The Daily Adventures of Mercat

THIS IS A LARGE POST, I AM WARNING YOU.

HOLY SHIT I SUCK AT POSTING. This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a month and a half, christ, shame on me. Anyway. I'm trying to make better habits for myself... Some are getting better (I keep a real schedule on my ipod! I'm under 100 firefox tabs consistently!) and some not (I don't check my calendar, I forget things, I haven't organized many piles of files on my new computer... from a year ago...)

Shia says Indy V will be crazy. idk what to think. I'm excited but hesitant at the same time? Eeengh. Like I said after Indy IV, I mean, at least they can't do that one anymore. (Also, I told you so. Also-also, I am kind of sick of hearing about your stereotypical MacGuffins: the spear of Longinus, Noah's Ark, all that stuff.) GO TO HAWAII, PLEEEEASE

But, uuuuhhh, if Spielberg pitched a script, I'm guessing this is happening. So... yay?

...I'm depressed that that last sentence has a question mark attached to it. :(

HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW WHAT'S DEPRESSING?! WHY ON EARTH IS THIS A MOVIE. WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHANE VAN DYKE WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTACHED TO THIS, YOU WERE AWESOME ON DIAGNOSIS MURDER AND NOW YOU ARE VERY NOT-AWESOME. AUGH.





Um...yes.

Also--ADORABLE KITTANZ:




While we're doing videos, this time-lapse-experiment-turned-art-video is absolutely fantastic:

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

I hope this is just some lawyers having fun, and were not actually hired over legitimate offense.

I didn't even know they had finished the script for this, shit. Three months away was apparently a COMPLETE NEWS ISOLATION, much moreso than usual. (Nobody famous died.)

This movie looks awesome! That hat looks awful. (Short crown + extra-wide brim = grossnasty.)

Ghostbusters/AC/DC mashup:




Lady Gaga kidnaps Comissioner Gordon. Guys, I was about to say "I want to live in that world", and then, you know, I remembered that Lady Gaga is a real person and kicks major ass.

A good essay on Iron Man 2, which I am still excited about. The awesome thing about disappearing from the world for three months to memorize a metric assload of numbers until you've lost 15 pounds is that, when you get back, all the movies you just watched in theatres (and loved) are about to come out on dvd. Fuck. Yeah.

Some awesome shots from the filming of Star Wars.

So, "mad science", you say?!



That is the kind of awesome shit I'd like to do with my life. (I must say, though, that the closest I've ever come was destroying an antique rusted oven with a sledgehammer. Also fun, except for the part where the paint chips were popping off the bent metal everywhere...)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HOLY CRAPCAKES. NIGHTMARES. NIGHTMARES BEYOND BELIEF.

Jesus, it's about time! They better make these. Not that I'm planning to buy any, but, yeah...

Oh, James Cameron. I thought I couldn't hate Avatar any more, but I was wrong. You think you're God's gift to cinematography when really it sounds like you're just a rich bully. I kind of want to go see Pirahna 3D, even if I hate it, just to fucking spite you. Goddamn.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS? Rick Moranis may come out of retirement for Ghostbusters 3. HELL. FUCKING. YES. As long as this shit is better than the game (a bit repetitive story-wise, in relation to the movies). Also, I thought we were already clear that Oscar is Venkman's? There's some banter toward the beginning of the second one that that is what I took away from it.

OH HEY THERE BLACKBEARD. Why the fuck don't you have cannon fuses in your beard?! Jesus, the man should look MUCH more epic than that. For god's sake his body circled his ship seven times before sinking after he was beheaded! (Fuck yeah pirate lore.)

Chewie: not nearly as adorable as Winnie. But still hilariously adorable.

Here! Have a picture of Viggo the Carpathian.

Okay, now, look. I am all about crazy costumes but I don't even know what's going on here.



So adorable.

If the world is making you feel weary (although I don't see how that's possible after all those adorable kitties), I prescribe this.

Next video: An apparently sanctioned-by-Lucas video about the dumping of Jabba's cargo. With a creepy animation of Han Solo. (BUT I SAW THAT RAIDERS REFERENCE. I SAW IT.)

