Lunar

Friday marked the 43 anniversary of the first lunar landing.  Here, in commemoration, is the long lost audio:

Muppet Lab

I humbly submit that the next Muppets film center on Bunsen and Beaker.  Any traditional SF theme would work.



This deleted scene comes via the lovely Kendra, reposted from io9.

Youtube dreams

"We are opening a window into the movies in our minds."

UC Berkley scientists are pioneering a system "to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips," technology that may someday allow us to TiVo our dreams. Yikes.

Weiner, on a roll

Anthony Weiner nails it at the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner:

Always get the insurance

BoingBoing has a video up from 11foot8.com, remixing video from Durham's own truck-eating underpass with Ennio Morricone.



Durham + Morricone = ♥

O Pioneers!

I love this.

Diaper chase scene

Another tasty slice from the ACBs recent release, Stona Rosa.  This song is entitled "Street Fighter II," and with The Pitch I'll designate it mostly safe for work.

Better than a flash mob.

Life

Nina Simone makes every day better. That's a fact.

Your Meat is Alive

This should make you not want to eat fish ever again: skinned and gutted dog fish wriggling around.

From BoingBoing.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

My dear Kansas has such nasty problems, between the immigrant-hating Kobach, the town-destorying tornados, and--well--it's pretty miserable politics. But sometimes the Crazy, when it gets really crazy, almost makes it worthwhile.

Case in point, the gay-, America-, everything-hating Westborro Baptist Church, most famous for demonstrating with non-sequitur signs at the funerals for dead US soldiers. You remember these guys, right? These people are so odious, so thoroughly beyond the pale of any semblance of theological coherence, that they actually manage to be funny sometimes. When your theology centers around hating gay people and condemning everyone everywhere that they are going to hell, it's pretty hard not to seem self-satirical.

And this brings me to the cultural artifact of the week: the granddaughter of the Church's founder/cult leader is apparently a gifted videographer. And the WBC seems to think that the best way to spread their enlightened message is through parody videos. Really the headline of this blogpost at Kansas City's Pitch Weekly speaks for itself: "Westboro Baptist Church has dropped another Lady Gaga joint, yo."

It's hard to imagine that the WBC spends its time with this kind of stuff. Really, it's just odd.

Via my man in the thick of it all, J. Barry.

And while I'm on the topic, there's a great documentary about the WBC, which you can watch online here.

Hedging

Think Progress has a post up today entitled, "After making ‘American English’ the official language of Texas, GOP recruits Latinos in Spanish." Here's the video featured as part of Texas' new Youtube campaign, "Soy Tejano Republicano(a)."

Now, there are three interesting things about this video. First, judging from the cast of the video, the number of Tejano Republicans is very, very small. Couldn't they have hired actors? One of the featured speakers is clearly not a native Spanish speaker. Given that the point of this video is to attract a wider Hispanic base, one would think that the creators would have preferred to show the breadth of Tejano Republicans by featuring -- well, Tejano Republicans.

The second thing that struck me about this was the way in which these Tejano Republicans talk about "America." As Spanish speakers know, "America" refers to the Americas generally, not to the United States, which is Los Estados Unidos. "Americans" are "Estado Unidenses," not "Americanos." In other words, when you say "Americanos" in Spanish, you may very well be speaking about Mexicans or North Americans genreally. And so it somewhat interesting to note that at least one of the Tejano Republicans featured here (about 20 seconds in) talks about "American" opportunity:

"Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Americanos."

In other words, this is hedging: Republicans stand for equal economic opportunity for all "Americans," but American here means something broader than United States citizens. The sentence could have read "Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Estado Unidenses," but it does not. And why? Because in order to cast itself as pro-Hispanic, the Republican party has to do some serious backbends.

Toon

In honor of tonight's Oscars, a film that was nominated for best short animation a few years back, "The Myterious Explorations of Jasper Morello."



This, like all good things, comes via Kendra.

Note to my future students:

If ever you apply to a university that allows you to supply a Youtube supplemental video as part of your application package, make sure it implies that you will spend your time in college more or less going to class and being a good member of the academic community--not just throwing raves on campus.

You're welcome.

Dolphins!

More video of dolphins hunting in mudflats ...



as well as dolphins hydroplaning onto beaches to catch fish.



I don't know why I find this so fascinating, but I do. Enjoy.

Strategy

Maybe the best nature video I've ever seen.

Proto-muppets

An early version of Kermit the Frog sells coffee through the base use of cartoon violence. Jim Henson, I thought better of you.



And as a bonus, a little early pro-muppet propaganda. Note the last 25 secords or so presage the conclusion to The Great Muppet Caper.

Duel!

Joey Ramone - "What a Wonderful World"



vs.

Israel Kamakawiwo - "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

taping toy guns to trees

Al Gore, taking it to the next level.

Cartoon break

In the course of looking around the web for information about Nazis and the science of human behavior, I cam across this anti-Nazi Donald Duck cartoon.



I can't get over what an awesome satire of (imagined) Nazi automaticity this is. This cartoon seems to even visually quote Chaplin's Modern Times as it conflates political discipline with industrial discipline. That the bombs Donald makes take over and become the instruments creating him is a very telling image of the imaginary surrounding Nazi discipline.

See also Disney's rendering of Nazi education.