friday fun
jdupuis | September 23, 2011There's this weird phenomenon on Twitter of HULK accounts, where some secret individual or cabal creates an online persona to criticize the status quo in some area of human experience, but in the lively patois of the old school Marvel Comics character, The Incredible Hulk.
Feminist Hulk, Adjunct Hulk, Editor Hulk and many others.
Now we can add OPEN ACCESS HULK to the party!
I was a huge fan of the Hulk comic series from the 1970s all the way through to the 1990s so I'm thrilled to see this development.
Who makes up the secret cabal of tweeters? Librarians? Scientists? No one really knows.…
jdupuis | September 16, 2011How do no one every tell of this NewsBiscuit before? It's fantastic, kind of a UK version of The Onion, but dryer and more polite. Or something.
Anyways, here's a recent one, my introduction to this fantastic site: Homeopathic leak threatens catastrophe.
An accidental release of highly dilute homeopathic waste from a research institute in Swindon has led to calls for the centre to be shut down. Plant operators have admitted responsibility for massive safety blunders after a spilled drop of an enormously dilute test product was cleaned by a caretaker, and in complete disregard of all safety…
Friday Fun: We Need To Do More When It Comes To Having Brief, Panicked Thoughts About Climate Change
jdupuis | September 9, 2011The Onion nails it on this one: We Need To Do More When It Comes To Having Brief, Panicked Thoughts About Climate Change.
The problem with solving all our climate change-related problems is basically that all the people on the planet are human.
Indeed, if there was ever a time when a desperate call to take action against global warming should race through our heads as we lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, that time is now.
Many well-intentioned people will take 20 seconds out of their week to consider the consequences of the lifestyle they've chosen, perhaps contemplating how their reliance…
jdupuis | September 2, 2011I have fond memories of reading the Asterix graphic novels as a kid, both in the original French and especially in the absolutely brilliant English translations -- I'm told quite reliably by my wife, who's a translator, that they are the best she's ever seen. My own kids also really loved them and they were among their favourites for bedtime reading.
Basically, the books are about a bunch of crazy ancient Gaul's who are resisting the Roman occupation, with the help of a bit of magic potion. Let's just say there's a lot of shenanigans and Roman-bashing.
I like this take on the series, from…
jdupuis | August 26, 2011this is all kinds of funny: Beloit College Faces Accusations that "Mindset List" Really the Drunken Ravings of Old Man.
I tend to find the Beloit College list on the one hand kind of lame and the other kind of irrelevant.
And The Cronk knocks it out of the park:
Beloit, Wis. In a statement that surprised many higher education professionals across the country, Beloit College admitted that their popular "Mindset List," which documents the changing worldviews of entering college freshman each year, may actually be based on the drunken ravings of Marty McCommons, a well-known regular at Suds O'…
jdupuis | August 19, 2011All week I've been planning to feature Tor.com's Noir Week series here today. Somehow it's fitting that my slightly dark mood right now is matched by the subject matter of the Friday Fun.
From the introductory post:
Welcome to Noir Week at Tor.com! Join us as we escape from the sweltering dog days of summer into the cool, shadowy underworld of back alleys, jazz joints, hardboiled hooligans and tough-talking femme fatales; a world filled with violence, glamour, and intrigue, where the color scheme is black and white and the rules are anything but....
This week, we're making the most of our…
jdupuis | August 12, 2011Sometimes The Onion is so funny it hurts: USSR Wins Space Race As U.S. Shuts Down Shuttle Program.
MOSCOW, USSR--Less than a week after the return of the Atlantis orbiter marked the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, the crowded streets and textile factories of Moscow erupted in celebration as the USSR officially declared victory over the United States in the Space Race.
"At long last, our great Soviet republic has conquered the West and achieved technological and ideological superiority over America," Kremlin representative Sergei Voronin said Wednesday, announcing the achievement to an…
jdupuis | August 5, 2011Believe me, there are days when I think I'd like to be sold for scrap.
Anyways, Student Takes Tenured Professor to Antiques Road Show.
Archeology major Wendy Markell packed Professor Mary Louise Grandy into her car last Saturday and took her to the most recent filming of the PBS program "Antiques Road Show."
"I've had Dr. Grandy's modern literature classes for three years and I was just curious what she was worth," said Markell. "Her lessons seem really old and I was hoping there might be something of value there."
*snip*
"The transparencies used on classroom overhead projectors are slightly…
jdupuis | July 29, 2011I usually don't feature too many Cracked posts here because, well, they can tend to be a little on the NSFW for a family blog like this one.
But this one is very funny and very true. Fortunately, I don't seem to qualify as any of the worst kinds of blogs, but I guess I'm not the best judge of that!
Here they are:
The "Let's Start a Blog" Blog
The Corporate Blog
The Shill Blog
The Parrot Blog. This is a blog which seems to exist solely to reprint, quote or link to other people's content. You can find these blogs everywhere, but by their very nature, they prefer cropping up in the more…
jdupuis | July 27, 2011As anyone who's a regular reader of my Friday Fun series will know, I'm a huge fan of The Cronk, that paragon of higher ed satire. In fact, you could call me the grand high poobah of Cronk fandom with the Cronk as the Sultan of Satire!
You can see some of my posts here, here and here and even more here.
