Video Round Up

In a similar vein to the previous video, here is a round up of some videos I have come across recently.

First Bill Maher lampooning fundamentalists:


Next:
Jon Stewart on the latest F*$%-Up by the US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez


Finally:
A great video with a nice bit of science, the helicopter blades in this video are rotating with a frequency which is some (integer) multiple of the one that the video works at, so every time the video records an image the blades have made at least one full rotation and appear at the same place, making it seem that the helicopter is hovering without any support.

Comic Interlude

Crooksandliars had this video up as a celebration of the comics 70th birthday. Being British I have no idea who George Carlin is, but he seems pretty damn funny. If you're of the strongly religious persuasion I would probably avoid it.

Child Of The Eighties?

To continue the theme of stealing posts from my brother, here is another one that could (if I can be bothered) run and run. If you were born in the early '80s the following should have been an important part of your childhood:

1) That pinnochio cartoon where it goes "Pee Eye En Oh double See aich eye oh, that's Pinnochio!"

2) The Teenage Mutant Hero (as Ninja was deemed too violent for the UK's kids - haha) Turtles, Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, Raphael and Splinter probably gang banging April O'Neil off camera. Krang was that brain thing in the body of a bouncer, Shredder, Beebop and Rocksteady (can't remember which was the Rhino and which the Hogg).

3) Ghostbuster - duh duh duh duh duh duh duh - Ghostbusters!

4) Thundercats - are on the loose! Liono was blatantly banging Shitara or at least watching her getting changed using the Sword of Omens to give him sight beyond sight.. Snarf probably watched and Panthro was probably jealous so he sabotaged the Thundertank.

5) Pogs - what was the point?

6) Premiership 1993 stickers, people would go through everyone elses stickers and go "need" or "got" and sometimes in the school yard kids would throw them up in the air and shout "scramble" at which point there would be a massive scramble to get as many as possible, worth their weight in gold.

7) That shitty bodger and badger, one of them liked mashed potatoes.

8) Count Duckula and that castle that was able to teleport.

9) Supersoakers, if you had any less than a supersoaker100 you were considered to be a failure of a man, the supersoaker was to many the childhood equivalent of the penis. The supersoaker200 was the best as it combined a decent amount of power so that you could feel it when you got squirted but it wasn't so big that it slowed you down. This lad I knew had the one with the backpack for the water - just pure greed.

10) Tamagotchis - what a load of bollocks. The were the bane of the teachers lives at our middle school as kids would excuse themselves so they could go feed their snake or something, some teachers thought it meant they were going for a tug.

Eurodivision

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was forced to watch the godawful Eurovision on Saturday night, surrounded mostly by a bunch of drunk astronomers, never has so much jingoism and cultural stereotyping been seen in such a short space of time. I know the whole thing is a joke, but why is the voting so obviously flawed? Malta gets the same number of votes as Russia? What happened to democracy? Well I suppose if Russia is involved, there probably isn't going to be too much democracy really.

Not that an injection of democracy and fairness this would help the UK any, everyone in Europe with the possible exception of the Irish and the Maltese hates us, to win these days you either have to be from a former soviet satellite state, or be one of the 5-6 countries from the Balkans that used to be Yugoslavia. I can see why the former soviet states all vote the way they do, if they don't, no more oil or gas from Mother Russia. The Balkans is confusing though, you would think that they really wouldn't care for each other that much down there, after the recent, unpleasantness. Maybe I should take it as good sign for the future.

Oh and if anyone is interested, here are some sometimes funny, generally offensive, Eurovision top trumps, celebrating Saturday nights, er, spectacle. No I didn't have anything to do with making them, thanks to b3ta.com for pointing them out.

Ashingtonese - Part 4

Continuing our investigation of the linguistic subtleties of the pitmatic dialect here is my brothers latest installment of Ashingtonese. As usual if anyone doesn't understand anything don't be embarrassed, ask away in the comments, I usually seem to spend much of coffee explaining the meanings to my colleagues most of whom have the benefit of having lived in the North East of England for several years at least.

"Doubter" is the English word for non believer, in Ashington this denotes female offspring. "Clewsie got the reverants doubter up the duff"

"Chute" is a tube that a person slides down, in Ashington it means to communicate very loudly. "Tommy seen Jimmy from the club, Jimmy waz deef so couldn't hear Tommy chute"

"Bared" means to uncover a part of the body so that it is naked, in Ashington it means "unpleasant or unwelcome". "Smegsa'z mother knew ee waz a bared lared efta the police caald"

"Berg" is an ice block that floats in the sea in English, in Ashington it is a lavatory. "After a night on the hoy Gregg left the berg in a state"

"Blair" the surname of Tony the Prime minister, in Ashington it means to cry. "Bert came yem efta a neet on the Stella and med Avril blair"

Poor Physics Jokes

In order to manage a post today I'm afraid I'm going to shamelessly steal some jokes, if you have a facebook account feel free to visit the group I got them from here, its basically a list of really poor, incredibly nerdy physics jokes from the some of the undergrads on the Physics course here at Durham. I have omitted to add their names, to protect the guilty, if you're one of them and want some credit grab it in the comments.

