion into a style or a philosophy or a…
jdupuis | November 13, 2009Ok, I know this one stretches any reasonable definition of the word "fun."
But in my defense, I think a few good cringes is a great way to celebrate Friday the 13th.
Over on Slashfood, one of my favourite foodie blogs, there's a couple of recent posts on 10 Dirty Little Restaurant Secrets and 10 More Dirty Restaurant Tricks, basically focusing on the disgusting and revolting shortcuts that restaurants take to save a little time and, mostly, money.
A couple of my "favourites" from the second post, based on reader comments to the first post:
10. Reusing Leftovers
70s waitress said: "When I…
jdupuis | November 6, 2009Bookgasm has a very fun guest post by Ben H. Winters, author of the recently published Jane Austen pastiche/adaptation/expansion Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.
Since writing SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, I've gotten a ton of feedback about how nice it is that I've made Jane Austen appealing to certain readers -- meaning readers who previously suffered a persistent allergy to The Classics. I am complimented for taking the prim and decorous Jane Austen and making her a) really violent, and b) really funny.
The first compliment I will gladly accept. Over the decades since…
jdupuis | October 30, 2009Actually, it's not really about misconceptions that we learn only in school, it's more about urban legend/zeitgeist stuff that eveyone knows.
Anyways, The 10 Biggest Misconceptions We Learn In School is from Manolith, a site I've never heard of before. It's rude and crude and definitely not for the faint of heart. Some of the points hit their mark and some miss pretty badly. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Nevertheless, some of them are also pretty amusing:
1. Einstein got bad grades in school
Um... have you heard about this guy Einstein? Famous physicist? Relativity and all that? A genius,…
jdupuis | October 23, 2009Ah, but maybe he would if they were Cthulhu plushies!
Check this out from Sci Fi Wire: 14 great Cthulhu toys that make devouring souls fun!
H.P. Lovecraft's elder god Cthulhu is supposed to be terrifying, hideous and awe-inspiring--but whoever knew he could be this darn cute? Check out 14 toys that take a slimy monster and turn it cuddly.
It's sick, twisted fun. My favourite is the Cthulhu Santa, but the wall trophy, suction cup, plush slippers and "My Little Pony Cthulhu" are all great too.
jdupuis | October 16, 2009And I'm not talking about students the morning after a pub night!
It seems that the University of Florida has actually added zombie invasions to their campus emergency plans.
You should watch, for example, for "increasing numbers of gruesome unexplained deaths and disappearances, especially at night" and listen for "lots of strange moaning." The guide includes an "Infected Co-Worker Dispatch Form" for Florida employees to let superiors know when a colleague exhibits signs of zombie behavior, with a checklist of such behaviors, including "references to wanting to eat brains," "recently dead…
jdupuis | October 9, 2009Yes, The Onion again. It's only been two weeks since the last one. I just couldn't help myself.
There's just something about global warming humour that appeals to my sense of the absurd.
ZACKENBERG RESEARCH STATION, GREENLAND--Claiming it to be one of the most dramatic and visible signs of climate change to date, researchers said Monday that receding polar ice caps have revealed nearly 200 clandestine lairs once buried deep beneath hundreds of feet of Arctic ice.
"We always assumed there would be some secret lairs here and there, but the sheer number now being exposed is indeed troubling,"…
jdupuis | October 2, 2009Yes, it's the IgNobel Awards for 2009!
Let's take a look at a couple of the more amusing ones:
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining -- by experiment -- whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
REFERENCE: "Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull?" Stephan A. Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael J. Thali and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Journal of…
jdupuis | September 25, 2009God, I love The Onion: Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.
An international panel of leading anthropologists, cultural critics, biologists, and social theorists announced this week that Western civilization will reach its lowest conceivable point at 3:32 p.m. Friday.
