I found

Pudge's Youtube channel recently.

I liked this one. The lyrics are here

Two Friday videos

Dancing Girlikins



Funny

the vicar of dibley

is amazingly funny and watchable.

Friday Video

Diet Coke and Mentos



H/T Tony

Love Dove's advertising

Ok, so I almost without fail find advertising amusing. Stating the underlying messages out loud is just generally really funny.

That said, I continue to love the way Dove's advertising is swimming againg the cultural stream in really important ways.

thought this was fun.

h/t byron


also this

dick cheney said this? Wow!

H/T gladly suffering fools

Galloping Gertie

I recently saw for the first time ever this video footage of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsing. It was built in 1940 for a cost of US$8 million, and collapsed four months later under a relatively mild 40 mile per hour wind. I drive across the new bridge occasionally, as it's relatively close to where we live and a useful way to get over to the kitsap peninsula.



Here's the current bridge.

I haven't actually driven over the brank spanking new eastbound span, which opened last month, and charges a $3 toll.

To me, the most fascinating thing about some of the footage of the collapse found on youtube is that it shows groups of people walking in the foreground and completely ignoring the crazy twisting and motion of the bridge in the background. It seems it was normal to them, and they paid it no mind. That is totally fascinating.

Friday Video 2

and this one, from Helen. Too perfect!

friday video

this made me smile. H/T Shemaiah

The Goon Bible does Job

thought this was fun

"Tell your story" says Barack Obama

This guy is just so freaking kewl. He's managing over time to ... wiggle his way through my wall of cynicism. How the hell does he do that? I mean this is what I think--I want to hear people tell me their story. My cynical side says "No chance in hell this country will have the good sense to elect this guy."

Friday Video

What teachers make.

H/T Helen

stop and hear the music

So a couple months ago I posted about this story, where one of the top violinists in the world played, for a while, some of the greatest music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever played in a busy washington D.C. metro station, incognito, as it were. The question was, would anyone stop and listen? People pay over $100 to hear this guy on this violin in an opera hall or theatre. So I found out recently that the whole thing got videotaped--looks like by a security camera. Here it is. HT to Byron

... Irony

Here's a fun and informative and gentle thumbing of the nose at Disney in particular, and powerful evil corporations in general. HT to Mike

friday video

I think Mr. Colbert is pretty freaking entertaining. And I've never even seen him on proper television--only on the internet.

How to make statistics fascinating--a Friday video

HT to Byron for this one.

It's about the getting a fact based big picture sense of what is happening in the whole world

One more video for Sunday

Sorry, but this is just too fucking kewl, both the music, Jonathan Coulton's Mandelbrot Set, and the video, a zoom on a mandelbrot set. It's infinitely complex, which means no matter how far in you zoom, there will still be complexity. It's a computer generated zoom using a relatively simple set of equations, from what I understand. Love the way Jonathan brings rorschach into it. Lyrics follow (technically, I'm supposed to be studying for my abnormal pscyh exam tomorrow, and instead here I am watching youtube videos. the abnormal psych is just *so* depressing. Another great reason not to go for the ph.d. in psych. At the master's level, I can (maybe!), hope to only be dealing with people who haven't got it *that* bad. This is actually an illusion, since the older and wiser (ha!) I get, the more I tend to suspect that we *all* more or less have it that bad. But I digress)




Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Mandelbrot’s in heaven, at least he will be when he’s dead
Right now he’s still alive and teaching math at Yale
He gave us order out of chaos, he gave us hope where there was none
And his geometry succeeds where others fail
If you ever lose your way, a butterfly will flap its wings
From a million miles away, a little miracle will come to take you home

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on change the world in a tiny way
Come on change the world in a tiny way

2 Sunday Videos

At great risk of being amazingly (by blogosphere standards) behind the times, I simply must post the video by Jen: Women in christianity. It speaks for itself, and Jen rocks, and I green with envy that she gets to start at MHGS next year.



I ran across this last week, HT to blogger. I just really like it, and did so almost instantly. He seems to be getting at something deeply true.

re: your brains, by Jonathan Coulton,