Search This Blog

19 Feb 2010

No man is an Island



UGH. This one is somehow much worse than the first one. The digitally inserted Micheal, the truly terrifying vocodering, the completely nonsensical rap bridge. I hate pretty much everyone in the video. You sort of begin to wonder if these kinds of projects exist to save lives or to further inflate popstar egos. What's really going to happen to all that money? Most likely buy a solid gold plane for the Haitian president, or whichever warlord is in power when the cash gets there. Administrative costs and the salaries of all those highly necessary aid workers will take another big chunk. The rest of the cash? Miscellaneous(theft). If only the American Army wasn't so busy they could restore law and order.

Beautiful Info

No video, but this website is amazing: Beautifulinformation.net. It's all about visualising all those numbers and statistics you hear into something where you can see what it means a bit better. This one in particular is astounding. Who knew saving the rain forest would only cost half of Bill Gates' money? Or that the global illegal drug market is comparable in size to the advertising industry? But there's more whimsical stuff too. Here's a timetravel guideline for a broad selection of popular culture. These are the kind of things that make you want to make piecharts of your daily activities.

18 Feb 2010

Terrible news



I don't really watch the news anymore, every single thing on it annoys me. It's partly this kind of ridiculous pandering to who ever is watching, as if their opinions are of comparable value to professionals trying to report facts in an unbiased way. But mostly the terrible market dictate that the only news is bad news. There are a lot of problems, but preciously little reporting on the things that do go well. Things are bad, but I can't just watch an unrelenting parade of the thousands of things that spell doom for us, what about the hole in the ozone layer stopping it's growth? The sharp decrease in terrorism since the 70's, save for a few high profile events? All the clever new theories on how best to make the economy the driving force behind saving the environment? I went looking for a good news page and found it, but when I wanted to read an article, this happened. You have to pay, which is bad news.

17 Feb 2010

Super Mario Torture



I loved Super Mario World on the old SNES. It was the first videogame I ever tried to finish, on the first console I owned. I can still easily play the first half of it on muscle memory alone. I earned that through months and months of frustration. Honestly, I'm crap at videogames, but I literally have this game memorised. This video is a complete delight for everybody who remembers playing that game. Endless invisible blocks at inconvenient locations, impossible jumps and more random horror. But what makes this video even better is the fantastic player doing the run. The whole level is designed to stretch the limits of what is possible for a player to do, and somehow the guy manages to do it in 30 lives or so, amazing.

15 Feb 2010

Jihadists were cool once



I remembered this video vividly, like a lot of 80's videos (they were on after the cartoons), but never in a million years would I have connected it to a classic goth band like sisters of mercy. Their early stuff is exactly the kind of thing you'd toss into the faces of progrock enthusiasts who hate everything made after 1978. But apparently they later succumbed to the cheese and did a bowie. Not that I have anything against that, but this might be a bit too on the nose. White suits, reflecting shades, Afghan freedom fighters? They were the coolest oppressed minority there was for a while. The classic desert palace set really takes the cake, though. It really makes me wonder what other fond memories I can disinter for the lulz.