I love this thread! Margaret Hamilton (schoolmarm / character actress best known for her roles as Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the film "Wizard of Oz") herself requested that "Ding, Dong! The Witch is Dead" be played / sung at her funeral. Sadly, her request was not honored.

Re: #4 (Usual Suspect) When my ex-fiancee's father passed away, one of the many songs played at his open-casket service was "Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World" ukulele mashup performed by Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole. His wife & daughters joined in. His wife picked that one. Oddly enough, she didn't request it for her own funeral just over a year later. Then again, she'd been deathly ill for so long she probably figured she'd survive this hospital visit too...

The only time I've found "Amazing Grace" tolerable is at Spock's funeral in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." It's probably Scotty's Highland pipes segueing into James Horner's orchestration that does it. Unless my remains are being jettisoned into space, though, I really wouldn't want it at my service.

One piece I always thought would be perfect for my own funeral, however, is Robert Schumann's lieder "Widmung." It's actually a love song, set to a then-popular poem. However, the music always conveyed this "sailing into the great unknown" quality to me, especially in Liszt's rather lush transcription for solo piano. Interestingly enough, I'm not the only one in my family to have connected this love song with funerals! It was played at the mingling of my Grandma's ashes with those of her husband (who'd died a number of years previously), and I believe both of my parents have agreed that it would be a nice piece to play at their funerals.

And, yes, I love how they do funerals in New Orleans! As a "Star Trek" fan, I greatly enjoy the bit in the TNG episode "The Next Phase" in which Cmdr. la Forge and Ensign Ro enter Ten-Forward to attend their own memorial service --- to find a party in full swing, complete with jazz combo! When I first saw it, I found myself saying "No, it's perfect!" right along with Geordi.

Love it! I used to play around with recording equipment --- still love to do so --- and that reminds me of the fun we'd have playing tapes fast, slow, backward. Playing tapes on a Walkman with a dying battery can be pretty funny too at times.

One person's comment (on the linked page) cracked me up: "Sounds like Satan took acid, then got drunk..."

It also reminds me of a time I hit the "pause" button on the VCR during a commercial for a sandwich spread. The shot was of an adorable little happily eating her sandwich. But the frozen image on the screen made it look as though she'd just realized she'd bitten into a sandwich full of poo or something!

Cool, weird... probably fake. I don't know what a cucumber leaf looks like, so I can't tell how well it was faked if it's not genuine. However, it's not impossible. If a transcription factor in the cuke's DNA misfires at the right time and place, it could cause a leaf to grow where one normally does not.

If it's real, it's still safe to eat (the cucumber part, that is). However, if the cuke's owner feels nervous about it or exceptionally proud of it, I recommend pickling in very strong vinegar.

His daughter extends her congratulations from the bridge of the Enterprise-B, fresh out of space-dock for major repairs. In the 23rd/24th Century, we're all cool that way!

Seriously, though --- Congratulations, Mr. Takei & Mr. Altman. Live long and prosper, ahead warp factor one.

(Straight, but not narrow)

Re: #12 (Tomas): The video seems to still be up. It's playing even as I type this.

Re: #9 (Rollerskater): The path we follow is that of the first violins. (At the very start, we see three staves: first and second violins and violas, apparently the only instruments playing at that point in the music. It's a commonly-used printers' convention when publishing orchestral scores to show the staves of all the instruments on the first page of the score, then omit the staves of instruments that aren't playing on a given page.) Naturally, since they've chosen a "roller-coaster" motif, we can't just switch tracks to hear the instruments that are most audible at any given time. But in this particular excerpt, much of the dominant melody is carried by the first violins once the ride hits full swing; so it was decided to feature that staff, even though we mostly hear the violas and later cellos & double-basses during the opening build-up.

If you can get a hold of "The Norton Scores: An Anthology for Listening," a two-volume set of books aimed at music-appreciation students, you'll see an interesting feature: In the orchestral music, a gray half-tone screen is superimposed over the music, with rectangular cut-outs revealing which one instrument is most audible at the time. (You'll also get a nice collection of a wide range of musical scores, a must for any serious student of composition.)

Does it flip the bird at bad drivers who cut you off?