Here's a great excuse for forgetting your physics homework:
"I'm sorry sir, I accidentally determined its momentum so precisely that, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, it could be anywhere in the Universe."

Two photons are traveling through the universe together until one day one turns to the other and says "Look, I'm sick and tired of your interference".

z=x^2+3xy Walks into a pub, sits down on the barstool and orders a pint.
The barman looks up from the glass he's polishing and says "Sorry mate, you're gonna have to leave. We don't cater for functions".

sin (x), cos (x) and e^x all go to a party. sin (x) and cos (x) are both enjoying themselves, dancing about with all the other polynomials whilst e^x is just sat in a corner on his own.
sin (x) goes over to him and asks "why don't you try and enjoy yourself, integrate a bit more?"
"Is there any point" responds e^x, "it's not like it would make any difference!"

And a few from the internet, which may or may not also be on the group page.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference

Heisenberg is out for a drive when he's stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says, "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg says, "No, but I know where I am."

Q: Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
A: Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position.

The Ten Commandments of Physics
1. Thou shalt read thy problem…carefully.
2. Whatsoever thou doest to one side of thy equation, do ye also to the other.
3. Thou must use thy common sense, else thou wilt have flagpoles 9,000 feet high. Yea, even fathers younger than sons.
4. Thou shalt ignore the teachings of false prophets to do all thy work in thy head.
5. When thou knowest not, thou shalt look it up; and if thy search still elude thee, thou shalt ask thy All-Knowing Teacher.
6. Thou shalt master each step before putting thy heavy foot down on the next.
7. Thy correct answer does not prove that thou hast worked thy problem correctly. This argument convincest none, least of all thy Teacher.
8. Thou shalt first see that thou hast copied thy problem correctly, before bearing false witness that the answer book lieth.
9. Thou shalt look back even unto thy youth and remember thy arithmetic.
10. Thou shalt learn, read, write ,speak, and listen correctly in the language of mathematics, and verily A’s and B’s shall follow thee even unto graduation.

I am truly, truly sorry. I feel guilty enough that I may manage another post later.

Politics, US v France

As a penance for all the faux French bashing I do to Maud here is a video she will probably appreciate, its from Bill Mahers HBO show Real Time and shows the difference between American and French politics. Sorry I can't find an equivalent Britain v France version. The clip is very funny, h/t to crooksandliars.com.

Bill Maher on the difference between the French and Americans

The Frustrating World of Games

I just came across this video at Break.com, it sums up perfectly the utter frustration I felt at many games as a child, many was the time I would be reduced to a quivering, screaming, swearing ball of fury at my inability to jump onto some moving block in one of the Mario Bros games. The commentary is brilliant, and vastly more polite than I would have been. Enjoy.

Super Mario Brothers Is Frustrating pt2

Ashingtonese - Part 3

Time I think for another examination of the linguistic niceties of my home town, Ashington, I'm sure Ibadairon will appreciate this. To those who have never seen this before below are a list phonetic pronunciations of words used in Ashington with their meaning in English and a brief example of how they may be used in Ashington. The hard work has been done by my brother who enjoys this kind of thing. To those of you having difficulty understanding, I apologise, it becomes difficult to work out what any one sentence means until you have picked up a usable vocabulary. For hints on how the accent sounds think along the lines of geordie (i.e. Jimmy Nail, Gazza, Mark Knopfler etc.).

"Bought" in English is to acquire something with money, but in Ashington it was a Sesame Street character. "Bought disnt like Oarnie nay mare"

"All" - means everything whereas in Ashington it is a title similar to a duke. "The all of Lancaster is a posh prick"

"Herb" in English is something used to enhance the flavour of food, whereas in Ashington it is part of a cooker. "The cooking herbs ahaad."

