Mocking the Mayan Meme

Mayan

Ah, the new year. Time for quiet reflection on the time that's passed. Time for good cheer amongst close friends. Time to count our blessings, share our memories, and imagine warmly what must lie ahead.

And it's also time to figure out who we'll be mocking one year from now. After all, nobody could have predicted that the death of Kim Jong Il would have summoned such a wellspring of jokes on social media; jokes at his expense mind you, even before the man was cold.

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Tagged 2012 Doomsday Mayan New Years

The best toy I ever got for Christmas

Terrordrome
Just a quick post today—sorry that I've been light on content over the last week, but I've been on holiday! Both work and blogging take a backseat this time of year. Lots of ideas though, so stay tuned! 

Christmas is almost here, and the underside of our tree is absolutely laden with shiny parcels. There are big ones and little ones, long ones and round ones, ones with bows and ones in bags. This morning my wife and I got to counting how many of those parcels were for anyone other than our two boys. 

The answer? Not many.

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Tagged Christmas Toys

A lovely short for a lazy Sunday

Waveform1
Tactile Waveforms
by Süperfad

What to post on a lazy Sunday morning? Sure, there are some ideas making banging noises upstairs in the old noggin, but none of them are finished baking yet. I also have a few recently completed projects that I could talk about, (and one really awesome one still in production) but, dangit, I just don't feel like it.

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Tagged Animation Design Music

Losing Hitchens

Hitch
Christopher Hitchens is gone. A man so well spoken, so outspoken, speaks no more.

I had been following Mr. Hitchens' illness for the last few months, terrible as it was to watch a man's body decay before your eyes. Yet I was encouraged by the retention of his character and intellect, by his undiminished desire to speak clearly to the world. I did not always agree with Hitchens, but stood in awe of his ability to slice through fuzzy thinking and bad argument with the sharpest of scalpels. He was sort of a school-yard scrapping version of Dawkins, willing to take debate to the most directly confrontational, and sometimes uncomfortable places, just so long as they made his point most accurately.

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Tagged Atheism Christopher Hitchens Death Debate Hitchens Secularism Skepticism

Why study science? Ask someone from the 50s.

Science

Recently I've been pouring through old news footage for a project I'm working on, mostly from the first half of the 20th century. A good deal of that footage was found in the awesome collection of materials at The Internet Archive. The footage I needed was kind of specific, so discovering the site's Prelinger subcategory was a God send.*

In my search I came across the following clip from 1955. It's an educational film designed to promote science and science education, and gee-golly if it isn't quaint. I mean, teenage kids begging their parents to extend a family camping trip? Lines like "women need to know as much about science as some men do, to help them keep house"?

Obviously we're dealing with sentiments from another time, long past.

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Tagged History Pseudoscience Science Skepticism

More from Jonathan Ball

02

Extinction and Sprett
two projects by Jonathan Ball

Some of you may remember me posting about Jonathan Ball before, and here's fair warning for the future; I'll probably post about him again. 

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Tagged 3D Art Illustration

Drawing with dots

Dots
Hero
by Miguel Endara

210 hours. 3.2 million hand drawn dots. 1 pen. Infinite patience.

This video went massively viral Monday, and for good reason. In it, Miguel Endara does that thing that many talented artists feel compelled to do; he changes the very way in which his art is made. 

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Tagged Art Drawing

Guest post by Greg Enright

Oyster-14

So here's something you haven't seen on this blog before. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Brad Blogspeed's very first guest post! Greg Enright is a friend, neighbour, and conversational sounding board to yours truly. He's also a professional writer and an all around smart fellow; and for a long time now I've been bugging him to guest on this blog. Yesterday, out of nowhere, he informed me that he had done just that.

There were no suggestions or conditions regarding subject matter, and despite what it looks like, I promise that I didn't ask him to include me in his piece! In any case, it's thrilling to have some writing on this space by somebody who actually knows the craft. I hope you enjoy Greg's thoughts as much as I did.

In the Internet Era, keep surfing...and conversing
by Greg Enright

The owner of this blog paid a visit to my house recently along with his wife and two little boys. As always when we all get together, it was just a flat-out good time. A bit of wine and beer, the hockey game on , kids (miraculously) playing peacefully together amidst a hurricane of toys in the basement... even a few rounds of Scategories. Lots of fun with good friends. 

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Tagged Internet Learning Stress Work

Eating Evolution

Eat

Evolution
by Ted Sabarese

There have been a lot of new readers around these parts recently, from all over the world, and I'd like to thank each and every one of them. This blog is of course open to everybody, and I hope that no matter where you come from, or what you believe, you find content that interests you.

However the following needs to be stated quite clearly. This blog is written by a skeptical, atheist, astronomy loving, evolution supporting, conspiracy theory psshawing, lab-coat worshipping dork. Some new folks hovering around the blog, no doubt having discovered it through the sun-earth distance post, have seemed surprised by that fact.

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Tagged Art Evolution Photography

A Severed Leg on the Sidewalk (Warning: Graphic Images)

Title
While driving through the suburbs this morning, I happened upon the severed leg of a deer. Could evolution have put it there?

Sorry folks. These pictures (bottom) aren't pretty, but damn are they fascinating.

When driving one of my kids to school today I noticed something odd out the window, and after the tot was safely in class I circled back to see what it was. There on the sidewalk was what appeared to be the severed leg of a deer, partially frozen, and particularly haggard looking.

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Tagged Animals Coyotes Evolution Nature Suburbs Wolves
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