Paranoid Android is one of my favourite Radiohead songs. Here’s Thom Yorke singing it with an acoustic guitar.
And here are Australian comedy band Tripod singing it a capella.
And here’s an 8 Bit version of the song.
And a bonus, because it was on YouTube and I saw it – here’s another one of my favourite Radiohead songs. Live.
So this morning’s letter was pretty sad. I thought I’d balance it with this one – a letter from a little girl to a then clean faced Abraham Lincoln who was just embarking on his presidential campaign.
“My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.”
And he replied.
“I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters— I have three sons— one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age— They, with their mother, constitute my whole family—
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?”
He grew a beard though. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Again, via Letters of Note.
What would happen if we redistributed nations around the countries of the world based on population? Well. The world map would look something like this.
I’m not actually sure where this came from. But the image is here for you to zoom in and have a look at.
Say what you will about Mark Driscoll – but the man is sharpest (I think) when he’s talking about how the church should interact with the surrounding culture. I like this video because we are almost completely in agreement.
Christianity, society and politics from CPX on Vimeo.
He talks about how we can learn from Calvin’s approach to Christianity and Politics, avoiding anachronistically suggesting that any imposition of Christian government is wrong, and suggesting that it’s not appropriate today because you’d need everybody in a country to be Christian in order for that to be appropriate.
“Change often times comes from the bottom up. And I think one of the great myths is that politics changes culture. Politics doesn’t change culture, it represents culture. Politics represents the views of the constituency.”
“My efforts particularly in our city have not been politically active, I’m quite frankly not, I mean, we don’t talk about politicians or issues, much, I mean as I’m teaching through the Bible there might be some corollary between a social issue and a biblical teaching, but for the most part our goal is to love and serve people, to serve the city, to be people who really do love and are committed to our city and want to see the benefit to all people in the city, not just the Christians, and I believe that as more people share that ethic that will help to turn the culture of the city over and that will lead to political change.”
Watch it. It’s good.
This is the sort of post that is eventually going to migrate to Venn Theology (in fact, it’s cross posted there).
You know a letter addressed “To My Widow” is going to be a tear jerker – and this one didn’t fail to hit that mark. I’m as tough and manly as the next guy, but this letter from Captain Robert Scott, who was beaten to the South Pole by some guy from Norway and died on the way back, to his wife, smashed me in the guts.
Via: Letters of Note (there’s a full transcript there).
“I must write a little letter for the boy if time can be found to be read when he grows up — dearest that you know cherish no sentimental rubbish about remarriage — when the right man comes to help you in life you ought to be your happy self again — I hope I shall be a good memory certainly the end is nothing for you to be ashamed of and I like to think that the boy will have a good start in parentage of which he may be proud…
You see I am anxious for you and the boy’s future — make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games — they encourage it at some schools — I know you will keep him out in the open air — try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting.
Oh my dear my dear what dreams I have had of his future and yet oh my girl I know you will face it stoically — your portrait and the boy’s will be found in my breast and the one in the little red Morocco case given by Lady Baxter — There is a piece of the Union flag I put up at the South Pole in my private kit bag together with Amundsen’s black flag and other trifles — give a small piece of the Union flag to the King and a small piece to Queen Alexandra and keep the rest a poor trophy for you!”
His son became a famous natural scientist, and television host, and his wife did remarry. So it seems the letter paid off.
I am contemplating making a regular feature of weird single serving blogs on Tumblr. This one features photos of Kim Jong Il looking at things.
It’s odd. And provides some sort of insight into the style of staged Public Relations shoots in North Korea. Somehow the idea that Kim Jong Il looks at things must provide some succor to his legions of loyal, browbeaten citizens. Everything about his reign is stage managed. Which means the oddness is intentional.
South Park said things become funny 27.5 years after the fact. Which means Hitler jokes are ok. Right?
I’m unsure. But you should check out Hipster Hitler and decide for yourself (it has some language).
Because making fun of hipster culture and genocidal dictators is the new black. Or something.
