Saturday, April 30, 2011

Predator - The Musical

Tonight's Arnold Schwarzenegger opera [language warning]:

Friday, April 29, 2011

Swan Lake

Tonight's ballet - Swan Lake, Chinese acrobatic edition:

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Taking the scenic route

Tonight's speed-flying video - Fisher Towers, in Moab, UT [hat tip to Tom O. for the link]:

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Skateboarding down the mountain

Tonight's skateboarding video:

Monday, April 25, 2011

Iceland lightscapes

Tonight's time lapse video, from Iceland:

Sunday, April 24, 2011

I arise today

On this Easter Sunday, I wish for all my readers the salvation that comes from the saving grace of Our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter!

Tonight's musical interlude - Lisa Kelly sings Christ in Me, a rendition of the Lorica of St. Patrick:

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Gregorian's Moment of Peace:




Friday, April 22, 2011

Musical interlude

Tonight's Good Friday musical interlude - an excerpt from J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Soloists, conducted by Ton Koopman:



Thursday, April 21, 2011

Chain reaction

Tonight's science-made-fun explanation - the chain reaction:

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Contact juggling

Tonight's contact juggler, courtesy National Geographic:

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Doing a little jig

Tonight's flash mob - doing a little Irish jig this past St. Patrick's day in Sydney, Australia:

Monday, April 18, 2011

Dinner at the Double Dog Diner

Tonight's hungry doggies - according to the video's description, this was shot in one take, no cuts or editing:

Sunday, April 17, 2011

What are they selling?

Tonight's what-exactly-are-they-selling commercial, from Japan:

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Juggling helicopters

Tonight's rotor-robotic video - Quadrocopter Ball Juggling, at a research lab in Zurich, Switzerland. The 'copters and the balls are computer-controlled and tracked by an overhead motion capture video system:




Here's an overview of the project:

Friday, April 15, 2011

Just don't throw rocks

Tonight's glassy future video, from Corning:

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The President's Speech

Tonight's movie parody, from Jimmy Kimmel:

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Chain of fools: from DOS 5 to Windows 7

Tonight's Microsoft upgrade process video:

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Truck drop

Tonight's airdrop video:

Monday, April 11, 2011

Little piggy

Tonight's cute piglet:

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Going down the mountain

Tonight's urban mountain biking, from Valparaiso, Chile (I think):

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Stuck on stupid

Tonight's stupid video:

Friday, April 8, 2011

But what if the spare tire gets a flat?

Tonight's fifth wheel video:

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Small fry

Tonight's miniature aquarium:

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Will you marry me?

Tonight's radio marriage proposal - Vancouver air traffic controller makes an on-air marriage proposal to his girlfriend on an Air Canada flight:

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Walking the hamster

Tonight's hamster walker:

Monday, April 4, 2011

Organizing the bookcase

Tonight's bookcase animation:

Eat the rich ... then what?

Today's yes-we're-that-screwed video, from Bill Whittle:

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Catchy lines

Tonight's memorable movie line compilation:

Four myths about the Crusades

Today's myth-debunking:
In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”

This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”1 The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games—drawing on supposedly more reliable sources—contain statements such as “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers”;2 “The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism”;3 and “Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.”4 The most famous semipopular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”5

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination. ...
Read the whole thing here.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Beer bottle dominos

Tonight's heavy beer drinker video:

Friday, April 1, 2011

Firecracker

Tonight's noisy video - popping 320,000 firecrackers: