(Via Darwin Catholic.)
Category: Humor and horror
It’s March 17 …
… so here is St. Patrick evangelizing the Irish, with a cameo by Voltron.
A quick test …
… of the breadth of your culture:
If this makes you smile, you pass.
Update: A variation on the theme.
Habemus spinacia
(Via a comment at God and the Machine.)
Nonsense and stuff
Presenting the Pulp-O-Mizer.
(Via dotclue)
*****
While researching jurisimprudence, I came across some additions to The Rules:
Cunningham’s Law – The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer.
Muphry’s Law — The principle that any criticism of the speech or writing of others will itself contain at least one error of usage or spelling
…
Chuck Jones’s Law – If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a bunny.
*****
Via the professor, here’s the Monty Python “Happy Valley” skit. which I hadn’t come across before.
*****
I quit watching teevee decades ago, so I missed this classic commercial. (Via Robbo.)
*****
When assembling a web page, be sure to close all tags. (How large a monitor would you need to read the final line above the footer?)
(Via Dustbury.)
*****
Even rapidly-flowing, basaltic lava, such as that which Tolbachik is currently erupting in Kamchatka, is dense stuff, as illustrated by the process of taking a sample, above.
Here’s a spherical panoramic movie of a helicopter touring Tolbachik. You can click and drag to change the direction of view.
Since lava is so dense, is it possible, with the appropriate footwear, to walk across a fresh flow? Sometimes, if conditions are right:
At Etna you can walk on small lava flows with good hiking boots (it might be their last hike, though), because the lava is more viscous than on Hawai’i. However, you won’t try on a larger flow because heat radiation is so huge.
You go first.
*****
Mt. Rainier erupting the Milky Way.
*****
Some true rock music, made with volcanic phonolite.
The horror, the horror
The truth about Lincoln …
… and Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Richard M. Nixon. Fred Himebaugh, a.k.a. The Fredösphere, who has neglected his weblog for too long, shares the results of his historical research. Content advisory: robots, alien gods, banjos.
Fred earlier wrote a chamber opera “They’re Made Out of Meat,” using the Terry Bisson short story as the libretto, as well as a touching ballad of interplanetary romance, “Earth Girl.”
A double dose of culture
Thomas Hardy does the hokey-pokey:
On a morning when the grey skies rained down sleet,
I stuck my left foot into the abyss;
I shook it to and fro, and then switched feet,
And thought how all must end with death’s bleak kiss.
Update: Poe sticks his left foot in.
*****
J. Greely notes that the DVD of the movie Megaforce has finally been released in the USA. Out of curiosity, I searched for clips on YouTube and found this. “Awesome” isn’t quite the word.
Coincidentally, one of the links in Greely’s sidebar is “A Cubic Light-year of Cheese.”
Boom
Some fireworks for your New Year’s celebration (best appreciated in full-screen mode):
More fireworks, this time from Kamchatka (below the fold, because of goddam autoplay music (fortunately, you can turn it off)):
Pre-Rush Day link dump
J.K. Rowling has been recognized in Thog’s Masterclass:
Dept of Trickle-Down. ‘There, in his poky office, Simon Price gazed covetously on a vacancy among the ranks of insiders to a place where cash was now trickling down onto an empty chair with no lap waiting to catch it.’ (J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy, 2012)
Daniel Barenboim also earns a mention in Ansible:
Pianist Daniel Barenboim is interviewed by Rosanna Greenstreet: Q. ‘What is your earliest memory?’ A. ‘In my mother’s belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.’ (Guardian, 2 November)
Christopher Tolkien doesn’t care for Peter Jackson’s movies:
Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”
So is the world going to end tomorrow? Nah. I suppose you could marathon RahXephon if you’re feeling silly, but I suggest listening to Geddy, Alex and Neil instead.
These are the acceptable ways to end civilization:
… asteroid/comet, climate, massive volcanic eruption, zombie pandemic, Daleks, the Master, the Mayor turns into a giant snake monster, Gachnar (although that would be a very tiny apocalypse), gateway to Hell opens over Los Angeles, Anubis, Tripods, Triffids, Ragnarok and possibly a Farnsworth Doomsday Device.
Cold temperatures and warm hearts, true chemical romance, and how to avoid bad theology
Here are a few videos that recently caught my fancy.
There are no “gangnam” parodies because I’m sick of them.
(hic)
The Twenty-First Amendment was ratified on this day in 1933, making this tasteful song possible. Here is an atmospheric, evocative performance by a chamber ensemble conducted by Lindley A. Jones.
Ancient cultural artifacts
You might notice some familiar names in the credits of this 1950 cartoon. You can download it here.
*****
Without exception, everyone on the island clamors to the Skipper for help at every crisis. “Skipper will know what to do.” The Skipper is “brave and sure.” The Skipper calms the islanders at each emergency, not by alleviating the problem, but by standing tall, pounding his chest and loudly making magnificent promises that neither he nor any other person could possibly keep.
Gilligan, the Skipper’s “little buddy”, embodies every extraneous governmental agency, policy and program ever foisted on innocent people anywhere. It is “Gilligan’s island.” Gilligan is well-intentioned. He sincerely wants to help. Gilligan saves no exertion, refuses no absurdity, respects no boundary in his unceasing efforts to solve, or at least soften, any and all of the everyday problems of the castaways. More often than not Gilligan is the problem. At best he makes a bad situation worse. At worst, he makes a great situation completely unbearable.
From A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan’s Island.
(via Joe Carter.)
*****
Be sure to check today’s Google doodle. Update: It’s gone now, but there’s plenty of Little Nemo to look at here.
Weekend Marxism
I just discovered that the entire movie Monkey Business is up on YouTube. It probably won’t be there long, so catch it while you can.
Stormy Bacon Monday
But can you find “meaningful brain activity” in Washington?
In excitement of Sing Like a Pirate and Talk Like Chester A. Arthur Day, it was easy to forget that this is also the week in which the year’s Ig Nobel prizes were announced. A couple of the highlights:
NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA], for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.
LITERATURE PRIZE: The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
The complete list is here.