Monday, February 14, 2011 at 15:11 (fun)
Tags: Bill O'Reilly, creationism, miracles, religion
This is just too hilarious to ignore. Bill O’Reilly, an American TV talk show host on the Fox News Channel, has recently offered an argument for the existence of God:
I’ll tell you why [religion]‘s not a scam, in my opinion. Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.
Well, there you have it. Shapely bananas, f*cking magnets and inexplicable tidal waves. Ours is a world full of miracles indeed.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 at 16:47 (fun)
Tags: Captain America, crimes, news, Spiderman, superheroes, Superman
According to The Connexion:
A MAN dressed as Superman has died after falling from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris …
Meanwhile, France’s ‘Spider-man’ Alain Robert has been arrested in Sydney after climbing the 151m Lumiere Building.
And according to the National Post, earlier this year:
Man dressed as Captain America arrested with burrito, joint in his pants
Is that a burrito in your pants or are you just happy to see me? The answer was both for one Florida man who was arrested after asking women at a bar to touch a burrito that was stuffed down the pants of his Captain America costume.
Doctor Raymond Adamcik, a 54-year-old family physician, was dressed as the comic book superhero while he partied with other medical professionals on a costumed pub crawl. At one bar, Adamcik asked women if they wanted to touch a burrito that he had tucked into the waistband of his blue tights. When one woman refused, he groped her …
Out of the superhero lineup, the woman fingered Adamcik…
Now that’s a lineup I’d like to have seen.
Friday, November 21, 2008 at 22:51 (fun, linguistics)
Tags: language, psychology, text analysis
Well, you are, if you believe the Typealyzer, which is some sort of text analyser. They don’t give any details of what it is that they do exactly, and should probably not be taken too seriously. Still, having typed in the URL of my own blog, it concludes the following about me:
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
So while I’m logical, creative and intellectual, I’m also an insensitive, arrogant bastard. That should make some people very happy to hear, I suppose.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 18:16 (fun, science)
Tags: IgNobel, science awards
This year’s IgNobel prizes have been awarded (last Thursday). Each year, they reward scientists for truly tought-provoking discoveries. For instance, last year J.M. Toro, J.B. Trobalon and N. Sebastian-Galles won a linguistics prize for demonstrating that rats cannot differentiate between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. (You can download their report here.)
My personal all-time favourite, however, is the 2003 physics prize, which went to J. Harvey, J. Culvenor, W. Payne, S. Cowley, M. Lawrance, D. Stuart, and R. Williams, for their work in analysing what it takes to drag sheep over various surfaces. (Their highly technical report can be downloaded from here.)
This year’s winners include:
M. Zampini and C. Spence, who won a nutrition prize for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make it appear crisper and fresher than it really is.
T. Nakagaki, H. Yamada, R. Kobayashi, A. Tero, A. Ishiguro, and A. Toth, who won a cognitive science prize for "discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles".
G. Miller, J. Tybur and B. Jordan, who discovered, after extensive field work one would assume, "that a professional lap dancer’s ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings".
And the people of Switzerland, apparently, who won this year’s peace prize for "adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity". (I’ll keep that in mind the next time I eat vegetarian.)
Full list of this year’s IgNobel winners is here.
Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 15:21 (fun, music)
Tags: food, music, vegetables
Are you one of those parents that keep telling their kids not to play with their food? You might want to rethink that.
Over at YouTube, Mr Heita3 would much rather play with his food than eat it. In fact, he does it very well. He builds musical instruments out of vegetables such as broccoli, carots, cucumber, paprika, radish, cabbage, and more, even mushrooms and eggs.
C’mon, you play with your food, too. You know you want to.
Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 9:46 (fun, literature)
Tags: literary analysis, psychology, Winnie-the-Pooh
There are many ways in which one can read literary texts. One can interpret them at face value, or one can read various things into them. For instance, did you know that the stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends comprise an allegory of male sexuality; in fact, a very old-fashioned one. With the exception of Kanga, all characters are male, and they each represent different aspects of male sexuality and associated desires, inhibitions, fears, prejudices, etc. The stories also include a typically male (albeit ancient) bipolar view of female sexuality: the caring Madonna (Kanga) and the always-accessible whore (the honey pot).
