friday fun
jdupuis | June 7, 2013*cough*
Anyways, here are a couple. Enjoy.
25 Signs You’re Addicted To Books
"The first step is admitting it. The second step is to keep right on reading."
When you’re reading a good book, you forget to eat or sleep.
Sometimes there is yelling.
You’ve been traumatized by things that “only” happened in books you read.
You think of colors in terms of Penguin classics.
Rainy days > sunny days.
Walking by a closed bookstore is torture. (my favourite...)
You would never shame someone for reading. (my second favourite...)
Go read the whole list -- each item comes with a nice visual to…
jdupuis | May 17, 2013I have to admit -- I've always been more of Star Trek fan rather than Star Wars. The Star Trek universe has always seemed more open, more diverse, with a lot more opportunities for telling different stories not just about the rebels versus the empire.
It seems that Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees.
"I'm old-school with the big traditional TV and movie series, so I'm old-school Star Trek. I'm partial to the old crew, Captain Kirk,"
*snip*
"I never got into Star Wars," Tyson said. "Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all."
*snip*
"I like the double star sunset scene (on…
jdupuis | April 26, 2013I'll admit, I'm a bit of a book snob, a strange thing to say for a lifetime comics/science fiction/fantasy/horror/mystery fan, but there you go. Perhaps more precisely, I'm a snob about books versus other media.
But in my defense I'll maintain that I'm getting better as I get older -- more tolerant and accepting and less snobby. Perhaps not coincidentally, I think my takes in reading material are getting more diverse too.
In any case, let's all enjoy 30 things to tell a book snob.
1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will…
jdupuis | April 19, 2013After a week like this, I think we all need something a little on the lighter side.
Mobile phone technology set to revolutionise things we already do quite easily
One of the biggest launches at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the I-open; an app which allows you to open your front door by just twisting your phone as if it was a door handle. ‘This is breakthrough technology’, said marketing manager Chris Davies, ‘the phone’s action even works with a gloved hand which is a big advantage when compared to the friction deficit presented by traditional door handles if used with…
jdupuis | April 12, 2013McSweeny's is brilliant at skewering fads. And there is no bigger fad in higher education than Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs, as they are known.
Now I'm not quibbling with whether or not MOOCs are an interesting and potentially extremely valuable addition to the landscape of higher education, because I think they are. What I find unfortunate is how completely so many in the general public/commentariat/tech guru class seem to have so thourougly fallen under the MOOC spell, seeing all their libertarian free market dreams coming true. Almost like a cult.
Without any further ado:
Welcome to…
jdupuis | March 8, 2013Just like the author of this piece, I too attended a recent talk by Cory Doctorow -- a brilliant talk relating the life and death of Aaron Swartz with the theme of his latest novel Homeland -- and similarly I often marvel at how lucky we are that the web is free and open.
Enjoy this wonderful little satire and shudder at the possibilities.
The World Wide Web is Moving to AOL!
The World Wide Web has been great, but to be honest, it's also been a lot harder than it needs to be. I know some of you love creating new web pages and participating in online discussions, but the last thing most…
jdupuis | March 1, 2013A fun sentiment if I've ever heard one. And I'm sure we all have a band/performer that we'd like to nominate as the "Performer most likely to keep aliens away from earth." Being Canadian, I think I can safely nominate Celine Dion.
"We never visited because we hate The Carpenters" say aliens
Aliens have confirmed that they’ve never landed on Earth because they can’t stomach easy listening music. ‘We buzzed a Lighthouse Family concert in Tunbridge Wells and thought “Has it really come to this?”’ said a spokesextraterrestrial.
*snip*
‘It took me thirty or so of your Earth years to get there,…
jdupuis | February 22, 2013Cracked is as Cracked does. Especially in this case, where some researchers do some especially cracked things. Or more precisely, things they only could have thought of after being cracked on the head.
Librarian researchers, don't try this at your library!
The 5 Most Badass Things Ever Done in the Name of Research
5. Thor Heyerdahl Crosses the Pacific Ocean on a Raft
On the 101st day, they made it. The "boat" hit a reef in French Polynesia and beached on an uninhabited island. But it didn't prove his point; even though Heyerdahl had proved that the journey was possible, no one believed that…
jdupuis | February 8, 2013Librarians seem to be under siege these days, both from within and without.
But at our core, librarians no matter where they work just want to make the world a better place.
io9 has a wonderful older post with a list of fictional librarians who've perhaps put that motto into action a little more directly than most: 20 heroic librarians who save the world.
Here's a couple, but definitely go on over to the post and check the rest out:
Rex Libris in the Rex Libris comics
Rex Libris is the "tough-as-nails Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library," who strikes fear into recalcitrant borrowers —…
jdupuis | January 4, 2013Nothing like a little engineering humour to get the year off to a good start!
This is one of my favourite engineer jokes, one that's been kicking around the web for quite a while. I'm not sure the original source, but this is there I found it for today's post.
If you know the original source, please let me know in the comments.
