(YouTube Link)
Brilliant. Simply brilliant. YouTube user MissSheenie made this mashup using scenes from classic Trek and music from the Ke$ha's song "Tik Tok."
via Geekstir
Previously: The Simpsons' "Tik Tok" Parody
John Farrier's Blog Posts
(YouTube Link)
Brilliant. Simply brilliant. YouTube user MissSheenie made this mashup using scenes from classic Trek and music from the Ke$ha's song "Tik Tok."
via Geekstir
Previously: The Simpsons' "Tik Tok" Parody
(YouTube Link)
"Golly, Jeepers, Batman! I'll make the call!" Never was a more anti-Frank Miller Batman alarm clock made. Deliciously kitschy!
via The Corner
Visual effects artist Bill George created photographs of people attending an unfortunately imaginary air show. Some of the air and spacecraft include favorites from Battlestar Galactica, Space: 1999, Land of the Giants, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's like a trip through the future from the perspective of the 1970s.
Link via Sci Fi Wire
(YouTube Link)
The pop culture blog Urlesque has a great roundup of the vuvuzela meme, including this gem by YouTube user PistolShrimps. It shows the Fellowship both accompanying people with vuvuzelas and attacking orcs armed with them. The song is "Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" by Erwin Beekveld.
Link | Previously: For Rohan!
LEGO artists Nannan Zhang and Tyler Clites made a marvy diorama set in a post-apocalyptic environment. It's called "Containment" and it looks like the future thankfully has a lower unemployment rate. The mutated denizens of the future keep busy salvaging parts from a crashed ship and working in what appears to be a functional soylent green processing facility. The whole system is motorized, as you can see in the video.
Gallery, Video, and Official Site via io9
At Test Freaks, D. Salmons provides a psychological analysis of the fanboy phenomenon. Such people, he alleges, are strongly motivated by jealously, a desire for tribal identity, and a yearning to find respect within that tribe. Good old-fashioned cognitive dissonance also plays a role:
Do you agree with his analysis?
Link via Digg | Image: Warner Bros.
It takes a lot to make money in today’s world, and often there is a less than ample amount for all of the choices. If you can’t buy both a PS3 and a XBox 360, then you will have to choose. And when you go online to discuss your wonderful hard won choice, you will naturally want to find that it was a good choice. Otherwise, hey, you can’t make financial decisions.
And if you can’t make good financial decisions, then you are going to be in trouble. The writing is on the wall, you are doomed to be a poor, insolent character that is stuck playing on a console that sucks, or so you are afraid. So you defend your choice, which proves to the world that you are indeed a wise choice maker, and that you and yours will prosper in the economic time to come.
Do you agree with his analysis?
Link via Digg | Image: Warner Bros.
(YouTube Link)
The Doctor and Rose face a French Dalek. "I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father...."
I liked them better when they were just trying to exterminate us.
via reddit
(Video Link)
Hollywood, take note: this is what a Batman movie is supposed to look like.
- Very gritty and dark.
- Villains are true psychopaths barely functional even in their own worlds.
- A seamless, carefully-written script.
- No glitzy stunts, special effects, or gadgets that try (and fail) to distract from the absence of a good story.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, with the exception of Mask of the Phantasm, this fan film is the greatest Batman movie ever made. Warner Bros. should immediately hire its creators, Aaron and Sean Schoenke, to turn it into a feature-length presentation.
Official Website via Comics Alliance
UPDATE: Nerd Bastards has more production information about this film. Here's an interesting bit: it only cost $27,000 to make.
(Video Link)
Don't hit me! At least not in the face! I don't actually believe that. "Girls Suck at Video Games" is just the title of this clever short film by Stéphanie Mercier. It's a bit of social commentary about gender roles in the form of a 2D video game.
via Miss Cellania
(YouTube Link)
Playing the Mario theme on the violin is nice, but not neato. What makes this video different is that it appears that pro violinist Teppei Okada plays the theme and sound effects in sync with someone else playing the game. What's unclear is whether or not the game is pre-recorded (and thus practiced) or impromptu. The latter of which would, of course, be extra awesome. There are similar videos in the YouTube channel, or you can go to Geekologie for a nice selection. YouTube Channel via Geekologie | Violinist's Website
(YouTube Link)
YouTube user Rick9635 made a costume of General Grievous from Episode III of Star Wars. At first, I wondered "Why do people find this interesting?" Then, about halfway through the video, the artist puts the costume on.
