Links

All I Wanted Were Funny Movie Clips

Of at least 1,200 movie clips currently on Hulu, these are the top 20 most popular today (as titled on the site):

  1. Cocoon: Alien Sex
  2. Animal House: Topless Pillow Fight
  3. Bring it On: Bikini Car Wash
  4. Porky’s: Shower Spy Hole
  5. Epic Movie: Lazy Pirate Day Video (“starring … Sara Underwood as a pirate wench”)
  6. The Ice Storm: Show Me Yours
  7. Bring it On: Having Cheer Sex
  8. The Girl Next Door: Fantasy
  9. American Pie 2: Going Too Far
  10. The Girl Next Door: I’m All Wet
  11. The Girl Next Door: Who Is This Girl?
  12. The Girl Next Door: Pool Crashers
  13. The Girl Next Door: Porn Star
  14. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: Master’s Bathroom
  15. Carlito’s Way: Get Me Naked
  16. Epic Movie: Slow Motion (“Peter uses a magic slow-motion remote to watch a big-breasted woman run.”)
  17. Epic Movie: Harry Potter
  18. Epic Movie: You Got Punked
  19. Bring it On: You Really Suck
  20. Species III: Alien Breeding

Did you too detect a theme?

Only six items in the entire list do not immediately imply sexual content.  I included the clips’ descriptions for two of those in parentheses, which clears up the confusion right away.

Of the others, “Master’s Bathroom” features a couple bathing nude, “Harry Potter” has one character grab another’s breasts, “You Got Punked” has a woman flash someone with her back to the camera, and “You Really Suck” opens with a female cheerleader adjusting her underwear while a male cheerleader watches.

The next 20 don’t look much more promising.

I find our society deeply troubling right now.

In the Same Vicinity

I linked to Amy Walker’s 21 Accents video when it became famous back in March.  After watching her new Yes video, which seems like it would be a good to watch before an important meeting, I felt like revisiting some of her other work today.  My favorite remains her parody of the song All I Ask of You:

I’m here, with you, beside you,
Close to you and by you

Even knowing all the words, I laugh every time.

For original work, I like best her original song Let’s Not Sleep.

Math 55

The Harvard Pops, whom I just mentioned, and whose concerts I never miss, often make jokes about Harvard in their performances.  When something is gigantic, it might be “bigger than Harvard’s endowment.”  Get it?  Most of them I get.  Some are more esoteric.

Pops Risks it All had a line that went something like (and I paraphrase):

The Rules: You’d have to take the ultimate risk!
Marcus: What, like, Math 55?

I laughed at the time, ’cause I got the gist.  Then I Googled it when I got home to understand more fully.

The math department has a pamphlet to help Freshman choose which of four math courses they might want to take.  The first sentence describing each course is as follows:

  • Math 21: A thorough treatment of multi-variable calculus and linear algebra with real-life applications.
  • Math 23: A class that covers linear algebra and multivariable calculus while also teaching proof-writing, starting with the basics.
  • Math 25: A rigorous treatment of multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and introductions to other topics in advanced mathematics.
  • Math 55: This is probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country; a variety of advanced topics in mathematics are covered, and problem sets ask students to prove many fundamental theorems of analysis and linear algebra.

Wow.  That is the ultimate risk.

They Have the Internet on Computers Now

From The Atlantic, July 1982:

When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen. For six months, I found it awkward to compose first drafts on the computer. Now I can hardly do it any other way. It is faster to type this way than with a normal typewriter, because you don’t need to stop at the end of the line for a carriage return (the computer automatically “wraps” the words onto the next line when you reach the right-hand margin), and you never come to the end of the page, because the material on the screen keeps sliding up to make room for each new line. It is also more satisfying to the soul, because each maimed and misconceived passage can be made to vanish instantly, by the word or by the paragraph, leaving a pristine green field on which to make the next attempt.

Even in an era when we all use computers on a daily basis – and I do even more than most people – it’s absolutely enthralling to read a description of how an ordinary person can really use such a thing as a personal computer.

