Truth in love is virtuous, but truth without love is vanity and wor...
Monday, October 19, 2009
Creepiest doll commercial of all time
It's Baby Laugh A-Lot!I don't know what's scarier: this ad's production values, or that once upon a time children and at least one too many adults found this toy even mildly amusing...
Sunday, October 18, 2009
FDIC without adequate funds until 2012 (at least)
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is in the red, and it's going to stay that way for another two years.Meanwhile the ninety-ninth federally-insured bank this year has gone under.Looks like I'm gonna have to begin stockpiling some more "breadlines" photos to use...
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Video game console war building out, not reaching up
Gamasutra's Kris Graft has written an interesting piece about the changing face of the multi-billion dollar video game console industry... and why it's no longer about building "the next big thing" and rushing it into production. Blame Nintendo's Wii for the revolution: motion control has become the biggest innovation for video gaming, and now Microsoft and Sony are working on entering the foray with Project Natal and Sony's planned motion-based...
Friday, October 16, 2009
30-second promo for AMC's remake of THE PRISONER looks VERY promising!
My mind is still trying to wrap itself around the concept of remaking The Prisoner. Heck, my mind is still trying to wrap itself around everything associated with the original television series. But this promo for the new miniseries starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan... has absolutely put The Prisoner on my must-watch list.Does it look like Rover got a massive upgrade, or what?The Prisoner beckons us back to The Village on November 15...
The art of Matt vanLieshout
Friend of The Knight Shift Matt vanLieshout (shown in self-portrait) is an up-and-coming artist blessed with an abundance of talent. And after you check out his blog Liquid Electricity, I've no doubt that you will agree. Some of Matt's charcoal renderings are especially eye-arresting: they look like photographs instead of work of the hand! Check out his stuff now, so you...
Sand-based battery lasts THOUSANDS of hours
You can't recharge it - yet anyway - but a new battery designed at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel could revolutionize everything from cellphones to electric cars. Prof. Yair Ein-Eli (pictured) worked for almost three years with partners in the United States and Japan to develop the battery which gets its power from, of all things, silicon from plain...
Here's a song dedication going out to Falcon Heene
Yeah, the kid from Colorado who was thought to have taken a ride in that balloon yesterday and then cryptically said on national television "We did this for a show".Here is "Up, Up and Away" by The Fifth Dimension...Now, let us never speak of this aga...
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Japanese TV show fakes sniper attack (and it's pretty funny)
Ahhh, Japan. A country of good-natured people who seem to take everything to the extreme! Where else in the world can you find $150 plates of potentially lethal fish so readily available?I've already shared with y'all some Japanese prank videos. But this next one is definitely over-the-edge darkly hilarious: a Japanese hidden camera "reality" television show fakes a sniper attack on an unsuspecting contestant. Panic Face King is kinda like Candid...
Is the LHC's own future sabotaging itself?
See if you can wrap your noggin around this one: the Large Hadron Collider - that super-powered high-energy thingamabob at CERN in Switzerland that previously had been predicted would destroy the world - is now theorized to be the first observed occurrence of the "grandfather paradox" of time travel!According to two physicists, the LHC's mission to produce the hypothesized...
DEATH TROOPERS: Gory good horror in the Star Wars galaxy!
Star Wars: Death Troopers is the craziest detour I've ever taken as a life-long fan of the saga. When word of this book came awhile back, the notion of a Star Wars horror novel... aroused considerable curiosity, concern and consternation. Yeah, Star Wars had (kinda) attempted scary literature before but let's get real: the Galaxy of Fear "young adult" books only came about...
Boy Scouts under assault from insane zero-tolerance policies
Matthew Whalen is an Eagle Scout from upstate New York. He got suspended for a month from school for having a pocketknife in his car while it was parked on his school's campus.Zachary Christie is a six-year old Cub Scout from Delaware who was sentenced to 45 days in reform school. His "crime"? Bringing a spork (combination spoon and fork) to school so that he could use it to eat his pudding.Fortunately however, the ensuing public uproar embarrassed...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Baptist church will burn Bibles on Halloween
Marc Grizzard (pictured at right), pastor of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina and its fourteen members, has announced that his church will hold a book-burning this coming Halloween. Among the tomes to be incinerated are every version of the Bible other than the King James Version, various works of Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and Rick Warren. Also set...
Neato meteorological special effect: Halo over Moscow
Fear not! The aliens aren't coming (yet anyway) but this luminous halo over western Moscow a few days ago has sparked worldwide curiosity. Many are saying it looks a lot like the arrival of the giant ships from the movie Independence Day. But meteorologists on the scene are reporting that it's merely a very peculiar effect of sunlight shining through the clouds during a...
Celebrating a century of copyright paranoia
For all the frustration that independent content producers such as myself are running into with multi-billion dollar media companies regarding YouTube and other self-publishing outlets, it's comforting to know that we are not the first... and no doubt won't be the last either.Putting it into perspective, Nate Anderson has composed a very good piece over at Ars Technica titled...
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Spotted: Bald Eagle in Rockingham County!
Of all the times that I didn't have my camera with me, it had to be on the way back from a bookstore in Greensboro today... sigh.But I've no doubt what it was that I saw here in Rockingham County, North Carolina a short while ago. At a national conference for the Boy Scouts of America's Order of the Arrow in Colorado years ago I got to see a Bald Eagle way up close: those birds are positivalutely HUGE!I spotted the Bald Eagle from my car at about...
