television
oracknows | February 15, 2010I feel really, really good today.
The reason? Simple Orac has annoyed Jim Carrey enough to ban him on Twitter. The exchange went something like this. For the first time in a while, I was perusing Twitter (I have a really hard time keeping my Insolence to 140 characters; so I only check my Twitter account maybe once or twice a week) when I saw someone mention a couple of Tweets by Jim Carrey that went like this:
Dr. Andrew Wakefield's studies r being unfairly supressed. His newest vacs vs unvacs study MUST BE PUBLISHED. RT "Show Me The Monkeys!" ;^)
Folks, it's a REAL STUDY of chimps subjected…
grrlscientist | February 6, 2010tags: weather, humor, funny, silly, weird, Jim Kosek, meterology, streaming video
AccuWeather.com forecast video for the coming Snowpocalypse in the DC/Baltimore area shows meteorologist Jim Kosek freaking out a little about the storm. Oh boy.
oracknows | February 4, 2010I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I'm writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield's being found to have behaved unethically and dishonestly by the British General Medical Council, only to be followed up a few days later with the news that the editors of The Lancet had retracted his 1998 paper, the paper that started the MMR scare in the U.K. and launched a thousand autism quacks. Meanwhile, the cranks…
grrlscientist | January 31, 2010tags: Seven Words, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, twat, television, social commentary, cultural observation, George Carlin, humor, comedy, fucking hilarious, streaming video
When the contractors were once again in the flat, trying unsuccessfully to fix the IKEA kitchen fiasco that has cost my spouse many thousands of euros, I said to one of them (who claimed he didn't know any English); "I'll bet I can name at least three English words that you do know: shit, fuck and damn."
His speechless laughter was confirmation enough.
grrlscientist | January 21, 2010tags: How it's Made: Chocolate, chocolate, food science, technology, streaming video
After watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid, I thought chocolate was made by oompa loompas who were employed by a fuzzy-haired man wearing a delightful purple velvet suit. I guess I was wrong.
oracknows | January 21, 2010Last night was grant crunch time to get a truly serviceable draft to my collaborators today as promised, leaving enough time to revise it by the February 5 deadline. That means the blog has to take a hit today, which is a shame, because Joe Mercola and Age of Autism have laid down some idiocy this week that I'm just dying to take down. Oh, well, it'll wait, and if it won't I'm sure there'll be new idiocy to take down (or, if I need a break, some good science to discuss) when I come up for air again. (In the case of Mercola, it's part one of a promised three part series; so waiting until he's…
oracknows | January 20, 2010If you ever want to get a sense of the scale of the universe and how insignificant our little planet is compared to the scope of it all, here's something really cool to put things in perspective, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History's Astronomy Picture of the Day:
It'd be really cool if it were physically possible to travel that fast and see what this video shows. It really is amazing, this universe of ours.
grrlscientist | January 19, 2010tags: How It's Made: French Fries, food science, engineering, technology, streaming video
Long, skinny French fries .. are NOT EXTRUDED! Toldyaso! Don't believe me? Watch this video! Yes, I win this argument! Muahahahaha!
Vinegar on fries? Ew! But that's how those wacky Brits eat "chips", I guess.
grrlscientist | January 17, 2010tags: Dragons Den, Bruce's Juice, television, snake oil, cure-all, WTF, broken dreams, streaming video
Ultra-pure water with silver in it is a cure-all? Um, I've never watched Dragons Den and if this is an example of the sleaze they feature on it, then I never want to. How cruel is it to raise someone's hopes and dreams only to have her lose everything, including her life?
"Bruce, I don't think you're crazy, but you disgust me" Robert opines.
H/T: more friend and colleague, Cath Ennis.
grrlscientist | January 15, 2010tags: The Downfall, Hitler, funny, weird, silly, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, streaming video
It's a bad day for everyone! In this parody, Hitler finds out the devastating news just before a planned vacation to Southern California: Leno Is Moving Back To Late Night. The film used to parody the NBC Late Night situation is DOWNFALL starring Bruno Ganz. Essay below the jump is a brief blow-by-blow synopsis of Leno-O'Brien opinions on the matter.
