{"id":872,"date":"2008-09-11T09:57:16","date_gmt":"2008-09-11T14:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/?p=872"},"modified":"2008-09-11T10:02:35","modified_gmt":"2008-09-11T15:02:35","slug":"you-have-to-either-laugh-or-cry-and-ill-help-you-do-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/09\/11\/you-have-to-either-laugh-or-cry-and-ill-help-you-do-both\/","title":{"rendered":"You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

The first is a really fine piece of election season film making (thank to Pharyngula<\/a> for the tip):<\/p>\n

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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<\/em> want to see.<\/p>\n

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.:<\/p>\n

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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<\/a>, and over 4,000 (as of today) following CERN<\/a>. Hopefully all this is a cool sign for the future of a populace engaged in science!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\t

\n\tTags: academia<\/a>, elections<\/a>, Hadron<\/a>, physics<\/a>, Politics<\/a>, Science<\/a>, Video<\/a>
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