- A computer that can generate bad puns? Ladies and gentlemen, I have been rendered obsolete! [via]
- “Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.” Looks like dread Cthulhu has finally discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- You know, if I was best known for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer on stage, I might be a little mean and bitter too.
- Oh my. Particle physicists have been searching for the “boob element” for decades! [via]
- And finally, Unusual Stop Motion: Videogame [via]
funny
The masks we wear
From Love Sick: A Smoldering Look at Love, Lust, and Marriage, text by Michael J. Nelson:
As we go through life, at work and in relationships, with both friends, strangers, and loved ones, we all wear masks. Some of us wear plastic dime-store Sandy Duncan masks, while others prefer the less expensive Burt Reynolds model. The downside to wearing them is that people don’t get to see our true selves, plus they’re itchy, and cut down on peripheral vision.
Monday various
- Maybe I’m just still bitter that my family stood on line for several hours to see this when it was new — and missed out on Journey into Imagination (at the time a personal favorite and which is what we originally thought we were standing on line for) — but come on, the return of Captain Eo? Really?
- I’m always dubious about lists of new slang words. They inevitably seem like they’re just a joke on whoever is compiling them — “can you believe what I got that reporter from the Guardian to believe?” — or like somebody’s just gotten corrugated ankles, gone to goat heaven, and started making things up. [via]
- Graham Greene once entered a contest to parody himself. He came in second. [via]
- Sketchy Santas. Parents, do you really want your kids sitting on these men’s laps? [via]
- And finally, speaking of which, Jack Bauer’s making a list and checking it twice…
Saturday leftovers
- Michael Schaub on being an English major:
I remember being an English major at a Big 12 school in the mid-’90s. This was an agriculture- and engineering-heavy school where liberal arts departments were isolated in a building that permanently smelled like paint thinner. Whenever I’d tell people I was an English major, they’d look incredulous and say “What are you going to do with that? Teach?” Like in the same tone you’d say, “What are you going to do with that? Trade blowjobs for meth?” Good times!
I was an English major at a pretty agriculture- and engineering-heavy school myself, so I know the feeling. Even my undergraduate advisor told me, “You know, you really can’t get a job with this degree.” (My advisor within the English department was a lot more encouraging, but I met with him all of once, the day I declared, and he left Penn State around the time I graduated. So take from that what you will.)
- Are you now, or have you ever been, a Lovecraftian horror? [via]
- Will we be telling our grandchildren (or even our children) about this thing we used to call “fish”? [via]
While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people–even those who profess great environmental consciousness–continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice. But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee. In the past 50 years, we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent. One study, published in the prestigious journal Science, forecast that, by 2048, all commercial fish stocks will have “collapsed,†meaning that they will be generating 10 percent or less of their peak catches. Whether or not that particular year, or even decade, is correct, one thing is clear: Fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we.
- Sorry I missed this around Halloween (and by dint of not living in Chicago), but I think a zombie-preparedness fitness class is a terrific idea!
- Has xkcd been watching the Penn State Monty Python Society’s Mall Climb?
- Ken Jennings takes the logic of Pixar’s Cars maybe a little too far.
- Speaking of Pixar, this Pixar opening parody is pretty great. [via]
- Imagine if the producers of FlashForward had gone with Robert J. Sawyer’s original concept and made the Large Hadron Collider responsible for everything that happens? Imagine how laughable the show might seem then. [via]
- I’ve never been remotely tempted to buy a bootleg DVD, despite an abundance of them on the streets of Manhattan. Still, their cover art can be pretty delightfully bizarre. [via]
- NBC sued over font usage. Really.
- Well, Coldplay does kind of put me to sleep anyway… [via]
- According to a recent survey:
Almost half of British consumers have lied to their friends about seeing a classic film to avoid the embarrassment of admitting ignorance of great movies.
I’m reminded — as it seems I often am, often enough that I should probably get around to reading the book — of the literary parlor game described here, where everybody one-ups each other with all the books they haven’t read. (The “winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he’s never read Hamlet.”)
For the record, of the “top ten classic films people most lie about seeing,” I’ve seen all but one of them. Can you guess which one I haven’t seen? [via]
- I often find it a little ridiculous what parts of the internet they do and don’t block in my office: blogger.com, but not www.blogger.com; twitpic.com, but not Twitter itself. We have a YouTube channel, for instance — I’d link to it, but there’s nothing there right now — except I can’t visit it at work, even when I’m working with our UK team to upload video to it. Glad I’m not the only person who thinks these policies are a little outdated:
As I’ve said a whole bunch of times, the “competition†for those of us in traditional media industries—book publishing, broadcasting, newspapers and magazines—is no longer other book publishers, broadcasters, or newspapers and magazines. Instead, our “competition†is now the plain fact that, even if you stipulate that 99.9% of the for-free internet is worthless nonsense, the remaining 0.1% is large enough to absorb anyone’s attention full-time for the rest of their life. For anyone with an internet connection, running out of interesting things to read is completely a thing of the past.
- This is probably the subtlest Rickrolling I’ve ever seen. [via]
- And finally, Birds on the Wires [via:
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Wednesday various
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- Your roof is leaking if you think I’m going to start using any of this 1950s hipster slang. [via]
- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And then, of course, I blew away the other road with my machine gun.Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle wanted to be a poet. [via]
- And finally, M. Rickert on storytelling:
I think that to say every story has already been told is to dismiss the temperament of words, to devalue nuance and meaning. Yes, of course, if stories are summed up into one or two sentence synopsis, then I imagine they all fit into certain categories. But stories are not just a matter of summation; if they were, the summation would be enough to satisfy that need for story. In fact, every word matters. I don’t know why people are so eager to diminish stories. You don’t hear architects bemoaning that every building has already been built. Within each field of creation there is a structure that exists as the foundation of that creation. The opportunity for expansion and artistry lies within that structure and is not diminished by it.