Hapy Birtday!

Layte? Erly?

Internet Meme Generation Discussion

Behold, as these three guys take you on an hour and a half long discussion of Internet meme generation. This isn't just an exploration of the memes themselves--these guys take a serious look at the groups and subgroups where the ideas seem to continually originate from.

Of particular interest is the part early on about 4chan's /b/ imageboard (beginning at about 3:45) Rapid combination and recombination of ideas and content, along with complete anonymity seems to be a recipe for exactly the kind of hive mind we've been talking about.


Warning: This hour and a half long video is an hour and a half long.

Ways to be Effectively Heard

A friend's unique response to the outcry over President Obama's invitiation to give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.


In other, slightly related news, I saw this guy on the street, and I drove around the block three times trying to get a good photograph of him. He was all by himself, and in all honesty, I had no idea what he was getting at, at first. In fact, his sign was so nonsensical to me the first time around, I even considered honking to show my support for vague, surrealist protests.

All these things get me thinking not about reproductive rights, but about changing minds.

Yeky!

On the windowsill of a bus from Zagreb to Savudrija, 13 July 2006.

Some of the scariest/most awesome things you’ll ever see…

Images taken by Paul Scheer at the Neverland Auction. Click on the show info tab at the top for his amusing photo titles..

BrainPop on Geek Dad!

Geek Dad is one of my favorite blogs, and look what they've just covered in one of their longest and most detailed posts to date!

One site that I discovered many months ago is BrainPop... You just can’t beat it when your kids are begging to learn!

I'm curious, did the folks at BP notice a spike in hits today?

Wired's Geek Dad

Transcripts from KGB Cold War Notebooks

Here's a link with translated texts of Alexander Vassiliev's KGB notebooks written during the cold war. I'm not much of a history buff at all, but some of them are spooky as hell to read:

Report on a c/t dated 1.4.42 from NY

Maxim reports that “Chap” learned the following in conversation with an old friend of his, an instructor at Columb. U. named Clarence Hiskey (Clarence Hiskey): Together with a group of prominent physicists and chemists at Columb. U., he is urgently working on a radioactive bomb. It is thought that this bomb will have enormous destructive power with a very large blast radius, possibly hundreds of miles long. Those who know about the bomb fear it could annihilate millions of people... The Germans are far ahead of the Americans in their work in this field. The Germans already have the ability to use the bombs, but fear that the large affected area will be inaccessible to them.

...And then more like this... Juicy!

Letter from Gennady dated 27.10.38

“‘Crook’ is currently selecting materials against the head of the US fascist organization, Fritz Kuhn. To this end he has enlisted a woman named Virginia Cogswell, the mistress of the aforementioned Kuhn... he moved Virginia into the Siric Hotel, installed a microphone in her room and arranged for the recording in another room of the conversation that takes place in Virginia’s room while Kuhn visits her.

[Virginia Cogswell] Met Fritz Kuhn and was his sweetheart for 3 years. Kept a diary of events... thanks to her liaison with F. K. She knew their entire network and was up to date on all of their espionage activities. She was checked out by the Gestapo and could be cordially received in Germany by Hitler.

P.S. F. K.’s vile and underhanded tactics infected her against him and the German-American Union, and she is prepared to do anything and to completely expose their entire organization in this country and everywhere she knows.

You could translate reams of this stuff directly into a movie script! Or, daytime soap opera. One of the two.

Galspanic's Weekly Question, or how I drive my wife crazy.

Supposing a disembodied voice were to say to you; "You are being transported to pre-existing fictional universe of your choosing. You will be given a universal translation device implanted discreetly in your ear, and an equivalent of ten thousand dollars of the local currency. While you won't personally know any of the protagonists, or antagonists of this fictional universe, they do exist in your time frame. Meeting said protagonists/antagonists would be like meeting Madonna, or Charles Manson. There's a possibility of this occurring, but it's highly unlikely. Working to your advantage though, is your knowledge of the workings of this fictional place. The universe of your choice can be from a book, movie, or television. Choose your destination now!"

Where would you go? What do you think you would do there? Keep in mind what the everyday situation of this universe you are choosing might be. Would living in that situation really be as amazing as your instant reaction says it would be?