I Know Him So Well...

Susan and Geraldine McQueen, aka comedian Peter Kay, staged a Comic Relief highlight with their rendition of I Know Him So Well. Take a look at the Official Video. Exclusively available for a limited time on Susanboylemusic.com

Anthony Geary's Confession about Affair with Elizabeth Taylor

YouTube - Anthony Geary's Confession about Affair with Elizabeth Taylor

This was on The Wendy Williams Show about a year ago. Now she's just a gorgeous memory for us all.

What the F@*& is Wrong with You People?! | VIDEO | elephant journal

What the F@*& is Wrong with You People?! | VIDEO | elephant journal

Bill Maher’s New Rule:

Al Gore must come out with a sequel to his movie about climate change and call it, ‘An Inconvenient Truth 2: What the Fuck is Wrong with You People?’

Source: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/02/what-the-famp-is-wrong-with-you-people--video/

Midnight At The Oasis: Roger Ebert's Journal

Roger Ebert's Journal



Everywhere I go, as much as I can, I listen to National Public Radio. It's an oasis of clear-headed intelligence. Carefully, patiently, it presents programming designed to make me feel just a little better equipped to reenter the world of uproar. I've written before about the disintegration of journalism, of the lowered standards everywhere in today's media. As a nation we once said, give us the facts and we'll make up our own minds. Now we say, spare us the facts and make up our minds for us. We have grown impatient, and the national attention span shrinks until even a 10-minute video on YouTube can seem unendurable. Nuggets of celeb gossip distract us on our way to oblivion. Studies document the way the internet is fragmenting our minds.

I'm part of this. I'm a promiscuous Tweeter. I don't read as many books as I once did. It is probably good for me that I see six or ten movies a week, none of them vulnerable to fast-forwarding or channel surfing. You just have to sit there are watch the suckers. My latest Great Movie, Kurosawa's masterful "Red Beard," was more than three hours long and I felt cleansed of clutter afterwards.

NPR brings fresh air into my mind, and not just with Terry Gross's show. The hosts seem calm and civilized. Their questions are good ones. You never catch them being clever for the sake of being clever. It's not happy talk. It's in good taste. NPR obviously makes a lot of effort to bring in guests that are appropriate to the subject; a lot of pre-production goes on. There's no catering to prejudice. No agenda.

There are radio essays from around the world. Local sounds and voices, sometimes with a translation. Tastes of Africa or Asia. Foods and rituals, emergencies and heartbreak, music and whimsy. A taste of BBC news. Some programming from Canada. Hour after hour, day after day, its standard of quality is daunting.

I've mentioned before that I cannot get into a taxi in Chicago where NPR is not either playing, or pre-tuned when the radio is turned on. The driver is invariably African or South Asian. I ask, "You like NPR?" I have been told, "I hear more about the rest of the world." I've also been told, "I hear more about America." More than once I've been told, "I want to learn."

NPR surely is the voice of America -- the voice I hope the world is listening to via the internet. It is the voice of our better nature. We are not all snarling dogs of Left and Right, feasting on shreds torn from the Body Politic. Some of us (maybe most of us, when the mood is right) are kind, curious, sane. We are interested in other peoples, other lifestyles, other choices. We do not demand that the media tell us over and over again the things we already believe. We are open to new ideas.

In my mind the most "American" program in American broadcasting for some time now has been the Prairie Home Companion. When I listen, it's almost like Willa Cather and I have our ears bent over the same old Emerson tabletop set in a farmhouse in the Dakotas. Garrison Keillor's gift as a storyteller is in direct descent from Mark Twain. He stands there and does his monologue all without notes, and it's like he's so smooth because he's telling you a story that really happened.

I was listening the other night. He was remembering an unfortunate football game in which Lake Woebegone played the other team to a tie. Neither team was good enough to score. Nobody had told them about time limits. Hour after hour they played, as the daylight faded and fans abandoned their seats, until both teams collapsed exhausted on the field.

Sometimes Keillor is funny in a different way, funny in the way that observes a truth about human nature. There is his recollection about three sons who gathered at the bedside of their dying mother in Lake Woebegone. It was quiet, and they were sad, and she lapsed into sleep, or maybe a coma. Conversation ran down. Silence began to build to an uncomfortable length. They smoked and sighed and cleared their throats. Finally, desperate to break the silence, one asked, "What do you think about those new Fords?"

Lake Woebegone doesn't exist in Minnesota or anywhere else. But for an hour on Saturday night it does, on NPR. The network pumps civility into our society day after day. Sometimes its stations also play classical music, which few commercial stations play anymore. And jazz, the only indigenous American music. And they fund local news coverage. NPR is just plain reassuring.

Recently some have claimed it is leftist. That baffles me. No one ever seems to cite something they heard that offended them. They just believe in general that it's left wing. I began to ask myself why that was. Tonight there was a discussion about Sarah Palin's new reality TV show. The host spoke to the TV critic of the Toronto Globe and Mail and to a coordinator of the show's online presence in social media. The question involved whether the show was, as claimed, "non-political."

