Tag: video

Categories
Politics

Obama for President

This electrifying speech by Oprah Winfrey solidifies my belief that nothing could be better for the United States and possibly the entire world, than Barack Obama as President.


[LA Rally: Oprah Winfrey – YouTube]

Here are a few stats from urbanfervor:

Obama has received, on average, 51.2% of the votes in each of the states to have held primaries through Super Tuesday yesterday. Clinton has, on average, taken 42.3% per state. Obama has won 70% or more of the vote in three states, Clinton has won 70% of the vote in none.

Obama has won 60% or more in 8 states. Clinton has won 60% or more of the vote in only Arkansas, where she was once First Lady of the state and a successful corporate attorney.

Obama won 80% of the vote in one state, Idaho. Clinton has not won more than 69% in any state.

Obama has won 10 states by at least 15 percentage points over Clinton. Clinton has won only five states by such margin, including Arkansas again, New York, where she currently serves as the Junior Senator, and Florida, which was uncontested and is virtually worthless delegate-wise.

In the states Obama has won, he has won by, on average, 25.5 points. In the states Clinton has won, her average margin of victory is 15.09 points.

Obama hasn’t just won more states by big margins, he’s won the most tight battles. In elections decided by five or fewer points, Obama has won 3, Clinton only 1.

A couple months ago everyone was penciling Clinton in as the nominee. Probably time to rethink that. I think a lot more people out there are a lot more excited about Obama than are for Clinton. The more we see him and get to know him, the more we like him. As the primaries continue on, with the money he has raised and the enthusiasm he has generated, I can’t see him not winning the nomination.

I hope he’s right. I’m tired of not loving the United States—the world is watching and hoping for change.

Here’s Obama himself, answering some questions at Google headquarters.

[Barack Obama: Q and A from Google employees II – YouTube]

Categories
biology

Amazing Ant Colony

This remarkable video from the documentary Ants! Nature’s Secret Power shows a glimpse into the fascinating world of the ant. The narrator describes the intricate ant nest as an accomplishment equivalent to the building of the great wall of China.

The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface.

I also recommend the TED talk by Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?

Categories
hypothetical

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and Conspiracy Theories

I just finished watching the conspiracy theorist documentary, “Zeitgeist”.

Much like the show Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? by Fox Television, Zeitgeist makes you feel like the lines between truth and fiction are not so black and white, and even though many of the claims made are far-fetched, or even beyond belief, it still makes for compelling viewing.

From the zeitgeistmovie.com site:

Zeitgeist, produced by Peter Joseph, was created as a nonprofit filmiac [sic] expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used/referenced and the Interactive Transcript includes exact source references and further information.

Now, it’s important to point out that there is a tendency to simply disbelieve things that are counter to our understanding, without the necessary research performed. For example, some information contained in Part 1 and Part 3, specifically, is not obtained by simple keyword searches on the Internet. You have to dig deeper. For instance, very often people who look up “Horus” or “The Federal Reserve” on the Internet draw their conclusions from very general or biased sources. Online encyclopedias or text book Encyclopedias often do not contain the information contained in Zeitgeist. However, if one takes the time to read the sources provided, they will find that what is being presented is based on documented evidence. Any corrections, clarifications and further points regarding the film are found on the Clarifications page. Non-Profit DVDs / Free Video Downloads are available through the Downloads page.

That being said, it is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.

From the origins of Christianity to the US government’s involvement in the September 11th attacks to the Rothchild’s attempt to take over the world, this documentary spans most of the conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard about. It even has a take on JFK’s assassination. Surprisingly enough, the moon landing as a hoax didn’t make the final cut.


[Zeitgeist – YouTube]

Categories
physics

The Large Hadron Collider

The latest iteration of the world’s biggest physics experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, will be switched on in May 2008 (though the BBC documentary below says November, the time line has been updated).

It’s big, REALLY big, and expensive—costing over 6 billion dollars and crossing between the borders of France and Switzerland at four points. The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries, universities and laboratories.

As a side note, CERN has had some impressive byproducts, including the web itself.

The BBC created a great documentary about it called The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, the full running time is 49 minutes, but you can enjoy the BBC’s preview:


[The Six Billion Dollar Experiment – YouTube]

Categories
games

Dice Stacking

Would you like to see something that looks like a trick, but is actually not a trick?


[Dice Stacking – YouTube]


[Dice stacking – Youtube]

Yes, it’s real.

(via)

Categories
humor

George Lucas in Love

George Lucas in Love title screen

I don’t know how I missed this when it made it’s way onto the internet a couple of years ago, but for those Star Wars fans that have always wondered where he got his inspiration, here it is: George Lucas in Love. (Runtime of 8 minutes 44 seconds on Google Video)

Categories
entertainment

If the Simpsons were Star Wars

Clever illustration and animation guy Rich Cando created this Simpsons/Star Wars mash-up that I think you’ll enjoy. Accept for maybe a touch of tweaking in the animation itself, I don’t think Groening and crew could have done it much better themselves.

Simpsons as the Star Wars Characters

Categories
Music

John Lennon’s Jukebox

A few years ago a jukebox owned by John Lennon was discovered. On it were 40 of the famous musician’s favorite tunes. This is a documentary about the songs on that Jukebox and the influence they had on the Beatles.

[John Lennon’s Jukebox | YouTube]

Categories
Photography

The Amazing Intelligent Resize

Currently if you have a large image that you need to make smaller for the web you can either scale it or crop it. Scaling makes everything smaller and cropping can cut out important content. This incredible video demonstrates an image re-sizing algorithm that is content-aware. It’s pretty cool and I figure it’s something that is going to make someone a boatload of money.


[Content Aware Image Sizing – YouTube]

Categories
documentary opinion religion Science

The Big Picture Debate on Dawkins’ “Root of all Evil”

Avi Lewis - The Big Picture

I’ve talked about Richard Dawkins’ documentary The Root of all Evil before, but something I came across the other day which I found very interesting is The Big Picture: Debate on Dawkins’ Root of all Evil.

(Coincidentally my friend Shannon Phillips is one of the producers on Avi’s other show, On The Map.)