You can do other interesting things with it as well: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1765326806226545307&hl=en

Antonio Alfonseca, former pitcher for several major-league baseball teams and current free agent, is nicknamed "The Octopus" because he's got six fingers per hand and six toes per foot. According to Wikipedia, it doesn't affect his pitching because the extra finger doesn't touch the ball.

Oh man, I saw them at the M-Shop in Ames about ten years ago, and I've never seen a more high-energy show than they put on. They had probably ten or a dozen musicians crowded onto a stage that was maybe big enough for 4, and the singer didn't stop moving for a second. By the end of the show, everybody i nthe place was drenched in sweat, grinning and hollering. I wasn't even that into the swing revival, but those guys set the joint on fire.

Haven't thought about them in years; thanks tfor the memory!

Shmengie,

I am a lawyer, and crimes don't have to be intentional; this appears to be a potential case of criminal negligence.

The paintings and the idea are interesting, but the text is near-unreadable. "productively collaborated"... "otherwise commoditized community"... "facets of the artists identities subsumed by the styles and relationships they maintain"... "Regional's cooperation with emerging enterprise forms that are internationalizing the village"... Ick.

Hey, Regional? Instead of "asking selected individuals, some for the first time, to imagine themselves in their professional medium," try "we asked them to paint self-portraits."

Drat. I saw the phrase "Crow vending machine" and thought it was going to be a gumball dispenser shaped like Crow T. Robot, to go with my Tom Servo...

One side of my family is from WV, and we used to go there a few times a year when I was a kid. In the years since then I've traveled all over, and I think West Virginia and Bali are tied for the most beautiful and distinctive landscapes I've seen.

Sadly, all my family up there have either died off, moved away, or (ahem) gone to prison, so I haven't been there in twenty years or so.

The barbershop one made me profoundly uncomortable. When the scissors were snipping, I thought I could feel my hair being cut.

The Radio Lab podcast had another interesting audio illusion a while back. Follow this link, then scroll down to the one called "Musical Language":

http://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab

Listen to the first five minutes or so.

This would have been really useful three months ago, before I knew my wife was having an affair.

Is there any problem with heat buildup?

They should have added: "They've never known a president who wasn't named Bush or Clinton."

Mark and Zuzu: A lot of these search results are from "Night Flight."

Once an actor has geared himself to play a given style with its prescribed level of belief, he cannot react to or accept within the same confines of the piece, a different style.

This pretty much sums up why I hated Little Miss Sunshine.

Noen, this isn't about the power dynamic. It's not about fear of powerlessness. It's not about resenting Daddy.

It's about the Constitutional right to not have the government screw with your life. If you are pulled over by a cop, you are "in custody." Doesn't matter if the cop just wants to give you a free cup of coffee; as soon as the cop puts on his flashing lights, you are not free to continue driving. For the next five minutes of your life, you are not free to make your own choices about where to go and what to do. And as an American citizen, you are guaranteed that right at all times under the Fourth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

That's the entire point of the Bill of Rights: Unless the government has a damn good reason, it is not allowed to make you do anything. The Constitution is citizens' shield against governmental intrusion into our lives. Human history has shown us over and over how easily those rights can be eroded, one grain of sand at a time.

I don't care if the cop wants to give me a Starbuck's card, a Christmas present, or a handjob; if I'm pullled over and the cop says it's NOT because I've done something wrong, I'm going to tell him to fuck himself and drive off.

@ELGUAPO138:

I understand your reaction. My reaction might have been somewhat similar before I went to law school.

The problem isn't with the coffee. It's that the cops are intruding upon your life, taking up your time, for no constitutionally valid reason.

Suppose you're heading to an important business meeting. If you're late for this, you're going to lose your job; no ifs and or buts. Would you still feel OK about a cop stopping you to "give you a free coffee"?

Built into the First and Fourth Amendments is a right to privacy. The government is prohibited from screwing with you in any way without a valid reason. To establish a governmental violation of your right to privacy in court, you don't have to prove that you were harmed by it; the unwarranted violation of your constitutional right IS the harm.

Look at it this way: What if the police tried to do this "by the book" and get warrants to detain people in order to give them Starbucks cards? There is no freaking way any honest magistrate in the country would approve such a warrant.

I think it's great. There's a neat aesthetic about someone putting a lot of effort into an essentially useless project. Like Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" song. Or my master's degree.

WIRED SCIENCE totally rules.

This seems like a good use for the Gmail "+address" feature. You can have Sandy e-mail you at username+sandy@gmail.com, then set up a Gmail filter to forward those to your phone as text messages. I'm away from the computer a lot, and I'm going to give this a try.

It reminds me of the South Park episode in which Michael Jackson--oops, I mean "Jefferson"--begins to deteriorate until he looks like a zombie from "Thriller." Low-quality video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imAfHvifqbY

By the way, the "Jeopardy!" theme song is 30 seconds long. If you want to wash your hands for 30 seconds, just hum that.

Regarding soap killing bacteria, I can't boast a degree in Biology, but I do remember an experiment we performed in my Freshman Biology lab.

We dipped little cirlces of paper into dishes of water containing dissolved soaps of various brands, then put the circles into petri dishes containing some kind of bacterial culture. After X amount of time (an hour? a week? I don't remember), we looked to see which brand of soap had killed the bacteria to the greatest radius from the circle of paper.

The winner: Dial
The loser: Neutrogena

This isn't inconsistent with Mycophage's post, though, as the soap was certainly in contact with the bacteria for far, far longer than it would be in a hand-washing situation.

The USS Macon was a "flying aircraft carrier"? How on earth did that work? All I can find is that biplanes were brought on board using a trapeze of some kind.

Better hope that there's nothin' unreasonable in them!

I'd say one should hope there IS something unreasonable; you're more likely to get the whole mess voided that way.

I flew on Garuda from Jakarta to Denpasa once. It was like riding down a really bumpy road in a Pinto with no shocks while thirty people blow cigarette smoke in your face. I'm amazed the victim was able to get a meal down.

I hate to be the wet blanket, but I think I like reading BoingBoing more than watching it. I read at my own pace: I can multitask, I can skim the posts I'm not terribly interested in, I can listen to The Perceptionists while I read.

Also, after a couple years of reading the site, I've established the voices I hear for all of y'all, and it's jarring to see/hear the people behind the rhetorical voices. (Don't worry: Your imaginary voices are way awesome.)

Granted, some or all of this is probably just transitional. And I'm not suggesting you stop with the BoingBoingTV; just that I don't think it's going to fit with my own rather hyperkinetic reading style.

By the way, it's entirely possible that the professor doesn't own the copyright in the lecture anyway. A lecture prepared by a professor is almost certainly a "work for hire," in which case MIT would own the copyright.

17 U.S.C. sec 101 defines a work for hire, in part, as "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment." In law school I had a few conversations with my Cyberlaw professor about this, and it appears that lectures are works for hire under the statute.

So while the lecture was cribbed, Aaronson likely doesn't have standing to enforce the copyright law; MIT would have to do that.

Yeah, there's no way Pluto was actually chasing the kid, because even in that heavy suit, Pluto would have caught him easily. Looked like some horseplay gone slightly awry.

I don't mean to be a nitpicker (well, OK, yeah, I guess I do) but the story's headline says "Shinkuju"; it's actually "Shinjuku."

Shinjuku Station is the busiest train station in the world; twenty years ago, I used to pass through it twice a day, to and from school.