"Snare" is something used to trap an animal, in Ashington it is frozen precipitation that usually falls in winter. "Ya bugger the snare's starting to torn t' slush"

"Add" means to combine two or more things to get a total, in Ashington it a term used to describe someone in their dotage "Berb started t' gan a bit funny when he got add"

"Term" is an academic time period, in Ashington it is the name of a gentleman. "Term backed fowa winnaz at Cambois dergs yistiduh"

"Torn" in English means to rip something i.e paper in Ashington it means to move or cause to move in a circular direction wholly or partially around an axis or point. "Dennis waasn't able t' torn eez wife owa in bed, she waaz owa muchuva heffa nooa days"

"Born" is the English word meaning to begin living, but in Ashington it means to damage or injure by heat or fire. "Edith had to take *his* leek pudding oot the cooka afore it started to born"

"Claire" is a girls name in English but in Ashington it is the animal equivalent of a finger nail. "That bord owa, yah bugga shiz got sharp claire's"

Serenity

After the silliness of the last few posts I think its about time to turn to weightier matters. In this case which Serenity character I am most like. This post is fairly well timed as it turns out that Serenity was voted the most popular Sci-Fi film in a poll by SFX magazine. I have to say the film is great, though I wouldn't go as far as saying it was the best Sci-Fi film ever.

If you want to have a go yourself try this link.

My results which I'm pretty happy about (except the 10% Reaver bit, unless it means 10% Border Reiver which could be true) are in the figure below.

News From Home

Every once in a while a story comes along that reminds me of home. Its rare however that a story about my actual home town appears. This is one such tale from the Metro...

A dim-witted teenage burglar left footprints in fresh snow this morning, which helped police track him down, a force spokesman said.

A homeowner from Ashington, Northumberland, rang police at 1.30am to report that two bikes had been stolen.

The thief climbed over a fence in Hindmarsh Avenue, broke into a shed and wheeled the bikes away, said a spokesman from the Northumbria Police.

'However, due to the fresh snowfall in the area, officers were able to follow a set of footprints in the snow, which led to a house a few hundred yards away,' the spokesman said.

The police located the culprit and found the bikes.

The spokesman continued: 'A 16-year-old boy from the Ashington area was arrested and is currently in custody on suspicion of burglary.'

... and yes there are people just that dumb back home.

Sunday Comic Round Up

Dispatches from the War On Science?

Joy Of Tech.

More Joy Of Tech.

Conservapedia - 2

More Conservapedia gems. It's really hard to figure out which articles are real and which are satire. Not that it really matters because they're both funny. I'll actually post the relevant bits because I'm sure they won't be around in their original form for long, all bold is mine, all poor spelling is theirs.

Second Estate

The Second Estate was a social level in pre-revolutionary France. It consisted of the nobility, about 2% of the population, yet it controlled 20% of the land and paid very little taxes, much like welfare mothers in modern America.

The Battle Of Hastings

The Battle of Hastings was in AD 1066. William the Conquerer disguised himself as the Duke of Normandy and invaded England. He established himself as king, and ruled until 1086.

Er, he was the Duke of Normandy.


Delaware

What a hole.

There's not much I could add to that exhaustive description is there? And yes that is the entire entry.


Spartan Soldiers

The most famous battle involving Spartan soliders was that of Thermopylae where, in 480 BC, a force of 300 hoplites under command of King Leonidas held back a massive Persian army under command of Xerxes. With nothing but spears, shields, and sweaty loincloths these soldiers fought off the following:

• Armored Rhinos
• Mutants
• Guys with Grenades
• War Elephants
• Orcs
• Goat-Man

Wait a minute Rhinos and Elephants, well maybe but Mutants,? grenades?, Orcs and Goat-Men? Say what now?


Homeschooling

Homeschooling is not new, and a disproportionate number of high achievers have been homeschooled throughout history. Here is a list of Christian homeschoolers:

You will notice if you check out their list of homeschooled Christian high achievers that the majority of them had one major advantage that more than explains their supposed high achieving status. They were born to rich families, generally in times when organised schools didn't really exist, so the fact that they got any education was a vast improvement on what most people at the time got. If your born to a rich family and can be educated at a time when very few others are, is it really a surprise you do well? Again a very poor example of confusing correlation with causation. But hey, we already know they aren't really up to scratch with their scientific methods right?


Possibly the saddest thing I have seen so far is in the entry for James Buchanan, it has the time and date of last editing.

This page was last modified 00:14, 1 January 2007.

I actually feel pretty sorry for the people involved now, go on, have fun, enjoy yourself, at least take New Year off. There will still be plenty of things to distort, lie about or otherwise mangle when you get back.

Best. Conservapedia. Article. Ever.

I've just come across the best conservapedia article ever, its for the Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus, I guess it goes to show if you believe Dinosaurs roamed the Earth at the time of Jesus, or that unicorns were real and a type of dinosaur, you truly will believe in anything, even an octopus that lives in trees.

At least I should be pleased that its one of their few pages lacking any sign of bigotry or intolerance.

