Space Ninja

Quantum of Solace: One Paragraph Review

2008-11-17T17:43:18Z

If you haven’t seen Casino Royale yet, go see it before you see this one. Unlike Bond movies in the past, which were all stand-alone, this is a true sequel to the first movie. It opens maybe an hour after the finale of Casino Royale, and jumps right into the action. Continuing their general theme of “Bond is an incredible bad-ass,” this movie has gunfights, car chases, knife fights, airplane chases, fist fights, boat chases, and even an opera fight. Where the first movie was a little more cerebral, and spent a good hour focused on the poker game, this one is all action. I love the rebooted Bond, and this one definitely lives up to the old tagline, “Everything He Touches Turns to Excitement!“

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-17T07:30:03Z

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
The infamous essay on the infeasibility of Superman sleeping with Lois Lane. This has been out of print for some time now, but Larry Niven put it up on his site.
Tags: superman, comics, steel, kleenex, loislane, lanalang, clarkkent, larryniven, science, biology, sex
A clip from the Firefly Blu-ray reunion featurette.
Joss and some of the cast discuss his ideas for Monster Cattle. I miss Firefly.
Tags: firefly, serenity, josswhedon, bluray, discussion, monsters, cows, cattle, scifi, television, movies
Make Cake in a Mug
Instructions on how to bake a mini-cake in a mug using your microwave and hot cocoa mix in just a few minutes.
Tags: microwave, howto, recipe, cake, mug, chocolate, snack
WW II vet held in Nazi slave camp breaks silence: ‘Let it be known’
"The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march."
Tags: wwii, war, history, nazis, pow, camp, slaves, terror, terrorism
Video: Speak, the Hungarian Rapper
This guy is awesome. He’s so serious, and you can tell he thinks he’s a complete badass - but the whole thing just flops and feels like an awful joke. "Yeah, c’mon."
Tags: video, music, hungary, rap, hiphop, speak
Video: Little Boy Meets Lobster
"Woah! Wow! Daddy! Wow! Can I touch it? No! No, I don’t like to touch it!"
Tags: children, video, lobsters, parenting, hilarious
Trailer: Up by Pixar
Pixar’s new movie looks hilarious. Grumpy old men are comedy gold.
Tags: pixar, video, trailers, movies, up, animation, cgi, disney
Jake Gyllenhaal’s SNL Opening
I’ve been looking for this for awhile, this is pretty low quality, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen on SNL. I love when the "nope, just regular cowboys" line.
Tags: jakegyllenhaal, snl, video, intro, gay, cowboys, musicals, showtunes, crossdressing
Video: Kung Fu Clowns
Urn sent this to me. It is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
Tags: clowns, kungfu, video, advertising
A Butler Well Served by This Election
"For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land… His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen."
Tags: eugeneallen, whitehouse, politics, race, racism, class, butlers, presidents
Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know
"He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics. While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead. He uses an Apple Mac laptop."
Tags: obama, president, politics, factoids, facts, lists, trivia, comics
The First 100 Days
Infographic comparing every president’s since FDR’s first 100 days.
Tags: presidents, politics, history, charts, graphs, infographics, fdr, first100days
Wil Wheaton’s Fundamental Rule of Driving
"Everyone on the road is an idiot, and they’re actively trying to kill you."
Tags: wilwheaton, rules, driving, parenting

The Parts of the Computer

2008-11-13T00:10:31Z

While digging through some old papers, Annie found this set of pages she colored when she was in second grade in 1986. I love the inclusion of the “stand” as part of the computer. It holds the monitor!

