Cool Robot Video
With Transformers: The Movie (again) in the pipeline, you have to admire this wonderful little video from Sweden’s Kaktus Films. Very Cool.
(via Sandbox)
13 Years Ago Today, The World Lost a Hero
Today is the 13th anniversary of Bill Hicks’s death. He was a hero of mine. I believe him to be one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time - up there with Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce. You can see him perform what I think is a remarkably profound speech (especially for a comedian) here.
Raise a glass, or better still, a cigarette or even better still, both, to him tonight.
(flickr)
Depressing Poll
I find the US a very perplexing place. Here’s a Gallup poll giving the percentage of Americans who would vote for candidates in particular social groups:
|
Yes, would |
No, would not |
|
|
% |
% |
|
|
Catholic |
95 |
4 |
|
Black |
94 |
5 |
|
Jewish |
92 |
7 |
|
A woman |
88 |
11 |
|
Hispanic |
87 |
12 |
|
Mormon |
72 |
24 |
|
Married for the third time |
67 |
30 |
|
72 years of age |
57 |
42 |
|
A homosexual |
55 |
43 |
|
An atheist |
45 |
53 |
What’s so bad about atheists? I mean really, what have we done wrong?
You’d have thought that with the current President holding prayer meetings every morning and the success that that’s brought him, that it might be time to give a gay, 72 year old atheist a go and see how he (or she) would do. Surely they couldn’t do any worse.
I suppose being an atheist, this makes me particularly sad. What I’d be interested in, however, is a UK equivalent of this. I doubt it would make me much happier in most areas, but I bet the atheists would do better than in the US.
No Tax
Following the success of the anti-road-charging petition on the Number 10 site, I think we need to take this a little further. I for one believe that everyone in the UK should pay no tax at all.
Alongside this, I think we need considerable investment in roads, the NHS, schools and local communities.
US College Bans Citing of Wikipedia in Essays
A college in the US (Middlebury College if you’re interested) have told their students that they can’t cite Wikipedia as a source in their essays. I just can’t believe that students need to be told this. This is nothing to do with Wikipedia’s quality, but the idea that you’d use any encyclopedia as a source in a University-level paper seems pretty laughable to me.
“History professor Neil Waters says Wikipedia is an ideal place to start research but an unacceptable way to end it.” Is this just me, or is this not blindingly obvious?
Fame of sorts
We went to see the wonderful Guillemots last night, and DV noticed this morning that they’re using my Lego version of them on their myspace, which is rather cool.
New Radiohead album 6th August
Apparently, Amazon have inadvertently let slip the release date of the new Radiohead album. Well, at least they appear to have chosen a date - I’m sure it’s not set in stone. Nice to see that it is probably on the cards though.
Minifig Album Covers #3: The Velvet Underground and Nico
It’s been a while since I made myself a famous album cover out of Lego. This one does look a little bit like cheating. True, it doesn’t contain a minifig, but I’m not renaming the whole series for one album cover. The banana, however is real Lego.