Here goes:
A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the…
jdupuis | November 23, 2012Anybody who's followed this blog for any length of time knows that I love books, I love reading them, I love reading and writing about them too. However, sometime it's possible to get a little too enamored of our own little petty obsessions. Of course, my obsessions are fine but yours are a bit suspect.
And for those of us with bookish obsessions, some of the not-so-fine parts of our mania is how we keep coming back to the same stupid conversations over and goddamn over again.
As this post so aptly demonstrated, there are definitely some bookish conversations, arguments and debates I don't…
jdupuis | October 26, 2012This is a classic case of "so funny because it's so almost true that if you didn't laugh you would stab yourself in the eye but that's a bad idea because all the hospitals are placebo hospitals and placebos don't work so well on stab wounds."
From my new best friend, Newsbiscuit: Jeremy Hunt to open world’s first placebo hospital.
Britain’s first hospital built entirely on the power of suggestion is to be opened next week as a cost-effective solution to the rising price of healthcare. The Royal London Placebo is totally fabricated, offers no actual treatments and will be manned entirely by…
jdupuis | October 12, 2012Longtime readers will know that I'm a big fan of the works of HP Lovecraft. And every once in a while it's nice to do an eldritch, namelessly horrific take on your typical Friday Fun.
I don't know about you, but I've read all of Lovecraft's original fiction (though not all the collaboration and ghost-written works) and even a fair bit of Lovecraftian or Cthulhuvian themed works by other writers.
But there's always more Mythos works being written and older works I've not tracked down yet. Blastr has been kind enough to recommend a bunch, many of which I've not seen or heard of and maybe you…
jdupuis | September 21, 2012One of my favourite events in the science calendar is always the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which was held last night in Cambridge, MA. For those that don't know, the Ig Nobels celebrate the odd and unusual in scientific research, both genuine and not-quite.
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology
And last night's awards (archived video!) were no different than previous years' in their ability to make us…
jdupuis | September 7, 2012One of my all-time most popular posts in the search engine keyword logs is Friday Fun: Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks. And a good chunk of the commenters seem to think it's true and not devilishly clever satire. A common occurrence with The Onion, apparently.
Well, this one is in the same category, from the UK's News Biscuit this time. Brilliant!
Particle physics ‘all made up’ admit boffins
For years, billions of pounds have been pumped into state of the art labs to fund so called ‘particle accelerators’ in the hope that the secrets of the big bang are revealed. ‘It’s all…
jdupuis | August 31, 2012Yeah, it's frosh orientation here at York U starting today so I thought I'd celebrate that with links to a bunch of posts from my all-time favourite source of higher education satire, The Cronk of Higher Ed!
International Helium Shortage Leads to Massive Orientation Layoffs
“After we realized how much time our orientation leaders spent blowing up and delivering balloons, we realized we’d have to cut 40 percent of our staff,” said Lisa Brandberg, assistant director of transition programs at Cal State Yorba-Linda. “We tried to create alternate assignments, like sidewalk chalking or poster…
jdupuis | August 24, 2012George R.R. Martin is the new J.R.R. Tolkien, right?
Great big, fantasy series with large casts of characters, epic battles between good and evil?
Maybe, maybe not. Tolkien certainly create a more black and white universe compared to Martin's infinite shades of gray. On the other hand, Tolkien found a very nice level of actual productivity. He basically wrote one amazing thing and actually finished it. Sure, there were a few other peripheral works that came out during his lifetime, but Lord of the Rings is it. He also wrote in an era when there was no expectation of ever becoming blindingly,…
jdupuis | August 17, 2012Personally, I aspire to being a Social Media Smurf.
Check out this amusing yet pointed post by Eric Stoller: You Are Not a Social Media Jedi, Ninja, Sherpa, or Guru.
A little taste:
They are everywhere. On Twitter profiles, blog bios, and Facebook pages across the social media sphere, inflated social media titles are rampant. People claiming to be experts with social media as they bask in the warm glow of 7 Twitter followers. Seriously, they are found in countless numbers on the web. Some people are even promoting themselves as Pinterest experts. That's almost as funny as the consultants who…
jdupuis | August 10, 2012You all knew I was going to find something on the lighter side of all the Mars Rover/Higgs Boson hype and glory, didn't you?
But I guess you didn't think I would be able to find one that combined both of them! w00t!
Mars Rover Should Not Get So Much Attention, Say Higgs-Boson Scientists
GENEVA (The Borowitz Report)—The landing of the Mars science rover Curiosity does not qualify as a significant scientific achievement and should not be getting so much of the public’s attention, says the team of scientists who discovered the Higgs boson last month.
“People see these beautiful pictures from…
jdupuis | July 20, 2012Academics aren't exactly known for their sartorial splendor. And that may be the understatement of the year.
A fun article by Daniel J. Myers in Insider Higher Ed from a few weeks ago: Faculty Fashion
Here's a quote:
What message might academics be trying to send when they flout the dictates of fashion and good taste, and ignore the color-clash pain they inflict on others? Well, it flows from the same reason we drive beat-up cars (rust-buckets that are still only automobiles in the academic sense) and refuse to edge our lawns. These choices are rarely driven by financial necessity, but rather…