friday fun
jdupuis | April 23, 2010This one's on Cracked.com and, unusually for them, is Safe for Work.
Now, I'm down with making education more interactive, social, customizable, multitasking, multimedia and web-enabled and all that, but for every good thing there are potential downsides. And Cracked's article nicely sums up some of the more, shall we say, absurd and ridiculous implications of Web-enabled education.
Let's just say the words pwned, First!, mentos, TL;DR and Nigerian princes all make cameo appearances.
Take a look, the Top 20 Ways the Internet is Taking Over Schools.
jdupuis | April 16, 2010If you love sword & sorcery books and stories (and who doesn't!), SF Signal has one of their Mind Meld features in which they ask a bunch of writers and editors to name their favourites of the genre.
Here's a taste:
Lou Anders
"Ill met in Lankhmar" tops any list. How could it not? Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser defined sword & sorcery for me as a child, and I'm thrilled that, having just started rereading their adventures they are thus far holding up. Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" is tied or a close second. I haven't read that since I was 15 but the Moorcock I have read hasn't dated.…
jdupuis | April 9, 2010This is sick, sick stuff. But actually quite funny, really, in a very black humour sort of way.
It's a web comic about the creatures from the Alien films invading the Hundred Acre Wood and basically turning all our most beloved childhood characters into monsters. The comic probably goes on a tad too long, stretching out a rather amusing concept to somewhat pointless length. This is the kind of thing where you have to hit the high points immediately and then run for cover.
There are, however, a couple of really good lines, like, "Suddenly Pooh found himself in the middle of a gastronomic…
jdupuis | April 3, 2010OK, so Friday Fun a day late.
Anyways, April Fools day was a couple of days ago and I thought that the ScienceBlogs home page was the funniest science-related prank of the day.
So, for those of you that missed the headline and the little story that went with it, here goes:
CERN Scientists Awaken Balrog
When the Large Hadron Collider brought protons up to full speed on Tuesday,
smashing them together at 99 percent the speed of light, the world did not end
as some feared. But disturbing news emerged Thursday morning that CERN
scientists have desperately been trying to cover up a catastrophe of…
jdupuis | April 1, 2010From the news release:
Google to Digitize Lost Library of Alexandria
by Paoli du Flippi
-- posted @ 4/01/2010 12:01:00 AM PT
Today at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, Executive Dan Clancy, head of the Google Books project, announced plans to digitize the contents of the Lost Ancient Library of Alexandria.
Initially, some confusion arose among the assembled media representatives, who immediately began to inquire about the details of dealing with the recalcitrant and xenophobic government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But Mr. Clancy quickly set the press corps straight…
jdupuis | March 26, 2010Interesting little slideshow article, one that makes you think about the transformation we've seen in the last century or so: The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations.
Here's the list -- note that each page in the slideshow has an audio interview with someone that used to do the job in question.
Lector (reads aloud to people while they're working)
Elevator Operator
Copy Boy
Pinsetter (sets up pins in bowling alley)
River Driver (logging)
Iceman
lamplighter (Manually lights street lamps)
Milkman
Switchboard Operator
Typist In A Typist Pool
Typesetter
Telegraph OperatorActually, lectors…
jdupuis | March 19, 2010John Scalzi's latest AMC column Why Hollywood Always, Always Gets the Future Wrong is, as usual, very smart and right on target.
And pretty funny too.
Everybody gets the future wrong. It's not just Hollywood or science fiction writers. When it comes to the future, no one knows anything. At the close of the 19th century, British physicist Lord Kelvin declared heavier-than-air flight an impossibility (despite the existence of, you know, birds) and that radio was just a fad. In the '70s, the president of Digital Equipment Corp. voiced doubts that anyone would ever need a personal computer. In…
jdupuis | March 12, 2010Oh, I love The Onion. Oh so funny and yet oh so directly on target.
So funny it hurts. In reference to the Great Buzz Privacy Boondoggle, this is what they have to say: Google Responds To Privacy Concerns With Unsettlingly Specific Apology.
The whole piece is brilliant -- go and read it right away, and I mean you George Smith of 5432 Murray Crescent, Podunk, ON.
"Americans have every right to be angry at us," Google spokesperson Janet Kemper told reporters. "Though perhaps Dale Gilbert should just take a few deep breaths and go sit in his car and relax, like they tell him to do at the anger…
jdupuis | March 5, 2010The Huffington Post has a couple of posts featuring the most amazingly beautiful libraries in the world, Part One here and Part Two here.
Here's the text from the two posts:
Times are changing for libraries everywhere. But even as many libraries build their digital collections and amp up their technological offerings, we thought we'd take a step back and show our appreciation for the beauty of many of these vast collections of books. Below are some of the most amazingly beautiful libraries from around the world.
Let us know what you think of these and let us know your favorites.
====
Last…
jdupuis | February 26, 2010Via Boing Boing, this is my kind of prize!
You can vote for the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year.
The shortlist:
Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Cromptons (Glenstrae Press)
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A Yannes'(Trafford)
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina (A K Peters)
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C Arkin (CRC Press)
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky (SLACK Inc)
What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? by Tara Jansen-Meyer (Mirror) More related…
jdupuis | February 19, 2010John Scalzi is one of my guaranteed Friday Fun go-to guys. Always amusing, always entertaining and occasionally controversial and provocative.
