Slamming UK Anti-Science

March 19th, 2009 1 comment or # link to posted by david

Ben Goldacre rails against modern day fraudsters such as anti-vaccination extremists. What’s strange about anti-vaccination is that despite it being a provably fraudulent meme that is endangering lives, it is taken to be a viable stance and attacking it is seen as controversial. Even this Goldacre clip has a legal disclaimer at the end from the news anchor presenting it.

Current events help put this in perspective, its like saying Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme and being quoted with the disclaimer that its a matter of personal opinion and not of the news organization.

1 comment » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: memes science

Dinga Dinga Dee – Israeli Arms Dealer’s Bollywood Foray

March 14th, 2009 4 comments or # link to posted by david

Weapons dealers’ marketing materials are often a great source of unintentional black comedy, however, there are no words to adequately describe this gem found by the excellent 3 Quarks daily.

Israeli arms company, Rafael, decided to create a Bollywood style promotional video for the Aero India 2009 show in Bangalore. The truly weird result is a lot of singing and dancing around missiles.

4 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: comedy

Kramer vs Kramer vs Kramer vs Everyone vs Cramer vs Stewart

March 13th, 2009 1 comment or # link to posted by david

What is it with these Kramer people?

1 comment » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: business

Stiff Upper Lip – Sir Alec Douglas-Home

March 12th, 2009 2 comments or # link to posted by david

This coming week on ST will be accents week.

In their extreme, accents can entirely take over people’s faces as was the case with former British Prime Miniser, Sir Alec Douglas-Home (pronounced ‘Hume’ for some unknown reason – presumably to do with a long line of affected speaking). Home had the quintessential English ’stiff upper lip’, to the extent that while talking, there was almost no perceptible difference between him and a ventriloquist dummy, his top lip being almost entirely motionless.

Here, Home slides out diphthong after diphthong from the narrow slit where his mouth should be (owf instead of off, caeb instead of cab), and where consonants would be more intelligible, proving that the English upper classes didn’t actually speak very clearly. The overall effect is no less exaggerated than the flailing gesticulations of a grovelling courtier.

Competition: Feel free to post some links to clips of ‘Home-like’ Ventriloquist puppets in the comments.

2 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: accents

Skate – And The Wonderful Red One

March 10th, 2009 3 comments or # link to posted by david

Like expensive, limited-edition cars, the cinematic quality Red One digital movie camera required a $1000 deposit and a years waiting list to get one.

The results look incredible as this 120fps, dreamlike short of skateboarders (at what looks like the Trocadero in Paris) demonstrates. Although, to be fair, this is not just because of the camera.

Watching this (click through to watch the HD) shows how Vimeo is continuing to set itself apart from Youtube in terms of quality rather than quantity. Increasingly, Vimeo is to Youtube as Flickr is to Imageshack. Perhaps Yahoo should buy Vimeo to ram the comparison home and score a cred point against the Google monster?

3 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: sport