So, The Atlantic has an awesome gallery of pictures of volcanic activity from this year. Check it out.
via Kottke.
2011: The year in volcanoes
All posts by jonfwilkins
North Korea Party Rock
So, nearly two million of you have already watched this on youtube. The rest of you can watch it here.
Good-night, sweet, psychopathic, strange, little prince.
Steampunk Star Wars
So, how awesome would this have been?
Yes, that’s Steampunk Princess Leia. Presented here to rekindle the 21st/19th-century version of all of your adolescent fantasies.
And here’s the corresponding stormtrooper, to rekindle your nightmares.
And finally, here’s Yoda, taking a drag on . . . um . . . let’s say it’s that spice stuff from Dune. He can totally see what color the force is now.
These are the work of visionary genius Bjorn Hurri, whose mother, I assume, went through only a thirty-minute labor.
via Bit Rebels, where you can also find Boba Fett, C3PO, and an in-progress Jawa.
Ronin Institute website up-ish
So, I have finally created a webpage for the Ronin Institute. It is quite bare-bones at the moment, and will be morphing considerably over the next few weeks. Those of you who have used WordPress will immediately recognize it as what a webpage looks like when you set up a WordPress site without doing anything else.
The URL is http://ronininstitute.org
I have included a disclaimer in reference to this blog (Lost in Transcription), that it does not represent the views of the Ronin Institute. This might seem a bit weird, since, at the moment, the Ronin Institute consists of, well, me. The issue I see going into the future is that I often spout off political / religious / cultural opinions here. Those opinions are honest and mine, but are not directly related to my scholarship / research. Furthermore, once the Ronin Institute has established its tax-exempt status, I believe that it will be prohibited from expressing particular forms of political opinion.
So, the Ronin Institute will have its own blog, the Ronin Blog, which is currently at:
http://ronininstitute.org/?page_id=7
The Ronin Blog will provide updates from the Ronin Institute, some cross-posted from here, information about Ronin Institute activities, and, hopefully, discussions about the challenges, rewards, intricacies, etc., of doing scholarship outside of the traditional academic structure.
If you’re an independent scholar, and would be interested in contributing, let me know! Happy to have cross posts from your own blog.
I Am An Action Scientist
So, I Am An Action Scientist is an excellent little song by Adam WarRock written for the Atomic Robo comic. About Atomic Robo:
Atomic Robo is secretly hired by the US Army to infiltrate the hidden Himalayan mountain base of Baron Heinrich Von Helsingard before he perfects a superweapon for the Nazis.
So, you know, sort of like Captain America meets Short Circuit.
This is my new motto: “I am an action scientist. / That’s why the science is guiding my fists.”
Notice: best heard at max volume with pipette in hand.
Check out the comic here. Download the mp3 here.
via Boing Boing.
Calvin and Hobbes Winter Wonderland
So, this is an excellent little musical montage of snowman scenes from Calvin and Hobbes lovingly rendered by Jim Frommeyer and Teague Chrystie. If you’re interested in how they did it, you can read (and watch) more here. If you’re more of a consumer, just sit back and enjoy.
Note that at the time of this posting, the YouTube page actually has more likes than views. I don’t know how that’s done, but seems right. I certainly like it more than once.
via Topless Robot.
Don’t try this at home: High School incest prank is hilarious, apparently
So, apparently in Minnesota, spin the bottle is a game for the whole family.
Here’s a prank from Rosemount High School. Some of the team captains were blindfolded and then kissed by a special someone. The twist? The special someone was one of their parents! Hilarious, right?
When I read the description of this, I assumed that the parents were also blindfolded, but no, they knew exactly what was going on. Although, in retrospect, if the parents were blindfolded and thought they were making out with someone else’s high-school kid, maybe it wouldn’t be that much better.
Hard to know what to say about this, except, hey, everybody seems to having a good time, so maybe the rest of us should, you know, sit down and quit judgin’.
The video is a little shaky, so it won’t be that satisfying for those of you with mommy and/or daddy issues who are watching in a darkened room with a box of kleenex.
The description in city pages is actually much racier than the actual video:
And these are not just innocent pecks on the lips. The parents are intimately lip-locking their children for several seconds. One even progresses to rolling around on the gym floor. In another instance, a mother moves her son’s hand south so he’s grasping her butt.
via Boing Boing, Gawker, where everyone seems to be completely scandalized.
Fox News presents Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
So, here’s the latest Tom the Dancing Bug, as seen on Boing Boing.
Occupy the Death Star
So, Darwin Eats Cake has returned from two consecutive strips featuring dumb math equation jokes to check in with Eleonora on how the occupation is going.
 |
| Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=82 Permanent image URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/82.jpg |
Dr. Breakfast
So, this video is called Dr. Breakfast. It will be at Sundance in 2012. The official description says:
One day at breakfast, a man’s soul busts out of his eyeball. While the soul roams the earth eating everything in sight, two wild deer bathe and dress the man’s catatonic body. . .
Which, you know, yeah, it’s that. There’s a certain something-else-ness to it, though. Watch:
via The Awesomer, who call it “bizarre, yet heartwarming,” and I’m all, yet?
The filmmaker, Stephen Neary, has a blog where he has a bunch of interesting stuff about how the film was made, his other art, and words and stuff. Much of it has a similar something-else-ness, which is similarly enjoyable.