The 17 Equations That Changed the Course of History. Somewhat misleading title. Yes, they show an important logarithmic equation, but then what they talk about changing the world is the entire concept logarithms. Similarly with Calculus…
The ever fabulous Pet Shop Boys have created a lovely dance track from the “Noble Call” speech by Irish drag performer, Panti Bliss. It’s a lovely song, includes the whole speech, and yes, you can dance to it:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here — And it’s available on iTunes here!)
Yay!It’s the first Friday of March. It’s March already? Wow! Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:
The Shamelessness of Professor Mark Regnerus. Designed his study intent on proving that gay parents are bad. When he couldn’t find the proof, he waved his hands and said his study proved it, anyway.
Unreal sales for Driscoll’s Real Marriage. Megachurch spent $210,000 to put pastor’s book on bestseller list. How many homeless people or poor children could have been helped with that money?
Religious Liberty Or Anti-Gay Animus?. Money quote: “…with devout Catholics, the acid test is divorce. The bar on divorce – which, unlike the gay issue, is upheld directly by Jesus in the Gospels – is just as integral to the Catholic meaning of marriage as the prohibition on gay couples. So why no laws including that potential violation of religious liberty? Both kinds of marriage are equally verboten in Catholicism. So where is the political movement to insist that devout Catholics do not have to cater the second weddings of previously divorced people? … Do we enshrine the right of, say, an Orthodox Jewish hotel-owner to discriminate against couples who might be inter-married across faiths?”
If you have somehow managed to miss the Guardian’s of the Galaxy trailor:
When I first heard they were adapting this Marvel comic as a movie, I was confused as to how it could possibly work. The problem was that I was thinking of the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book as published from 1969-95, which was a weird sort of resistance group made of of characters that had originally appeared in one-shot Marvel sci-fi titles of the 50s and early 60s, each of whom was the last survivor of a planet that had been destroyed by a n alien empire. I didn’t realize that in 2008 Marvel gathered a bunch of odd characters from some of their weirder 70s sci fi titles and created a very different group of misfits that seems to share more than a bit in common with the crew of both the Farscape and Serenity. Anyway, now that I know which characters they’re going with (and these guys were all involved in fighting Thanos, who was the “mysterious” bad guy in the after credit sequence of The Avengers), it makes a whole lot more sense. (And how can you go wrong with the Blue Swede cover of “Hooked on a Feeling”???)
The original was a hit in 1968 by B.J. Thomas (and yes, yes, I’m old enough to remember that, too). The only videos I found of him singing are from much more recent shows where he looks he doesn’t look quite as ancient as I feared. However I found this awesome clip from the Ed Sullivan Show, 1969, of B.J. Thomas singing his much bigger hit. And you really ought to watch it. Put up with the very cheesy background choregraphy, because a bit after the 2:00 minute mark it gets too silly:
It’s a beautiful Friday which happens to be Zorkfox’s birthday. It is entirely appropriate that a man with such a large heart celebrates his natal day on February 14.
Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:
The least scathing review I found of the remake of Robocop began, “It wasn’t bad enough to make me angry.” Another review recommended that instead of spending money to go see the blockbuster-budget remake, to instead watch this crowd-sourced Robocop remake for free: Our Robocop Remake. “As big fans of the original RoboCop, and as filmmakers and film fans admittedly rolling our eyes at the Hollywood remake machine, we’ve elected to do this remake thing our own way. Our RoboCop Remake premiered in Los Angeles on January 26th and New York on February 5th. On February 6th, it was released online. Because if anyone is going to ruin RoboCop, it’s us.”
The U.S. hypocrisy over Russia’s anti-gay laws. On one level, I’ve been saying stuff like this for a while. I do quibble with that fact that in none of the states with similar “don’t say gay laws” are the police going around beating gay people and throwing them in jail en masse.
Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” Super Bowl Ad Brings Out Some Ugly Americans. You’ve probably already seen this, but I think it’s funny that the wingnuts are so busy being upset about “America the Beautiful” lyrics not in English, that they are failing to get apoplectic about the gay men ice skating with their daughter.
It’s Raining Men becomes anti-Ukip protest song. Three decades after its original release, the single re-enters the charts thanks to a social media campaign launched in response to David Silvester’s remarks that the bad weather is a punishment for its gay marriage laws
Stop Beating a Dead Fox. I disagree with Rich’s conclusion for reasons I may go into elsewhere, but: “With a median viewer age now at 68 according to Nielsen data through mid-January… Fox is in essence a retirement community.” and “Hard as it may be to fathom, Fox Nation is even more monochromatically white than the GOP is, let alone the American nation. Two percent of Mitt Romney’s voters were black. According to new Nielsen data, only 1.1 percent of Fox News’s prime-time viewership is (as opposed to 25 percent for MSNBC, 14 percent for CNN, and an average of roughly 12 percent for the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs).”
The Problem with “Don’t Feed the Trolls”: Steph Guthrie at TEDxTor (Thanks to Sheryl for the link!):
The five best punctuation marks in literature. More specifically, the author explains five instances where famous writers used punctuation in a particularly interesting/important way.
That would explain the aim… (Click to embiggen)It’s Friday, already? Well, here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:
Font Folly 