A brief blow-by-blow synopsis of Leno-O'Brien opinions on the matter:
MONDAY
Jay Leno, monologue from "The Jay Leno Show" : "I take pride in one thing. I…
laelaps | January 13, 2010
I heard, but did not see, wolves when I visited Yellowstone National Park this past summer, but the Nature film team had better luck during a winter in the same park. The above clip is a portion of the footage they shot and will be featured in the upcoming documentary "Clash: Encounters of Bears and Wolves." It is set to premiere this coming Sunday on PBS.
grrlscientist | January 12, 2010tags: man drinking fat, NYC Health Anti-Soda Ad, Are You Pouring on the Pounds?, diet, nutrition, sports drinks, soda, sweetened drinks, television, disgusting, streaming video
Most people don't realize how easy it is to gain weight from drinking sugary sodas, juice drinks, sport drinks and sweetened tea and coffee drinks. Just one 20-ounce bottle of soda can pack 250 calories and more than 16 teaspoons of sugar. Is the lemon-flavored iced tea any better? Not by much with 210 calories and 14½ teaspoons of sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages add hundreds of calories to your diet each day. Don't…
oracknows | January 12, 2010For some reason, I've tended to give Dr. Mehmet Oz a bit of a free pass when it comes to promoting woo. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I just haven't paid that much attention to him. Perhaps it's because, even when he was on Oprah's show, he didn't delve as deeply into the woo as her other frequent guests, such as Christiane Northrup, Suzanne Sommers, or Jenny McCarthy. The one or two times I saw him with Oprah, usually online because I'm never home to watch Oprah during the day and on those rare days when I am home on a weekeday, trust me, I don't watch Oprah. Then Dr. Oz got his own…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2010tags: King Bird of Paradise, Cicinnurus regius, Red-Capped Manakin, Yellow-Thighed Manakin, Pipra mentalis, courtship displays, behaviors, birds, ornithology, Kim Bostwick, streaming video
I recently showed you the oddly shaped iridescent tail plume from a King Bird of Paradise as the daily mystery bird, now watch this video to see how the birds use these plumes in courtship displays.
grrlscientist | January 4, 2010tags: Polishing a Turd to a High Gloss, silly, funny, mythbusters, poo, technology, streaming video
Is it possible to polish a turd to a high gloss? Well, it depends upon how you define "high gloss" but these two men had an unambiguous standard for measuring "high gloss units" and they set out to find out if it is possible to accomplish this.
laelaps | December 29, 2009
During the past year scientists have been celebrating the work of Charles Darwin for the insight the 19th century naturalist had into how evolution works. It is truly amazing how much Darwin got right, but there was also a lot that Darwin didn't know. Indeed, Darwin recognized a group of disciplines that were relevant to what he was proposing, from paleontology to embryology, but despite his discoveries there were still mysteries in each field. A new NOVA program, What Darwin Never Knew, looks at what we now know about some of the questions Darwin's research raised but could not immediately…
oracknows | December 24, 2009It's Christmas, and I hope that those of you who celebrate the day are having a merry one. Personally, I'm taking the day off from any substantive blogging, instead electing to post quickie holiday-themed stuff that amuses me. Still, it might not be so merry if everyone's favorite elf happened to have met the wrong person on his journey through the world:
"You're on the naughty list now, Jack. The naughty list." Heh.
oracknows | December 24, 2009If there's one thing that's irritated the crap out of me ever since I entered the medical field, it's celebrities with more fame than brains or sense touting various health remedies. Of late, three such celebrities have spread more misinformation and quackery than the rest of the second tier combined. Truly, together, they are the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Quackery.
The first two of them, of course, are that not-so-dynamic duo of anti-vaccine morons, Jenny McCarthy and her much more famous and successful boyfriend Jim Carrey. Having apparently decided that selling "Indigo Child" woo was not…
oracknows | December 20, 2009Regular readers here know that I'm a long time Doctor Who fan. That's why it's with some sadness that I await the approach of the two-episode finale for David Tennant's tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Over his three full seasons and multiple specials in 2009, Tennant redefined the role and even began to rival Tom Baker for my favorite Doctor. This time, fortunately, BBC America will be showing these episodes one day after they air in the U.K.; so I don't have to choose between waiting several months to see them or getting them by BitTorrent. In any case, there are some tantalizing clues about…
grrlscientist | December 19, 2009tags: Chainsaw Illusion, magician, optical illusion, streaming video
I ran across this amazing illusion recently and have been intrigued: how did the magician do this?
Was the guy who was chopped in half actually two people? Was the short guy running around at the beginning of the scene the bottom half? Here's another view of the trick;
Apparently, "half-men" have been known before;