humour
aardvarchaeology | November 26, 2010A Gambian moment.
We're in an extremely dilapidated taxi that has stalled at the roadside, just a stone's throw from Tanji village's main taxi hub. Before getting into the car, my wife and I had to haggle for ten minutes with the drivers assembled there under the dull gaze of the village idiot. And then we were accused of rich white chauvinism by an angry man whose whole family the assembled drivers forced to change cars because of us. But now the car has stalled, and no amount of joining the two wires dangling under the wheel will get it to go.
All the windows are open in the afternoon heat…
illconsidered | November 24, 2010As fate would have it, no sooner does a disengenous commenter here point out the unusual cold and snow falling on my hometown of Vancouver, Canada than I come accross this amusing comic from Jen Sorenson:
illconsidered | November 12, 2010More entertaining than informative, greenman's latest Crock of the Week surveys the history of climate change in the movies!
Gotta dust off those old Mad Max VHS tapes again...
illconsidered | November 5, 2010This Youtube is long, but it is very well done, and frankly hilarious. Many of our favorite denier memes would fit in very comfortably as well.
Of course, after the laughing stops, the congressional hearings will begin.
aardvarchaeology | October 22, 2010Last night I attended Junior's school concert in the church of St. Catherine in Stockholm. Here are some of the lyrics sung by the 13-14-year-olds in front of the altar.
Because the world is round it turns me on
Because the wind is high it blows my mind
"Because", Lennon & McCartney
And
Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination
Silently the senses abandon their defenses
Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendor
Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender
Turn your face away from the garish light of day
Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling…
illconsidered | October 19, 2010Okay, what with the "made in China" phenomenom and the boom in Japanese electronics long before, we are all familiar with bad translations in our product packaging and instructions, but this goes a bit beyond that!
Below are the washing instructions for a pair of jeans my wife bought today. Read carefully!
I think I will suggest the traditional marital roles next time laundry day comes around, because I don't see how I can win with this one!
illconsidered | October 11, 2010File this one in the "sad but true" department: Donald Duck learns what Glenn Beck is really about.
And apparently he was not happy about it!
aardvarchaeology | October 3, 2010A buddy and namesake of mine has a father who is a literature scholar. He wrote his thesis on absurdist drama, Beckett and Ionesco, that sort of thing. This influenced his son's vocabulary. Once about 1970, when the scholar was out on a walk with his little boy in a stroller, they passed a large tractor and a group of people. The boy was greatly impressed by the tractor, pointed to it and exclaimed, "Absurd tractor!". The bystanders stared in amazement.
illconsidered | September 3, 2010I just had to highlight a couple of good laughs from this week's GWNews:
and this one:
(source)
h/t to Kate at ClimateSight for highlighting the first one. Be sure to visit this page of hers for a bunch of other good ones inlined by commenters.
aardvarchaeology | August 29, 2010
[More about sex,, humour; sex, humor.]
One of the perks of keeping a well-visited blog is that you get to spy on people using search engines. Extreme Tracking keeps a list for me of the latest search terms which have led people to Aard. It turns out that they're always largely porn surfers. My entry about the German locksmith who has four children with his long-lost sister / common-law wife attracts continual interest from people who are probably really disappointed to find nothing prurient there. And there's always the people who mistype "big booty" and end up at my entry about Iron Age…
illconsidered | August 25, 2010As in the example I just highlighted, we climate mitigation advocates are frequently attacked for alledgedly not wanting to do anything to promote or help people adapt to changes that are after all already underway.
This post is meant to change that lack of balance on A Few Things Ill Considered.
To all and sundry, I bring to your attention the definitive guide to adaptation in the face of global climate disruption:
(This is a real book, by the way!)
For those who like to skip to the end, here is the back cover. And speaking of skip, thanks to him for bringing this to my attention, a good…
illconsidered | August 11, 2010It seems, like Galileo before him, Lord Monckton is facing persecution from the established institutions of his day.
This has Mike Mann's fingerprints all over it. Will "The Team" stop at nothing?
illconsidered | July 29, 2010Dr Roy Spencer, normally a darling of the septics, is getting the full denialist savaging over at his own blog for daring to defend the physical basis for the greenhouse effect.
CanadaFreePress saw "NASA" in his job title and must have mistaken him for Jim Hansen as they hold nothing back in their scorn.
All very amusing!
illconsidered | July 23, 2010Brilliant!
When faced with enemy graphs, remember that if extent is dropping then clearly we are looking at the wrong metric. Perhaps we should look at volume instead, unless that is dropping too, in which case we should look at area. If all that fails take a look at extent again because it might have gone up again in the meantime. If not then we should look to regional ice trends or if push comes to shove abandon the arctic entirely and talk about Antarctica instead. This is not cherrypicking because we know there is a recovery it is only a matter of finding a metric that shows it.
jdupuis | July 23, 2010This is soooo funny. So funny it hurts. Ok, so maybe I've been guilty of one or two of these. Ok, maybe you have too. The more you're guilty, the funnier it is.
To many, the Internet is a world full of promise.
To others, a ripe field ready to be harvested by douchebags.
Both are true.
I think the first douchebag was the knight in medieval times. You just know he clickity-clanked across the village in that dopey metal armor and thought he was so cool.
Oh look at me. I have armor!
And then he'd return to the castle and push the jester around with his joust. Jousting him in the ass,…
illconsidered | July 21, 2010Courtesy of commenter "Cornelius Breadbasket" at John Cook's Skeptical Science:
100 climate deniers go into a bar.
Spencer goes up to the landlord and asks "do you sell pure alcohol?" "No mate, just the usual wines, beers and spirits" he replies. "Right lads, next pub" says Spencer.
The landlord is stunned. "What's wrong?" he asks. "Nothing mate" replies Spencer, it's just we require 100% proof".
Of course, 100% proof is only 50% alcohol, but since when did that lot get anything right? :o)
jdupuis | July 16, 2010So, it appears that Batman is on Twitter.
From the newly renamed Blastr site, I give you a selection of Batman's 34 greatest tweets:
Watch out criminal scum, I'm trying to kick caffeine again. And we all remembered what happened last time, don't we? DON'T WE!!!
Going to help with the clean up effort in the Gulf. And by "clean up effort" I mean breaking some BP exec's knee caps.
Hey Tony Stark, there's a "Rich Drunk Douchebags Anonymous" meeting tomorrow. I'll sign you up for a seat. With my fists.
Arkham is a disgusting, human rights-violating hellhole. It's like my Disneyland.
What do I call…