Moo

Slow news week, so here's something that Alec Esotérica sent me:

I am under the influence of prescription narcotics (got snipped on Monday), so I have no idea if the video looks *that* weird to somebody with a clear mind.

The Job Market in 2009

Many thanks to Phil Greenspun for pointing me to this:

No one was spared, not even the children

Please, I beg you, do not watch this video:

TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com

SAN FRANCISCO - TiVo users will be able to watch YouTube clips on their televisions by year's end, TiVo Inc. said Wednesday.

That's the latest move by YouTube to reach beyond the Web's regular boundaries. Fans of the popular online video provider can view its videos on their cell phones and Apple TV, a box that streams movies from people's computers to their TV.

[From TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com]

When I setup our AppleTV's I thought that the Youtube feature would just sit there unused. Next thing I knew, PJ was spending as much time browsing Youtube from his AppleTV than from his iMac (which is great, it means less bickering between PJ and Ivette about who gets to use the iMac). I also like it a lot, after spending just a half hour browsing videos on a 37" HDTV, you don't want to go back to your computer.
Of course, the feature needs work, but it is most an issue with searching and browsing. The videos look pretty damn nice.

Yes, he is

The long awaited reply to Sarah Silverman's video:

Rogue satellite destroyed by SM-3 ship-launched missile

It looks almost like when Alderaan was blown up.
What I am really enjoying about the press coverage of this event is how everyone pretty much understood that the shooting was more than just removing the threat of that dangerous satellite plummeting down to earth: it is also a technology demonstrator of a functional ballistic missile shield.
I also think it's really cool that the kill vehicle is kinetic (basically a huge bullet) instead of an explosive warhead. Tom Clancy explored this scenario with a similar platform, except the kill vehicle was an anti-air warhead. The technical challenge for that scenario was that the tracking software was making it follow the hottest part of the ballistic inbound, which is wrong since it would aim the missile at the tail end of the flying fireball surrounding the inbound. The warhead flies faster than the velocity of the explosive in the intercept missile, so by the time the missile blows up, the inbound is already too far to feel the explosion. Clancy's solution: switch to a radar tracker, which let them (at least in theory) track the actual inbound.
Fun stuff.

Where's your God now?

I know, just horrible.

Screw THAT

Thanks to Paul for this one:

One of the things that set us apart from animals is that animals don't do the same kind of stupid shit that us humans do.

Banned From YouTube: Parody Guitar Videos | The Underwire from Wired.com

[From Banned From YouTube: Parody Guitar Videos | The Underwire from Wired.com]

The shredder got banned from Youtube! This is one of my all time favorite series of parody videos. Basically Santeri Ojala takes a video where one or more "guitar gods" are playing, and then he records his own music over them. The results are extraordinary.

The first one I saw was with Carlos Santana. I had no idea what was going on, but I couldn't understand why it sounded so terrible. Not only Carlos was horrible, but everyone in his band was playing completely off-key, yet the music was obviously in sync with the video. I thought I smelled a rat, so I checked his list of videos and tried one with Paco de Lucia. Same thing, everything was in sync, but the music was horrible.

That's when I got the joke. Just plain beautiful. By the time I was done watching the third video, Iron Maiden's, I had laughed so hard that I almost got an asthma attack.

By the way, here's Santeri Ojala playing side-by-side with Slash:

Yes, she is

If you are not familiar with the Jimmy Kimmel show, he has a running gag where he waits until the end of the show to claim that he "ran out of time for Matt Damon."
This is Sarah Silverman's revenge:

Happy Mornings

1,500 inmates practice "Thriller"

Inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in the Philippines. Wikipedia has some background information on the video.