You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both)

Lacking the time or neural function to generate any new content, I’ll instead pretend to be engaging in some sort of hip new mash-up by dropping two wildly different videos on you. Connections? Nope. Cool synthesis that comments on the post-modern state? Doubt it. Worth the time? Probably.

The first is a really fine piece of election season film making (thank to Pharyngula for the tip):

Favorite quotes: Cheney reminding us that “Some people lie” (speaking from experience there?) and Pat Buchanan saying that McCain will “make Cheney look like Gandhi”. Wow – that’s something I really don’t want to see.

Then, after you’ve found the tissue box or finished smashing the crap out of the couch cushion in anger and frustration, you can lighten up with this bit of silliness courtesy of Joe R.:

I think it’s arguably a bit long (they felt like they had to get the whole lecture into one song), and watching the “dancers” gets a bit painful in places. Still, it’s well written and fun, and I like the chorus. It’s cool to see people trying different ways of getting the word out and, for better or worse, I suspect that more people will learn a little physics from this sort of thing than from “normal” sources. There are 34,925 people following the Mars Phoenix lander on Twitter, and over 4,000 (as of today) following CERN. Hopefully all this is a cool sign for the future of a populace engaged in science!

And this sort of stuff really makes certain academics nervous — they worry that somehow the only way they’ll keep their job is to do this kind of thing in class — and that’s gotta be worth something.

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Dead people scare me, so it’s nice to know that Saddam is still on the Terrorist Watch List

Yellow Shadow
Creative Commons License photo credit: PieterMusterd
As most anyone who’s flown much in the last few years can attest, the existing TSA airport security system frequently borders on the ludicrous. I know I’m more comfortable in the air knowing that 7-year-old John Anderson (of Minneapolis) is on the national Terrorist Watch List, and his parents have to “check in at the ticket counter so an airline official can see that he’s a child”.

If you’re looking for an opportunity to be even further depressed on this issue, I definitely recommend the ACLU’s short “national security quiz”. It’s really nice to know that “The U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone or PDA as you enter the U.S. and download all your private information—all without a warrant or probable cause” ’cause we are the Home of the Free and the Beacon for Democracy or some such. It’s also reassuring to learn that there are over 1 million people on the national Terrorist Watch List (which is then reduced to little more than a massive fishing expedition), and that includes a number of high profile dead people.

‘Cause dead people are so scary when they fly…

Man, oh, man, what a boondoggle. Absolutely enormous amounts of money and energy being expended, little of which actually does anything to make us more secure.

Another proud resume item for Our Fearless Leader. And another reason to be grateful that his fiasco of a presidency will end soon.

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