Zombie Strippers

I suspect that, much like Snakes on a Plane, the title of Zombie Strippers really does say everything that you need to know in order to make an informed choice about whether or not this movie is right for you.

The Pants Strike Back

As a follow-up to the Blade Runner pants post, here's a list of great science fiction titles that I've "pantsed" up.

20,000 Leagues Under the Pants
2001: A Pants Odyssey
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Pants
A Deepness in the Pants
A Fire Upon the Pants
A Wrinkle in Pants
Brave New Pants
Childhood's Pants
Do Androids Dream of Electric Pants?
Ender's Pants
Foundation and Pants
Have Pants, Will Travel
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Pants
I, Pants
Journey to the Center of the Pants
Lucifer's Pants
Make Pants! Make Pants!
More than Pants
Pants for Algernon
Pants for Leibowitz
Pants of the Galaxy
Pants on Zanzibar
Pants Out of Joint
Pants Plus
Rendezvous With Pants
Ring Around the Pants
Speaker for the Pants
Starship Pants
Stranger in Strange Pants
The Demolished Pants
The Door into Pants
The Forever Pants
The Invisible Pants
The Left Pants-leg of Darkness
The Lost Pants
The Man in the High Pants
The Pants Are a Harsh Mistress
The Pants Dysfunction
The Pants in God's Eye
The Pants Look Up
The Pants My Destination
The Pants of God
The Pants of Paradise
The Pants of Steel
The Pants Themselves
The Shadow of the Pants
The Stainless Steel Pants
The Three Pants of Palmer Eldritch
The War of the Pants
Time Enough for Pants
To Your Scattered Pants Go
Use of Pants

Fantasy Bonus:

Lord of the Pants
The Fellowship of the Pants
The Two Pants
The Return of the Pants

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Creative Commons Pants image courtesy of "yatta".

Unstructured Clocks

Nothing says "I am a major corporate enterprise" like having a wall full of clocks set to different international times.

Now, thanks to the internet, you can get that very same feeling from the comfort of your own home. I would suggest chomping on a cigar and yelling at your subordinates to complete the effect.*

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* If you don't have any handy subordinates, pets and/or children may be substituted. It is not recommend that you use spouses or significant others, however.

Unstructured Flight Patterns

This is a snapshot of a twenty-four hour visualization of flights across (as well as into and out of) the continental United States.

I love the way that you can see night and day sweeping across the country. It also astonishes me that so many flights are in the air at the same time. Once again I'm reminded of the fact that we live in a Golden age.

Unstructured Path to Rivendell

Perhaps Frodo and Sam would have had an easier trip if they had had Google Maps.

Unstructured Bendito Machine

Bendito Machine is an animated story with a moral. What, precisely, that moral is, I'm not sure. It may be a simple tale of how greed corrupts and destroys, it may be a cautionary tale about the reliance on technology, or perhaps a story about the futility of conflict and nationalism, or maybe even something to do with religion.

Regardless, the iconic animation is beautiful and the story is intriguing even if the precise message is a bit equivocal.

Be warned: this one's a bandwidth buster.

Structured Traffic Signs

I found this clever bit of semiotic humor at BoredStop.com.

Obama's Race Speech

This is not a political blog, nor do I have any desire to turn it into one largely because the world is full of such blogs and I know very well that there's very little that I would be able to add to that wide discussion. In like manner, I have few enough readers and there's nothing like politics when it comes to alienating others.

Given that, I want to make it clear that I am not endorsing any candidate on this blog. I trust that you don't need hear my decision in order to reach your own.

That said, I really have to say that I was exceedingly impressed with Barack Obama's speech in which he defended his association with the Reverend Wright. As someone who has spent much of his life in words, I can appreciate quality oratory and I think that this speech proves that Obama is probably the best political orator we've seen in decades.

Of course, there is no necessary correlation between being a good orator and being a good leader. Indeed, honeyed words can lead a nation down a sour road and history is filled with such examples. At the same time, I do think that there is a positive correlation between the ability to speak clearly and the presence of a strong intellect (while hastening to add that simple ineloquence is not a definite sign of stupidity -- there are many people whose wisdom is hidden by a stumbling tongue).

I am especially impressed by what the speech says about race in America. I have, myself, tried to articulate some of these concepts with considerably less success. I am impressed by the way that it both illuminates and transcends much of the real and even reasonable suspicions that divides America. I have long felt that the charge of racism has often been deployed simplistically and that prejudice is often a much more complex and subtle thing than is credited and that saying that something, or someone, is racist is too much of a binary categorization to be either meaningful or useful in the vast percentage of cases where the word is used.

Unstructured Gravity

If you've ever played the old Artillery computer game, Gravity Pods is essentially the same game except that the artillery is deflected by attractors and repellors.

It's a simple game while still being quite addictive.

Unstructured Pi

In honor of International Pi Day (which is also, conincidentally, my birthday), here's a song about the virtues of pi by Alan Ferrier and Antoni Chan.
If you liked the song, there's also a somewhat truncated video that you can watch.

Unstructured Eruption

Here's a rather specatular orbital photo taken of the Aleutian Islands' Cleveland Volcano taken for NASA's Earth Observatory. Click here for a larger image.

Unstructured Glowsticks

There's a good chance that you've already come across the "Will it Blend" site by Blendtec. If you haven't, Blendtec is a company that makes industrial strength blenders. They've created a series of viral videos whose shtick is them taking various objects and destroying them in their blenders.

The entire site is good for when you're in the mood for a bit of entropy by proxy but I particularly like the demonstration of blending a bunch of glowsticks.

Oscillo-techno

More fun with oscilloscopes.

Unstructured Microart

Willard Wigan specializes in amazingly tiny sculptures.

I wasn't able to find a good gallery of his work so, instead, here's a Google Image Search link that returns quite a few samples.

Enjoy.

Gary Gygax, RIP

Troll Lord Games, who currently publishes Gary Gygax's work, has reported that Gary Gygax has died. Although I haven't seen reports in the mainstream media, I'm inclined to view this as a credible report.

Generations of introverted teenage geeks have Gary to thank for providing us with a creative social outlet for our geekery. While D&D has often been stereotyped as a way for kids to avoid contact with others the truth is that it, more often than not, brought smart kids together who shared common interests that didn't confrom to the popular norms. I can certainly say, from my own experience, that it was an integral and cherished part of my own childhood.

It's been years since I've done any serious roleplaying but I think that I may need to set aside some time with some friends and some polyhedral dice to honor the memory of the man.