snap.

your morning wasn't so bad.

Piano covers

Those are some of my favorites, but that Youtuber has got a bunch.

human sex is so lame.

Nails

Nails' life

Foxy Friday

"Door to Hell"

According local residents, geologists were digging in the area for gas deposits and stumbled upon a huge underground cavern. The geologists apparently concluded the cavern was filled with poisonous gas, and decided (as any sane rational scientist might do) that they should light the cavern on fire to burn off the excess. The hole has been burning for more than 35 years since.

Turkmenistan's "Door to Hell"

that's a paddlin'

Pop culture sites links

1. Videogum

2. Overthinking It

take that, hippies.

nice title.

Buddy's real talent was beating people up

The closest I'll get to recognizing the Winter Olympics.

Black hole simulator

Space is crazy.

Metal Monday

Search and Destroy Saturday

3e endorsed

By former president George W. Bush.

More endorsements.

Movie thoughts from a screenwriter

Website. I like it because he accurately explained why I liked but was mostly impressively confused by Inglourious Basterds, and it's always a sign of good analysis when it puts into words and explains something you just kind of felt.

Dock Ellis' LSD no-hitter

Great video.



Dock Ellis is also famous for getting maced by a security guard who didn't recognize him and for trying to hit every batter in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.

Why are Europeans white?

A good question with surprisingly no good answer.

If you are in a movie, avoid mirrors

Putting weird things in coffee

Exactly what it sounds like. The only thing that sounds particularly good so far is peanut butter.

Ocean depths to scale

heah.

Electoral reform

Here. I disagree with many of these places names.

A better idea: 50 states is too few, so we should split some of the big ones. Some of these would be easy and obvious (for example: Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, California and Florida all have obvious divisions based on geography and distribution of major metro areas). I think 60 states would be a big improvement; 80 or more would be even better. This is entirely possible -- you could divide California into seven states with each having a larger population than Louisiana (currently the 25th largest state).

Funnier than the movie they're promoting

Tyler looks so silly

Hover animals?

Hover animals!

3E Presents: Thursdizzle

1.

2.

Difficult languages

You tell “a” lie but “the” truth in many languages, partly because many lies exist but truth is rather more definite. It may be natural to think that your own tongue is complex and mysterious. But English is pretty simple: verbs hardly conjugate; nouns pluralise easily (just add “s”, mostly) and there are no genders to remember.

English-speakers appreciate this when they try to learn other languages. A Spanish verb has six present-tense forms, and six each in the preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, subjunctive and two different past subjunctives, for a total of 48 forms. German has three genders, seemingly so random that Mark Twain wondered why “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has”.

Tongue Twisters: In Search of the World's Hardest Language

Super Mario Land Rap

Internet chatting

1. Chatroullete!

2. Coffee Talk with Cobra Commander.

this should be our new commenting this

via

Richard Cory

Profiles in Being Black: That guy in Happy Gilmore who awkwardly says "The gold jacket's yours, Happy. Shooter's gonna choke!" or something like that.

I couldn't find a video of him, so here's this one instead.

gat gat gat

"Is a bird not safe in its nest?"

-Birdman

Super Bowl?

No, America Bowl.

go mammals

Before Adult Swim was Adult Swim, there was Sifl and Olly

I apologize

I owe you an apology big-time. Last summer, on the # 4 bus, the hooked handle of my umbrella caught the edge of your shirt and lifted it partway up. Being a woman myeslf, I felt awful for you. But I didn't want to make a fuss apologizing and in that way draw any more attention to you than you had in the first place.

But, belatedly, I AM sorry. VERY sorry.

Irina

The Public Apology

B -

You knew S was cheatig on me and you didn't tell me?! What kind of a friend are you?! I want an apology - now - and I want you to MEAN IT.

If you ever want to talk to me again....

N

This is a question I consider constantly:

You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling.

Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.

Or at least you will be. Oxygen is scarce at these heights. By now, hypoxia is starting to set in. You’ll be unconscious soon, and you’ll cannonball at least a mile before waking up again. When that happens, remember what you are about to read. The ground, after all, is your next destination.

Granted, the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra­ordinarily slim, but at this point you’ve got nothing to lose by understanding your situation. There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky with absolutely no protection or means of slowing your descent. The second is to become a wreckage rider, a term coined by Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page—an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet. That classification means you have the advantage of being attached to a chunk of the plane. In 1972, Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic was traveling in a DC-9 over Czechoslovakia when it blew up. She fell 33,000 feet, wedged between her seat, a catering trolley, a section of aircraft and the body of another crew member, landing on—then sliding down—a snowy incline before coming to a stop, severely injured but alive.

Next, I would like them to have a similar feature for a sinking ocean liner.

happy groundhog day

Descriptive title

Related clever comment.



Meta-comment.

The Shining

The Shining is surely Stanley Kubrick's most misunderstood masterpiece.

I use the word 'masterpiece' guardedly because I have never really thought that The Shining was a very good film.

At the time, in 1980 when I first saw it, I didn't like it at all. The way that Kubrick threw out so much of Stephen King's great source material and replaced it with a lot of things that just didn't seem to make any sense, really bothered me.

Hopefully, before I am finished with this essay, the reader will see it is only when Kubrick dramatically alters the script from Stephen King's novel that we can begin to understand what Stanley Kubrick is trying to tell us in his version of The Shining.

It should be understood from the beginning that The Shining is Stanley Kubrick's most personal film (outside of, possibly, Eyes Wide Shut). Before we are done here it will be easy to see that Kubrick was only using Stephen King's novel as a launching pad (excuse the pun) to be able to tell a completely different story under the guise of making a film based on a best-selling novel. He did this for a very important reason - mainly to save his life.

[...]

The Overlook Hotel itself is America.

Like America, the Overlook Hotel is new and shiny. It is ostentatious, corny and architecturally boring. As the Manager tells Wendy "All of the best people stayed here".

But there is something very deep happening. Kubrick brushed shoulders with the elite of the world. He knows what is going on.

Secrets of The Shining: Or How Faking the Moon Landings Nearly Cost Stanley Kubrick his Marriage and his Life