...Definitely thought it was going to be something like River Tam in the box though, the shape was eerily similar.

Heheheh kitty parkour.

HOLY SHITBALLS this woman has completely missed the point of feminism. Oh my god this article is rage-inducing. OH. MY. GOD.

Good news, videogamers! Playing video games enhances decision-making skills. That is, it enhances your ability to make choices faster.


Oh! An antibiotic-resistant superbug. Awesome. This may be our downfall. However, if you're worried about the apocalypse, I just thought you'd like to know that science seems sometimes straight-up fictional. I know a lot of zombie movies/novels/etc. lately have been leaning on diseases like ebola, mad cow disease, or other things to explain the basis for the disease. So here's a crazy fact: mad cow disease causes cattle's eyes to glow. WTF.

Rechargeable cars are less hurtful to the environment than gas, even if charged using "dirty fuel". And it's crazy, if it could charge using renewable sources--solar, wind, etc.--it's FORTY PERCENT cleaner than a gas-using car. Holy shit. Why is the world so resistant to changing how we use our resources? :(

(Answer: laziness, greed, but it still pisses me the fuck off.)

I read an article the other day about how an old solar panel from the White House was rediscovered, and some students, led by Bill McKibben, took it to the White House to see if they would take it back as a symbol of good faith and an attempt to move conservation forward in the eye of current US politics. Some of the statistics were incredibly impressive--like the fact that seed sales increased by 30% the year Michelle Obama was promoting her White House garden. But the kids were taken into a "war room" and basically told no. The whole thing made me so sad, particularly because I remember McKibben speaking to my freshman class on his book we all read, and because we were stuck in a hot, sweaty gym with a rather heavy book (as in, the material, not the book itself), he kind of got ignored by most people. And trying to sort out the fifty interested students in a room of 1000 or however many it was is not really a simple task. Anyway. The whole thing just makes me depressed for the state of our politics. I don't understand why people want to spend so much money on stuff and on keeping things the way they are instead of helping people who need help, helping the WORLD that needs help. I don't know. Maybe that's my bias of too many years of marianist catholic education speaking. I'm too hopeful, I suppose.


Cats drawn as Marvel characters! Adorable. And hilarious. Particularly Spidey and the Sandman.

OKgo's new video to encourage the adoption of shelter pets. Amazing as usual.

Surprise! Facebook is fucking with you again. And this is why I keep all my info private except to people I know.

NEWSIES IS GOING TO BROADWAY, hilariousyesfantasticyesssss.

If superheros were hipsters. I particularly like PBRman. Also I feel like Spiderman isn't that far from Tobey McGuire Spiderman because DEAR LORD DO I HATE HIM. (Also, LOL at Aquaman--Northwesterners are a silly people. I learned that this summer.)

Mysterious civilization hidden in the Amazon--I think this is the same thing (SPOILER ALERT!) Lost City of Z talks about. BUT NOBODY KNOWS. It's fascinating.

Carnivorous plants dwndling across US; I wonder if this might have anything to do with all the bugkiller sprays we use? (No idea, just a thought.)

Shark attack survivors team up to save sharks.

ATHLETE'S FOOT MEDICATION COULD CURE WHITE NOSE SYNDROME! Finally, a hint of good news on that front.

Bug people are crazy. So are geologists.

Some foreign memes for you. I particularly like Makmende, for some reason. I suppose it's like Chuck Norris, but cooler, because Chuck Norris has kind of turned out to be a douche. (Clint Eastwood = cooler than Chuck Norris.)

A really good article about building the mosque. It sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Where can you find Ned and Chuck, Henry Jones (Sr.), and (old school!) Zaphod Beeblebrox? Cons, of course. (Those PD outfits are fantastic, though, seriously.)

Interesting bit of Raiders trivia.

Oh my god, remember the ad for Iron Man 2 where Pepper smooches Tony's helmet, and it wasn't in the movie, and everybody got upset? I present to you--THE ALTERNATE OPENING:



(Fan. fucking. tastic. Why did they not do this one, now?)

And another fantastic short.


Star Wars yoga, absolutely hilarious. And rather clever.

