Bad judgment in choice of kids’ book cover
I’m inclined to agree with Andrew Hearst of the Panopticist that this is an unfortunate choice for a children’s book cover. A Children’s Book About Animals–and Group Sex.
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Birth of a ‘Horrible’ Fandom
A brief look at the Big Bang birth of a fandom: the explosion of ‘Dr. Horrible’ fandom in just 47 days.
First, there’s the fanfic videos that try to expand the universe. Such as Dr. Horrible: the Early Years (1 2 3 4 5), and Dr. Dreadful’s YouTube Riposte. There’s applications for the Evil League of Evil as well, including Average, Yin and Yang, Short Change, the Allergen, the Parasite, the Horse Thief, Custodious Rex, Capt. Shrovewreaker (the Breakfast Pirate), Mistress Paragon, and the Death Giggle. (Ever wonder how Dr. Horrible‘s application was received at the League?) There’s Evil Horse’s rival, the Evil Germ-man; Dr. Horrible has the Weapon gunning for him; the Henchman’s Union is recruiting; and catDWM’s made a musical application to be Dr. Horrible’s sidekick (her competition is puppetry).
Second, there’s the fan creations that take the show and do something
adorable or amazing or weird with it — always cute kid covers such as Laundry Day (aw!) or Bad Horse (Preschooler Mumbler Edition), not to mention a few good covers by adults, too. (Speaking of adult covers, rickrolls are so passé … have you been Bad Horse’d? Felicia Day has. Although she wasn’t Bad Horse’d in German.) There’s the guy who plays a duet with himself on “My Eyes/On the Rise” — in character — as both the “Penny violin” and the “Dr. Horrible violin”, playing his own piano backup as well. There’s ringtones, limericks, HALO machinima (1 2 3 4 5), My Little Horrible Ponies (including Capt. Hammer) (which is almost as cute as a commercial L’il Kaylee), and karaoke tracks (soon to be officially touring as a singalong, although the show is already being Rocky Horror-ed). (And there’s LibraryThing doing crowdsource research as to what’s on Horrible’s library shelf.)
And the world isn’t lacking for official Dr. Horrible material, either. There’s Felicia Day, with her own Twitter channel and her own excellent fan production, The Guild; she’s caught “twittering under the table“, requests that someone post it on Vimeo, and comments there. She does a duet with Jonathan Coulton on “Still Alive“, and the Penny Arcade guys want to groom her. The Whedons aren’t exactly naifs when it comes to an online presence either; they’re Twittering as well (and even passed along this little off-topic gem to their followers) and the world now has a Capt. Hammer comic and the official Evil League of Evil website (e-mail Bad Horse). (Not to mention presences on MySpace and Facebook.)
If you’ve not been over-Horribled by now, you might want to sit down for the 53-minute Dr. Horrible ComicCon panel with Joss and the cast (1 2 3 4 5), read Entertainment Weekly‘s oral history, read Warren Ellis‘ comments on the musical, or muse upon what would happen if Capt. Hammer and Mal met. If you’re still not over-Horribled, you could go to WhedonFilter or Wonderflonium, where there’s a great deal more singing, fan art, and music videos.
All in just 47 days. That’s a lot of Wikipedias, I imagine.
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Fascination with the Dodo Bird, by Adam Savage
Adam Savage’s talk at The Last HOPE: Fascination with the Dodo Bird
parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C
(YouTube with a great audience Q&A session)
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Geoffrey Perkins
Legendary British comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins died
in a freak accident yesterday. Chances are if you watched some British
comedy over the last 20 years, and liked it, Geoffrey Perkins had a
hand in it.
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Look at all the MAPLE SAP I got!
The worst comic strip ever? Thrill to the stilted, unfunny adventures of Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy, brought to you by Jerry Beck, of Cartoon Research fame.
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Lard: The New Health Food?
As I sent my friends home bathed in the warm glow of hog grease, I
felt sure that our generation would pass the test of lard. We might not
cook with it every night–natural lard is expensive and (all right, I’ll
admit it) deep-fried foods are often loaded with calories, no matter
which fat you use. But we won’t live in fear of it, either. When we want deep-fried excellence, we’ll reach for the best fat for the job: lard.
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Mythbusters Adam on education issues
MythBuster Adam Savage: 3 ways to fix U.S. science education.
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Will the Dalai Lama reincarnate?
As the health of the Dalai Lama seems uncertain, the question remains: will he be reborn this time? and, if so, where?
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Je me souviens … l’accord de partage de l’utilisateur
Facil, an open-source community based in Québec, is suing the Québec government for buying Microsoft software when free alternatives are available. Facil’s press release
says, in part, “From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of
proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases
were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with
no regard to suppliers in Quebec. … While most of the developed
countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological
infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec’s public administration is far
behind.” Some applaud Facil’s move. Others, not so much.
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Heroes
A Serbian village erecting a statue to reggae superstar Bob Marley? Sure, why not? A Bosnian town with a statue of kung-fu legend Bruce Lee? Hell, yeah! And how ’bout, say, a Serbian monument to Rocky? Er, well.. ok. But the British Museum displaying what they say is the largest gold statue built since ancient Egypt, of… Kate Moss? Um… I dunno. I prefer the Russian monument to the enema.