Evolution Cartoons

For this roundup of cartoons I decided to try and stick to a theme, the theme was decided when I came across the first of the cartoons below. All of today's collection relate somehow to evolution, some even date from the 1920's, showing that evolution has essentially always been under attack by fundamentalists.


This one comes from a great site called Russells Teapot, as in Bertrand Russell's famous china teapot floating between Earth and Mars.


Click here for a slide show of classic cartoons printed in the Journal Evolution between 1927 and 1938.

Conservapedia

The blogging world (well the sentient part of it) has been all over Conservapedia this week making some hilarious discoveries. For those of you that have been under a rock for the last week Conservapedia is the wingnuts attempt at making an "unbiased" version of wikipedia, by which they mean a version which is totally biased towards the right-wing creationist fundamentalist Christian demographic. For various other blogs on the subject try, here, here, here and here. Unfortunately the site is running extremely slowly, probably because so many bloggers are now causing mischief by editing the entries. Beware when reading it though, not only is it often (unintentionally) funny but its also incredibly difficult to read, the entries generally read like a 9 year old wrote them for a school project.

Some of the entries are very funny, it must be pointed out that its difficult to know how many of these articles are legit and how many were actually put up by people taking the piss. For example here is part of the entry describing a Democrat, as in a member of the Democratic Party:

According to leading conservative thinkers, no good Christian would ever be a Democrat. Catholics identify as Democrats more than Republican, but the opposite is true for Evangelicas. The major tenets of the modern Democrat platform include cowering to terrorism, cocaine presidents, corporate profits, and establishment of an aristocratic, faux-religious state. However, contempt for all the founding principles of America is not yet an official prerequisite for entry into the Democrat party.

Or how about part of the entry on Charles Darwin.

While often regarded by the majority of modern biologists (who accept evolution) as "the father of modern biology," Darwin himself was aware that some aspects of his work were not as scientific as he wished. However, this theory is promulgated by extremely biased groups not recognized as real science, or, truly, advanced critical thought.

This part from the entry on Bill Clinton is clearly a piss take. I guess they have been too swamped to change it yet.

Bill Clinton managed to serve two terms without botching the prosecution of two wars, manipulating intelligence, engaging in a systematic program of torture, or mishandling the federal response to flooding of a major American city. Obviously, he is the devil incarnate. Clinton also attempted to use the American military to kill Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, an action which was properly seen as a mere attempt to distract the nation from the Monica Lewisnky scandal.

Some entries are well somewhat lacking in content, take this one, which is the entire entry for France.

A country in Europe. Thrived during the middle ages. The capitol is Paris, France, which was founded in the Middle Ages.

Thrived during the Middle Ages, thats it? Or how about Germany? Again this is the whole entry complete with spelling mistakes.

A country in central Europe that was blamed for both Wolrd Wars and claimed to be the dominate race of mankind.

So there we have it the conservative view of everything you need to know about two of the most powerful countries on Earth. Kind of explains US foreign policy for the last 6 years doesn't it?

You can see how the site descended into a free for all as there we're people being banned at a rate of about 1 every ten minutes, in fact they have suspended new accounts now. Surely they could see that this was always going to be the outcome? Their ideas can only survive because they are so insular (its meant to help home schooled kids), any technology that allowed free discussion and presentation of the facts was clearly going to lead to articles that were reality based and hence not at all what they were looking for.

The British Space Program

I finally found a video of Top Gears most outrageous stunt yet, turning a Robin Reliant car into a space shuttle. Alright it was never technically meant to make it into space but just watch the video. I'm amazed it got off the ground.



I love it, its just so totally English, a bunch of guys turn a crappy three wheeled car into a semi-working rocket. It also has the right ending for this type of story, remember Beagle 2 anyone? Click here for the full segment.

More Cartoons

More great cartoons from Joy Of Tech.

Vista vs Mac OSX, In Cartoon Form

Click For Big.

Its funny because its true. I know that plenty of people have it in for Macs and I'll probably get a snide comment or two for this, but to hell with it. Everyone in Astronomy uses Macs so at least I won't get any grief at work.

Oh then there's this:

If you're after a bit of balance how about this:


See them all, and more over at joy of tech. Damn I wish I could draw, and also was funny.

Mispronounced Domain Names

A list of 5 of my favourite (to date) mispronounced domain names:

1. Therapistfinder.com - Er, need to find a therapist?
2. Whorepresents.com - Find out the agent for a particular performer.
3. Cummingfirst.com - Cumming First United Methodist Church.
4. Scatissues.com - The website of SCA tissues.
5. Penisland.com - Sells pens.

Does anyone else have any good ones?