Obscure Taco Bell trivia! A.k.a. the random shit I will bring up in conversation that may eventually lead to me singing the Gordita Anthem. This, in fact, happened this week despite me finding the article months ago, although it did not lead to Gordita-anthemizing, which is a shame.

Here is a fantastic interview with Patrick Stewart, and within it is a fantastically creepy tidbit of their interpretation of Macbeth, ( which I am cutting for the rare case of spoilers )

Is that not fantastically Halloween-y in the best manner? It absolutely is.

First of all, this article is rather old. Second, I doubt it is more than tongue-in-cheek coincidence, and three, Hex of the Hydra sounds godawful. Like the books series.

OH MY GOD. So I was watching the new Sherlock Holmes (not for the first time), but I also decided to watch the bonus material. Apparently they decided Jude Law was more of the ladies' man than RDJ, so they took to calling him Hotson on set.

omg. Hotson.

I can't even. It's hilarious. Anythus.


Much like Rule 34 of the internets, I surmise there must be a similar rule about blogs and personal interests. If you have thought of it, someone, somewhere, has already posted about it online. There is a cool blog called Strange Maps that posts, well, non-generic maps. This particular post has some interesting material on worldviews. It's rather fascinating, but my main point of this whole thing is that the Bulgarians think Poles are all sexy fembots.

I. Don't. Even. Know.






What I do know is that I need to post things more often because I have AT LEAST this many more links piled up in my Google Reader waiting for me to take action. And FIVE MORE old posts on my desktop from before I left this summer! Luckily those posts actually have some real content, like some book reviews.

So, real stuff now, we went to the Yellow Springs Street Festival today. I got an awesome monster shirt, a necklace for my medusa costume, and a beaverfelt antique collapsible tophat! The sad part is I got home and realized the tophat is too small :( BUT I refuse to get rid of it for the time being. I also walked RIGHT PAST Dave Chappelle without even noticing at first, who was saying that the street fair was "like Yellow Springs normally, but gayer". Which... I don't know what that means? Because it's almost the opposite. All the out-of-town people come to visit for the day, so the percentage of hippies is decreased by at least some...

Also my sister finally found the CORRECT version of the Taco Bell Gordita Anthem (thank you, 1998) and I downloaded it for the sake of posterity. POSTERITY I TELL YOU.



(begins at 1:40ish if it doesn't play correctly.)

[EDIT] If I had been paying attention or had any creative/organizational method of linkspamming (Captain Obvious Hint: I don't) I would have posted the Ghostbusters/Rick Moranis thing followed by the carnivorous plants thing followed by the Newsies thing. Points to you if you know how those three are related.

Alas, I did not, and I also need to post this in the case I missed posting it before:



Also-also, tomorrow is 42 DAY as in, the date is binary for 42 (101010), and it happens only once every hundred years, and tomorrow we are getting together to watch the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, probably have a Vogon poetry reading, and get our brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Coincidentally that is the name of my ipod and there will be no citruses anywhere near my electronics, thankyouverymuch. (I've taken to naming my electronic devices after science fiction things, or other related items; this new lappy is HELPeR486.)

Also-also-also, I am very afraid for this Pan-galactic Gargleblaster recipe, which is, essentially, take Everclear, cut with liquors:

...er, scratch that. I may be looking at the wrong recipe. Anyway, there's a lot of alcohol, plus a little bit of mixers, add olive, et voila.

If I weren't so convinced I'll be smashed rather quickly, I'd throw in a gin & tonic to boot. Maybe I'll pour one out for my gpa who seemed delighted about the affair but clearly can't make it (and probably shouldn't be consuming high levels of alcohols).

Sometimes I agree.

Oh god, it IS horrifying.

When Superman invaded the KKK. Life is awesome sometimes.

hehehehe, space.

This whole thing pisses me off. Yeah, maybe it's a little low-cut for a movie premiere, but it's the preimiere for Kick-Ass, and if you haven't noticed, I'm going to take a stab with the whole hot-pink hair thing and say she probably doesn't give a whit what you think of her. Not to mention, half the headlines talk about her husband (and call her "Mrs. Wossy") despite the fact that she's the fucking screenwriter. And somehow, they pointed this all out and still managed to completely miss the point?! I don't know. I really don't.

