jrtom: (Default)
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm

probably my personal favorite in a very meta way, the Grand
Panjandrum's Special Award for the "Vile Pun" category:

"Upon discovering that Miles Black, the famous phrenologist from
Yorkshire was going to take up yodeling to lonely goats in Bali, James
White decided to balance four planks of wood on a beer keg and call it
an abstract work of art in the style of a famous fourteenth-century
architect, just going to prove that people will read any old garbage
if they think there will be a good pun at the end of it."

That's just beautiful, is all.

heh heh heh.
jrtom: (Default)
(I thought it was kinder than spamming my friendslist with 10 or 15 posts in a row. Going to make the tags interesting, though...)

The Redistricting Game: http://www.redistrictinggame.com/

Haven't played it yet, but the concept--teaching about redistricting and gerrymandering by making a game out of it--is very interesting.

Kinetic Sculpture: http://www.glumbert.com/media/kineticsculpture [video]

Very cool. Actually, "kinetic" doesn't really convey it: think "auto-mobile".

Singing Tesla Coil: http://www.hauntedfrog.com/gt/movies/2007/duckon/SingingTeslaShow.html

What else need I say?

US States "renamed" for countries with similar GDPs: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-gdps/

A very interesting and informative visualization: it actually tells me about as much about the US as it does about the respective countries. The table at the bottom may be useful to give some context.

Gay Bomb: The Porno Flick [safe for work]: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/gay-bomb-the--1.html

Gay Bomb will take us into the future and the year 2012. George the Second has refused to step down as leader of the "free world", and the nations of Europe have banded together to fight the new American military dictatorship. Desperate to fend off its attackers, the US launches the experimental "gay bomb", designed to make the enemy forces drop their guns and turn fag. But the winds of fate blow in a different direction, and soon America is brought to its knees.


This is the best part: it appears that this has been seriously proposed...

Recent news headlines revealed that Pentagon insiders admitted to having truly considered the "gay bomb" as an example of non-lethal chemical warfare in the Iraq War. The Air Force asked for a $7.5 million grant to develop the idea, which was proposed to the government's highest scientific authority.


("Some people you don't need to satirize--you just quote 'em.")

http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2007/june-july/Seti.htm

A dedicated SETI effort, i.e., one with its own facility.

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/06/binary_marble_adding_mach.html

A mechanical binary adder, with a video of it at work. Very nicely done.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/06/second_movieplo.html

The winner of Bruce Schneier's second annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest...which makes a plausible case for banning water from airplanes.

http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/63329/detail/

A very silly music video. Requires a bit of patience; wait until it's about a minute in before you give up on it, and about 2 minutes in it gets impressive.
jrtom: (safe cat)
http://www.netflixprize.com/

I so don't have time for this right now, but it sounds like a really interesting problem. Not sure I'm eligible to participate (my PhD advisor is apparently one of the judges, which I think explains a conversation that I had with him a couple of weeks ago involving a lot of intentional vagueness on his part), anyway, but I bet that I could do a pretty decent job if I had the time to sink into it. (Especially considering the data that they have but are not using...)

argh.

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