Re #91: It's possible he omitted something, but equally possible that he did not. I remember substitute-teaching about 8 years ago at a high school. I work several jobs, and one of them required me to wear a pager (cell phones were still a rare sight) so I could be informed when a new assignment came in. One of the office secretaries noticed the pager and informed me that I'd have to remove it --- something about how they weren't allowed because kids used them to cheat or for gang purposes, and there would be some trouble if a teacher got to wear one. I said "okay," removed the pager and put in inside my bag. No problem. Nope --- I had to put it in my car. I found this annoying, but I complied with no more than an irritated "All right."

Fifteen minutes later, while I'm reading the lesson plans and finding all the teaching materials, I am summoned by intercom to the office. I walk all the way back, and am ushered into the principal's office, where he and the vice principal were waiting as though I'd committed some offense. There they tell me that they heard I was wearing a pager. I said "Yes. The secretary already informed me about them; I took it off and put it in the car." Then they wasted five more minutes going on about the reasons why pagers aren't allowed. Then they told me to either put it in my car or hand it over so they could confiscate it. I re-stated that I'd already put it in the car, and had done so as soon as the secretary had told me to. They looked at each other with these "he's a trouble-maker" eye-roll expressions, then finally let me get back to doing my job. Bizarre. They kept acting as though I was sporting a pager even though I'd gone out to the car and even told them that I'd put it away already.

As many have stated, it's just a movie, folks --- and not a well-thought-out one at that. However, at the risk of sounding like a total nerd, I do have something to say in Indy's defense.

If one accepts "Young Indiana Jones" as part of the Indy canon... Indy is very well-travelled, and even had friends in Russia who were part of the Bolshevik revolution. Hatred of a culture is usually fed by ignorance of that culture; when one actually has or had friends who were part of it, one tends to be more ambivalent, even if one disagrees in principle. Indy, of course, is a man of many cultures.

The fact that his partner turns out to be a turncoat gets Indy in hot water (right after his post-fallout scrubdown, of course), and his whole past is brought into question --- in typical commie witch-hunt style. One may protest one's patriotism... but one may feel resentment toward this treatment that could easily lean towards distrust of the American government.

Indy is not a politician. He's an archaeologist. As such, tippie-toeing around political issues is not first & foremost on his mind. He's often been at odds with the government even as he's served it. (Think the final scene in "Raiders.") This does not make him a fascist, and it doesn't make him a "pinko." He may agree in principle with the ideals of communism, but he won't say so out loud, and he wouldn't care for the way the KGB turned out.

Furthermore, the University of Leipzig has a campus within walking distance of the French border --- in West Germany. (However, I don't know if this campus existed then, or was part of the University, so this could be irrelevant.)

Not as old as Chaucer, but as old as Shakespeare, and one of the earliest incidents of an author getting miffed at someone else stealing his thunder: The unauthorized lost sequel to the first part of Cervantes' "Don Quixote." Cervantes wrote first one volume, which proved to be such a hit that he tried his (one good) hand at a sequel, which became volume 2. During this time, however, one Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda wrote his own bit of "Don Q" fanfic in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the original. No copies of this spurious sequel remain, to our knowledge, but apparently it was pretty bad, and it definitely incurred the wrath of Cervantes. It inspired him to make mention of it in one of the funniest self-referential scenes in literature: In volume 2, Don Quixote & Sancho Panza stop at an inn, where they overhear another traveler asking his servant to read to him from "the new book about Don Quixote." Quixote, amazed to discover that he's been written about, listens and realizes that he's hearing total lies about himself. So he introduces himself to the traveler and asks to read these stories for himself. The traveler happens to have Cervantes' original book with him as well. Don Q. likes Cervantes' treatment very much, but denounces Avellaneda's sequel as lies and balderdash, written by a total hack. (Cervantes himself took a cue from Mateo Aleman, who had parodied a jealous rival who had written a spurious continuation of Aleman's own bestseller.)

Re: 2001's demerit for slo-mo in zero-g --- We're used to working in a gravitational field. Even simple operations in zero-g must be done carefully and deliberately. Note that Frank Poole's death spasms are at regular speed, as is Dave Bowman's ejection from the space pod into Discovery's airlock.

This has been known for a long time, although the actual ratio of human-to-non-human cells in one's bod is still a matter of speculation. One bit of wording that bugs me (pun intended): "We're sort of a superorganism--one that's 90 percent microbial." I believe if one were to investigate other organisms, it would turn out that there's nothing terribly unique or unusual about our microbe count. Instead of "superorganism," which implies something out-of-the-ordinary, "colonial organism" might be a better term. Symbiotic relationships are very likely the norm among multicellular creatures, and the larger the "host" organism, the greater the percentage & variety of little tenants occupying its real estate.