Oh, Liam Neeson. I still don't get this movie.

NOOOOO MOUNTAIN DEW THROWBACK TASTES HORRIBLE :C

ICHC is a Mensa favorite site. I don't know if that means they have a sense of humor or they're no better than the rest of us. Oh, humanity. You and your ego.

Old hat, but these George Takei ads creep me out a little. I mean, he's awesome, but his voice is just... weird.

Oh, FUCK YOU, Gizmodo. The dude did not "sneak a peek". HE TOOK A FUCKING PICTURE. (Oh, and remember, these are impossible to misuse, remember? At least it didn't take long. Maybe they'll realize what a dumbass idea these are.)

NOOOOOOOO why do they release all these lovely bright colors after I just got a new lappy?! AUGH. Turquoise or hot pink or lime green or sunset orange would have been SO SUPERIOR to dark blue.

Didn't know there was an Indiana Jones timeline. However, this guy seems thoroughly unamused? I really hate when people get interviewed and respond with stuff like that. At the least, make your answers interesting if you have nothing to add.

FUCK YES TREASURE ISLAND A LA THE NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES. AND APPARENTLY TWO STUDIOS ARE DOING THREE MUSKETEERS.

MOTHA'
FUCKIN'
HELLS YEAH

I really love the English's sense of humor. Or humour, as it were. Anyway, St. George is also the patron saint of... Barcelona? No, Valencia? I think it was Valencia. I remember seeing little Winnie-the-Poohs dressed up as St. George in the Disney Store in Valencia. I really wish I had bought one now, that would just be too awesome.

Heheheheheh.

OH MY GOD, I am such an open source science nerd. I mean, science is so expensive and in some instances there is just so much data to be processed (or unavailable due to number of researchers) that stuff like SETI and folding@home and that Mars or moon game or whatever it was that NASA came out with that I totally forget right now just makes me happy inside. Anyway. Jellywatch, a "social networking" open source method for collecting jellyfish data. (Well, any "unusual marine life".)

ISN'T THAT FUCKING AWESOME, you bet your damn ass it is.

Oh god, Viacom, wtf. I don't even know.

Updated Milgram's torture experiment used on French television. Just actually learned about this in Psych, it kinda makes me feel justified in not trusting people. Kind of. Anyway, the data is disturbing as shit, not to mention the effect to which peer pressure plays an effect. I mean, we already know (sadly, this is also in the news) that peer pressure drives people to horrible options like drugs and suicide and all sorts of other bad decisions (fashion standards vary reader by reader), but the fact that people are willing to torture other people to the possible point of death is just crazy. You know you'd like to think you'd be different but how do you know? The best I can offer is that I'd be more particular about the questions I'd ask and the objectives of the testing, but I have the advantage of a pretty decent higher science education and I think way too much so with studies I'm always trying to figure out what they're after. One because I'm curious and two so I can more accurately answer the questions in the method I think is accurate. Anyway. Roles can be intimidating (official, peers, et cetera) and this test, if nothing else, is sure as hell proof. Questioning authority can be a good thing.

I'm sorry, but all those pictures of "trees" and "dust particles" and things on Mars creep me the fuck out because they look like horrible skin diseases. Can't you just imagine parasites under that skin with some necrotic tissue (the gray areas)? Yeah... fukken GROSS.

Hard to believe at one point I wanted to be a veterinarian, jesus christ.

Well, many days late to Ada Lovelace Day, but here is a lovely article about Cindy Cohn, a woman involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I admire people who can argue technical knowledge to people with nontechnical education, mostly because my engineering professors are not those people. And let's face it, I have more of an artistic mind than an analytical one (though I'm thankful I can handle the analysis at all, if I were graduating as a straight-up architect right now I'd be SO FUCKED in the job market).

Oh god, Ottowa, really? It's time like these I'm thankful for the bill of rights which encouraged such lovely things as freedom of the press and the like. Because, you know, photography is dangerous.

