Grey Explains

C.G.P. Grey is really kinda awesome. He has a series of videos called Grey Explains. Each video is short, but crams a ton of information (and more than a little humor) into its 3-6 minutes. Here are some of my favorites:

The United Kingdom Explained
The Difference Between Holland and the Netherlands (and a whole lot more)
Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever
Death to Pennies

Just awesome. I really need to watch each of these several times.

Horrid Movie; Great Poem

I recently saw Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanimo Bay. I liked the original Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, so I figured what the heck?

The movie was spectacularly bad, but had two good parts to it. Here is a guide to watching the movie if you have it on DVR or some other linear medium that does not allow scene hopping, but does allow fast forward.

Start the movie and immediately hit fast forward. If you have 3 fast speeds, choose speed 3. If you allows yourself to hear the beginning of the movie, you can't say I didn't warn you. It starts out rather vile, then generally oscillates between being nasty and banal.

When you see the men in white sheets, get ready to hit the play button. Once Harold and Kumar start flagging down the little red/orange car, hit play. The scene is a bit ribald, but only thanks to some language. Neil Patrick Harris is great as "himself" in both Harold and Kumar movies. If you are clever with searching YouTube, you can find the two clips that combined make up NPH's time in the movie. One has "Takes Shrooms" in the title and the other has "Brands a Ho."

Once NPH exits the brothel and is done trying to get in the car (you will know when his attempt is done), go back to fast forward.

When you see Harold and Kumar falling from a rather high place, get ready to hit the play button. When the groom walks back up the aisle and past the bride, hit play. Here is the good part and here is the text of the poem: The Square Root of Three.

That's it. You have seen the best parts of the movie. Actually, you could probably same some effort if all you do is watch the clips at YouTube, but suit yourself.

Note to Frances: Thanks for the Hernia

Marvin caused me pain. I share an office with 11 people, so when a coworker sent this to me, I may have caused myself permanent injury when trying to suppress my laughter.

Release the Kracken: Arch Campbell's New Phrase

Arch Campbell was on Tony Kornheiser's radio show last week and he had a segment that had me laughing out loud.

There is one thing I like about Clash of the Titans. I believe that it will contribute a phrase to the lexicon: "Release the Kracken." I have prepared some examples of Release the Kracken:

• I have a new Calloway driver it's got a head on it about the size of a Russian Army boot. I believe when I stand on the first tee and take the head cover off, I will say Release the Kracken.
• Let's say you're out with the dog and he tarries; he doesn't do what the walk is for. You turn to the dog and say Release the Kracken.
• I believe that couples will date and decide that intimacy is for them and at that moment of intimacy, either the man or the woman will exclaim Release the Kracken.

I am ready to help popularize "Release the Kracken." It's a nice turn of phrase.

Web Stuff Friday: xkcd Highlights

If you aren't into the webcomic xkcd because it's too nerdy, here are some entries I think have relatively broad appeal. You don't need to be a programmer or a mathematician to find these amusing:

Lego: That's deep. My only quibble is that the lego house (like grandpa) still exists in our hearts, minds, and imaginations.

Movie Narrative Charts is wonderful (it's better when big). I like the LOTR and Star Wars diagrams, but really like 12 Angry Men as well.

Scary: This sort of thing gets me all the time. Boy Kid was born a month and a half before 9/11/01, so he is the same age as the post-9/11 era. We have project managers at work who are too young for me to have taught them: I stopped teaching before they entered high school. Holy crap!

I Love Monty Hall

OK, so I don't really love Monty. What I love is the problem that is named for him, which can be stated as follows:

You are a contestant on Let's Make a Deal. Monty has given you a choice of three doors. Behind two doors are goats, but one door has a nice, shiny new red car with a radio! You choose a door. Monty (who knows what is behind each door) then reveals that behind one of the other doors is a goat. He then he asks you: Do you want to switch to the other door, or do you want to stay with your original choice?