"From the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings to the stirring symphonies of Mozart to today's hot-dog eating competitions and action films with comical gerbils, culture has descended into a festering pool of mass ignorance," said Yale sociologist Paul Riordan, who has spent his career analyzing…
jdupuis | September 18, 2009As many have not doubt noticed over the months and years of my blog's existence, I am a hardcore science fiction fan. And just as with the science/librarian world, there are countless blogs and other sites about the science fictions/fantasy/horror worlds. And of course, I have trouble keeping up with all the happenings in that particular blogosphere.
To make it a bit easier (and more enjoyable) on myself, I created a Friendfeed group and added a bunch of feeds to it -- a smallish assortment of reviewers, authors, publishers and news sites. I created it a few weeks ago and it's really made…
jdupuis | September 18, 2009I'm talking about the new-to-me Wolfgang's Vault! Among other things, it includes a Vault Store, where you can buy prints and other swag; the Concert vault with 2859 concerts, the Crawdaddy magazine & archives. The concerts material can be sliced & diced into playlists and radio shows.
The concerts are by, among others: The Allman Brothers, The Band, Black Sabbath, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Linda Ronstadt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, MC5, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Van Morrison and The Who.
As I type this, I'm listening…
jdupuis | September 11, 2009No, I don't mean the werewolf entry in Wikipedia, I mean the use of Wikipedia by werewolves.
You see, I recently received a review copy of The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten by Ritch Duncan, Bob Powers and Emily Flake.
As you can imagine, it an imaginary non-fiction book helping new werewolves to cope with their newly transformed lives -- it talks about work, romance and all the rest. I'm not quite finished it yet, but it's very amusing and definitely worth a look if you like that kind of thing.
What struck me, though, is something from the entry on figuring out when…
jdupuis | September 4, 2009I just love those articles that turn up every once in a while that make fun of the typos and factual errors students make on their exams and term papers. I know it's cruel but I can't help myself. Best Wank and Gaza: this year's top exam howlers is a pretty good example of the form.
Meanwhile, a biology student spent an entire paper telling Kevin Reiling, from the Faculty of Sciences at Staffordshire University, about the science of gnomes.
"It took me a while to realise she was referring to genomes," Dr Reiling remarked.
jdupuis | August 28, 2009John Scalzi has a couple of very amusing posts at the AMC TV website, John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design:
Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view ("I can't see a thing in this helmet!" -- Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don't just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.
And John Scalzi's Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs - Star Trek Edition:
V'Ger
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a…
jdupuis | August 21, 2009Oooh. I love lists of books!
And, hey, I'm on a blogcation, you're probably on vacation too. So here's some reading material for the beach, backyard or cottage!
SCIENCE
Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones (Little, Brown £20) Enthralling life leads us through Darwin's entire 40-year career after the Beagle's return from the Galapagos islands.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (HarperPerennial £8.99) Brilliantly debunks faddy scientific "breakthroughs" and exposes the barefaced fraudulence of fringe medicine; read this book and you won't get fooled again.
13…
jdupuis | August 14, 2009One of the most important things librarians do to manage their book collections is weed. That involves removing the really old, useless stuff to make way for the shiny, new, useful stuff. Shelf space is limited, of course, but you also don't want to clutter your shelves with items that are too outdated to be useful to your patrons.
Academic libraries have a slightly different mandate in this area than public libraries -- we often serve patron communities that study the history of various disciplines so for them the old stuff can also provide valuable insight into the history and culture of…
jdupuis | August 7, 2009Via BoingBoing, this looks like one hell of a cool book: The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive! (O'Reilly page).
With this unique traveler's guide, you'll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. Travel to Munich to see the world's largest science museum, watch Foucault's pendulum swinging in Paris, ponder a descendant of Newton's apple tree at Trinity College, Cambridge, and more. Each site in The Geek Atlas focuses on discoveries or inventions, and includes information…
jdupuis | July 31, 2009Most of these look odd, interesting, weird, useless or some combination of the above.
Here's a couple of examples:
Underwater Basket Weaving
Philosophy and Star Trek
Joy of Garbage
(Via Ask-Dr-Kirk.)