2010 Apr 15, 2:52Scans of some of a few instances of hate mail Neil deGrasse Tyson received from elementary school students after demoting Pluto to non-planet status.
hate-mail mail humor cute children neil-degrasse-tyson science pluto space planet astronomy 2010 Apr 11, 3:51"In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals." Its easy to get awesome stats like this when talking about lawlessness on airplanes given its great
infrequency.
statistics humor security bruce-schneier airplane 2010 Mar 12, 11:11"All of the sculpted noses on the planet Viltvodle VI were fashioned after Douglas Adams' own. The creators used a 3D model he had created for the game Starship Titanic." The noses mentioned in the
previous sentence were depicted in the movie in a church. The religion of this church maintains that the universe was created by their god sneezing out the universe and so they have statues of their
god's nose throughout the church. Of course this is intended to seem absurd, however based on the previous sentence -- that the nose belonged to Douglas Adams -- then they really were worshping the
nose of their creator.
douglas-adams book hhgttg movie religion nose 2010 Mar 3, 2:57As titles go 'Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter' is right up there with 'Snakes on a Plane'. They can film whatever they want and if they name it 'Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter' I will watch it.
humor move fiction abraham-lincoln vampire 2010 Feb 18, 4:59"At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different
type of nuclear reactor."
ted bill-gates video environment energy 2009 Dec 31, 1:50Har har: "I had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles. If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning and shut its doors, the TSA would announce that
all banks henceforth begin their business day at 10 a.m. And, if a terrorist managed to get on board a plane between Stockholm and Washington, the Fed would increase the number of flights between the
cities."
economics humor airplane emanuel-derman tsa fed government 2009 Dec 8, 12:02"This illustration, from the September 10, 1910 New York Tribune, imagines the rooftop burglars of the future. 'BURGLARS LEARN TO HANDLE THE AEROPLANE WITH PRECISION AND SILENCE: Our artist takes a
look into the future and foresees the time when roofs must be secured as carefully as any other part of the home.'"
humor history burglar crime newspaper news 2009 May 3, 9:17
Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to
watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share
movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.
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Weeds
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You don't have to be a stoner to enjoy this humorous and dramatic satire featuring a widow trying to raise her children and deal pot in suburbia.
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Avatar The Last Airbender
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An American animated series that's an amalgamation of various Asian art, history, religion, etc. that maintains a great story line.
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Paprika
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If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and
writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and
reality.
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Grindhouse Planet Terror
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I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.
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Outsourced
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A refreshing romantic comedy that still has a few of the over played tropes but is easy to enjoy despite that.
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The King of Kong
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A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high
score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the
villain.
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Primer
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I've mentioned Primer before, but I put it on
here again because its really good and you still haven't seen it, have you?
movie personal netflix 2009 Apr 7, 10:04Aggregation of feeds concerning HTML5 including Ian Hickson's, Planet Mozilla, Planet WebKit, the IE Blog, the WHATWG blog, etc etc.
w3c html5 html blog feed daily 2009 Jan 12, 12:48Results of a FOIA request for the DHS travel records: "I had been curious about what's in my travel dossier, so I made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy. I'm posting here a few
sample pages of what officials sent me."
foia security airplane airport privacy government information 2009 Jan 7, 7:02All the appearances Neil deGrasse Tyson has made on The Colbert Report. Especially good are the ep from 08/17/2006 containing planetary trashtalk and 02/13/2008 where Stephen learns how to become an
astrophysicist.
neil-degrasse-tyson colbert-report stephen-colbert science video humor tv astronomy 2008 Dec 29, 12:22"This wasn't my fault. Anyone could have dropped his stupid iPod in the toilet. It's really the government here. I mean, at this point the building contained six customs officials, an army of
policemen, people from various security agencies, a bomb squad, and a couple of detectives."
ipod toilet humor airplane plane security terrorism wow 2008 Nov 21, 3:52I like the melted ice cream truck. "Our Australian friends 'The Glue Society', a group of artists, designers and projecteers, have created these amazing series of sculptures and films where they've
created chair rainbows on the frozen tundra, a curb-side wrap party, gratuitous nudie pictures for airplanes passing by, a house of crates, and a blow-up doll's vacation paradise."
streetart art prank culture nature photo sculpture ice-cream-truck via:boingboing 2008 Oct 10, 1:32Xkcd providing answers to questions that I forgot I had, like what is the answer to the lawn-sprinkler question from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. "Feynman used to tell a story about a simple
lawn-sprinkler physics problem. The nifty thing about the problem was that the answer was immediately obvious, but to some people it was immediately obvious one way and to some it was immediately
obvious the other. (For the record, the answer to Feynman problem, which he never tells you in his book, was that the sprinkler doesn't move at all. Moreover, he only brought it up to start an
argument to act as a diversion while he seduced your mother in the other room.)"
humor feynman comic blog xkcd physics science math 2008 Sep 9, 8:36"You'd better read this today, because it's possible the world will end tomorrow. Strictly speaking, the probability of doomsday isn't any higher than it is on any normal Wednesday, but there's been
a fair bit of kerfuffle and hullabaloo over the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and whether it will create a black hole that will destroy the entire planet."
lhc cern humor wired technology science blog physics apocalypse 2008 May 28, 3:27A WWI poster with a fallen plane and the text "consider the possible consequences if you are careless in your work". I feel like this should go up in Eric's office.
poster purchase wwi propaganda 2008 May 2, 10:20
![[The cover of Cryptonomicon]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0380788624.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
![[The cover of Quicksilver]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060593083.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
![[The cover of The Confusion]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060733357.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
![[The cover of The System of the World]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060750863.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
I've finally finished the Baroque Cycle, a historical fiction series set in the 17th and 18th centuries by Neal Stephenson whose work I
always enjoy. There were often delays where I'd forget about the books until I had to take plane somewhere, or get discouraged reading about the character's thoughts on economics, or have
difficulty finding the next volume, or become more engrossed in other books, projects or video games, and leave the Baroque Cycle books untouched for many months at a time. Consequently, my reading
of this series has, I'm ashamed to say, spanned years. After finishing some books which I enjoy I end up hungry for just a bit more to read. For this series I don't need a bit more to read, I'm
done with that, but I do want a badge or maybe a medal. Or barring that, college credit in European History and Macro Economics. I can recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed Neal
Stephenson's other work and has a few years of free time to kill.
history neal stephenson baroque cycle book nontechnical 2007 Dec 27, 5:33A programming language written on a 2D plane with arrows pointing up, down, left, right to control the flow of execution.
geek humor language programming wiki wikipedia befunge
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