This is completely fascinating but it makes me wonder if some people have greater sensitivity to mid-scale pitches than others. When I listen to songs (pop, musicals, doesn't matter, anything really) I could swear I hear semi-glisses and mid-tones that other people don't bother singing when they're humming a tune or doing karaoke or something. And I'm talking about people who were in the musicals or are in band. (Although not always, sometimes it's just a matter of people simplifying sheet music too much so that it follows the composition and not the recording most people are familiar with, ohmygod I am looking at you crazy lady that wanted us to sing our graduation tune LITERALLY. So oversimplified, fuuuccckkkk)

Internet censorship harms schools! Is it really any surprise that any type of censorship is harmful anymore? People NEED to be educated (and if the situation necessitates it, punished for willfully breaking rules). That is the only way that people will grow. Well, experientially, not biologically, obviously.

Isn't this the plot for that Julia Roberts movie? Honestly I think this just shows the creativity of the writers (in their willingness to present it, I mean, not necessarily "originality", as it clearly is an existant problem) as well as kind of not ceasing to prove that we need more basic technology education. Most of what I know I've picked up from the internet and I read a shit-ton more (read: spend more time on the internet) than most people I know. And I am apparently "very good with computers". (Which actually means I know how to Google For Diagnoses. [Diagnosises?]) Which is bullshit, I really don't know much about their operation. Anyway. My point is, if you have sensitive information, don't trust technology. At this point criminals should realize that "older" technology is probably almost safer at this point because some of the technology or applied knowledge to trace certain things like that is rather obscure in most people's minds these days or is just completely without people's realm of experience. Crazy, huh? (And before you wonder why I think of things like this, it's definitely because I read too many detective novels as a kid. You have to think like a thief to catch a thief.)

Oh man, number seven makes me laugh. I remember reading about that (though the social implications were probably beyond my understanding at that point) and at the moment it makes me glad that people were willing to write in and tell the other folks they're full of crap (ignoring the fact that it was a prank, of course).

Did I mention that I bought awesome spectator shoes yesterday? Because I totally did.

We also went on a bike ride, and the extreme wind (due to onsetting rain) fantastically fucked up my knee again. It seems to be healing faster, though, so... here's to hoping? I'd like to actually ride all of TOSRV this year and fuck youuuu Laura for wanting to sag part of it because I DON'T WANT TO SAG AT ALL.


TESLA DRUNK HISTORY, fuck yes. Looking at Drunk History's youtube channel it appears that there are other videos with Zooey Deschanel and such that were supposed to show up on HBO in February? And I haven't heard anything about them since which makes me sad. =(

Also, totally loling over Crispin Glover as Edison. Hahaha, fucking slick-ass bastard.

Speaking of slick bastards, check out Copenhagen over here. Sweet, no? Hell yeah.

This video is hypnotic and creepy at the same time. I'll just leave that there.

It could thusly be argued that Indiana Jones fought "aliens" in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is also a sad thing that the freaking Lego Flying Wing costs like $70. I think I have the Micro Machine version, though, SWEET ACTION.

New favorite slang: qu'est-ce que fuck?

Inherited from my dad, I am sure, I will take any opportunity to butcher French for the greater humorous good.


GOOD FUCK THIS IS HORRIFYING. It reminds me of the Splicer episode from Batman Beyond. Fffffuuuuuccccckkkkkkkk~

Hahaha "Mathsputin". Looooove iiiiit.

You know, while I appreciate the characterizations, that logo is just... incredibly detestable. I am so sick of steampunk being OMFGGEARS! (heh heh heh, I would go for a good Disney "g-ears" pun, though.) Seriously, yo, technology, in general, has to do something. And this is more the aestheticist than the engineer in me saying this. Just... bleh. Anyway, I think this means it's Old Hat if Disney did it and is no longer Scene and maybe it will lose some of its steam no pun intended. (Okay, totally intended afterthefact.) The sooner you can boot scenesters from any scene, the better. Please move to the Next Big Thing and mind the gap as you disembark, I'd like my functioning technology in relative peace, please and thankyou.

Also, Daisy is a fucking badass, check that shit out yo, she is AMELIA FUCKING EARHART-ing it up in that shit!


