Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The difference between nerds, dorks, and geeks... in a Venn diagram

This is perfect: it explains the difference between nerds, dorks, and geeks in a format that nerds, dorks, and geeks can understand. This comes from Great White Snark, which is a very funny blog for, well, nerds, dorks, and geeks. 


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500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

This is a 3-minute video of images from 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.  They morph, too!    

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Sunday, March 28, 2010

Quote du jour

"I know we are here to serve others. What the others are here for I have no idea." W. H. Auden
(Thanks to Herb Mitchell for pointing this one out.)

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Holy CRUD, I never knew this tidbit!

The 1980s film "Airplane" is actually a remake of the 1957 film "Zero Hour," frequently word for word! 

Here's a 7-minute video clip that shows a number of key scenes and characters from both films.  It's disturbing and funny.  I never knew this. 

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Health care isn't just a Democratic idea

I'm pleased we have a start on universal health care and that Obama was able to bring it forward. But, despite the noise from the aptly-named teabaggers, any number of presidents, Democratic, Republican, and Independent, have been trying to get universal health care passed for the last 100 years.  Nixon was one of them.  Yeah, he was a little weasel as a person and suffered from some truly impressive personal failings, but he actually accomplished a lot of good things in his presidency: he founded the EPA, he opened diplomatic relations with China, he proposed a national basic stipend, and a number of other things.  One of his proposals was universal health care.  

Thanks to @faircher on Twitter, here's the text of Nixon's initial speech on universal health care.  Note how similar this sounds in general intent to the current health care plan that just passed.  The point is not that this was originally a Republican idea vs. a Democratic one (or vice versa), but that this is an idea that has not gained traction in this country for over a century until just now. 

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