Yes, said the Globe and Mail, citing McLuhan. The show need not contain a single a political syllable to be political; it was political because Palin is running for something, and it promoted her image. No, said the show's spokesman (who turned out to be a Democrat). One of his jobs is to organize a network of bloggers around the show, some of them pro and others con. My own opinion, which no one on the show shared, is that such blogs would serve a political purpose by focusing on the issue of whether it was political.

But never mind. All three were calmly-spoken and rational, no one threw any charges, and the discussion really was about whether a politician could be on a reality show without making it political by extension. Of course, by even asking that question you may open yourself to charges of bias, but why? You have an opinion about Palin. I have an opinion about Palin. NPR got me off of Palin and started me thinking about the nature of the media in McLuhanesque terms. Understanding Media was published in the 1960s, but it's still relevant.

Earlier, NPR aired a report about banking. It profiled a century-old bank in North Dakota that circulates its deposits within its community. Eight percent of the stock is owned by the employees. The rest is owned by a charitable trust. All the bank's profits go to local and state charities. The money stays in North Dakota, for the use of businesses and agriculture. One banker mentioned "Predator banks" that enter a market to drain its resources. What was the political bent of that report? Does that bank sound like (1) a conservative poster child, or (2) socialism? Maybe it's just an interesting bank because of the times we live in.

Thursday a bill was introduced in Congress to end funding for NPR. Actually, NPR doesn't receive a dime of federal money, but the bill would have forbidden member stations to use federal funds to pay for NPR programming. The measure failed, 239 to 171. In the next Congress, who knows how it will do?

Why is NPR seen a threat and not a national resource? I think it's a threat because it deals in information and not in the trivial. It encourages thoughtfulness. It tries to look at more than one side. It has a way of pointing out errors and drawing obvious conclusions. Its very existence is a rebuke to media outlets that depend on popularizing an ideological party line. Just think it through, if you haven't lost the knack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wewzGYW_Hrw

A Prairie Home Companion: The News from Lake Wobegon, March 21, 2009

How many Canada Geese does it take to sink a luxury ice house?

Recorded live from The Historic State Theater in downtown Minneapolis, MN March 21, 2009.

What's My Pirate Name?

fidius.org's What's My Pirate Name? (3/3)



Your pirate name is:

Dread Pirate Bonney

Like the famous Dread Pirate Roberts, you have a keen head for how to make a profit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

You Think Ravel Never Wrote For The Vuvuzela? Oh, You're So Wrong. : NPR

You Think Ravel Never Wrote For The Vuvuzela? Oh, You're So Wrong. : NPR

by Linda Holmes

What, were you not familiar with Brahms and Ravel for vuvuzela?

Well, now you are.

(Hat-tip to Metafilter. http://www.metafilter.com/93316/Not-to-be-confused-with-Beethovens-25th-Concerto-for-Vuvuzela)

Crazy Lightning Strike in Chicago Filmed with the Canon 7D

Crazy Lightning Strike in Chicago Filmed with the Canon 7D

by Michael Zhang on Jun 25, 2010

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

A nasty storm rolled through Chicago recently, and Craig Shimala was ready to capture it from his balcony. Using a Canon 7D and a 10-22mm wide angle lens, he was lucky enough to film lightning striking the three tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time. Playing the footage in slow motion also gives an interesting look at how lightning travels.

(via planet5D -http://blog.planet5d.com/2010/06/canon-eos-7d-captures-lightening/ )

The Michael Horn Show 1 | Positive World Radio

The Michael Horn Show 1 | Positive World Radio:

"It’s the debut of the highly anticipated Michael Horn show. Michael introduces the Billy Meier UFO case in Switzerland, and focuses on looking at some of our most pressing concerns in light of the core principles contained within the Meier teaching. Michael discusses the environmental devastation, illegal immigration and overpopulation in light of how they reflect on our understanding of self-responsibility, cause and effect and conscious monitoring of our thoughts, feelings and actions. He explains that these three critically important cornerstones for conscious, creative, constructive living are essential for creating peace, love, freedom and harmony."

A Message from BP ;-]

A Message from BP

Mother Jones

— By Mark Fiore

The oil company wants to blame the spill on us!

[view video here]

This cartoon requires Macromedia's Flash Player. If you don't see the cartoon above on the website, download the player here.

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

Don't Mangle the Star Spangled Banner

Stravinsky Mugshot

Igor Stravinsky, arrested for "tampering" with the Star Spangled Banner, 1940


Thanks to (and read more at) Washington Musica Viva

Facebook in Real Life

Facebook in Real Life - Musings of a Startupist



Thanks Dru Wynings

The Beauty Of Typography: Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World - Smashing Magazine

The Beauty Of Typography: Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World - Smashing Magazine

The beauty of typography has no borders. While most of us work with the familiar Latin alphabet, international projects usually require quite extensive knowledge about less familiar writing systems from around the world. The aesthetics and structure of such designs can be strongly related to the shape and legibility of the letterforms, so learning about international writing systems will certainly help you create more attractive and engaging Web designs.