So I found out that Crystal Skull has a Star Trek tribute, of all things. During the rocket-sled fight scene there is a wall dubbed "numbersnumbers-GNDNnumbers" which apparently is reference to Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing. I also started reading the imdb trivia page for the movie and discovered this gem:

Harrison Ford was adamant that he got to wield Indiana's famous whip. Paramount executives wanted the weapon to be computer generated because of new film safety rules, but the actor branded the rule "ridiculous".

Dear Harrison Ford, you are my hero, thank you for being awesome. Dear George Lucas, you're still crazy as fuck, but at least this time you had Spielberg and Ford willing to tell you sometimes that you're a little bit off your rocker.

Also, this has always goddamn bothered me:

The Akator throne room designed by Guy Dyas keeps up an Indiana Jones tradition by having C-3PO and R2-D2 etched into one of the yellow titles, and E.T. into another. According to the book "The Complete Making of Indiana Jones", the characters can be found somewhere in all four Indiana Jones pictures.

They're easy to find in Raiders but WHERE THE DAMN HELL ARE THEY IN ToD and LC?

Also, I just ~can't wait~ until the original Star Wars trilogy gets re-released and re-remastered on BluRay and George Lucas decides to digitally add these Other Dimensioners to the celebration scene at the end. I mean, ET's already there, it's bound to happen at some point.

Originally Henry Jones, Sr., Short Round, Sallah and Willie Scott were to make an appearance at Indiana's wedding.

WHY DID THIS NOT HAPPEN FFFFFFFUUUUUU~

In the "making of" on the Back to the Future (1985) DVD, one of the original ideas of the time machine was as a refrigerator that Marty would climb into. Furthermore, the way Marty was to come back from 1955 was via the power of a nuclear bomb at a test site in the desert. Back to the Future was produced by Steven Spielberg. The idea was scrapped because filmmakers were afraid children would shut themselves inside of their home refrigerators to imitate the movie.

Pure. Excellence. I DON'T REGRET THAT SCENE FOR A MOMENT.


...Anyway. Speaking of GNDN, I kind of need these in my future house, somewhere. In my super-futuristic Tony-Starkish tech lab.

(Seriously though I still want his drafting table. Rich motherfucker.)


Heh heh heh, stormtroopers.

( OLD LINKSPAMS AND STUFF THAT MAKE ME A HORRIBLE BLOGGER RIGHT NOW )

So that's what I've been up to for the past MONTH or so. Also did I mention I downloaded the Force Unleashed Lightsaber App for my iPod touch? I totally did and it's PURPLE ALL THE WAY, baby. Now I need someone to duke it out with.

...You know, the sooner Nerf makes Nerf Lightsabers, THE BETTER.

[EDIT] ALSO-ALSO, anyone play Spore or Sims 3 online? I got a code from Taco Bell and I play neither.

A review of Avatar that pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. The more I read about it, the less and less interesting it gets. =/ Meh.

I love Bill Nighy:



I, for one, am all for it. I also need to find more films with Nighy as he's been underused in everything I've seen him in (as Slartibartfast, Davy Jones the pirate, and Shaun's stepdad in Shaun of the Dead).

How to store and organize cats. Rather adorable, yes?

I didn't even know that people still didn't know what an address bar is, except maybe grandmas and grandpas and the like. I just... bwaaaaaaaaaa?



My kitties need to learn how to do that ASAP. Except they just expect you to turn on the sink, put noms in their bowl, or give up your cereal milk for them. Not nearly as multitaskable.

Woah, research on reversing the effects of aging. That kind of stuff is crazy!

Ohmigod. OHMIGOD. Elemental emission spectrum scarves. SOMEONE BUY ME ONE, HOLY SHIT THEY ARE AWESOME. I would wear it more than my physics scarf, even! It's a bit more subtle and colorful than my energy/displacement/pi scarf. <3


More later, maybe. Like the real goings-on in my life, not just a million internet links. =/

MY NEW CONSPIRACY THEORY: Billy Joel is actually Batman. (Billy Joel = Michael Keaton = Bruce Wayne = Batman.)



Or... Bruce Wayne's even-more-secret-than-Batman identity is Billy Joel.

(It's definitely the hair.)



In other news, other animals are aware of their situations as well. Completely fascinating, as much as we dismiss them.

