This morning I got copied on an email blast intended to encourage our graduate students to finish their theses in the next few days.
Cruel, I call it.
But still, it works for me as a goad to push Monday up the rails.
(Credit where credit is due, dept: the vid came to my correspondent via Gawker, btw)
Chat about whatever, with bonus points for any discussion of impossible tasks to be done by Friday. Mine? Finish version 4 (a conservative estimate) of my damn book proposal.
Sometimes the internet is a swamp in which time — hell, vast swaths of life — get sucked into oblivion. Sometimes the ‘tubes are merely a crush of blinkered Philistine pig-ignorance. I suppose that for some life online is just one long “kidz theze dayz” lament…
And then one comes across something like this:
This is thanks to my Imperial College science writer and twitter buddy, @AliceBell, who has thus introduced me to the bizarre world of BBC weather report homages — of which, without the ‘net, I would never have had knowledge.
(Because I love you: bonus Monty Python sketch with a connection to the post title.)
…But Oh. So. Tasty.
I’ve been conspicuous (or not) by my absence, I know, and will probably continue to be so for a while, as daily life does what it does so well.
But I’ve been collecting a few odds and ends that this crowd might enjoy, so I thought I’d offer them up as a peace offering until I can post something that actually has some substance to it. Think of this as the third cotton candy stick you got as a kid, just before it all went pear shaped at the top of the Tilt-O-Whirl.
First up, via DKos, a truly delightful take on a song that my son has not let me escape in months (Ah, the joys of being well into middle age, and being schooled by your 12 y.o.) Apparently, the thing is authentically what it alleges itself to be, the Royal Engineers living the pop life in somewhat forbidding circumstances:
Via Daily Kos, here’s a US Army version, equally…how to put it…charming:
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I’ll leave it to y’all to decide which side of the Atlantic wins this battle of bands.
But I can say that my beloved uncle, a career officer in the Royal Artillery, warned me about those engineering boys.*
Which advice allows me to partake of the “not-quite-500-miles-away”** school of segues to take you to one of the latest effusions from a noted engineering school — one that produced what, to my admittedly biased view, is the best of the exploding universe of Gangnam Style parodies.
Which is to say, here is the MIT version. Watch for the cameos — I’m not sure I’ll ever think about genomics in quite the same way after seeing Eric Lander’s performance. But the capper is one I’ll let you discover, if your eyeballs aren’t already bleeding at the thought of yet more PSY coming your way.
Oh, and open thread too.
*not intended to be a factual statement
**The not-quite-500-miles-away” segue was the term of art applied to the habit of the BBC programme Panorama to feign a link between two segments by saying something on the order of “Not 500 miles away from where Joe Bloggs was trapped in a death embrace with his pet python, Mary Scroggs paused, startled, while watering her petunias.” Or some such.
I haven’t posted stolen anything from xkcd lately — dropped out of the habit of reading it for while, actually — but a couple of hyperbright young geek friends of mine reminded me of what I’ve been missing.
Hence, just now, as I ponder this morning’s posts from around the web with more stomach for the fray than I can muster today, I stumble on this:
John Maynard Keynes was right, but incomplete. In the long run we are all dead. In the medium turn, we are understood as fossils by the kids who just won’t get off my lawn.
What do you plan to forget today?
Edit: I just noticed that the 1/2 way to oblivion date for the Bush Presidency is scheduled for 2043. Watching coverage of the GOP effort this year, I’d say Romney’s team is desperately trying to move that date up.
I’m still basically on my work/life-compelled blog hiatus, but I could not so abandon you all as to fail to bring to your attention serious-charismatic-megafauna-gettin’-busy video.
Hence, Ladles and Jellyspoons, may I present some awesome rhino porn:
Do read the story framing the clip. There is the suggestion of some significant insights into animal behavior that may — emphasize the tentative there — have real bearing on other conservation/species restoration efforts.
PS: Here’s a bonus video of rhino courtship:
Not just for all the very good reasons Zandar advances.
Just look. He’s having the time of his life:
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Go to around the two minute mark to get to the good stuff. (Via)
Now try to imagine Larry Summers in the same context.
[Snickers]
How have I missed these guys all this time?
Also too: this vid puts me in mind of an old Journal of Irreproducible Results paper on the natural history and psychology of editors. The one unifying characteristic: all of them as children, had been whacked by a book. 
You may consider this a completely GOP genital-invasion gift to the blogosphere.*
*Though, on reflection, one may catch a whiff of big-swingingness in the sketch above. Ah well. One can run; one can’t hide.
I have to admit that I laughed at this from Gail Collins’ Friday column:
Everybody hates cancer and everybody likes breasts — infants, adults, women, men. Really, it’s America’s most popular body part.
Collins is actually making the same point as DougJ’s in this post — though, as befits a proper New York Timeswoman, (or perhaps because she must, to remain such) she does so a bit more obliquely that one finds in the fearless Balloon Juice mothership. And I’d guess that it’s at least within the bounds of possibility that some Americans may not be all that enamoured of women’s chests…
…but I quibble.
Really, the whole point of this post is to have a little Sunday giggle with the help of a quick trip down memory lane (please applaud my punner’s restraint there. Too obvious anyhow.) Embedding is verboten on this clip, but who among us of a certain age would not make the connection between “America’s most popular body part” and this scene. (Warning: actual Woody Allen sighting at that link.)
Titian, The Worship of Venus, before 1576.
From the vocal chords of one Professor T. Lehrer, this celebration of Chanukah. (Embedding is disabled, but you can cross that link for an…interesting aesthetic experience.)
And, just to provide some more direct stimulus — here’s an old favorite that popped up on my radio this morning. Nothing seasonal about it, but still, a good time will be had by all:
What would you want an archaeologist 5,000 years from now to find all tangled up in your bony hands?
…And wish only the best for you all, may I present the Honorable Rick Perry, Governor of the Great (Secessionist) State of Texas, tragically mistaken in his quest for the nearest ZZ Top venue. (The really good stuff starts around 4:45)
My thanks to Marc Abrahams, best known as the impressario of the IgNobels and the Annals of Improbable Research, for turning me on to this forgotten gem.
(To be fair: Perry does his job just fine here. Governating puts all kinds of demands on one’s sense of the surreal, and the man with the hair holds up pretty well. But still. It really is a moment of high-camp absurdity.)
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