Author: Jeff Milner

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Subliminal Messages Psychology Materials

I occasionally get requests for materials for psychology classrooms based on the backmasking section of my website. I usually don’t send out materials, but I have been known to make exceptions, especially for professors of post secondary institutions.

I should point out that if you are teaching psychology, you may be interested in material intended for classroom demonstrations by writing John Vokey or Don Read at

Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta T1K 3M4 Canada

and requesting University of Lethbridge, Department of Psychology, Technical Report No. 85. A blank cassette tape should be enclosed if classroom demonstrations are desired.

I imagine a blank CD would also work or maybe an empty USB thumb drive, but I would ask them first just to be safe.

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Charlie Brown Christmas Performed by the Cast of Scrubs

I’m a fan of scrubs, and if you are too, you might like this version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas performed by the Scrubs cast.

Here is some backstory.

Take everyone’s favorite Christmas special, mix in a little wackiness from everyone’s favorite medical sitcom, and what do you get? You get the video that’s after the jump: a ten-minute version of A Charlie Brown Christmas with the voices of the cast of Scrubs dubbed in.

And don’t think that this is just Zach Braff, John C. McGinley and company doing a literal reading of the Charlie Brown script; it’s more like a Scrubs episode, complete with flashbacks, girl names, and penis jokes. Even the characters are the same. Except here, JD looks like Chuck, Dr. Cox looks like Linus, Carla looks like Lucy, etc. (And there’s even a Cox Rant ™ or two in there, in places you wouldn’t expect). I’ll let you be surprised at where the other voices pop up.

The video was made during season three for a cast Christmas party. It’s very funny and definitely worth a look.

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Astana: the Tent City

Tent over Astana

Plans have been unveiled in Kazakhstan to build a giant 150 meter high transparent tent over its capital Astana, essentially creating an indoor city!

From the BBC article:

Underneath, in an area larger than 10 football stadiums, will be a city with squares and cobbled streets, canals, shopping centres and golf courses.
The idea is to recreate summer, so that when the outside temperature is -30C, the residents of the Kazakh capital can play outdoor tennis, take boat rides or sip coffee on the pavement cafes.

I wonder if they’ll have any problems keeping the air fresh.

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Niall Kennedy Goatse’s Microsoft Blog

When Niall Kennedy found out a creative commons licensed photograph he had taken was being misused by Microsoft, he did what any net savvy blogger would do: he replaced the image with goatse. (Ok, personally I wouldn’t have gone that far, but it definitely got their attention).

From his site:

I license my text and image creations under Creative Commons licenses in the hope they will help other people tell a better story or unleash some sort of increased creativity upon the world of content I enjoy every day. When that content is used beyond the terms of my published license I choose to take various forms of action ranging from e-mailing or sending an instant message to the person (if I have it or can query accurate information without much effort) or by issuing legal documents of copyright violations to the offensing site or host.

Read the whole story: Handling of Microsoft’s copyleft violation.

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The Rebate King

Confessions of a Mail-In Rebate Junkie is a collection of tips and tricks for making sure you collect on mail-in rebates. I liked reading about some of his more difficult rebate collections.

…[T]here is a high degree of universal frustration with the mail-in rebate process.
But that’s exactly what makes the mail-in rebate process so rewarding and exciting! The harder it is, the more discouraging it is for most people, and therefore fewer people wind up filing for or getting the rebates. And if fewer people get them, that means that the companies can afford to be more generous in the rebates that they offer—a bonanza for the true mail-in rebate warriors such as ourselves. So after years of climbing the rebate learning curve, I’ve decided to share my experiences, so that all of my fellow rebate junkies can benefit.

(Thanks Jackie)

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Break a Leg

On a shoestring budget, a collection of very funny folk have created a 22-minute-long pilot episode called “Break a Leg“. It’s heavily influenced by Arrested Development and it’s funnier than (or at least as funny as) most sitcoms on TV. Look for the next episode sometime early next year.

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Water Polo Champions

Those of you that know me well, know that I love water sports. Last night my water polo team won the U of L intramurals finals in a victory so decisive, I didn’t actually find out the final score.
I’m not going to say it was easy. For one thing, we were missing a lot of players last night. One had bus trouble and wasn’t back from her swim meet in Vancouver, another had a concert to perform in — one that if he missed he would fail his music class. There were a couple other players that just sort of, stopped coming to the games, so that left us a person short and no subs.

It was 6 on 7 for the first half and we actually did really well, despite being short handed. However, near the beginning of the second half, our goalie swam up out of the water to make a save and then fell back under the water shaking with pain. Nobody could figure out what happened to him. I swam over as did a couple others and it turns out that he had one of the worst cramps in his calf that I’ve ever seen. It was pulsing up and down.
So that left us down to 5 players. I have to be honest — I was a little worried.

It turns out my fear was misplaced because it was at this point that we really started to pull ahead. It’s games like this one that remind me why I love water sports so much.

Update: Check out this great water polo flickr set by my friend John Lapins.