He's definitely in the controversial and provocative mode here in a 2006 blog post entitled The Lie of Star Wars as Entertainment.
The post is scathingly funny, cruel and vicious and sarcastic and brilliant. And spot on.
So let's not pretend that the Star Wars series is this great piece of entertainment.
Instead, let's call it what it is: A monument to George Lucas pleasuring himself. Which, you know, is fine. I'm happy for Lucas; it's nice that he…
jdupuis | February 12, 2010Following up on my Onion post a few weeks back on a Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet I thought I'd do an update on The Onion's article Apple Finally Unveils iPad.
Here's most of what they say:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's new tablet computer, the iPad, during a presentation in San Francisco last week. Here are some of its features:
Awkward name enables Twitter users to make the same joke over and over and over again
Super slick design makes it impossible to hold, pick up, or stop from sliding down the street
Softly whimpers if left alone for too long
Photo…
jdupuis | January 29, 2010So far, I'm pretty iPad-agnostic -- mostly curious to see if it can burst out of it's obvious niche applications and become a mass device like the iPod or iPhone.
However, The Onion's article just before the big announcement day really struck a funny bone:
Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple's new tablet computer. "Come on, Steve, just think--think, dammit--you're running out of time," the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate…
jdupuis | January 22, 2010Excellent post with a lot of great comments. Let's take a look at what Scalzi doesn't miss:
Stupidly expensive long-distance charges.
Crappy old cars.Which cars qualify as crappy old cars? In my opinion, pretty much all of them. Pre-catalytic converter cars were shoddily-constructed, lead-spewing deathtraps, the first generation of cars running on unleaded were even more shoddily-constructed 70s defeat-mobiles, the 80s were the golden age of Detroit Doesn't Give a Shit, and so on. You have to get to about 1997 before there's a car I would willingly get into these days. As opposed to today,…
jdupuis | January 15, 2010This one is pretty funny, from McSweeny's:
INT. UNIVERSITY FOOD COURT. SUNDAY AFTERNOON. JULY 15TH, 1945.
HANS BETHE, EDWARD TELLER, and ROBERT SERBER sit at a table. There are notebooks, laptops, and expensive coffees arranged on the table. All three wear hoodies, basketball shorts, and flip flops. Serber is texting on his Blackberry Storm. Teller checks his own cell phone for the time.
EDWARD TELLER: Where's Oppenheimer?
HANS BETHE: I've got Chapter at six.
TELLER: Serber.
ROBERT SERBER: (keeps texting) Yo?
TELLER: Did you hear anything from Oppenheimer?
SERBER: (keeps texting) Nah.
BETHE:…
jdupuis | January 8, 2010This amusing little gem from The Onion, published December 3rd, seems particularly relevant in the post-Christmas consumer orgy period.
With the holiday shopping season officially under way, millions of consumers proceeded to their nearest commercial centers this week in hopes of acquiring the latest, and therefore most desirable, personal device.
"The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more attractive for purchase by all Americans," said Thomas Wakefield, a spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device. "The old device is no longer…
jdupuis | January 1, 2010Ok, I promise, this is the last Lovecraftian Friday Fun for a while. I double promise. It's also possible that I can't be trusted in this matter.
Anyways, to celebrate the the fresh possibilities of the new year, let's mosey on down to Tor.com and see how S.J. Chambers is doing -- a horror fan who's never read Lovecraft coming to his works for the first time! "The Alchemist" and "The Outsider" are up first.
I have a dark confession to make. For all my love of the Gothic and weird, for all the Stuart Gordon movies I've seen, and for all the issues of Weird Tales and Innsmouth Free Press I'…
jdupuis | December 25, 2009Now here's a question: What do you leave by the fireplace on Christmas Eve for a great old one to snack on? Probably your neighbours' kids.
Anyways, Tor.com has posted an amusingly creepy Christmas story by Charles Stross, Overtime.
It's certainly not every treacly Christmas story that has a passage like this one, describing the aftermath of an office party:
Whoever sat on the copier lid that time didn't have buttocks, hairy or otherwise--or any other mammalian features for that matter. What I'm holding looks to be a photocopy of the business end of a giant cockroach.
Maybe I'm not alone…
jdupuis | December 18, 2009What better way to celebrate the yuletide season that with some gifts that honour and celebrate everyone's favourite Great Old One, Cthulhu!
Ellen Datlow has a couple of cool posts on Tor.com with some Lovecraftian gift ideas here and here.
Take a look:
Despite the fact that he's been dead for over seventy years, and his prose considered purple and overwrought by many, H.P. Lovecraft's work is still widely read, and has remained influential for generations. Evidence of this is in the 2005 publication of H. P. Lovecraft: Tales by Library of America, that bastion of literary respectability. The…
jdupuis | December 11, 2009...on Tor.com!
Check it out:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn...
In deference to the Great Old Ones, Tor.com has devoted this December to everyone's favorite cosmic tentacled thing-that-cannot-be-described from Vhoorl. All month long we'll be posting articles, stories, and comics relating to the Lovecraft Mythos, and we've invited scholars, editors, and fans of the snuggly beast to contribute. We're thrilled to welcome as bloggers Ellen Datlow, Stephen H. Segal, Seamus Cooper, and others on Tor.com for this very special occasion (along with our regular lineup, natch).
We'll…