friday fun
jdupuis | February 10, 2012Ok, so none of these realizations has actually ruined science fiction for me, but they are pretty funny nevertheless.
4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You
#4. Sci-fi Needs a Straight Man Like a Laurel and Hardy Routine
The bulk of the workload in writing science fiction/fantasy is creating your whole world from scratch. It's a hell of a lot of fun, but it also has some unique problems. Characters, by being from this world you've just hand-built, are naturally going to be referring to places and objects and sometimes even speaking in a language that is completely foreign to…
jdupuis | February 3, 2012Well, not me, exactly, but...
Anyways, some ideas and experiences from someone out there in blogland who used to be a lawyer and somehow managed to think opening a bookstore was a good idea.
25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
Here's a chunk from the middle:
19. If you're thinking of giving someone a religious book for their graduation, rethink. It will end up unread and in pristine condition at a used book store, sometimes with the fifty dollar bill still tucked inside. (And you're off and leafing once again).
20. If you don't have an AARP card, you're apparently too young to…
jdupuis | January 27, 2012Ah, The Cronk News always turns a dull, freezing rainy, slushy, oh-my-god-climate-change-is-going-to-kill-us-all day into a warm fluffy puppy day.
University Library Enlists Collaborative Cheerleaders
When Sam Spivender, CEO of Temporarium University Library, noticed that no students collaborated in the new ten million dollar Collaborative Learning Center, he did what any rational library CEO would do: hired twenty collaborative cheerleaders, one for each collaborative pod, at a rate of fifteen hundred dollars per cheerleader per day.
*snip*
A few students caught in the cheer circle giggled,…
jdupuis | January 20, 2012This seems a little too close to reality if you read a lot of what passes for higher ed reporting these days.
College Prez Scores with "No Huddle" Academics
So Clavell and other businessmen-turned-educational experts are looking at the records of college administrators across the country to see if they can inject a little competition into the sleepy business of handing out credentials to post-adolescent slackers. And one up-and-comer who has caught their eye is Norbert Duncan, President of Vermilion County Junior College here, who has successfully installed a "no-huddle" approach to academic…
jdupuis | January 13, 2012All I have to say is that I'm really glad this wasn't published 20-something years ago.
5 things you should know before dating a scientist
1. We can figure things out. Understand, we're paid to dig deep, find the secrets and wade through bullshit. We can pick up on subtleties, so what you think you are hiding from us won't be hidden for long. Sure, we'll act surprised when you eventually tell us you failed freshman biology in college -- but we already knew.
We don't take shit from anyone, so don't lie to us or give a load of bullshit. We spend all day separating fact from fiction, listening…
jdupuis | January 7, 2012Ok, Friday Fun a day late. But better late than never, right?
Anyways, Top Ten Signs You're An Adult. And apparently punctuality and predictability aren't ones I've mastered.
All of a sudden everyone is taking about their "401k".
You have friends who have houses or really nice apartments.
You find your grandparents adorable and your parents hilarious.
You're freaking tired.
Your health is suddenly a big deal.
Christmas is just kind of like, whatever.
You don't care if you are totally uncool. You have no problem telling people that Ke$ha's 'Tik Tok' is one of the best pop songs ever written…
jdupuis | December 30, 2011News Biscuit. My new best comedy web friend.
Forget that dangnabit "God Particle," finally one of them there sciencey gizmos has been put to some useful purpose!
Large Hadron Collider finds car keys
It cost some £6.2 billion to build, but the Large Hadron Collider may have justified that enormous price tag after it finally located Professor Brian Cox's lost car keys. The keys were lost by Cox in the 1990s while an undergraduate at the University of Manchester and his 1987 Nissan Micra has remained in an NCP car park ever since.
'When the car keys disappeared it soon became clear that there…
jdupuis | December 23, 2011Thanks be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the Cronk of Higher Ed. That is all.
Recreation of Infamous Bridge Collapse Exonerates Engineers
Researchers at the U.S. Marine Academy's civil engineering labs have determined that the designers of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge were not responsible for that structure's spectacular 1940 collapse.
"It's those videos," commented Dr. Ramsey Archer, head of the research team. "Millions of people have seen footage of the bridge's gyrating plunge over and over again, ad nauseam. Very cool to watch, but it's lousy science."
Dr. Ramsey's idea was…
jdupuis | December 16, 2011OK, the blog post in question isn't actually that funny. But the title is. And, it's really worth reading for the seriously intentioned message it contains.
How to argue with a scientist: A guide.
I notice it all the time- on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called "anthropogenic" global warming is really just due to sunspots or some other natural cycle. Perhaps you are doing pretty well at first, making use of passionate,…
jdupuis | December 9, 2011Now this one should start some really good arguments in the comments!
6 Pop Culture Visionaries Who Get Too Much Credit
Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek)
George Lucas (Star Wars)
Stan Lee (X Men, and really the whole Marvel Comics shebang)
Who Actually Deserves the Credit:
While Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did create the core concept in 1963 -- teenage mutant superheroes living in a mansion helping Professor X fight Magneto -- their vision of the team was so unsuccessful that Marvel stopped creating new X-Men stories in 1969. They ran in reprints for a while, until the book was finally given to…
jdupuis | December 2, 2011Sure, John Scalzi doesn't need any link love from me.