EVEN COOLER, scientists are using completely ridiculous approaches to attain real results. THIS IS WHAT SCIENCE IS ABOUT, PEOPLE. I looooove iiiiiit. :D

...As a result I have just discovered that the International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos is a legit publication and NONLINEAR SCIENCE is a real realm. Why don't they teach you this shit in school?! Shit would be so fascinating. It's like fictional superscience come to life. AND I WOULD PROBABLY BE A SCIENCE MAJOR. Just saying.

I still blame gradeschool for a shitty science education, I really do.

A rather disturbing state of political affairs. I just... yeah. There are no words.

Petri Dish cookies! If I ever have a mad science party, these will be involved.

Natalie Portman to star in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies! THIS CASTING IS PERFECT. Why? Because people already confuse her with Kiera Knightley already, and they are both awesome, AND SHE IS AWESOME, and they are GOING TO BE KILLING ZOMBIES. Heeeeeeee this cannot come out on dvd soon enough. Also...? I really want to see a zombie Christmas movie. It would be fantastical, I'm sure.

So, last night, instead of going to the POD Christmas party like I was planning, since Kim and Melissa and everyone else and I had had our Christmas dinner here at our apartment, and Melissa got Jon the Beatles Rock Band, we ended up going to the guys' house to play Beatles Rock Band. For four hours. In which time we beat the whole game and moved on to regular Rock Band. BUT. I got really excited because the game was pretty fun, and since Laura and I still need the drum and mike set for our GH, maybe I could find a RB compatible pack so I could buy the Queen Rock Band! Right? So I just did a little research... the Queen Rock Band that I saw at WalMart is apparently a 10-song disc. LAME AS FUCK. I mean, I realize Queen doesn't have maybe quite as many recognizable songs as the Beatles do, but ffs they didn't put Don't Stop Me Now on there! So I am not buying it. Poop.

Also, they put Tie Your Mother Down on there. Nobody loves that song.

ELTON JOHN IS ON GH5 THOUGH? That is amazing. I'm just waiting for some sort of Billy Joel version of RB... Obvs you don't really have guitar jams, but who knows, they made DJ Hero, maybe they can come up with something clever to be a piano/other instruments. (He has a lot of brass and sax parts... idk how that would work though without looking rather stupid.)

An internet safety code for the next generation. And yet they will still have the fabulous opportunity to fall prey to rickrolling and goatse. The internet really is a fabulous place, you know.

Calvin and Hobbes covered by different artists. Very cool. The first one's a little depressing though, no?

Idk why but I've been tab-hoarding for weeks. As a result, running roughly 220 tabs was causing firefox to crash constantly. So, here is several days worth of tab writeups, which might mean whatever I wrote sounds a few days old. That would be because it is, but it's probably not too important.

( LOTS of articles )

( a second set, many more articles )

...I read a lot.

This is me still catching up on shit. And needing to clean out my tabs like serious

I did get my taxes done, though. (Woo!) And my dad and I took apart a lawnmower engine today, that was awesome. I learned that the engine bodies are just aluminum and there is quite enough force on broken parts to shoot them through the sides. (Hot damn) That's what my sister did to her car engine back when she killed it (not when she wrecked it, but when she blew the engine quite dramatically). Goddamnit, I keep forgetting the term and calling it the crank shaft. But it was some arm in this engine that snapped, flipped around and locked the engine and flywheel and sent pieces shooting into the wall (and into the wall of the piston area, jamming that too).

Was George Lucas wrong? Unfortunately, this is not about Star Wars or Indiana Jones. But anything where we're taking credibility away from him is a-okay with me. Kind of like ALW. They both had their times but they need to take a step back from their involvement now. (Wicked and Phantom are coming to the Schuster next year and my mom thought I meant "Phantom 2" because I kept saying "Phantom too". I have absolutely zero faith in his sequel, letmetellyou.)

They're making a 10 Things I Hate About You tv show? I... uh... I dunno. I don't have much faith in that, tbh, because I don't have much faith in general television. Especially decade-old not-quite-remakes.