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-10T07:30:03Z

Real Life Photoshop Desktop
Awesome.
Tags: photoshop, real, desktop, tools, photography, art, paint
Strains Between McCain and Palin Aides Go Public
"On election night when it was clear that McCain would be giving a concession speech instead of an acceptance speech, Palin approached McCain with a speech in hand hoping to make her own concession speech… McCain aides made it clear to Palin that she would be a spectator that night, not a speaker…"
Tags: mccain, palin, politics, president, election, campaign, concession, speech
Yes, he did.
"What comes next - a generation of people who will grow up without the automatic preconception that ‘President’ automatically means ‘white guy, probably also old.’ That’s really going to change things in ways you and I, with our blinkered, limited-by-our-experiences-and-upbringing vision, can’t begin to imagine."
Tags: mightygodking, politics, president, election, obama, race, racism, change, hope, future, preconceptions
Pavel Goberman Description from the Oregon Voters’ Guide
Crazy Russian immigrant who uses the first paragraph of his description to pimp his exercise program. He has worked every job imaginable, including beekeeper, and gave himself a PhD in PE. His previous government experience consists entirely of previous candidacies, and time in the Russian Tank Army.
Tags: pavelgoberman, oregon, votersguide, description, biography, education, experience, crazy
And Now for Something Completely Different
Video of a six-legged robot wearing a fedora and sunglasses dancing to "Mambo #5."
Tags: hexapod, robots, dancing, fedoras, sunglasses, loubega, mambo, awesome, video
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging
"The Frustration-Free Package is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It’s designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging."
Tags: amazon, frustration, packaging, shipping, protection, clamshell, plastic, twistties, recycling, genius
Are Windows Vista icons facing the wrong way?
"This raises an interesting discussion around the ‘psychology’ of design. Could this explain why so many people are turned off by Vista? On the same note, facing left also implies “looking back” as opposed to right - ‘looking forward’."
Tags: icons, ui, design, left, right, vista, ux, psychology, microsoft, windows
What I learned from The Ants
"With their beautifully simple set of behaviors ants can seem a lot like robots. Really stupid robots."
Tags: ants, robots, science, biology, nature
Sarah Palin prank call
Oh, this is just humiliating. Even accepting that she didn’t get the rather obvious hints that it was a prank, the things she’s saying when she thinks it’s REALLY the French President are painful.
Tags: palin, politics, election, campaign, prankcall, video, prank
Video: Pixar’s Up
Teaser site for Pixar’s new movie, Up.
Tags: up, pixar, cgi, disney, cartoons, animation, video, teaser, trailer
Video: Transmetropolitan Cartoon
Screen test for a Transmet cartoon by Noodle Soup, the guys that went on to do the Venture Brothers.
Tags: cartoons, comics, transmetropolitan, warrenellis, noodlesoup, video, screentest, venturebrothers
Video: Baby
"Having a dog totally prepared us for having a baby."
Tags: omg, wtf, video, babies, parenting, pets, dogs, satire, guns, cps, children
Video: The Dark Knight Meets Superman
“Haha, no, seriously, what is it, like heat vision? ‘Cause I have that. It’s awesome.”
Tags: superman, batman, comics, darkknight, satire, video, cartoon
Video: Wassup 2008
It’s been just long enough that this is funny again - and timely.
Tags: wassup, video, budweiser, politics, election, campaign, advertising, change, true

Yes We Did!

2008-11-05T04:26:46Z

The Worst Part of the Matrix

2008-11-05T00:01:39Z

“The absolute worst thing in Matrix III was when Keanu gets to the virtual office of the Big Computer Mind, and he meets, like, a tweedy professor with a white beard. Ugh! At the very least it should have been a fat hacker in a T-shirt, preferably high on pineal extract.”
– Rudy Rucker

Where is Everybody?

2008-11-04T00:28:36Z

You all know this story. In the summer of 1950, Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist and atomic pile-builder, went to lunch at Los Alamos National Laboratory and joined some colleagues there and asked them a question. “Where is everybody?” This confused his colleagues, obviously, because they were sitting right there with him, and then he had to clarify that he wasn’t talking about them. He was talking about the space aliens.

You see, this was only a few years after the supposed flying saucer crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and even though that turned out to be nothing, nothing AT ALL — Merely a downed weather balloon piloted by small hairless men with slits for mouths — still, America had gone saucer-mad, even famous scientists who were eating lunch.