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This is Me
The aim of Self-Portrait Challenge
is to create an online community of people participating in a
continuous artistic self-expressive art project; self-portraiture. (images in the nude category obviously NSFW) They also participate in the Flickr: self portrait tuesday group.
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The Middler
Your
Gmail account isn’t secure. Announced at Defcon
16, Jay Beale’s tool, The
Middler (man-in-the-middle) to steal session ID from not only Gmail users,
but LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Facebook, and presumably any site that uses a session-based
cookie. Enable
https permanently.
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Rat Sound, the original punk rock sound company
Rat Sound Systems is the original punk rock sound company. Started in LA in the early 80s, it was a stalwart of the early LA punk scene (posters: it did happen). Starting in the 1990s, Rat Sound has been supplying sound for some of rock’s biggest acts. They even went corporate, with a client list including Paris Hilton.
Since May 2006, founder Dave Rat, who mixes the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the audience, has been keeping a tour blog.
Those of you who (like me) are interested in audio nerdery may be interested in the Sound nerd speak section of Dave’s blog. (e.g. drum fills, subs, input lists, amplifiers, the Grateful Dead’s wall of sound)
You may also read about the technical evolution of sound systems, from humble beginning to the Rat Trap 5 cabinet of the 1990s and the L-Acoustics V-DOSC and Microwedge of today. Also of interest: Dave’s Roadiepedia.
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Cramp Free
They’re everywhere; languishing on doorsteps, hanging out in the middle
of the road, dangling off street signs, peeking out of piles of
garbage, reclining in the middle of the sidewalk, riding the bus for
free. London Bananas.
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Mythbusters Paint Mona Lisa With 1100 Barrel Paint Ball Gun
Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman
demonstrate the difference between CPU and GPU by painting the Mona
Lisa in 275 milliseconds using a 1100 barrel paint ball gun earlier
this week at NVIDIA’s NVISION 08 show.
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Comcast tech calls grandpa a crook and disconnects him
A Comcast tech showed up at a Consumerist reader’s grandad’s house and
totally failed to understand how their cable was set up and billed. So
he called them thieves, cursed at them, and disconnected their cable.
Naturally.
I come outside to witness my grandpa and the Comcast guy in a screaming
match. The Comcast tech is threatening to leave and I ask “What the
heck is going on?!” Well, my Grandpa starts telling me that he
disconnected his cable and says we do not have a cable account with
Comcast and basically accuses my Grandpa of hijacking cable. Okay, last
time I checked, most 74 years old probably don’t know how to hijack
cable. So my Grandpa gets really upset and starts back for the house.
I’m trying to find out from the Comcast tech what is going on and my
Grandpa comes back out 2 seconds later with a Comcast bill in his hand.
He goes to hand it to the Comcast tech and he rudely replies “Sir, I
don’t want to see your fucking bill. If you don’t go back in your house
and quit disrespecting me, I’m going to just leave.”Meanwhile, I ask my Grandpa to try and let me straighten it out and
go inside for a minute because I could tell at this point he was
getting really upset. So I continue to ask the guy what the hell is
going on all the while he is telling me he isn’t going back in the
house to hook up my internet because he doesn’t appreciate my Grandpa
“disrespecting him”. Well, from what I saw, my Grandpa didn’t really
deserve to get his cable turned off and treated in such a way. I
finally talk him into hooking up the internet (I needed it for school
as my homework is submitted online). But the issue still remains with
my Grandpa’s service. So I ask the tech why he thinks we don’t have
cable. He replies “When I look up the phone number on the account, it
only shows internet, no cable television. That’s a red flag mam.”
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People Power
It was a mass protest held outside the halls of Washington. Led, or at least it was supposed to be, by Martin Luther King Jr. (before he was assassinated) it was going to show the world the glaring divide that existed between the Rich and the Poor of America. Black, White, Red, Yellow–they all gathered from all over the US, to stay together for six weeks, outside the Capitol, and inform
the public about what life in America could sometimes mean, if you were
not considered economically, socially or racially acceptable.
Unfortunately, the problem still persists, even today.
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Keep your cool
levelHead is a spacial memory game by artist Julian Oliver,
using a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen
each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are
logically connected by doors through which you guide your character. Take a look at a demonstration or build your own levelHead setup.
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Life without parole: Child prisoners in the US
“In the US, there are 2,270 prisoners [report, news release, with testimonies] who were sentenced as children to life without parole. They will die behind bars. Ed Pilkington asks five of them – from a 21-year-old to a 70-year-old – how do they cope?”
Related: as of 2005, executions of prisoners for crimes committed as children is no longer permissible in the United States.
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Not being a geologist, I can’t get very technical but it just went kaboom!
Wall Arch in Utah’s Arches National Park has collapsed.
Other notable collapses in recent years:
- London Bridge, Victoria, Australia (collapsed January 1990)
- Old Man of the Mountain, Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire (collapsed May 2003)
- One of the Twelve Apostles, Victoria, Australia (collapsed July 2005)
- Natural Bridge in Aruba (collapsed September 2005)
- El Dedo de Dios, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands (collapsed November 2005)
- Turret of Miner’s Castle, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan (collapsed April 2006)
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Who is the Man — Dead at 65
Known for many musical hits such as Shaft to being the voice of Chef on South Park, Isaac Hayes has died. Let them enjoy his “Chocolate Salty Balls” in Heaven.
RobDurdle.com 
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