The question for you is: Should you stay with your original choice, switch doors, or does it not matter?

If you haven't before, stop and think about the problem before reading on.

Coding Horror has an article: Monty Hall, Monty Fall, Monty Crawl that a friend from work sent to me recently. I agree with the Jeff Atwood, who says:

What's interesting about this problem, to me at least, is not the solution, but the vehemence with which people react to the solution....

Here is a nice, simple explanation of the correct answer courtesy of Antonio Cangiano at Zen and the Art of Programming:

When you make your first choice your probability of winning the car is only 1/3. If you decide to switch, you will win only if the first choice you made was wrong. And since your first choice came with a 2 out of 3 chance of picking a goat, switching will then (logically) give you 2/3 chance of winning.

But don't believe me. Check out these sites:

• The New York Times Interactive Feature: The Monty Hall Problem allows you to try it several times and also provides an explanation.
• The Straight Dope: Long thread about the problem. A fun read.
• Wikipedia has some history and some explanations including a section called Aids to understanding.
• Let's Make a Deal has links to several sites including a simulation I like.
  

Anyway, this is a great problem.

The Number of the Counting

I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember watching it on my tiny black & white TV when I was in high school, then watching it in the Quartier Latin in Paris, then in college.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of my favorite movies. I have fond memories (from tenth grade) of watching it on channel 26 through the UHF snow on a tiny black and white TV while in my bedroom.

Later, I saw it in a theater in Paris' Quartier Latin. It was extra funny because all the college students up front knew English and laughed when I did throughout the movie, while the rest of the audience consistently laughed a few seconds later after reading subtitles.

I saw it again when I went to college, so it became a favorite source of quotes for many of us.

Anyway, one of my favorite parts from any Monty Python movie is the scene in The Holy Grail when they bring out the holy hand grenade.

Here is the original Holy Hand Grenade scene.

When I was looking for that original version of the scene, I stumbled upon a bunch of anime versions of Holy Grail scenes:

• Holy Hand Grenade Scene
• Bring Out Your Dead
• The Knights Who Say Ni!
  
• and here is a montage showing Various scenes

There are others, but the novelty wears off after the first few (much sooner for anyone who isn't into anime or Monty Python).

Bat Heading to Valhalla

On a recent shuttle mission, a Bat Hung on for a Ride Into Space.

This made me think:

Some people feel sorry for the bat (or Interim Problem Report 119V-0080 as his friends refer to him), but I like to look on the bright side. I think he went out with a spectacular exit. It was akin to a floating funeral barge. Perhaps he was a flying mammalian version of King Arthur!

All hail Interim Problem Report 119V-0080! May he enjoy his trip to bat Valhalla.

I know this is my first post in an age, but life is a bit too crazy these days.

Remy Raps

GoRemy is hilarious.

Slow Jam: This made me laugh out loud


McDonald's: The Rap


Two Percent Milk: The Rap
best line: You pour yourself a bowl, then you drop in the deuce.

Other raps:

• Hey There Khalilah
• Warcraft: The Rap

Homey and Homeboys

In Living Color was a great show. They had some really memorable characters. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Homey the Clown was my favorite recurring character.


The Homeboy Shopping Network even inspired a movie (Mo' Money).


On another note: Black People Love Us: I'm sure Homey and the Homeboys would just love Sally and Johnny.

Election Day Fun, Part 3: Very Mysterious

Here is a report about a magical voting booth.

Very mysterious....

Election Day Fun, Part 2: First Poll

Comedy Central brings us The First Exit Poll Is In.

Election Day Fun, Part 1

All hail DRE-700

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

Web Stuff Friday: Scary Bunny Movies

Angry Alien Productions has a series of 30-second movies starring cartoon bunnies. Their creator calls them "movie parodies in bun-o-vision." Most of these re-makes of famous movies are quite fun. Here are some of the great scary bunny movies. There are other scary movies at the site and several other non-scary movies, but these are just the scary ones I have seen.

