"Alive in Joburg"

This short film by Neill Blomkamp formed the basis for his upcoming feature, District 9.

Stupidity on Parade VI

A recent editorial on health care reform in Investor's Business Daily contained the following little nugget:

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

It seems that the writer of this editorial was blissfully unaware that Professor Hawking is in fact a British citizen. He was born in Oxford, grew up in London, and is currently the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton.

And the medical treatments for his ALS are provided by the UK's National Health Service.

In responce to this bit of, well, uninformed tripe, Professor Hawking said the following (of course through his speech synthesizer, which lacks an English accent and thus might be considered the source of IBD's, er, confusion):

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

The IBD article has since been stripped of the Hawking reference. More about this in articles at the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Register, and the Telegraph.

Of course, this is all part of a larger debate about health care reform in the United States. There are certainly things to be concerned about in the proposed reforms, but rational debate and discussion about them is being drowned out by vacuous and uninformed screaming about things that are not even part of what is being proposed. The "deathers" like Sarah Palin who carry on about mythical "Obama Death Panels" and falsehoods about people being forced to drop the insurance they currently have and like are starting to make the "birther" nutjobs look relatively sane. Conservative talking heads like Limbaugh, Beck, and Malkin spout the lies, their listeners and viewers naively take it on faith that they are being told the truth, go out to town hall meetings with elected officials and vent their anger. Sadly, the most susceptible targets for this misinformation campaign are the elderly, who are being falsely told, point blank, explicitly, that Obama's proposed reforms will kill them!

This isn't civil political discourse. This is a one-sided screaming match.

(FYI: For an interesting glimpse into what is wrong with our current system, take a look here.)

Terry Gilliam Strikes Again!

@ Yahoo! Video

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Jack Dagger on the Tonight Show

Last night, an acquaintance of mine (by way of the Buccaneer's Beach Bash) appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian and showed Conan how to throw knives and axes.

In the past, he has tutored David Boreanaz in knife throwing for an episode of Bones, and has also appeared in an episode of Monk.

He fibs a bit at the beginning. "Jack Dagger" is not his real name. Ladies and gents, meet Mr. Todd Abrams....

Stupidity on Parade V

It seems that Bill O'Reilly has absolutely no grasp of basic mathematics, not that this is a big shock....

For some bizarre reason, comprehensible only to himself, he seems to think that there is some strong correlation between population size and life expectancy, invisible to professional mathematicians and statisticians. Mark Chu-Carroll over at the "Good Math, Bad Math" blog sets the record straight quite nicely.

Ah, nostalgia...

Alice in Wonderland Trailer

A teaser for Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland is out, and it looks quite promising. This project is certainly an ideal vehicle for Burton's skewed cinematic asthetic, and Johnny Depp seems quite at home as the Mad Hatter. (Is it just me, or was Johnny Depp born to play over-the-top characters in tons of makeup and outlandish wardrobes?)

Stupidity on Parade IV

The stupid...it BURNS! Must be the metal oxide salts...

Rainbows didn't appear in sprinklers twenty years ago? Right.... Outta the gene pool, lady!

The Science of Apollo 11

Although the primary impetus behind the Apollo program was absurdly geopolitical (beating those pesky Commie Ruskies to the Moon), once we actually got to the Moon, science rightly took center stage. Wired.com has a nice article about this, but the best part is that it links to two historically relevant science resources:

• A PDF of the Apollo 11 Preliminary Science Report (NASA, October 1969)
• Free access to a special Apollo edition of Science (Vol. 167, Issue 3918, 30 January 1970)

This isn't dumbed-down pop-sci tripe. This is the real deal, and I'm loving it.