It’s a terrible time waster, but if you’re looking to kill your afternoon, try Whiteboard Tower Defense.

Since the introduction of open lectures by progressive thinking educational institutions like M.I.T., Stanford, Duke, Yale, and others, many exceptional presentations have bubbled to the top and should be watched.

Here are five must see open course video lectures as recommended by Virginia Heffernan of the NYTimes.

1. Walter H. G. Lewin, Powers of 10, M.I.T. (At about 2:40 watch Power of Ten video that is cut from the lecture)
2. Randy Pausch, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Carnegie Mellon
3. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, Duke and M.I.T. (the rest of his short clips)
4. Langdon Hammer, Modern Poetry, Yale
5. Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), Yale

I also recommend Mark Schlissel, Introduction - The Cell Theory, Bacteria, Animal Cells, Evolution (Viruses and Midochondria). (The good stuff starts at about 13:00).

I listened to about a quarter of all the lectures from this course—most of which were over my head, but the first and second (mp3) classes are fascinating and make me wish I studied biology at school.

Another wordle, this one is comprised of the words I use most when posting to this site.

I came across a youtube video this morning that shows Sarah Palin (Sarah Heath) sporting a swimsuit in the 1984 Miss Alaska Pageant. The video was pulled shortly later, but in the meantime I contacted Waxy.org’s Andy Baio and he, having more foresight than me, made a copy and is now hosting it himself.

I downloaded the transcripts of all of Obama and McCain’s speeches from their respective official websites from March 25th, 2008 to the present and then put them each into Wordle.

Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I used 51 speeches by McCain and 61 by Obama.

McCain’s site only had transcripts from March 25th to the present and I figured that was plenty of data for my purposes.

Matt Damon condemns John McCain’s choice of hockey-mom Sarah Palin for Vice President. He compares the situation to a ‘really bad Disney movie’ and says it’s crazy that this woman could become President.

Hit play or watch Damon Condemns Palin at YouTube.

It’s one of those situations that is funny because it’s true (albeit also frightening). The geniuses at CollegeHumor have taken the idea and run with it. Here is the fictional trailer to her, unbelievable, real life story:

Hit play or watch Sarah Palin Disney Trailer at CollegeHumor.

I went to the Naomi Klien speech at the U of L last Monday and was entertained and enraged (both at the same time) as she talked about the situations and events unfolding in the world right now and the influence that free market ideology has on the world at large. She also emphasized that new policy applied after a crisis has often been waiting for the opportunity, for people too shocked by the event to stand up against bad laws.

Here she is on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher (September 19):

Hit play or watch Naomi Klien on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube.

She wrote an article for the Guardian last week which contained many of the points she made in her speech. (More after the jump).

Read the rest of this entry »

A crash course on the amazing properties of super-conductors, the following video demonstrates what may be the future of transportation.

Hit play or watch MagLev Toy Train at Liveleak.

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MyHope is an original song by sweetafton23. It’s lovely—I wonder what my future kids will think of this site.

Hit play or watch MyHope on Youtube.

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A short time waster, Crappy Cat isn’t the kind of flash game that rewards dexterity and reflexes, but instead curiosity and morbidity.

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See if you can figure out how psychology professor Richard Wiseman creates space for the missing piece. I have to admit, even though I’ve seen tricks like this before, it took me 3 or 4 times through to figure it out completely.

Hit play or watch The Missing Piece at Youtube.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wondered why someone wasn’t doing something that would give American voters useful and unbiased information about which candidate has the best plans for the economy.

Then he realized that he was someone.

He commissioned a survey of over 500 economists, drawn from members of the American Economic Association, a nonpolitical group, that had previously agreed to be surveyed on economic questions.

The economists were asked to rank the most important economic issues and pick which candidate they thought would do the best job on those issues.

Here are the results:

Adams is quick to point out that even though economists favour Obama in 11 of 13 of the most important issues (as decided by the survey) 48% of economists are Democrats and only 17% are Republicans.

It makes you wonder, are liberals more likely to go into economics, or are economists more likely to become liberals? Or is it just the simple fact that educated folks tend to be more progressive?

You can check out the full report (in Power Point format).

My friend Katy says:

My band, Ladysugar, made it to the final round of voting for the star 98.7 radio contest! The competition is extremely tight so EVERY vote counts. Voting is quick and easy and would really help us. Just go to http://www.987fm.com/pages/rockstar3/videos.html and find the Ladysugar video. Even if you’ve already voted you can vote again because that was round 1 but now it’s round 2 so voting starts all over! Voting started last Friday at noon and ends this Friday at noon. You can vote once a day from the same email address.

Here is the band in action:

Hit play or watch I Want What I Can’t Have at YouTube.

And here is the voting page.

When John McCain met Sarah Palin for the first time, you have to wonder, did he think Hey, you remind me of someone.

Here’s a little SNL clip from the weekend of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler doing Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.

Musician T.J. Hill hooked a saw up to his amp and now rocks out on the tool. Check out his rendition of Amazing Grace.

Hit play or watch T.J’s Electrical Music Saw at Youtube.