More movie trailer voice men

Another video about voice actors. Featuring all the guys you've ever heard narrate movie trailers. And lots of industry inside jokes I don't get.

Best. Trailer. Ever.

I love good voice acting.

Drugs are bad

As Sam pointed out, a new study points out that tobacco and alcohol cause way more problems than illegal drugs.

Of course, are they more "dangerous", or does making something illegal limit its use, and thus the effects it has on society? Prohibition of alcohol didn't work. But this study could be interpreted to show that it sort of does.

Firefly genes are everywhere

Sure, they took a jellyfish gene and made a tobacco plant that glows in the dark. I learned about that 12 years ago in high school biology.

But now a guy did that with a rabbit.

Simultaneously awesome and creepy. Just like me!

Your PIN or your life!

Thanks to the hard work of researchers at lightbluetouchpaper.org, it's now possible to hack an ATM and play Tetris on it.

Or take lots of other people's money.

Copyright is broken

Walt Mossberg of the Washington Post has an excellent essay about copyright.

He points out that Congress has slacked off and not made clear rules for ordinary people to follow. Big corporations asked for, and got, exceptions protecting them from reasonable behaviour. But the law treats ordinary consumers as criminals.

Stealing movies and selling them to make money is a bad thing. But showing a movie you bought a copy of to a few friends on a projector that happens to be at work should be ok. Stupid Republicans.

Smart Walt Mossberg. Stupid Viacom suing Google. Sad that Carol Burnett is suing Family Guy. She is going to lose that one.

High tech murder

Apparently, troops in Iraq had to elude our own unmanned probes to conceal a murder of an Iraqi.

Oh, robot soldiers. Is there anything you can't do?

Obama Ad update

So the guy who made the "1984" Obama/Clinton ad revealed his identity today.

Turns out he works for an internet contractor that did work for Vilsack, Richardson, and Obama.

I care a lot more about President Bush's imaginary world where he can decide that Congress doesn't have the power to subpoena people. And he can "negotiate" whether or not his staff will testify when subpoenaed. I wonder if he'll try to "negotiate" with a "judge" over Lewis Libby's "sentence" for his crime.

1984 ad for Obama

This is an interesting, very professionally done mash-up of Apple's 1984 Super Bowl ad. One interesting question is who created it, and why?

Drug parody

My new favorite parody drug is more than just a parody of side effects. It's a parody of consumerism.

Rainbow bookshelf

I want to organize my books by color. Or maybe my girlfriend's.

Jim Henson's The Cube

Before the Muppets, there was The Cube. Sci-fi, but with the compassion of Henson.

Editorial power

I'd wondered whether several stock photos of leaders existed. Often during a campaign, stupid smiley pictures of people appear next to really bad news.

But of course they have different pictures of presidents for different "moods".

Freedom in the world

So, the US government is exceeding its legal authority to spy on us.

And, during a debate on whether Sweden should expand government surveillance, it turns out that Sweden's government has been tapping phones for decades.

And then there's censorship in America:
Government officials are told not to talk about global climate change.

Young women aren't allowed to talk about "themselves".

I never have seen a performance of the hoo-haa monologues. Maybe it's time.

Photos lie

Wired has an amazing gallery of historic photo manipulation. You can see modern news photos that have been photoshopped to tell a better story. And classic Soviet photos that were altered for political reasons.

I was surprised that the infamous Kent State screaming girl was altered because it wasn't well composed. (The original looks like screaming girl has a stick coming out of her head.)

Amazing maps

This site has several different maps of the world, showing different countries in different sizes depending on different statistics.

It's pretty darn cool. Toy imports, toy exports, wealth, military spending. All made visual.

C-Span copyrights

So, CSPAN is making all their video freely copyable so long as they get the credit for making it.

But shouldn't government proceedings be free to all to observe?

I guess getting the credit for their work is a fair demand to make.

US Attorneys firings related to Patriot Act

So, the firing of various US attorneys for political reasons was made possible by a revision in the "Patriot" act. But it turns out that the particular clause that makes this possible was slipped into the law in the middle of the night. And no one can be held responsible for this because no one knows who made the change to the law.

As this poster on Slashdot points out, it is relatively straightforward technically to track every change made to a document. It sure does seem like our national legislation should be tracked for edits and revisions more effectively than Wikipedia. Sigh.

Gratitude

I love this comic most days, but this panel hit such a home run, that I'm illegally linking to it.

Originality

I just watched the complete Fawlty Towers on DVD from the library. In the bonus features, John Cleese talks about how audiences didn't get the series at first, because it was so new and different. But on the reruns of the first season, it began to catch fire.

Too bad today's TV networks don't understand this idea.

To be fair, some of the shows I love that were cut down in their prime were given 2 years to try to build an audience, while the ratings slowly circled the drain. But Firefly and Day Break had 6 episodes. That's just not enough time for people to "get it" if you're doing something creative.

Bastards.

Of course, I look for intelligent, provoking shows that bring catharsis as well as stimulate. After watching Sports Night, my verbal dexterity increases.

It's a perfect example of what stupidity arises out of American bloodlust for short term success. Instead of investing in quality which will result in long-term awesomeness and staying power, networks just buy throw away products that will last for a few months and then have to be replaced when the shine wears off.

Broadway Spring Medley

2 minutes into this radio clip, there is an excellent medley of spring songs from Broadway.

Every song is done in an old-time bluegrass style. Completely alien to the original intent of the Broadway composers. Great comedy!

Re-edited trailers

This is a brilliant genre. I love these new ones. It's interesting how the best recut trailers tend to take wholesome family movies and make them twisted. The attempts to make Taxi Driver or Silence of the Lambs romantic comedies just fall flat, even with good music, editing and voiceover. It makes the edit of the Shining that much more impressive.

Mary Poppins as a horror movie. It's really a good fit. Mary is a subversive, disruptive, character:



Toy Story as horror:


Dumb and Dumber as a horror movie:

Dorky Hamlet

The Hamlet Text Adventure

It's literary. It's a computer game. It's so nerdy I can hardly take it!

Your PIN or your life!

Apparently, hackers have found it relatively easy to make a card that can do all sorts of things to ATM card readers.

British Military Strategy

It turns out that at the height of World War 2, England gave the US all their military secrets, hoping we could do something useful.

If only our government trusted anyone outside the White House that much.