I love the little sea-serpent! I thought I was the only person left who still stuck those olde-tymie grotesqueries into modern maps. Nice to know there's a kindred spirit out there.

Wow! Just a few days ago, I was telling someone just how cool it would be to build a housing for a CD player that resembled an old grammophone, with a decent speaker in the fancy trumpet (a second speaker would have to be placed somewhere else). It would probably be an engineering challenge to get it all to sound good while adhering to the old-fashioned design --- but it would be well worth it.

Looks like all the funny cultural references have been gobbled up already. However... this reminds me of a supposedly true incident from a coupla decades ago: the KILL MOMMY doll!

A woman visiting Florida picked up a talking dolly for her daughter. It was supposed to say "I love Mommy!" But when her daughter activated it, it said "Kill our Mommy!"

Horrified, the mother called the manufacturer. They had her put the doll on the phone so they could hear it.

(I'd love to say that, like Talky Tina, the doll feigned innocence at this point. But...)

It turned out it was saying "Quiero Mami," Spanish for "I love Mommy." In Florida they sell English- and Spanish-speaking versions, and due to a goof in packaging, an Espanol version wound up in an Ingles box. They sent her a replacement free-of-charge.

I can't speak for the authenticity of the "fan art," but I have read that Hitler REALLY LIKED Disney's "Snow White." He was apparently a big fan of Disney's animated movies. Of course, so were lots of other people. Later, when he saw that Hitler Youth members were sporting Mickey Mouse pins on their lapels alongside the nazi swastika, his attitude changed. He had Goebbels denounce Mickey as "un-German" and compare him to Jews. Strange, sick, angry man.

I experienced this (along with nausea & vomiting) when I found out I can't eat mushrooms. (I was eating a portobella, by the way.) Everything in my field of vision appeared alternately larger or smaller, then I got sick. When I described it to Mom, she said that I'm probably sensitive to the toxins present in all mushrooms (poison 'shrooms simply have these ingredients in different proportions to the edible ones). She added that Lewis Carroll may have had the same problem, hence the inspiration for the Caterpillar's mushroom in "Alice in Wonderland." Years later, I saw the film "City of Lost Children," and the trippy scene in which the girl finally defeats the old man reminded me of what I'd seen after eating of the mushroom.

I saw this last week on Neatorama.com. Delightful! I've been referring to the overhead projector as an "epidiascope" ever since, just to drive my students crazy!

"Panzer" - Deutsch fur "panther," and used during WWII to denote either a model of tank or a tank division in general. My guess is that plastic model kits of "Panzer" tanks are among the more popular tank model kits available, so the person who designed the blocks assumed that "panzer" was English for (whatever the Chinese word for "tank" is).

Love the "secondary planet" --- almost poetic, in a cosmic sort of way.

As for "dick" being given as the word for "egg" (not pictured above, but on the site), my guess is that the almost-universal practive of calling testicles "eggs" might have something to do with it. Most bi-lingual dic-tionaries pull a boner when it comes to semEntics (Yeah, I did those puns on purpose. Did you find all four? I'll stop now), and the one consulted not only used the slang for the wrong part of the genitals, but failed to specify that it was a slang!

Classical music is definitely a better tactic. I'm 40, and I can hear that darn "Mosquito" just fine, thankyouverymuch --- It's really annoying, like a bad electrical connection noise.

Music would be fairly unobtrusive. Adults wouldn't mind, young children wouldn't mind, and teens who aren't likely to cause trouble wouldn't mind. As a teacher, I've noticed that the sort of environments & upbringings that produce delinquents & criminals also instill a heightened intolerance of anything "foreign." The students whom I generally have to discipline in class for disruptive behavior tend to be racist and make fun of others' physical appearance and manners of speaking. For all their claims to be expressing "individuality," they keep to a brutally strict "dress code" within their groups. Anyone who does not conform to this "code" is subject to ridicule or worse; and I've even seen that troublemakers will go so far as running away from or avoiding those who are "different" --- a display of fear, oddly enough, for all their bravado. Because classical music is just not part of their little world, it would drive them away, leaving only those who either enjoy the music or at least accept that it is another way for music to be (even if it's not to their preference).

As for thugs like young Alex LeStrange and his droogs, however, the music might do little to discourage acts of... ultra-violence. (Cue Rossini's overture to "The Thieving Magpie" here)

Wait --- why are we fighting each other? The computer's the REAL enemy here! Let's team up and overthrow it!

