humour
illconsidered | July 7, 2010Via the amusing and insightful musings and insights of Marc Roberts:
(click for slightly larger and more legible image)
I think this is rather apropos given the recent retraction of one of Jonathon Leake's um, let's be kind, "dodgy" bits of journalism from the recent spate of IPCC "gates".
(Cartoon seen at In It For the Gold who uses it for the recent UVA report that again finds no academic misconduct by Mike Mann)
aardvarchaeology | July 4, 2010My buddy Micke and his Japanese college room mate:
"I'm Ken Nakamura. Ken means 'heresy'!"
"Really? That's kind of... odd."
"Yes! It means 'HERESY'! Rike when you are never sick!"
"Ahaaa, you mean 'healthy'..."
"Yes! Correct! What does your name mean?"
aardvarchaeology | July 1, 2010
Image by Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre.
Archaeology is a famously ghoulish pursuit whose practitioners are always on the look-out for dead bodies to gloat over. If we can't find a grave, then at least we'll try to get hold of animal bones from kitchen middens and sacrificial deposits. I've seen desperate Mesolithic researchers cackle with funereal glee over the toe bones of long-dead seals. Osteologists are of course the worst necrophiliacs of the lot. But nobody's immune. There's an anecdote going around about my old favourite teacher, where he lifts a pelvis out of a Middle Neolithic…
illconsidered | June 28, 2010We tend to give crakar a hard time around here, but via email he has offered us something for which we should all be grateful, and that is new hope for controlling the unfolding BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the spirit of pictures being worth many words, I leave it at this:
[Update: BP has responded that according to their cost-benefit analysis, only one paper clip is indicated and it is their decision to go with that. "who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine" said BP upper management.]
[Update 2: McGiver MacGyver has come out strongly against this new…
jdupuis | June 18, 2010From McSweeney's, a glimpse into the future perhaps...
7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism
The 11 Stupidest Things Phonies Do To Ruin The World
8 Surprising Ways West Egg Is Exemplary Of The Hollowness Of The American Dream
And that's only the first half of them...head on over to the original link for more.
Of course, this is the kind of Friday Fun that really encourages audience participation. Let's see if we can't all take a few of our favourite books and turn them into link bait!
3 Amazing Ways to Turn Mars into an Earth-like Planet!
Want to create a plague that will kill…
jdupuis | June 11, 2010Priceless, just priceless.
PALO ALTO, CA--All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick's attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on the social-networking site. "Look, he's clicking 'Friends Only' for his e-mail address. Like that's going to make a difference!" howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. "Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, 'delete' that photo. Man, this is so rich." According to…
aardvarchaeology | June 9, 2010
So Ikea sells this bathrobe called "Njuta". It's a verb, meaning "experience (intense) pleasure", and it's usually reserved for pretty powerful kinds of pleasure such as good food, good music, good sex. And Junior's robe size here is Small to Medium, which goes some way towards explaining why the sticker on his new bathrobe reads:
Experience Intense Pleasure
S/M
aardvarchaeology | June 5, 2010I'm reading a collection of my favourite music critic's journalism, Strage Text. Fredrik Strage and I were born the same year and both grew up loving Depeche Mode and Swedish role-playing games. He has a hilarious way of taking things that sound really cool in English and expressing them in Swedish, thus humanising the stars he portrays. And his calculated mix of slang and formality resonates with my own idiom.
In a 2005 interview with Turbonegro's singer Hank von Helvete I found this gem about Tengil, the evil ruler in Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart. Said Hank,
"To me, Tengil is…
illconsidered | June 1, 2010From Salon.com, Tom Tomorrow has a great panel!
(Click for a pop-up full sized version)
illconsidered | May 23, 2010FYI, the thread highlighted here is still continuing, though one wonders if it might be losing utility!