Fermi’s reasoning, if I may paraphrase badly, is that the universe is so vast that it stands to reason there should be other intelligent life out there, and the universe is so old, that unless we were the very first civilization ever to evolve, we should have some evidence of their existence by now, and yet, to the best of our knowledge, we are alone. “Where is everybody,” asked Fermi, and his colleagues had no answer.

Fermi then went on with the same blunt logic to disprove fairies, Sasquatch, God, the possibility of love, and thereafter, as you know, Enrico Fermi ate alone.
– John Hodgman, A Brief Digression on Matters of Lost Time

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-03T07:30:01Z

Sarah Palin Doesn’t Understand the First Amendment
"According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers."
Tags: palin, politics, election, campaign, firstamendment, freespeech, stupid
Widespread Touchscreen Vote Flipping
"ES&S iVotronics touch screens have already been observed now in four completely separate States, flipping the votes, in the early voting that has taken place to date. Eye-witness reports of repeated, consistent flipping of votes (from Obama to McCain naturally) has already occurred in the States of: West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas that have had early voting."
Tags: voting, electronic, machines, fraud, failure, fail, problems, troubles, obama, mccain, republicans, democrats, election, politics, campaign
Caught on Tape: Electronic Voting Machines Flipping Obama Votes For McCain, Completely Unreliable
This does not fill me with confidence. I’ve worked tech support for too long to want those guys handling something as important as votes.
Tags: voting, electronic, machines, fraud, bugs, problems, trouble, politics, election, republicans, democrats, obama, mccain
Parodies of the Obey Hope Poster
Turns out there are LOTS of parodies of Shepard Fairey’s "Hope" poster - here are about 100 of them.
Tags: obey, obeygiant, giant, shepardfairey, hope, obama, parody, satire, politics, mccain, palin, election, campaign
How to Write an Episode of Fringe
5) Dr. Bishop says or does something nutty. 6) Conflict! 7) Dr. Bishop proposes some crazy solution to contain the situation. 8) The doctor’s zany solution works! What luck! 9) The X-Squad saves the day! 10) Optional: Agent Dunham sees dead people.
Tags: fringe, satire, howto, writing, television
Judging Books by Their Covers
"In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California’s Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California’s public schools. …Feynman analyzed the Commission’s idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products."
Tags: richardfeynman, physics, math, curriculum, textbooks, schools, stupidity, evaluation, corruption
Video: Red 5’s Golden Ticket Program
The msn news video covering Red 5’s "Golden Ticket" recruiting program. Worth a look.
Tags: red5, video, games, recruiting, outsidethebox, goldenticket, hiring, design
If It’s Too Social, You’re Too Old
Khoi hits the nail on the head: "I recently came to this conclusion: as an interaction designer, if I’m not actively using social networks, then I’m just not doing my job."
Tags: khoivinh, subtraction, web, development, design, interaction, socialnetworking, facebook, flickr, twitter, social
Product Placement Movie Posters
"What if movie posters were more honest? What if the theatrical one-sheet wasn’t filled with floating heads of the main stars, but instead featured all the brand tie-ins and product placements up-front?"
Tags: movies, posters, productplacement, honesty, advertising, marketing

Wealth Groupies

2008-10-30T22:19:07Z

Like “Joe the Plumber” — who is not a licensed plumber, whose first name isn’t Joe, whose boss’s business makes $100K, not $250K and isn’t for sale, and who couldn’t afford it if it were for sale based on his own income of $40K and his outstanding tax lien — a certain sad proportion of white blue-collar men I know are wealth groupies.

Like Joe, they imagine they’ll make big money some day. They imagine themselves rich some day. And so they doggedly vote as if they were rich already, voting over and over again against their own self-interest, because they don’t want to identify with their own economic class — not in their hearts, and not in the voting booth, either.
– Lisa Small on the popularity of Joe the Plumber

Not the Way We Should be Doing It

2008-10-30T22:18:52Z

“I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”
– Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama (via Emptyage)