Personally, I think any "law" requiring people to wear clothing is kinda retarded. But then I find clothing itchy, uncomfortable and far too hot at temperatures over 20C, and I know what humans look like without clothes.

As for this Blue-tooth gadget: It may not be directly addressed in the Qur'an, but then, neither are those silly burquas. Morons with nothing better to do than control other peoples' personal lives will find some way to misinterpret Islamic law so that it seems like there's something morally wrong with broadcasting a picture that may or may not look like yourself. And then they'll use that as an excuse to murder women who do this, as per the will of the same God who issued the famous "Don't Kill" law (and as far as I know never rescinded it). These are, remember, the same twits who think that a picture of a person constitutes idolatry. (Seeing as they have no objection to videotaping & broadcasting bin Laden's asinine rants, they figure it's okay to worship him.)

I've seen this style of animation before. Indeed, Norman McLaren used it in the 1950s, and there was a woman who more recently did some truly eye-popping animated films starring herself (can't seem to find her work in my resources, but one of her films featured her as a floating fairy who completely re-paints a house in floral patterns with a simgle magic paint-brush). Anyway, as some have correctly surmised, the original footage is much longer, as everything but the peaks of the jumps is edited out. One could try shooting a frame every time someone jumps, but that's very dicey. It's actually easier and less time-consuming on the day of shooting to just film your people jumping, then do a heckuva lot of cutting later in the editing room. In this film the shaky camera is due to the absence of a tripod, as they were shooting panning shots in the woods.

Cute! Re: #2, the article is kind of superficial for my tastes, and your question about whether it's a baby is a good one. However, palaeontologists routinely run MRI scans on fossils nowadays to survey underlying bone structures. This would yield clues as to the age of the individual creature at the time of death. It's highly doubtful that an announcement like this would be made regarding a fossil that had not been carefully studied beforehand. (Unlike the days of Copely and Marsh, who were notorious for rushing things in attempts to outdo each other, fossils are often examined for months, sometimes years, before the official unveiling.)

Being a poor United Statesian, I rarely even SEE any denominations over $20. However, the main reason for a business refusing to take bills over a certain amount is mainly to get the most mileage out of their small change before the next bank run. If people using large bills for small purchases becomes a common recurring problem, the business usually puts up a sign saying they don't accept larger bills. It would be nice to see them propose the rather obvious solution: Please visit the nearest bank to make change if necessary. If I had a $100 bill and needed to make a $5.00 purchase, I'd stop at the nearest bank first and break it into small units.

Ah, for a $100 bill of my own again... Can't wait until Bush is out of office...

The text used in the above sample is taken from a Jack T. Chick religious tract called "A Love Story." The original is pretty funny, too. The "Gay" text was originally in parentheses and preceded by "Homosexuality." "Homosexuality (Gay)" has become a sort of humorous meme among people who read these tracts for the unintentional humor.

The clip art is from other sources. Incidentally, Chick tracts frequently proclaim that Catholics (and Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, etc.) are all going to Hell for not subscribing to Chick's own specific world-view. Jack Chick is virtually unreachable for comment, of course.

The fuel is an interesting twist, but the basic design is reminiscent of a Stirling engine. Such an engine, especially in a near-equatorial country like Malawi, would actually be an excellent basis for an electrical generator.

The Stirling engine is basically a piston driven by the expansion of a fluid under great heat. Simple design, but the drawback is that it generally took too much energy to heat it, relegating it to the realm of "interesting but impractical science toys."

However, within the past few years, a solar-powered Stirling engine was designed and built. The fluid chambers are suspended in the focal point of a parabolic mirror, which is directed at the sun. The reflected sunlight super-heats the fluid chamber constantly, driving the piston repeatedly. Attach a servomotor to angle it toward the sun throughout the day, and hook the thing up to a storage battery, and you can run an air-conditioner off of it and have electricity to spare.

One danger: the focal point gets so hot you can ignite a 2x4 like a giant match with it. Finding a safe place for this could be problematic.

Cute! Brings a manly tear to the eye. I love the "natural childbirth" touch and the tiny, clothespin-like Jesus being delicately held by its little round head by the robot's tender claws.

FRY (to a group of very Hassidic-looking Robot Jews): So, you guys don't believe in Robot Jesus, right?