It's fantastic! The costume not only looks like Grievous, but moves like him, too. And the soundtrack was a nice touch.
via reddit
(YouTube Link)
This clever mashup by YouTube user solidbronze presents information about the Daleks as though reading from an entry in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It speaks at length about Davros, the creator of the Daleks. A selection:
It was only after his final creation of the Daleks was signed off and filed that Davros spotted the major flaw in the design of these would-be conquerors. Unwilling to admit that his perambulatory calculations might be slightly askew, Davros spent the next two hundred years after his death trying to conceptualize a way for his galaxy-traversing warriors to navigate stairs, without resorting to the obvious solution: legs.
via Sci Fi Wire
(YouTube Link)
Warp 11 is a rock band that plays songs inspired by Star Trek. Above is the video for their song "She Make It So." It's "the classic tale of boy-meets-green-skin-alien-girl." Here's a selection from the lyrics:
Well she look tacky – on (Get it? Tachyon!) my bed
Shes ready in my ready room
And its full speed ahead
She set a course now
For the heart of the sun
She gotta, gotta join my crew and be my number one
The band has an extensive discography -- five full albums. A quick YouTube search suggests that much of their repertoire is online.
Official Website via Nerd Bastards
Jeff Cooper (1920-2006) was an American firearms instructor who systematically studied, refined, and taught self-defense using the mind, the handgun, and the rifle. His books and his commentaries are interesting to read, not only for his practical firearms information, but his well-written expositions on the meaning of masculinity. Cooper maintained a carefully thought-out vision of what it means to be a man that would not be alien to our friends at The Art of Manliness.
In one passage in The Art of the Rifle, Cooper wrote about the instructional duties of a father to his sons:
I'm personally leery of any formal concept of masculinity or femininity because it can mean getting yourself trapped in the identity with which other people desire to burden you (e.g. "X is what it means to be manly; why aren't you doing X?).
Nonetheless, I agree with Cooper's general sentiment that a parent should prepare a child to enter a dangerous world. Here are, of the top of my head, some of the skills that I will intentionally teach my daughters:
What skills do you think are essential for parents to teach their children?
via The View from North Central Idaho | Photo by Flickr user bterrycompton used under Creative Commons license
In one passage in The Art of the Rifle, Cooper wrote about the instructional duties of a father to his sons:
Before the young man leaves home, there are certain things he should know and certain skills he should acquire, apart from any state-sponsored activity. Certainly the youngster should be taught to swim, strongly and safely, at distance. And young people of either sex should be taught to drive a motor vehicle, and if at all possible, how to fly a light airplane. I believe a youngster should be taught the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat, unarmed, together with basic survival skills. The list is long, but it is a parent's duty to make sure that the child does not go forth into the world helpless in the face of its perils. Shooting, of course, is our business, and shooting should not be left up to the state.
I'm personally leery of any formal concept of masculinity or femininity because it can mean getting yourself trapped in the identity with which other people desire to burden you (e.g. "X is what it means to be manly; why aren't you doing X?).
Nonetheless, I agree with Cooper's general sentiment that a parent should prepare a child to enter a dangerous world. Here are, of the top of my head, some of the skills that I will intentionally teach my daughters:
- How to change a tire, engine oil, a headlight, a battery, and jump-start a car without assistance.
- How to swim (see also)
- How to seek and apply for a job.
- How to ask a reference question.
- When to keep your mouth shut.
- How to save money.
What skills do you think are essential for parents to teach their children?
via The View from North Central Idaho | Photo by Flickr user bterrycompton used under Creative Commons license
Nikola Nikolov turned his first car, a Lada Samara Diva, into a Transformer sculpture. It's 2 meters high and weighs 90 kilograms. You can see more pictures by going to the studio website and clicking on "Transformer" in the sidebar.
Link via DVICE | Studio Website | Photo: Nikola Nikolov
Email This Post to a Friend