Goddamnit, this is the kind of shit I wanted to be doing in science fair. Instead I had rather shitty science teachers who never actually helped me accomplish anything with my projects, and thought my stuff was way too off-the-wall because I ACTUALLY ADDRESSED FUCKING QUESTIONS I HAD WITH SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND DIDN'T LIE ABOUT THE RESULTS, godfuckingdamnit. (No, I'm not bitter. Have I mentioned I'm really good at holding grudges?) Other than my eighth grade project which I can't remember, I did one testing people's ability to actually differ between Coke and Pepsi and knockoff colas, one testing backpack weights compared to body weight, one testing cat saliva killing bacteria, one testing wine cork tainting, and one testing the vitamin C content of edible flowers. Which I think are pretty damn legitimate questions, even though my procedures weren't anything great or advanced. WELL I'M SORRY YOU NEVER TAUGHT ME OTHER STANDARD PROCEDURES AND MACHINES. If I'd known what was out there for me to use, I could have come up with a test using them. I promise you. So yes, once again I'm blaming GOD DAMN FUCKING MS. WISE and ugh Mrs. Levy (she hated me) and rather clueless Ms. Keller. What is it about the science teachers I had that made them completely unhelpful (or just plain idiotic... Ms. Wise ohmygod, we actually made her cry once. I don't even remember why, but I remember she was an idiot)? And so many other people got away with completely unoriginal tests or just plain LYING about their data or having their parents come up with and design and basically build their project. God fucking damn, people have no respect for the scientific process.

Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.

Housing drunks and letting them drink saves millions, interesting. I always like when alternative solutions are actually able to get permission to test (somehow) and are able to show results. YAY PEOPLE ARE THINKING (unlike my science fair peers yes I'll be bitter about this for the rest of this post for the sake of hilarity)

This may just be one of the best articles I've ever read, "The different kinds of people that there are". ( the text in case it disappears )

OH GOD ROBOTIC OVERLORDS Well kinda. Not AI but critical thinking skills. Hot damn. We're a few steps away from the computer in Eagle Eye (did I ever get around to how ridiculous that film was?) which I think would have been a totally better film if it decided it needed to destroy itself again. OOPS I JUST SPOILED THAT MOVIE KINDA BUT OH WELL. It's not really worth your time unless you have nothing better to watch (it's not awful) and you are a trumpet player flying from Denver to Dayton who wants to be kind of surrealistically freaked out. Yeeeaaaaah.

Oh man, speaking of technology, they (I'm not exactly sure who) invented a table saw that's attached to a circuit and a brake drum and in ONE TEN-THOUSANDTH OF A SECOND if it senses a change in electrical resistance (aka wetness or in this specific case, flesh) it stops and retracts the blade. Of course doing this costs you a $200 brake drum each time but it's better than losing your fingers and paying $10,000 to maybe having them reconnected.

But I am just consistently amazed by the mechanical and electrical things people are able to design. I just... have no mind for mechanics. If you give me the pieces I can put them together, but I am a static person. At best I can give you a Rube Goldberg, but that's about it.

A really fun and simple word game.

Goddamnit I love RFID. This isn't even a particularly exciting application! It's just so awesome.

10 Amazing Living Walls. Just trying to pay more attention to sustainable stuff because I'm going to the Stander Symposium on what UD should do about energy stuff, and I want to be able to see us do something fucking awesome.

On that note, the 10 Worst Greenwashers. That'd be people who lie about having an earth-friendly business. FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.

Okay yay done links for now fuck I'm really tired and hungry goddamnitall

[EDIT] Oh, I almost forgot. Things I learned today: you know why older cars were designed with such long fronts? Not just style, but because the pistons were all in a line before they did the V-design. Cool beans. :D

Huh, so CSI:NY is not on at the same time. HELLS YEAH MOTHAFUCKAS

Mythbusters was good but they only tested the bike myth (busted). Although they've tried the plane-inflatable-raft thing before, and I think found it plausible (never seen the episode).

But Adam's outfit looked NOICE (as did the bike--holy crap I want one), especially the hat :D And the bag was when I noticed that he probably geeked out over the whole thing (well, the whip too).

But CSI:NY, not so much. SHAME ON YOU COSTUMING DEPARTMENT that's right I said it.