On the other hand, sometimes he just hits one right out of the park.
Apparently the other day he stumbled upon a Lord of the Rings trilogy showing on TV. And he had a web-enabled machine of some sort handy. And he had Twitter open.
Hilarity ensued. Of the highest order. Lord of the Tweets it is!
Here's a samplling, but please do drop by Scalzi's blog and check out his complete rundown of tweets.
OSHA clearly has no jurisdiction in Moria.
I am suddenly aware of just how little difference there is between Orlando Bloom's Legolas and…
jdupuis | November 25, 2011Kids today! They just can't suffer deprivation like we could back in my day!
Take a look: 'Youngest' expedition to South Pole abandoned after 3rd day without Twitter.
Plucky 20 year-old Belinda Baron had to abandon her attempt to be recognised as the youngest person to reach the South Pole on skis, after becoming cut off from all social networks for nearly 72 hours. Baron described the experience as 'chilling', claiming she hadn't experienced such feelings of isolation since switching her phone off on the flight out.
Baron had spent months planning her expedition, and took advice from…
jdupuis | November 18, 2011Yeah, I'm sorta an IT guy, or at least I used to be a real IT guy. I guess now I'm a former fake has-been IT guy.
In any case, this one from Cracked really tickled my cyborg funny bone: 5 True Stories That Prove You Shouldn't Piss Off The IT Guy.
Let's take a quick peek at number 5:
#5. Omar Ramos-Lopez Remotely Shuts Down 100 Cars
If we told you that a young computer whiz disabled more than 100 cars from his computer, you'd probably think "Man, this Hackers remake is gonna suck." That's the sort of wildly impossible feat that could only come from Hollywood's ridiculous conception of…
jdupuis | November 11, 2011It's not everyday that The Cronk News has a science-themed article but when they do, I'm all over it!
Today it's Agronomy Lab Calls Flesh-Eating Plants "A Mistake."
"Yes, we admit our mistake," says Blackheart. "Of course this doesn't lessen the university's commitment to sound agricultural policy and responsible research. Nor does it reflect negatively in any way on the integrity of our technicians."
When pressed on this point one of the labs' senior researchers, Dr. Seymour Krellburn, admitted that the release was "probably unintended...Actually, someone just accidently dumped the wrong…
jdupuis | November 4, 2011OK, the Friday after Halloween. But at least I'm typing this the day after Halloween!
And what might be some of the things you'll regret the day after Halloween?
Ages 45+: Shot a Kid
And every Halloween, teenagers will come around and shit on your stuff. Sometimes figuratively, but also sometimes not. This will, for lack of a strong enough word, make you unhappy.
So one Halloween, you'll find yourself lurking in the bushes in front of your house, armed with a garden hose, waiting to douse young punks with righteous, chilly justice. This is fine and normal, and except for the fact that the…
jdupuis | October 28, 2011With The Onion implementing a new paywall with non-US users, I'm forced to look for a new source of cheap amusement.
Yes, I'm too cheap to pay for The Onion online. For a paper copy, I'd easily pay $5 per week but online infotainment has no monetary value for me, and I suspect for anyone else. Writers starving? At a fundamental level, I'm ok with that. Hey, Onion, good luck with the new system. Can't win either way?
Anyways, if you Yanks are going to make me pay, I'll be turning my comical attentions to Canada's colonial master -- the Brits.
And that brings us to News Biscuit!
And this…
jdupuis | October 21, 2011I like to think of Nobel Week as stretching through the entirety of October and certainly The Cronk has made that much easier this year with a fun little article, Nobel Prize Committee Snubs Professor Huckman's Bigfoot Research Again!
For the thirteenth time in thirteen years, Professor Mikael Huckman's write-in campaign to the Nobel Prize in Physiology was overlooked in favor of what Huckman refers to as "political hogwash."
Huckman has been the head researcher at the Sasquatch Studies Institute for over two decades and has appeared in over 100 self-produced documentary films and scholarly…
jdupuis | October 14, 2011The science fiction news site blastr has a very entertaining series going for the month of October, 31 Days of Halloween.
As you would imagine, every day this month they are featuring a post about Halloween. And fortunately the topics range from the bizarre to the ridiculous all the way to the barely safe for work.
Here's a sampling:
33 scary stories you can read RIGHT NOW from great horror writers
Vader, Spock, Spidey and 26 other sci-fi icons as rotting zombies
18 LEGO creations so unnerving they could give you nightmares
Zombies and vampires rule in 14 horrific Halloween board games
What…
jdupuis | October 7, 2011Leave it to The Onion to put it all into perspective. A couple of articles on Wednesday's passing of Steve Jobs.
Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies
CUPERTINO, CA--Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computers and the only American in the country who had any clue what the fuck he was doing, died Wednesday at the age of 56. "We haven't just lost a great innovator, leader, and businessman, we've literally lost the only person in this country who actually had his shit together and knew what the hell was going on," a statement from President Barack Obama read in part…
jdupuis | September 30, 2011w00t!
It's Ig Nobel Prize season again!
A brief description:
The Ig® Nobel Prizes
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.
"Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" -- Nature
The video of last night's ceremony is archived here.
Here are some highlights…