David Dunham at Christ and Pop Culture doesn’t think we should be laughing at this sort of stuff. And it does make me a little bit uncomfortable – but what say you? He doesn’t know what the target of the satire is. Hitler or Hipsters. I say, why can’t it be both. Here’s what the Christ and Pop Culture article identifies as the problem:
“Satire works great as a means to offering a critique, and I am of course quite satisfied to mock and belittle Hitler, whose disgusting acts warrant him no sympathy. Yet I can’t help but wonder what the creators of this comic are aiming to critique. Is it Hitler? Well kudos to them, but I am not sure how casting him as a trendy young bohemian does that.”
I think the answer might be that Hipsters aren’t really that cool. They eat food from trashcans.
This does sound a lot like the kind of thing one might cook up at the pub noticing the phonetic similarity.
These aren’t toys. Though they look like it. No. These are art.
This one is called “Leopard with Wilderbeest”
Apparently this is how springbucks “court”
This one is my favourite…
There are more at the sculptor (or knitter?), Jennifer Muskopf’s site.
The Bold and the Beautiful in 6 minutes. Contains adult themes. And stupidity.
Thanks Cafe Dave.
Like many of the internet generation I’m a fan of Red vs Blue. And I was thrilled to discover that the Red v Blue back catalogue is on YouTube.
I discovered that because I watched this video, made by Rooster Teeth, the guys responsible for Red v Blue… there’s a pretty strong language warning on this one about half way in.
Here, in case you haven’t seen it, is the first episode of Red V Blue – there’s a language warning on it too. It’s a series shot entirely using characters from Halo.
Somewhere in my archives there’s a story about people putting the ideas put forward by XKCD into some sort of real life application. Well. Here’s another example (previous examples include adults filling their lounge room with colourful balls to make their own ball room).
Somebody did this. And you can follow the progress of the eBay robot on Twitter, and read about the source code here with an update here…
The method it uses to select items:
Sounds fun, right? The guy responsible made a couple of changes yesterday:
So far he’s bought some watch batteries, some stickers, and a casio watch. Hooray.
You knew it, and I knew it. We’ve known it for years. Burgers from fast food places don’t look like their ads, in fact the same could be said for all fast food from all fast food places, and in fact, for all food, from all food places… but in order to document what we already knew this guy took photos of the burgers side by side with the photos used in the ads.
The real pay off was that the guy responsible figured out that the ad burgers couldn’t even fit in their real boxes.
How do you thwart a high-tech security system that analyses your fingerprints. In a school. Because all schools need fingerprint scanners… at least according to a school in New South Wales. You stick gummy bears on your fingers.
Yes. Apparently gummy bears can foil most fingerprint scanners. Exciting, no?
From the scientific study of gummy fingers and biometric security systems:
“We also pointed out that artificial fingers can be made not only of silicone but also of gelatin, and examined 11 types of fingerprint systems whether or not they accept the gummy fingers. Consequently, all of these systems accepted the gummy fingers all in their enrollment procedures and also with the rather higher probability in theirverification procedures. The results are enough for us to see evidence that artificial fingers can be accepted by commercial fingerprint systems. The objection will no doubt be raised that it is very difficult to take an impression of the live finger from a legitimate user without the cooperation of her/him. Therefore, we demonstrated that the gummy fingers made from residual fingerprints can be accepted by all of the 11 systems. “
Cool stuff comes from Sweden, take my friend Mattias for instance. He’s from Sweden. He’s cool. He even likes lakes.
Anyway, this Flux Shop also comes from Sweden, like Ikea, and sells cool stuff for you to put together at home. Also like Ikea.
Like this box. It comes with a bunch of test tubes holding different coloured paints and some paper. And you shake it all about. And you get a painting.
Or this one, where you get a reversed artwork, and 100 questions to figure out what’s behind it in order to get the key. After you’ve bought it.
Their commitment to mixing and matching also led to the creation of this “religious” text, where readers can mix and match between three books, I think one is the Bible, but I can’t tell what the others are…
