Lasusa Links, Jon Carroll Cat Column, Best Rap Video Ever, Truth in Fiction, BPP on CCTV, Malchman on the Flu, Marjorie Wolfe Column, Obama Endorsement, Dan Grobstein File
Tom Lasusa surfs the web so you don't have to: Onion Exclusive: 'Museum' Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past....Woman's dead body lies in flat for 35 years....Transformers 2: Electric Boogaloo....Why Won't Vader Leave those poor Padawans Alone?....Billions of electronic-eating 'crazy ants' invade Texas....Graduating New York University Student ejected from commencement at Yankee Stadium For trying to steal home.....When Life Imitates South Park -- Girl's twin found inside her stomach....Darvaz: The Door to Hell....And let's wrap this one up with some Dancing Zombie Puppets
Jon Carroll can sure write a cat column. He starts out rehashing an idea, familiar to his readers as well as to those of Douglas Adams, that we are put here on Earth without an owner's manual, but then he switches it up and makes it into another of his brilliant cat columns. Once again, the finest daily columnist in America.
Lost cat
Jon Carroll
We none of us got a handbook. We arrived on Earth, opened our eyes, noticed there was no handbook, and started screaming. Some years later, for unknown reasons, we decided that everyone else had a handbook...
Phil Proctor, whose work I have loved in every medium since I first heard him with the Firesign Theater 40 years ago, has a guest-star role in the world's funniest rap video as Dr. Proctor the Proctologist.
A friend of mine is being driven crazy by her first office job; she thinks this clip from the movie "Office Space" really says it all, in the section about the TPS report cover sheet that's about 30 seconds in.
There are 4.2 million surveillance cameras in Great Britain, creating the "surveillance society." So, of course, an unsigned band wandered all over Manchester and played, then obtained the tapes with freedom of information requests. I heard about it on the podcast of the Bryant Park Project, the best daily NPR morning news program you're not listening to: In Surveillance Video, Band Rocks Big Brother. While you're there, subscribe to the two-hour daily podcast!
For a guy who refused to believe that CERN is going to create a black hole that will swallow the Earth, my credulity detector went on the fritz when it came to the danger of an accidental releases of the 1918 flu virus, according to Robert Malchman:
I don't know the publication you cite to (it looks kinda eco-nutty), but the article is from 2004, hardly breaking news. Moreover, in 2005, the fruits of the research were published in Science and Nature. http://depts.washington.edu/einet/?a=printArticle print=928 The EICs of both publications (which, as I'm sure you know, are the most respected in the world) believe the benefits outweigh the risks -- indeed, as one of the authors points out, since many flu strains derive from the 1918 virus, it's unlikely that, even if it did escape, it would wreak the destruction it did 90 years ago.
Marjorie Wolfe has a seasonal column: The commencement speaker is "Robot Redford"
Daniel Dern passes along Lt. Worf's endorsement of Obama.
Dan Grobstein
- Dan found this at Salon, from G.K. Chesterton's Heretics:
It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself.
- McCain's acceptance speech will happen the same night as the NFL opener. (not sure what percentage of the fans would normally be watching political coverage.). On the other hand, Obama's acceptance speech will happen on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.
