humour
aardvarchaeology | September 14, 2008
With kudos to Mattias who sent me the link, here are Stephen Lynch & Mark Teich performing a fine song about being a 14-y-o D&D-playing young man. To those of our readers who currently fit that description, let me say that just a few years from now you will no longer have the least interest in sneering high-school jock girls. Instead you will attract the intimate affections of bright college freshwomen, some of whom will demand to do some pretty wild things with you, including but not limited to the playing of D&D.
aardvarchaeology | September 11, 2008I recently read this year's Hugo-winning novel, Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. (Getting it sent to my local branch library from Malmö cost me one euro!) It's a hard-boiled detective story set in an alternative present where Israel was squashed by irate Arab neighbours in 1948 and much of the world's surviving Jewry ended up in a small reservation in south-west Alaska. An exciting read, and very lyrically written. Full of badass Hasidic gangstas.
One detail in the story was so silly that I had to look it up. And whaddya know -- eruvin are real.
There are a lot of things…
illconsidered | September 3, 2008I was just kidding about that Sarah Palin-osmosis-experience crack...but apparently Frank Gaffney at TownHall.com takes it all seriously!
As that state's governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis - if nothing else - about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden.
(h/t to Science Avenger from the comments]
illconsidered | September 2, 2008Okay, when I first heard this about McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin:
I figured it was just an unscripted blunder by a marginal participant. But now I see this:
After I stopped laughing, I realized it is actually going to be one of their wingnut talking points. Sarah Palin knows about foreign policy because she lives close to Russia! Could you be any more ridiculous?
Now excuse me, I am going to go put a few particle physics texts under my pillow so I can solve the mystery of Dark Matter in the morning....
[h/t to Dispatches from the Culture War]
illconsidered | August 20, 2008I poke into Jennifer Marohasy's blog from time to time, though I am no longer a regular commenter. I gave that up a couple of years ago but still take any special cases as opportunities to chime in again. She's one of those standard types of sceptics, the "scientist" from another discipline just "honestly" investigating an important issue about which she has no preconceptions.
Well, a recent post prompted Deltoid's Tim Lambert to shake his head in consternation as Jennifer gives a soapbox to yet another crackpot pseudo-science post where we are told that the concept of radiative equilibrium…
aardvarchaeology | August 18, 2008
I got my driver's licence late, at age 22, because I wasn't interested in cars and didn't want to support automotive culture. When I finally did get myself a licence, it was because I was starting to feel embarrassed at being driven everywhere by my wife and my colleagues. I didn't buy a car of my own until I was 33.
But long before trying out any real cars, I learned a thing or two about them from the 1987 computer game Test Drive. Most importantly, I learned what the gears are for. They are there because a car's engine can't stand an infinitely high rate of revolution. And, I also learned…
illconsidered | August 8, 2008Again, just because!
Love that music, too. I heard that on SBS in Tasmania in 2001 and struggled hard to find out what it was but never did. Now I know, "Sweet Lullaby" by Deep Forest (this video has a different version). Waiting for the CD now.
illconsidered | August 7, 2008What would adapting to climate change be like? A picture is worth a thousand words:
But a second picture is worth a few thousand more!
I saw the kids protecting their families from the rising tide at the beach and thought it was an amusing analogy. The running-away photo was just an unforeseen bonus!
I, and the throngs of others, were at that overcrowded beach to see some fireworks. Well actually to take pictures of the fireworks. After four evenings of this, all part of Vancouver's "Celebration of Light" fireworks competition, I think I have learned the basics of photographing them.…
illconsidered | August 1, 2008Posted just because I love this (besides, it's Friday, let's go dancing!)
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
illconsidered | July 30, 2008Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy is a new film from scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olsen ("Rediagnosing the Oceans", "Flock of Dodos") and rather than being a film about global warming, it is a film about the making of a film about global warming. Sizzle is also a self described "novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary and reality." Olsen, as well as directing, is the main character who sets out to emulate Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth but this time featuring the actual scientists.
The challenge of combining three genres is avoiding failure three times. The film needs to…
aardvarchaeology | July 28, 2008Yesterday my glorious daughter turned 5. Today my radiant son turned 10. In the maternity ward five years ago I quipped to the nurses, "The kids being born one day apart, I suppose I'm only fertile for one week each year".
Replied one of them, "I think you're probably only romantic for one week each year."
illconsidered | July 10, 2008The good news: George W Bush actually does know what a disgrace US economic policy has been for the environmental health of the world.
The bad news?
He thinks it is funny.
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
BTW, a remedy for any possible feelings of nausea upon reading that can be had by reading to…
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2008Over at Podcastle, I just heard an amazing reading/performance of an amazing surrealist love story, "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery". It was written by John Schoffstall, first published as text two years ago, and read by Heather Lindsley at Random Jane. It's got some gore and a few naughty words, it's nerdily intellectual, it's lyrically written and it's really, really funny.
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2008
Looking closer at this cover of a Chinese pirate edition of Disney's 1937 animated feature Snow White, we find a couple of fine Engrish phrases.
"Latinum Edition" is pretty good. But wouldn't you agree that "Still the Fairest of the Mall" takes the cake?
aardvarchaeology | May 22, 2008
I've posted a fine example of Ansiktsburk song lyrics before: listen to a song in a language you don't understand, and try to imagine that it is actually sung in your own language though with a funny accent. Then write down whatever words you can half make out. Thus the Swedish drinking song "Helan går" becomes "Hell and gore, shun hope Father Alan, lay!".
Now Paddy K directs my attention to a new permutation of this idea. Here's a piece of choral music sung in English in such a way that the real lyrics are difficult to make out -- and the ansiktsburk poet has set new English words to it.…
aardvarchaeology | May 5, 2008More good and witty UK rapping, this time a year-old hit from Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.
Thanks to Paddy K for the tip-off.