1. Winnie-the-Pooh is the personification of male (adolescent) sexuality. He is not quite sure what he wants, or even who he is. His actions are often hampered by his fears or his ignorance. Winnie-the-Pooh is in fact a symbol for the penis.
2. The Honey Pot, Winnie-the-Pooh’s favourite thing, represents the male fantasy of a vagina. It is the ultimate objectification of female sexuality. It is passive, will-less, and locked up in a safe place until male lust (i.e. Winnie-the-Pooh) wants a piece of it. As such, the Honey Pot is also a symbol for the whore.
3. Piglet is the unwilling virgin. He is the little kid who wants to be a big kid, like all his friends. Piglet represents the young adolescent’s frustrations and insecurities about never being sure if the others think he’s a grown-up or if they know he’s just a kid pretending to be a grown-up.
4. The Owl represents pretence. He wants to be wise. He tries very hard to appear wise. In fact, he has come to live the image he has created for himself. He is the guy who wants wants everyone else to think he knows all about what to do with the girls, but in reality he is just the same fumbling fool as the rest of us.
5. Eeyore is downbeat, cautious, self-pitying. He is always holding himself back, never allowing himself to enjoy things. He wants new experiences (i.e. date girls), but he is never likely to do so, because he fears what it might lead to. Eeyore is the personification of repressed sexuality.
6. Rabbit is that annoying acquaintance we all know, who is convinced that he is more experienced and mature than anyone else. He is different from the Owl, who knows his limitations but hides them, while Rabbit has no self-awareness at all. He wants to be in charge of all things around him, because he knows best, even when he doesn’t. In the bedroom, Rabbit is the one with the whip, always in fear of loosing control.
7. The Heffalump represents everything that our mothers warned us about, such as bad company, unhealthy living, strangers in cars, etc., as well as their consequences, like unwanted pregnancies, naughty diseases, and so on. Still, we’re all curious animals, and we’re strangely drawn to the Heffalump, perhaps because it is so taboo. The irony of the Heffalump is, of course, that it is no independent danger at all, but a part of our own beings. In fact, the search for the Heffalump represents all those trials and errors we make as young adolescents looking for love, identity, and adulthood. Hence the Heffalump is a symbol of puberty, or more specifically, an escalating awareness of our own sexuality.
8. Kanga represents the teenage mother. (Roo is her child.) Kanga is a mother because she wasn’t afraid of the Heffalump, or at least not afraid enough. But even so, she is a responsible mother. In fact, Kanga is a symbol for the Madonna. Her main role in the story is to control Roo’s unlimited lust for life, clearly in a vain attempt to stop him from repeating her mistake(s).
9. Roo, Kanga’s baby, is the fearless, life-enjoying optimist. He is totally without inhibitions and fears. He represents all our desires for constant adventure and joy. He is like a stereotypical hippie advocating free, boundless sex. He is always willing to jump into anything, as long as it looks fun. And if it doesn’t look fun, he’ll jump into it anyway.
10. Tigger is a wannabee adventurer who wants to enjoy life, but is too dumb to understand what or why things happen the way they do. As he lacks Roo’s naive self-confidence, he also lacks the courage to go all the way. He is the insecure boy who wants to hit on the pretty girls, but always gets cold feet in the last moment (eminently exemplified in stories by Tigger climbing into the tree and freezing). Tigger represents unfulfilled sexual desires, which makes him the eternal masturbator (symbolised by his constant bouncing up and down).
11. Christopher Robin is the only genuinely asexual character in the story. In a way, he is God. He gave life to all the characters. He is the moderator of their lives. He feels for them and cares for them. He is the benevolent, respectful leader we all wish we had.
I hope you can still enjoy Winnie-the-Pooh.
(Apologies to Bruno Bettelheim.)