I particularly like Mr. Fallows’ description of using BASIC to write some tax accounting software.

At the end of the year, I load the income-tax program into the computer, push the button marked “Run,” and watch as my tax return is prepared. Since it took me only about six months to learn BASIC (and the tax laws) well enough to write the program, I figure this approach will save me time by 1993.

That doesn’t sound remotely like anything I’ve ever developed.  (He says, unconvincingly.)

A Brief History of Time

At 4:49 am on 19 October 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user created a new page titled “Sarah Palin.” It read, in full:

Republican Party (United States) candidate for governor for the state of Alaska. Sarah is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska

Sure, the first sentence is incomplete (which another editor corrected that day), the second is missing its period, and her last name doesn’t feature anywhere in the article, but she had her very own Wikipedia page.

As early as 2 November 2005 we got this telling sentence from user Tko ak:

Despite being considered a maverick by many for rebuking her own party, her conservative political credentials remain intact.

Huh! She really is a maverick!

The page grew into a full article on her governorship and beyond until 6:57 pm on 12 August, when Paul007ex added this paragraph:

Governor Sarah Palin has been mentioned as Vice President contendor (sic) by a number of different media outlets. Governor Sarah Palin has a strong online member support for her Vice Presidency appeal.

It had undergone 714 revisions in total before then. Between 12 August and 29 August (when McCain announced his running mate) another quick 187 revisions speculated on her place in the 2008 campaign, including the controversial Young Trigg edits.

And after the 29th? In just three days editors tacked on 2,364 new changes – about 2½ times the total volume of edits in the prior history of the page.

Over 6,200 more have gone through in September and October (to present).

At first I was considering creating a time lapse video of the page (as has been done before for other articles) but then I calculated that if done to scale there’d be three minutes of glacial nothingness followed by five to ten seconds of explosive change.

A James by Any Other Name

I stumbled on a wikiHow post titled, “How to Deal With Having a Boy’s Name when You’re a Girl.”

I enjoy particularly step four:

  1. Go back to school with evidence. Bring a page you printed of a name website, stating that your name can be a girl or boys name. Possibly bring a list of female celebrities sharing your name.

I highly doubt that showing up at school with paperwork defending your name is a way to reduce teasing.  Admittedly you’ll be teased a lot less about your name, but now you’ll forever be the girl who brought Internet research to school.  Naming such a celebrity is a great idea, but bringing supporting documentation really won’t help.

The last step may also be ill-advised:

  1. Get advice. Ask your parents, or if you’re too shy, ask the school counselor or an older sibling. Ask how you can cope with people treating you this way.

Your parents created the problem by naming their daughter James.  They may not have the best advice to give on the subject.

PoaT+xkcd+www+blog = Fun!

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, blogged about the infamous Plane on a Treadmill problem from the perspective of how people interpret the problem differently, and how that leads to chaos in Internet “discussions.”  I enjoy the summary at the end:

So, people who go with interpretation #3 notice immediately that the plane cannot move and keep trying to condescendingly explain to the #2 crowd that nothing they say changes the basic facts of the problem. The #2 crowd is busy explaining to the #3 crowd that planes aren’t driven by their wheels. Of course, this being the internet, there’s also a #4 crowd loudly arguing that even if the plane was able to move, it couldn’t have been what hit the Pentagon.

All in all, it’s a lovely recipe for an internet argument, and it’s been had too many times. So let’s see if we can avoid that. I suggest posting stories about something that happened to you recently, and post nice things about other peoples’ stories. If you’re desperate to tell me that I’m wrong on the internet, don’t bother. I’ve snuck onto the plane into first class with the #5 crowd and we’re busy finding out how many cocktails they’ll serve while we’re waiting for the treadmill to start. God help us if, after the fourth round of drinks, someone brings up the two envelopes paradox.

It somehow reminds me of a great Simpsons quote, as a group of pirates are about to bury some treasure:

Captain, what if, instead of burying the treasure, we use it to buy things? You know, things we like?