Robin Williams appeared in an advertisement for the Nintendo 3DS remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A few things:
I considered posting something about the Dallas Mavericks winning the NBA championship, but I decided against it. I’m not invested in the NBA at all any more, and any post from me would’ve just ended up snarking about LeBron again failing to win a title.
But this photo of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (second from the left in the front row, solid blue T-shirt) taken by David J. Phillip of the AP ran in today’s paper. And…
This photo, man. This photo.
French media tweet and poke ban
French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.
The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.
Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.
…
In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.
“Whereas the referral by naming the social network in question has the character of advertising, contrary to the provisions of Article 9 of the decree of 27 March 1992 forbidding covert advertising.”
Crack reporting from the BBC’s Department of Things You Can’t Make Up.
British spies to terrorists: make cupcakes not war
So that title of this article by Paisley Dodds of the AP is pretty terrible. But only because the actual gist of the story is somehow even better:
Britain’s spy agencies have a new message for terrorists: make cupcakes, not war.
Intelligence agents managed to hack into the extremist Inspire magazine, replacing its bombmaking instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.
…
The quarterly online magazine, which is sent to websites and email addresses as a pdf file, had offered an original page titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” in one of its editions last year. The magazine’s pages were corrupted, however, and the instructions replaced with the cupcake recipe.
Mr. Curly looks pretty small and pretty curly. But in fact if you stretch Mr. Curly out it’s about two meters of narrow-bore garden hose.
And then he plays this thing. And it actually sounds pretty damn good. Good gravy.
(Make sure you get to the part where be brings out a clarinet made out of — well, I’m not going to spoil it.)
In Vermont, draft horses used to lay fiber optic cable
Fred, the draft horse standing next to Desmarais, is unperturbed by the snake or much else. The muscled 1,700-pound cable-hauling Belgian is in full draft regalia. Studded leather flaps keep his eyes on the task at hand. A leather collar wraps around his neck, bearing the hames, or a frame from which the traces span Fred’s torso and connect to an iron whippletree trailing behind.
[…]
It’s perhaps a fitting irony that Fred is the anachronistic vehicle for broadband installation in remote areas of the Northeast Kingdom. Without Fred pulling his weight in fiber-optic cable, however, FairPoint would be hard-pressed to meet its 2013 goal, set by Gov. Peter Shumlin, to bring Internet to every home in the state.
What the devil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtd9GrO-XWk
Here’s Lenny Kravitz hocking the new model of the Jeep Wrangler by driving through a swamp all extreme-like.
I’m not even sure what audience this is supposed to be reaching.
Two automated Amazon sellers create a ridiculous upward pricing spiral
Michael Eisen:
A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).
Apparently two sellers created an automated upward pricing spiral. Basically, one seller is trying to price their copy of the book just below the highest priced alternative on the market — a totally reasonable strategy. The other half of the equation is a little stranger, however:
My preferred explanation for bordeebook’s pricing is that they do not actually possess the book. Rather, they noticed that someone else listed a copy for sale, and so they put it up as well – relying on their better feedback record to attract buyers. But, of course, if someone actually orders the book, they have to get it – so they have to set their price significantly higher – say 1.27059 times higher – than the price they’d have to pay to get the book elsewhere.
Between the two of them, the eventual high point of the book’s price (“The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly”) was $23,698,655.93.
Here’s a shot from MSNBC’s PhotoBlog from the preliminary round of the Pillow Fight World Cup, happening in New York right now.
Did you know that’s a real thing? Yeah, turns out that’s a real thing. Here’s something the promoter apparently said:
This is real pillow fight. The boxing ring, the clothes and rules are all according to the CEPFR (central European P.F rules). This is NOT about half naked women wrestling with pillows as an accessory. This is by all means one of the most technically, physically and mentally challenging sports today.
“X Files: The Musical” is the seventh production and third backyard musical by The Colonel Mustard Amateur Attic Theatre Company in Lincoln, Nebraska. Millions of people worldwide love The X-Files, and our audacious vision is to transform the show into a full-length theatrical spectacle.
…
After cramming over 100 people into the attic for a play, we knew it was time to move to a new, larger venue: the backyard. That’s where we performed “Jurassic Park The Musical!” in 2009 before a capacity crowd of 250. An even bigger spectacle, “Dr. Quinn: The Musical,” required a larger backyard, one that barely squeezed the 450 people who showed up to see it in 2010.
We’ve added exciting elements to each new production, and “X Files: The Musical” will be the biggest thing we’ve ever created. We have 40+ people in the cast and crew, a 30-piece orchestra, plans for elaborate sets and backdrops, and we’re expecting 1000 people to come see the show during its two-night run (August 19-20, 2011). It’s going to be almost unbelievably awesome.
How do people get these ideas?
They’ve already reached their Kickstarter funding goal, but you can still fling money at them if you want.