• Alien
• The Exorcist
• Night of the Living Dead
• ...and the great one: The Shining

I've watched a couple bunny movies for films I never saw, but they didn't really work for me. When you've seen the movie, the bunny re-make is a nice reminder of what made the movie so great (or so bad).

BTW: One friend at work does a great job of impersonating the bunny saying "sometimes" like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. She knows she'll get a chuckle out of me when she does. It's one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

Really Good Words: Eponym, Eponymous

There are several words that I just plain old like. These words generally are fun to say and hear and in some cases have meanings that lead us to interesting places. Every once in a while, I'll share some of my favorite words and try to give you some sense of why I like the word(s) so much.

eponym/eponymous
When referring to an artist's self-titled album, it's so much more fun to say the album is eponymous. Also, the idea of the eponym is a fun one. When you start looking for eponyms, you find all sorts of interesting stories behind words such as sandwich, guillotine, and bloomers.

Web Stuff Friday: Ubiquity, Office War, 24h a NYC

Ubiquity is Mozilla's natural language internet project. What does that mean? It means that they are trying to come up with a way of making the Web work with sentences as we think of them. I think of this as similar to a high-end universal remote for a home theater system for which you hit a single button to watch a DVD and the remote turns on the right devices and sets each to the proper settings to you can do what you want. Similarly, Ubiquity should let you type a command like "Send this to Mom" and the browser would do the copy and pasting and emailing for you. It's an interesting way of rethinking how the technology can work.

The Great Office War is funny.


Here is a movie by a man who took a short business trip to New York City. He took the photos with his iPhone and narrates the resulting sequence of images in French with English subtitles. It's really a nice piece.

[A 24 Hour Trip to New York] from M. Ward on Vimeo.

Web Stuff Friday: Translations and a Ball

This Chinese restaurant shouldn't have relied on an online translation service for their sign.

Ball is maddening. I won't give away the ending, but it's a cool game.

Note: I was on vacation all this week, so the posts were all written and set up last week. One Blogger feature I like is that I can set a date and time at which each post will be released. In theory, I could set up my posts for the year on January 1st, then ignore the blog for the rest of the year. The posts would roll out on schedule. Fun stuff.

A picture a day for six years

Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years


This is an interesting experiment, and it's still going on. I really like the video and I check in on the site every once in a while. Noah's ability to make the time to take the photo every day is great, but his ability to keep his facial expression so consistent day after day is awesome.

Web Stuff Friday: Fun and Games

Here are some cool games that you can play online.

Go is an ancient game that has been one of the last bastions of human superiority over computers. Sadly, this superiority seems to be ending, but it's still a really cool game. I always wanted to play it and so will check out:

• The rules of go
• Play against a computer. some of the programs are free, so that's good value.
  

Sudoku is really addictive. I used to do one puzzle a day (usually on the bus on my way home from work), but now that I have a short drive to work, I don't do them often.

• Web Sudoku has various levels and is a good place to go for a quick game.

Scrabulous is an online version of Scrabble.

Web Stuff Friday: Star Trek, a Game, and Larry Miller

Star Trek Inspirational Posters are awesome. They are kinda spoofs of Demotivators (which i have blogged before), which are spoofs of inspirational posters like these. Note that there are four pages of the Star Trek posters, all filled with tons of Trekkie inside jokes. If you didn't watch the old Star Treks, or at least the movies, don't even bother with this. If you have seen the original shows several times, then this site will make you laugh out loud.

Here is a cool game. Everything is in Japanese, but see how you do. I think I scored 22 on my first time through.

Here is one of my favorite comedy bits of all time. Larry Miller's "Five Levels of Drinking."

Here is a routine about the difference between men and women. You can skip forward to about 4:00 in this:

Great stuff. This is where I get lines like "it's like the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it" and "God's flashlight," both of which are regular parts of my lexicon.