ROBOT JEW: We believe that he was built, and that he was a very well-programmed robot. But he was not our Messiah.

--- from a "Futurama" episode

In the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker movie "Top Secret!" there's a scene in a "Swedish bookstore" that's shot entirely in reverse and uses all kinds of visual gags, like tossing books into their slots on a high shelf, blowing a layer of dust back onto a book, etc.

I figured that the tune was the Anacreonic song before the midpoint, and that he was most likely singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," since nobody knows "Anacreon in Heaven" anymore.

One way to sing or speak backward is to spell the words out using the phonetic alphabet, then write the words in reverse and memorize them. It's not perfect, as some sounds just can't be done backward, but it comes close.

Re: #26 - You suggested using single letters to represent commonly-used words. Both shorthand and Braille have done this for a long time, replacing many articles (a, an, the) and other short words (basically anything easy for a fluent English speaker to divine from the context) with single letters, pairs of letters, or even a single dot or two. The same could be applied to typed English, but it would probably only be useful in certain situations where speed or file size is a concern (think txt msging!) Since Braille cannot be reduced in size beyond a certain point, and the paper must be of above-average thickness to retain the impressions, the "shorthand" employed by Braille is necessary; relatively short books become weighty tomes in Braille (which is why most blind readers opt for Talking Book format for anything longer than a short children's book or a news digest).

I haven't tried a Dvorak keyboard, but I've wanted to for a very long time. The stories about the QWERTY system being developed to slow typists down appear to be true --- an experiment that failed as typists learned to adjust, and that became moot as typewriters became electrified. Another reason for the QWERTY system is that it allowed door-to-door typewriter salesmen to type the word "typewriter" quickly as a demonstration --- all the letters are on the top row.

Useless factoid, but of interest to the musically inclined and those of Czech ancestry: August Dvorak was related to the famous composer Antonin Dvorak. The lack of a Czech version of the keyboard stems from the fact that August was born in the USA and very likely didn't actually learn Czech despite his famous ancestor, and because he probably figured that a keyboard tailored for the English language would get more widespread use. Like it or not, English was (and still is, although Spanish and Mandarin are closing in fast) a common second language in much of the world. Two people who do not know each other's language usually both know English and can use that to talk to each other. August Dvorak happened to be very fluent in English and could crunch the numbers involved in determining letter-frequency in commonly-used words, so he designed his keyboard for English. Theoretically, the same data could be tailored for keyboards for other languages. It's possible that such keyboards exist. But they wouldn't see much use outside of the countries where those languages are used.

I'll have to see this. "Choose Your Own Adventure: The Movie!"

... Also reminds me of the creepy TV show Montag's wife watches in Truffaut's film of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." "Linda, you're fantastic!" That film was from 1966; I rather doubt that Czech filmmakers had access to it, though. Then again... It could also be a case of a similar idea popping up in two places --- a lot of experimenting was being done in film at the time.

Ah, Crazy Eddie! There was a "Christmas in August" CE commercial (sadly not included on the site with the group of his commercials) in which he's swinging his arms wildly in the proximity of a tacky Christmas tree, hitting it every so often. I think he knocks it over near the end. When the screen goes to black at the end, if the volume was turned up loud enough, you could hear him say, "I think I hurt myself..." We always found that hysterically funny, and we'd turn the volume up at the end just to hear it. We could never figure out if it was left in intentionally. For those who want to hunt it down, the year might have been 1984, 1985 or 1986.

Dyeing one's hair with anything but henna may be a violation of Islam, but when discussing Osama bin Laden or any retard who follows him, that's a moot point. Murder and lying are also strictly forbidden by God, according to the Qur'an. Ergo, bin Laden, who often claims to be doing God's will even as he flagrantly violates it, is nothing more than a charismatic blasphemer who thinks that he himself IS God (or Mohammed). The same applies to his followers. I'd issue a fatwah against him... except that since fatwahs are basically death marks, and murder is forbidden by God, fatwahs are strictly the practice of blasphemers and infidels. However, if anyone doesn't care about such things and wishes to pummel the bastard to death, I'll gladly hold him down by his dyed-in-the-wool beard.

I was once barred from eating at a restaurant because my short-sleeved shirt left my arms visible. A woman already dining in the restaurant wore a top that revealed even more of her arms. Of course I raised a fuss, but I was not allowed to file a lawsuit. Naturally, I boycotted the restaurant from then on.

Next time someone says, "You'll eat those words..."