Category: Miscellaneous

The Presidents of the United States of America (the band) have put together a music video comprised of footage shot exclusively with cell phones.

From the Presidents’ site:

The director of the video, Grant Marshall from Film Headquarters, said he was very excited when Presidents of the USA agreed to this idea. He came up with the idea after the company’s creative team lamented how budgets for Australian music videos were far lower than those for international clips. Producer Nick Wolff said “We joked that budgets were getting so small that the next thing we’d be doing is shooting on a mobile phone.” (emphasis mine)

And that is exactly what they did. (Link has various video format choices)

When I heard that BitTorrent was collecting money from investors, it left me confused because BitTorrent is an open source protocol. It’s like hearing that HTTP or FTP was rounding up funds. Fortune.com recently published an article outlining exactly what the BitTorrent deal is all about. It sounds like Bram Cohen, the designer of the BitTorrent protocol, intends to sell media on a commission basis – kind of like what Google Video does.

I got into a conversation about evolution last night with an active member of the Mormon Church. I presented the concept that though other religions seem to think evolution is the tool of the devil, LDS folks shouldn’t think so. This afternoon I discovered a great article by Michael R. Ash, The Mormon Myth of Evil Evolution, which shows that the official Church position on evolution is neutral.

Even if you’re not from a Mormon background, you may find it interesting how a major world religion has avoided committing itself one way or the other to such an obviously important topic. Also I don’t think one has to be a Mormon in order to try and reconsile one’s beliefs with science; perhaps there is something every religious person could learn from the article.

If you liked Michael R. Ash’s article, you may also find of interest Duane E. Jeffery’s well-known and often cited Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface.

The Aquaskipper only $595 (US). Even though it looks very fun, I think I’d get tired pretty fast.

Be sure to watch the Aquaskipper video (2mb wmv).

Americans who want to bomb places they can’t find on maps. I just can’t resist posting this (video).

The never ending fall is back, this time with more cowbell Dubya.

Apparently the remains of some giant creature have washed up in India following the tsunami last December, or is it a hoax? The verdict is still out on this one, but the story and video are compelling nonetheless. Maybe it’s a blue whale, maybe it’s a dinosaur or maybe it’s just an elaborate computer generated image. You be the judge.

(via Snopes)

Kevin Kelly over at Cool Tools has a review on Behind Bars: Surviving Prison. I found the excerpts to be very interesting. It’s the kind of stuff you’d want to read before you, or someone you know was headed for the big house. Even if you’re not, it’s still interesting.

Some guy by the name of Samy wrote a social network popularity worm for MySpace blogs and made over a million new friends in under 24 hours. The worm also added the text “but most of all, samy is my hero” in the infected users self-description / hero section. The worm source code can still be seen in the Google Cache (just search for Samy’s user id 11851658 to jump to the relevant part).

The outstanding story of the creation and spread of a MySpace worm.

Update: The folks at Google Blogoscoped have interviewed Samy.

An interesting read from the New Yorker about an Internet security company and their effort to keep cyber criminals down.

THE ZOMBIE HUNTERS by Evan Ratliff.