Sesame Street should get medals for this stuff. I hereby delightedly present: Meal or No Meal with Howie Eatswell.
I honestly can’t decide if my favorite part is the muppet’s earrings or the fact that he keeps taking calls from “The Baker”.
The World
Chernobyl vs. A Banana
In the ongoing wake of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, news outlets have been saying “Three Mile Island” and “Chernobyl” a lot. To help alleviate the ensuing confusion and help us all understand radiation doses a little better, Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has prepared a chart of radiation doses on the xkcd blag.
We can see at the 1µSv scale the effect of eating a banana, at the 1mSv scale the dose one gets during a mammogram, and at the 1Sv scale the doses that are likely to kill you. The dose for “Ten minutes next to the Chernobyl reactor core after explosion and meltdown” is pretty astonishing.
Shuttles on a Plane
During the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery a passenger on a passing commercial airliner recorded video of what the launch looked like from the air. Even after watching the launch live in spectacularly high definition video from NASA, this is somehow even more amazing.
Probably the best part is the pilot’s announcement near the beginning:
Folks, the space shuttle’s going off the right side of the aircraft right now. Those of you on the right side of the aircraft can see the space shuttle. Those of you on the left side of the aircraft can probably see the people on the right side of the aircraft looking at the space shuttle.
Then and Now Again
The Toronto 1977 – 2007 photo series showed how Toronto changed over three decades. Photographer Irina Wering’s Back to the Future project shows how people have changed in the same period of time.
Mechi in 1990 & 2010
Each pair takes an original image, usually of a child but occasionally with a teenager or younger adult, and recreates the scene with the same person in the present day.
Some of the pictures look like classic school portraits, while others show a variety of everyday activities that one would expect to see photographed — playing at home or at the beach, or posing at a landmark while on vacation.
Werning has taken care to duplicate not just the location but also the clothes and even the posture and facial expression of each original.
Lali in 1978 & 2010
(via bumbumbum)
The Best Egyptian Protest Signs
Astute observers of current events may recall some sort of hullabaloo in Egypt a little while back having something to do with freedom and democracy.
The Cheezburger Network has showcased some of the best protest signs.
Egypt Protest Sign
They’re all quite clever, such as this programming-themed protest:
try {
Free and Fair Elections;
} catch (DemocracyNotFoundException ) {
“Time for Mubarak to leave”; }
Return of the Browncoats
The Science Channel now has the rights to Firefly and will be re-airing the series, but unfortunately won’t be producing any new content. Nathan Fillion gave a brief interview to Entertainment Weekly in honor of the occasion. In it, he said, almost offhand:
If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.
And that’s the story of how HelpNathanBuyFirefly.com was born.
The current theory is that enough Firefly fans exist that we can just raise $300 million. And since $300 million is a figure Fillion pulled from thin air, it probably wouldn’t take that much. And while nobody wants to donate money to a random website with the vague hope that it will somehow result in new Firefly episodes, who wouldn’t willingly give their savings over to Malcolm Reynolds himself?
The Internet is pretty awesome.
Huddle to Fight Hunger
In the wake of the Superbowl, we can revisit a brilliant ad from Kraft’s Huddle to Fight Hunger campaign.
Besides communicating Kraft’s message effectively, it’s also a pretty good demonstration of how the game is played.
This American Life
This American Life is a Public Radio International show (also available as a free podcast from iTunes) and is unlike any other television or radio program I know. I’ve been listening for years and no two episodes are alike. It’s not a current events or documentary show per se; rather, each episode dives head first into the details of a situation — any situation — and gives us a perspective we’ve never had before.
When “toxic assets” were famously ruining our economy last year, This American Life and Planet Money bought one (nicknamed “Toxie”) and spoke with some of the homebuyers whose mortgages they now owned. Each had a different and unexpected reason for falling behind on their payments.
In 2009, the Princeton Review named Penn State the “#1 Party School in America” so This American Life went there to find out what it’s like for students, administrators, and residents of the surrounding community. A surprising number of drunken college students wander into strange homes at night and pass out.
Mr. President
And just two weeks ago the show aired what may have been its best episode to date: Kid Politics. What would the world be like if it were run by children? In one segment we hear about a simulation where students become president, press, and Navy in 1983 when something’s about to happen in Grenada. Now, Mr. President, would you like to invade? And would you like to change your plans now that the press has leaked news of your “covert” invasion?
In another segment, we visit The Brooklyn Free School: a real school where there are no traditional classes and the students are in charge. At one point a student calls a meeting of the entire school because she’s just been called a whore again. If you’re thinking that’s an overreaction, some of the other students agree. But the victim’s justification makes a lot of sense: these boys just used a very offensive word without even knowing its meaning, and she wants them to understand the severity of that action. Essentially, she’s able to react with as much force and impact as every student who’s ever been called a name has ever wanted to. And perhaps those boys will be wary of doing the same thing again.
You can listen to every episode of This American Life ever aired for free in the show’s Radio Archive and you can subscribe to new episodes through their free podcast in iTunes. Perhaps Kid Politics is a good place to start. When you’re sufficiently impressed, don’t forget to donate some money to the show (through PayPal if you want).
Then and Now
Toronto 1977-2007
Photographer Damon Schreiber posted a fascinating series of photographs a few years ago titled Toronto 1977 – 2007. Perhaps the title gives away the premise: after discovering online a set of photographs taken in Toronto in 1977, Schreiber set out to photograph the same locations again in the present day (then 2007).
He took great care to find not just the same location but the same camera angles and even the same subjects. If a bus happened to be pulling away when the shutter clicked 30 years ago, the retake will capture a new bus in the same place. This brings striking clarity to the real changes that three decades have brought to the city.
What I found absolutely fascinating was that the pairs show neither a steady decline throughout the city nor a constant improvement toward sleek modernity. Some locations got better, some got worse. Some sidewalks became crumbled and chipped while others were replaced with beautiful brick and shrubbery. We see buildings erected and torn down. New signs are installed while others have stayed exactly where they were placed half a lifetime ago.
The end result is a wonderfully comforting sense that the dilapidated sections of our cities today will be vibrant and clean in another few decades, even if the new brickwork we see workers laying down today may have degraded.
Freckleface Strawberry
Any rational person upon hearing Kimiko Glenn perform Nothing from A Chorus Line in 2002 would have concluded that she was bound for a proper Broadway stage. Through her YouTube channel we can now see her performing a song from a new Off-Broadway musical titled Freckleface Strawberry based on the children’s book by the same name. (Skip to 1:45 to hear just the song.)
The entire original cast album is available on iTunes. The musical is also playing (open ended) at New World Stages in New York, with tickets through Telecharge.
While I probably can’t rush all the way to New York for a show at the moment, it’s definitely on my list for the next time I’m in the city.