The following is offered only as a laugh, and truly no offense intended to the originator. At times, the distance between mind and keyboard can be dauntingly immense:
The first forcing is unknown; the second forcing is also unknown; I fail to see where you have an unknown unknown. We suspect that something undefined going on: that we know. If we know that there must be something there, we know at least that. Something is known there. Knowledge is something we know, not something we…
jdupuis | May 21, 2010Funniest. Onion. Article. Ever.
New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It: Let Someone Else Report On This Bullshit
Virtually every line is laugh-out-loud funny.
According to sources we feel really, really sorry for, Foursquare works by allowing users to "check in" from their present location, whether it be a bar, restaurant, nearby magazine stand, or man, this piece would be perfect to hand over to that schmuck Dan Fletcher at Time magazine right about now.
By "checking in," users can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most…
illconsidered | May 16, 2010Lord Viscount Monckton of Benchley, it turns out, really is a "swivel-eyed maniac". Or at least it is a fair thing to say.
Some month's ago, George Monbiot wrote a bog post about our good friend Monckton that said Monckton has claimed, among other things:
⢠he has read the treaty that will be signed at Copenhagen next week. That's quite a feat of clairvoyance.
⢠The treaty says that "a world government is going to be created".
⢠Greenpeace is "about to impose a communist world government on the world" and President Obama, who sympathises with that aim, will sign up to it.
Monckton made a…
illconsidered | May 13, 2010Offered without comment:
(Thanks Morten Morland for the laugh, and h/t to Jeffrey Hill)
illconsidered | May 11, 2010Some old news here and some new, all of it about my favorite climate contrarian, Lord Cristopher Monkton. He is my favorite because he is a clown and the more he is put forth as denialism's "Septical Champion" the better.
First the old news. You may recall Tim Lambert debated Cristopher Monckton in Sydney a couple of months ago. Well that debate is up on YouTube in full. It is a 15 part playlist, but Tim tells us his presentation is part 3 and 4. I watched most of it and it is worth the time.
I think it is kind of amusing, and revealing, that Monkton claims some rather intimate knowledge…
jdupuis | May 7, 2010Ah, The Onion. A true repository of snark and snideitude
But as the winter lingered, Spirit began producing thousands of pages of sometimes rambling and dubious data, ranging from complaints that the Martian surface was made up almost entirely of the same basalt, to long-winded rants questioning the exorbitant cost and scientific relevance of the mission.
Project leaders receive data from the Mars rover Spirit.
"Granted, Spirit has been extraordinarily useful to our work," Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW…
jdupuis | April 30, 2010From The Cronk of Higher Education, New First Year Experience Class: How To Not Be An Asshole, this is very funny.
The six-week class is comprised of five modules:
So You're Drunk: A Guide To Quietly Stumbling Home
Street Signs Are Not Dorm Room Decorations
Streaking: A Fast-Track To Suspension
Noises Neighbors Hate To Hear After 10 pm
Nine Reasons the Police Will Handcuff You
Current students expressed skepticism about the offering.
"I think it's retarded," remarked Marco Miller, a current first year student. "Sometimes, when I'm mad, I just want to pee on a statue or throw bottles at…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2010
Discreetly hidden under the northern side of the eastern bridgehead of rural Täckhammar bridge is a spray-painted mural. I found it while checking for geocaches. It depicts an evil-looking male face accompanied by a really funny piece of Satanist prose poetry.
"Dark vengeance of cryptic slaughter and Satanic suffering. The boundaries of Hell will brake [!] and humanity fall into frantic oblivion. Hatred and pain will forever rule the realm of Man."
Dark Vengeance is a 1998 computer game. Cryptic Slaughter was an 80s thrash metal band. "Frantic oblivion", though an oxymoron, is actually a…
aardvarchaeology | April 29, 2010
Who knew that it would be so much pure childish fun if someone with decent Photoshop skills put a collection of silly hats on Carolus XVI Gustavus? There's even rumoured to be an unedited picture there, but I certainly can't identify it.
illconsidered | April 29, 2010At least his image does, in a field of wheat!
(go to actual Google Map)
And PZ Meyers still doesn't believe in him!