Pick any language you like: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, maybe Nepali? Each is based on a different writing system, which makes it interesting to figure out how they work. Today, we’ll cover five categories of writing systems. This may sound tedious and academic, but it’s not. If you take the time to understand them, you’ll find that they all give us something special. We’ve tried to present at least one special feature of each language from which you can draw inspiration and apply to your own typography work. We’ll cover: East Asian writing systems, Arabic and Indic scripts (Brahmic).

Feast your eyes ... http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/18/the-beauty-of-typography-writing-systems-and-calligraphy-of-the-world/

7 Foods That Should Never Cross Your Lips - Page 1 - Summer's Smartest Choices - MSN Health & Fitness - Nutrition

7 Foods That Should Never Cross Your Lips - Page 1 - Summer's Smartest Choices - MSN Health & Fitness - Nutrition

Food scientists are shedding light on items loaded with toxins and chemicals—and simple swaps for a cleaner diet and supersized health.

By Anne Underwood, Prevention

Clean eating means choosing fruits, vegetables and meats that are raised, grown and sold with minimal processing. Often they're organic, and rarely (if ever) should they contain additives. But in some cases, the methods of today's food producers are neither clean nor sustainable. The result is damage to our health, the environment, or both. So we decided to take a fresh look at food through the eyes of the people who spend their lives uncovering what's safe—or not—to eat. We asked them a simple question: "What foods do you avoid?" Their answers don't necessarily make up a "banned foods" list. But reaching for the suggested alternatives might bring you better health—and peace of mind.

Read on ... http://health.msn.com/nutrition/summers-smartest-choices/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100246775&page=1

Reunion Of The Rikers - Jonathan Frakes & Marina Sirtis

An interview with Riker & Deanna from Star Trek TNG. I watched all the episodes. Their commentary on Insurrection is great, very funny. This was on the Blu-Ray version.

The Twitter Spelling Test Quiz - The Oatmeal

The Twitter Spelling Test Quiz - The Oatmeal

I scored: 100% (A+) [but then again, I type and self-proofread for a living]

Could YOU pass the Twitter spelling test?

There's an English word with no vowel: "CRWTH" Crwth is an ancient Celtic instrument with strings stretched over a rectangular frame, played with a bow. It was an originally a Welsh instrument. It is pronunced "crooth". - OMG Facts - Your Mind. Blown.

There's an English word with no vowel: "CRWTH"

Crwth is an ancient Celtic instrument with strings stretched over a rectangular frame, played with a bow. It was an originally a Welsh instrument. It is pronounced "crooth".


http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/3357

Total Pro Sports - If Jesus Were Alive Today, He’d Be A Liquid Mountaineer!

Total Pro Sports - If Jesus Were Alive Today, He’d Be A Liquid Mountaineer!

Now here is a sport I think Jesus would have excelled at. It is called Liquid Mountaineering and the objective is simple: run on water for as long as you can.

These guys may not be the son of God or even Chris Angel, but they seem to be pretty damn good at high-stepping their way across this lake. This looks like something Usain Bolt would be perfect for. Perhaps they should consider teaming up with the world's fastest man, and this dirt biker (who can ride across water) for a worldwide tour.

And maybe once they are done mastering this sport, they can try parting the sea. After all, it appears as though the sky is the limit for these guys.

@Google & YouTube present A Conversation with Conan O'Brien

AtGoogleTalks — May 07, 2010 — Conan O'Brien may have been "legally prohibited from being funny on television," but thanks to TBS he'll be back on the air very soon. Conan and Andy Richter stop by Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters for a morning of hilarity. This event took place on May 5, 2010.

Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host and comedian. He served as host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien from 1993 to 2009, followed by The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien from 2009 to 2010. Prior to his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for Saturday Night Live and the animated series The Simpsons.

http://www.youtube.com/conanontour
http://teamcoco.com/

His Noodly Window

The Flying Spaghetti Monster,
originally uploaded by AKA Dillweed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobikey/4568069317/

The Flying Spaghetti Monster

On this, the first of May 2010, I am proud to release this piece of sacred art which I commissioned from Sarah Pierce. I welcome you to join me in silent reverence to His Savoriness, the Noodle in the Sky, our Saucy Master, The Flying Spaghetti Monster. May you be forever touched by His Noodly Appendage.

This piece is licensed Creative Commons: Attribution. Please re-use however you like as long as it is non-commercial and with Attribution to Sarah Pierce. albinobloodsugar.deviantart.com If you are interested in using this commercially, please contact me through notetoself.net.

The Skin(ny) on Touch Technology

digits: The Skinny on Touch Technology | MarketWatch.com

April 26, 2010
Imagine if you could dial a cellphone on a keypad displayed on your hand? It could happen sooner than you think. Simon Constable talks with Carnegie Mellon graduate student Chris Harrison, who is working to develop the technology with Microsoft.