Links posted in November 2008
November 27, 2008
All season a TAMU blog has been making humorous videos mocking the Aggies' upcoming opponent. I wonder who they are serving vlog-style this week. Oh yeah, that's right. Pretty funny even if they are gonna lose by 30.
November 26, 2008
What the heck is a mortgaged-backed security anyway? And why is it the source of the economic crisis?
November 25, 2008
I thought someone here might find this gossip-column nugget enjoyable... perhaps even inspirational.
November 24, 2008
ANSWER ONLY THE VERSION THAT APPLIES TO YOU: Last Name begins with A-L - Last Name begins with M-Z
To see how the other half answered, visit its link and just hit "continue" without clicking any choices.
[more inside]
November 22, 2008
Follow Beckto's Ironman progress online! Go to www.ironmanlive.com and enter her name or race # 2102. It goes all day Sunday! If you're a facebook friend, you can check the live updates done in tandem by me and her friend Em via the magic of Facebook mobile on the Blackberry, and a combo of regular telephony and the internet.
Palin holds press conference while man in background holds turkeys in a decapitation funnel. No, I don't mean Palin reviews architectural proposal while Cleese suggests rotating knives and blood sluices. This really happened...
A reporter at the press conference: "with falling oil prices, are any programs on the chopping block?" Or as noted elsewhere,
Burberry Long Skinny Muffler $275 + S&H
A thin, extra-long muffler fashioned from soft, check-patterned cashmere is trimmed with delicate fringe at each end.
* Dimensions: 6"W x 101"L with 5 1/2" fringe.
* Cashmere; dry clean.
* Made in Scotland.
November 20, 2008
Go inside the MN recount and vote on what you think the fate of some actual disputed ballots should be. The ballots (and the campaigns' arguments) range from the reasonable, to the possibly understandable, to "what the hell is wrong with these people? It's a damn optical scan ballot for fuck's sake!"
November 19, 2008
Who says video games keep kids from exercising? This one is pretty good.
The contested 4x100 relay in Battle of the Network Stars '76 - Farrah Fawcett, Ho-ward COsell, Opie, Bruce Jenner, Kojak, Kotter, Wonderwoman, and Bill Simmons' scene-by-scene breakdown...
[a celebration of] an impossible-to-fathom era of political incorrectness, egotistical celebs, misguided testosterone and the purest unintentional comedy possible ... only it finishes with a Hall of Fame sports moment
Worth watching for even just the unique cadences of Cosell in his ever-florid prime ("CLEARly controversy has beSET the battle-of-the-network stars").
Get A Clue -- A new webseries comedy/action thing. In episode 5, we learn that "lobsters are the new cocks". [more inside]
November 18, 2008
Interior of a giant leafcutter ant colony - scientists pour tons of concrete to fill tunnels and chimneys in a giant ant colony. Really giant: 538 square feet, 26 feet deep; required evacuating 40 tons of soil (the scale equivalent of the Great Wall of China). Hölldobler's book Ants (#27 on the "100 Best 20th century Non-Fiction Books" (AE) list, cowritten with Edward O. Wilson) just moved up my wish list. (vid after jump) [more inside]
TinySong is a service like your TinyURL/Is.Gd/whatever but gives you an easy to send link to a specific song. Interesting enough in a Pandora/last.fm kind of way but I wondered exactly how legal the whole thing was when I looked up some songs and got back things like live bootlegs and near-misspellings of artist names. I wondered, "Could they just be getting the music from bittorrent?" mrflip found out that the music is "uploaded by users" so the answer is almost certainly yes. However, the artists do apparently get a cut in there somehow.
November 17, 2008
Sidearming knuckleballer becomes first woman drafted into Japanese professional baseball.
November 16, 2008
I read an article somewhere that Clinton and W both sent less than 10 email messages while in the White House and I thought that was just insane. I didn't think about why that might be and the reason is very simple: it could be subpoenaed and become public record (or be hacked). As much as Obama loves his Blackberry and laptops, he's probably going to have to give them up. Imagine dropping out of the information society for 4-8 years!
November 12, 2008
Required reading on the bailout. Naomi Klein keeps on impressing me.
Fake NYTimes Prank - In a move that writes its own snarky conservative blog posts, situationalist prankster group The Yes Men printed and distributed thousands of fake issues of the New York Times across NYC today. I'm sure copies must be even harder to find than the real 11/5 issue (compare), so check out their pixel-perfect spoof website for the full text. (Or try to, as it's currently slashdotted from here to 404.) And don't gloss past the sidebar: the fake ads are the best part, natch. [more inside]
November 11, 2008
ObLink | I made a few tiny site changes; you shouldn't notice any of them, and so if you do please let me know. The only major change is to the RSS Feed structure: the URL intro now shows, the title is more descriptive, and you may optionally include comments. (Comments are on by default -- resubscribe or complain if that fails to please.) The new toy I made for you is a per-user feed, for ease of stalking or more generally for piping into your facebooks.
Links to the site feed and to your personal feed are in the sidebar (under 'Syndicate', main page), and a link to any user's feed appears on their profile page. Those who know what "URL" means can just edit any of the following to suit:
- Specific user, posts only
- Specific user, posts + comments
- All users, posts only
- All users, posts + comments
With 69 days left in Still-President Bush's career, do we need a Sha-Na-Na-Na-Hey-Hey-Hey-Goodbye keys-ajanglin' laugh-so-that-we-may-not-cry group therapy uber-thread? Of course we do.
The Telegraph kicks things off with this Bush Facial Expression Photogallery, reminding us that Bush is adorable (<- skip to 4:20). [more inside]
November 08, 2008
Dear SplatnikGanglion, please enjoy. [more inside]
From the Nov 1997 issue of Might Magazine, Donnell Alexander on race.
November 07, 2008
I don't know about you guys, but I've always found Jean Claude Van Damme (note that his entire career can be summarized by five plots) more unintentionally hilarious than awesome. Well, that was until I found out about the release of this. Now, for the first time ever, I'm excited about the release of a JCVD movie.