Future Contestants for the Newlydead Game?

Turns out Bruce Campbell is an ordained minister and will be performing a wedding along with a large renewal ceremony at ZombCon. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the minister part. If you were Bruce Campbell, wouldn't you want to be able to manufacture holy water on demand?

Fun with Acetylene

Even though a coworker recently bought a FourTwo, I think I'd still rather have this chopped and welded, superdeformed VW Golf.

Awesome Trivia

The four spikes at the end of the stegosaurus's tail are call a "thagomizer." This is not some sort of obscure technical term derived from latin or greek. It is a reference to a Far Side cartoon Gary Larson drew in 1982. Thanks to Irregular Webcomic for another cool piece of trivia.

A Fresh Eye on WWII

The Russians have some sort of internet archive storing military memoirs from the Great Patriotic War. Some are even translated into English. Good stuff. The aforelinked tanker drove a US supplied Sherman throughout the war. He liked it a lot better than the British tanks and even the T-34, but hated the Tommyguns that were issued with them.

Via Tam.

As You Get Older

I had an interesting conversation with some coworkers while coming back from lunch a few days ago. We all noticed that while our parents are not technically illiterate, they don't necessarily grasp the latest technologies. Most of our parents had a lot of trouble with e-mail for instance. We wondered what technology we wouldn't be able to grasp when our as yet unborn children get to be our ages.

• Jeez dad, why do you keep using these old mp3 players? Don't you know everything's on audio crystals now?


• I know. My dad is still listening to music with his ears. I keep telling him he can get it piped straight into his audio center in higher fidelity now. Especially with his hearing.


• Well he probably refuses to mindjack onto the connected global consciousness anyway.


• Yeah, my parents will only get on using a hardline. I keep telling them that the info cloud is subspace accessible now, but the idea of instantaneous high bandwidth connectivity inside their heads freaks them out. They still make me talk to them with words! It takes me forever to tell them anything! Like whole minutes even!

We know it's going to happen, we just don't know when or what with.

40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

In celebration, I give you Buzz Aldrin punching Bart Sibrel in the face:



Sibrel is one of the most prominent moon landing deniers. At the time Buzz was 72 and Sibrel was not. Go Buzz.

Getting Your Manga Fix

I've been reading a lot of manga online lately. I initially got caught up on Naruto at OneManga after my wife started talking about their iPhone manga app. It's a good site and most of the content seems to be fan translations, which is nice because I have no problem reading something on the internet that I can't get in the US. Spectrum Nexus and Manga Fox are similar but at least some of their content seems to be direct scans of US translations. Not sure if they're fan subs or not. Spectrum Nexus also has some flash vids of unlicensed anime like Blade of the Immortal.

Something About Maria

Amy loves BBC America. Right now we're watching "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" a reality show trying to cast the lead in the Sound of Music. Sometimes it's unintentionally funny. For instance they regularly comment on one contestant's Romanian accent. They mention that she was really good as Evita, but that was something of an accent part. Where do they think Maria von Trapp is from? She certainly wasn't born in Surrey like Julie Andrews.

Fitness for on the Cheap

For those of you who have already tossed out your WiiFits, Instapundit linked to a site that all about working out on the cheap.

Life Sized Gundam

In construction. Now finished. How the first link classified the Gundam as "green," I'll never know. Maybe they made it out of recycled Sapporo cans.

Lego Aircraft Carrier

Just Awesome. My inner ten-year old thinks that is the coolest thing evar.

Via Tam.

Hope These Aren't Horribly Broken in 4th Ed

D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium

Dangerous Women Circa 1925

When I said dangerous I meant it, these ladies from the University of Maryland beat the U of M. men's team that year:

U. of M. Coeds Defeat Men in Rifle Match
Co-eds of the University of Maryland Proved themselves better marksmen than the male students at the institution in a rifle match Tuesday at College Park, according to a "post-mortem" examination of the score today.

The score showed the men had made a desperate effort to avoid defeat, registering 497 marks out of a possible 500. But the female of the species proved "more deadly than the male" with the rifle - at least the girls came off with a score of 499.

The campus yesterday was a dismal place so far as men were concerned. Vainly they tried to show resignation, or smile or treat the whole affair as an accident. It was hard to realize and acknowledge that girls had beaten them.

However, the vanquished team had forgotten that its triumphant adversaries had a reputation for marksmanship to preserve in the contest Tuesday. The reputation was won when the girls gained third place in the nation-wide intercollegiate competition last year, although it was only their second year of shooting at targets.

The five girls who made the best scores were Miss Thelma Winkjer, of Washington, captain of the team, who scored 100; Miss Helen Beyerle, of Baltimore, a former pupil at Western High school, 100; Miss Rebecca Willis, of Washington, 100; Miss Julie Louise Behring, of Washington, 100; and Miss Mary Harbaugh, of Washington, 99.

Washington Post, Feb 12, 1925

And just to point out how times have really changed, this picture was probably taken at a rifle match that included these far homelier Drexel Girls. The match was held at George Washington University in Northwest DC.

No Mention of YouDee?

Wow two whole threads bashing stupid college mascots and not one mention of the Delaware's Fighting Blue Hens.

Via Instapundit.

Obama Joke of the Day

What's the difference between Jesus Christ and Barack Obama?

Punchline. Rimshot.

UPDATE: Don't you wish they had a version of this video for politicians?

Tennant and Tate in Comic Relief

Always interesting to see David Tennant nee MacDonald use his real accent. Also nice to be able to fill in the missing tidbits of Doctor Who that show up during the Children in Need specials using Youtube.

The Return of Jim Darkmagic

The guys are Penny Arcade are getting together with Scott Kurtz, Wil Wheaton (!?), and someone over at Wizards to create another D&D podcast. The last series was really fun, especially with Kurtz and Gabe drawing the action as it occurred.

A PSA I Can Stand Behind

Via Geek with a .45

Meta Comics

Schlock Mercenary linked to IsItFunnyToday, a sort of webcomics comedy value aggregator. Unfortunately right now it doesn't contain many comics or have enough people voting. I also suspect that comics that aren't very funny won't bother to draw many people in to vote for or against them. Would you put yourself through rating a ton of Sluggy Freelance just so that you can quantify how long it has been sucking?

Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!

Was someone caught LARPing or was that Google Street View really performance art?