Light links
Posted: Thursday, February 15, 2007 8:07 AM by Will Femia
Obviously I did more reading than posting yesterday and my day today will be interrupted by a trip to the dentist, so here are some of the lighter links in my notes and I'll try for an entry later today with some denser subject matter.
The fastest XP prank ever - This is a pretty good prank, but I think for most people I know, the single step of hiding desktop icons would be enough to send them home early.
Joe Rogan vs. Carlos Mencia - I saw the video before I saw the link to Joe Rogan's site. NOTE: Lots of cursing in the video. I don't generally think of Joe Rogan as a comedian because he's on so many non-comedy shows but that's besides the point in this video. Apparently (unless there's some joke I'm missing) a lot of comedians feel that Carlos Mencia steals jokes and Joe Rogan has taken it upon himself to confront Mencia very publicly. It's especially interesting because we so often hear about the comedy community and in the video you can see it pretty clearly. UPDATE: New link here (thanks Scott) and the spelling is fixed (thanks Clinton).
Speaking of comedy, Fox New Channel has a new comedy show meant to match The Daily Show and the Colbert Report called The Half Hour News Hour. I'm not sure if it's already started or if these are sneak peeks, but so far the online reviews I've read, even from politically sympathetic bloggers, haven't been good. Here's another clip in which Rush Limbaugh plays the President, Ann Coulter as Vice President.
Only fools are enslaved by time and space - This may be a little late depending on whether you watched or Tivoed Lost last night but if you'd played the torture scene in last week's episode backward you'd have a hint as to the nature of this week's episode.
Speaking of TV, I don't know if anyone watches Knights of Prosperity on ABC. I never hear anyone talk about it, but I think it's funny. Anyway, last night there was a brief scene with a funky soundtrack in which a guy sings "Save me someone save me. Call in caped crusader, Green Hornet, Batman too. I'm in so much trouble I don't know what to do." I Googled the lyric to find out that it's an old classic called Save Me. Here it is from a young Aretha. Nina Simone, unlike Aretha, mentions Batman in her version, but that's not the one from last night, which was sung by a guy. It's bound to show up on fan sites eventually but if someone happens to know who it was, I'd be tickled. (I haven't mentioned this in a while so let me point out again that with a free Napster login you get a certain number of free monthly plays. I like to link to them for this reason and because their database is so big.)
March of the librarians - This is a little dry, but I know I have librarian readers so I'm sure it has an audience. It's a parody of the March of the Penguins movie, instead focusing on librarians at a convention in Seattle.
Valentine's leftovers:
Be My (Blood-Drenched, Pesticide-Ridden, Child-Enslaving) Valentine - Looks like (organic) wine is about the only thing you can buy for Valentine's Day that isn't socially tainted in some way.
A lot of folks online were trying to figure out Google's holiday logo yesterday. They turned the second G into a chocolate covered strawberry, with the L being the stem. Some people didn't see it that way and thought it looked like Googe. What's surprising is that Googe would have been an appropriate coded message after all.
Write your own heart. 
Smart guys date in parallel - "Let’s let V be potential difference between dating girls and doing something productive, I be current of love, and R be resistance to current flow. "
Why do men ignore nagging wives? It's all science - "Working with Duke Ph.D. student Amy Dalton, Chartrand and Fitzsimons have demonstrated that some people will act in ways that are not to their own benefit simply because they wish to avoid doing what other people want them to." It's not about being a rebel, it's about preserving autonomy. The methodology here seems a little odd to me. Subjects were exposed to the name of a significant person in their lives by having it flashed on a screen - so subconsciously they'd associate commands from the researcher with the significant other. That in itself is a pretty amazing discovery.
Congrats to my friend Bob for making the front of Digg with his piece on suing telemarketers.
Kid sized Tetris - I didn't know there was a blog for new dads.
These people in the air remind me of the jumping on beds site.
Speaking of photos, the HDR photos I've seen lately have mostly been poorly done skylines, but this one makes good use of the technique. See large.
Speaking of unusual photo techniques, this is what it looks like when 360 photos are displayed flat. I've got this one bookmarked for later because there's actually quite a bit to learn (for example, what's a Quincuncial map?) It's also worth noting that he's got links for some of his photos to be viewed in 360 using a Flickr beta product (?) called Spi-V... or is it Field of View? Like I said, this is one to go back and learn more.
Horntones: Customize Your Honk - "The unit holds up to eight audio files at once and can be loaded from any USB flash drive." So let's see... Dixie, La Cucaracha, Here comes the bride...
Speaking of USB flash drives, Chap Stick USB - I like these clever memory stick casings, but I have to worry about what would happen if you tried to take this on a plane. It looks like the perfect object for a "can you believe what happened to that guy at the airport" story because someone who doesn't know what it is will want to know why you're hiding it and that kind of person isn't going to understand "just to be clever" as an answer.
Matthew Yglesias criticizes the "assassination strategy" favored by some bloggers, pointing to incompetence as an unavoidably complicating factor (on top of the arguments by Glenn Greenwald, to which he links). It's hard to deny the appeal of killing a few people instead of bringing armies together to kill each other (and collaterals) in huge numbers, but really, is there a more slippery slope?
How to access Gmail (and a lot of other things) when it's blocked at work or school (or possibly an oppressive government).
Wake Up Feeling Great With These 22 Tips for High Self-Esteem - Nothing you wouldn't know from watching Oprah, but still, if your part of the world is weighing you down with a big of S.A.D. it might be worth running through this list for a way to grit through that extra month. (Yes, I know S.A.D. is about light, not self-esteem but depression can have a real domino effect.)
Composite images of women on Hot or Not. In case you're not familiar, people put their photos on Hot or Not and their appearance (hotness) is rated by users of the site. This guy took faces from the same ratings range and morphed them, arguably distilling some commonality. Interesting to note it was done with freeware. That's definitely something to play with later.