I love the Cronk, you love the Cronk, we all love the Cronk. And now we all have a chance to put our money where our mouths are and kick a little cash towards the hard working gang that entertain and amuse us so regularly. They fine folk who produce the Cronk have published a print book…
jdupuis | July 22, 2011Or is that Auto Cucumber?
For those of you who own iphones and text a lot, you'll know what I'm talking about here.
As you type the phone tries to guess what you really mean to say and often you can inadvertently say the wrong thing if you acknowledge the phone's suggestions too soon.
And there's a blog that's just full of them: Damn You Auto Correct!
It's pretty well the funniest thing on the entire Internet. And pretty NSFW too, as a fair number of them are, well, you really just have to see for yourself.
There's a summary post of some of the best, a taste of one of the more printable ones…
jdupuis | July 15, 2011The world of fantasy genre fiction is finally happy this week. An incredibly long-awaited event has finally taken place.
George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons, fifth book in the epic A Song of Ice and Fire series has finally been published.
With over five years since the last one, with much grumbling from the fans, the wait is over.
And people seem...underwhelmed.
The first three were amazing classics of the fantasy genre. I loved them, the way they combined fantasy tropes with a strong dose of reality. They were violent and brutal, just the way the world of political machinations…
jdupuis | July 8, 2011I chose this one more for the humourous title of the post since the content itself is very seriously intentioned.
I almost see this as a double sequel to both the social media evilness post and to some of my recent ramblings on thought leadership.
The post in question is We Don't Need No Steenkin' Social Media Gurus by York prof Robert Kozinets.
After I had left the stage and assumed a position within the audience, beer in hand, a woman began talking to me in the crowd. Let's call her "Jennifer." Jennifer told me that she knew nothing about social media even a few weeks ago, but that her…
jdupuis | July 2, 2011You would think what with me being Canadian and all and this being the day after Canada Day, I'd somehow try and find the energy to hunt up a nice piece of Canadian humour to highlight in my weekly Friday Fun feature.
We Canadians are pretty funny, after all.
I guess it's even more Canadian not to bother highlighting or promoting other Canadians. Tall poppy syndrome, eh?
Anyways, this one from The Cronk of Higher Ed is pretty funny: Summer Conference Director Suspended for Damning Youth Group to Hell.
Dr. Charlotte Digges, president of Lottie University, issued a statement today condemning…
jdupuis | June 24, 2011This one's pretty funny, but in a painful way.
I'm sure this one rings true for a lot of people out there.
I like Number 8:
8.) Self-Entitled Social-Media HotShots
Who You Are: Your license plate reads "SCLEXPT". You spend all day teaching computer illiterate people how to create a facebook pages and twitter logins and you mock anyone who doesn't spend three hours a day updating their FB status or tweeting photos of their lunch. You have about as much "expertise" as 24-hour online certified priests, but tout your "knowledge" like a peacock on parade.
What's the Remedy: Make somebody money…
jdupuis | June 17, 2011I like the subtitle of this Onion article too: "'Mature Adults Could Be Gone Within 50 Years,' Experts Say"
In the wake of this week's rioting in Vancouver over the loss of a game, it seems particularly appropriate: Nation Down To Last Hundred Grown-Ups.
Of all the many Onion articles I've linked to over the years, this one has to be one of the best:
The endangered demographic, which is projected to die out completely by 2060, is reportedly distinguished from other groups by numerous unique traits, including foresight, rationality, understanding of how to obtain and pay for a mortgage,…
jdupuis | June 10, 2011I've watched a lot of bad science fiction movies over the years, but somehow have management to avoid 4 out of the 5 mentioned in Technology Review's list The Five Worst (Hard) Science Fiction Movies Ever!
2012 (2009)
Lawnmower Man (1992): Trying to capitalize on the then-current zeitgeist of virtual reality, this movie is basically Flowers For Algernon, except that the mentally disabled human guinea pig ends up getting angry rather than reverting to their original condition. Like many similar cyberspace movies, Lawnmower Man uses the eye-rolling idea that the virtual reality interface also…
jdupuis | June 10, 2011From the BBC:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Eric Schmidt have warned governments worldwide not to over-regulate the internet.
Mr Zuckerberg said governments cannot cherry pick which aspects of the web to control and which not to.
*snip*
"People tell me on the one hand 'It's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring [uprisings], but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," said Facebook's founder.
"But it's hard to have one without the other. You can't isolate some things you like about the internet and…
jdupuis | June 3, 2011I contacted Twitter earlier this week but unfortunately they have been unable to activate the Academic Big Deal "Elitist" Verification Status on my Twitter account.
Something about me being a "delusional status seeking famewhore megalomaniac." They also mentioned something about Klout, but I'm not sure what they meant by that.
Anyways, The Cronk News details this great new service from the fine folks at Twitter: Twitter To Add "Elitist" Verification for Higher Ed Big Deals.
Similar to its current "Verified" function, the Highed Elite feature will allow users to quickly identify whether they…
jdupuis | May 27, 2011Yep, the promised Rapture from this past weekend didn't materialize. Or more precisely, I didn't de-materialize and ascend into heaven this past weekend.
I don't know about you, but I was pretty pissed. Disappointed that I wasn't able to join all my childhood pets at the left hand of god. Or whatever.
Anyways, I totally agree with the sentiments from A Letter to God Following the Cancellation of the Rapture from that noted religious publication, my favourite source of divine wisdom, Cracked.com.
Here's what the author of the letter, Soren Bowie, has to say:
Dear God,
You screwed me. Not in…