FF:QLD The Best (and Worst) Of The Web

The Cookie Brigade @ PAX.

Heh, I love this concept.

 

That's awesome. Next step: bring back drive-in cinemas and cloth maps in adventure game boxes.

After a few weeks of active reading and posting, I'm ready to call Operation Give Twitter Another Chance a rollicking success. If anyone else wants to rock the boat, consider yourself welcome.

 

Brisbane City Romp

This sounds like a neat idea, but with Serious Business Live 3 the night before, no way I'd be able to get up and do this.

Something to keep in mind for next year though.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

I concur, that does look fun - maybe next year.

 

I'm re-reading the archives of Shortpacked, and this one has still got to be my favourite comic from the whole strip.

 

That's a good one. i do like it when he tackles religious arguments through genre stuff for some reason.

Funny, my friend Nathan has also been re-reading Shortpacked! Ah, that whacky Hive Mind of ours

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

There's a great one which I don't have time to hunt through the archives for, where Harry Potter and Aslan are standing waiting for a bus, and Harry asks Aslan why he gets to make fantasy movies without getting pegged as ungodly. The best line is something to the effect of "...and they're afraid little kids are going to pick up sticks and invoke the power of the devil with made-up words. Well there are sticks in Narnia too. They're called swords, and people use them to stab each other!"



EDIT: Still too lazy to find it, but this is the sequel.

 

Gordon Freeman spotted at CERN.

Well, there goes the planet.

 

I'm really not in the mood to deal with a Resonance Cascade currently. Great. Just great...

Guess I'd better start sleeping with the Crowbar next to the bed.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

My sis jsut sent me a goodbye and I love you message just in case. I thought that was cute..and interesting that a science event is getting so much world coverage, and she would even know about it. Cool really.

 

CERN and the Environment.

This is a nice little security blanket.

 

My sis jsut sent me a goodbye and I love you message just in case. I thought that was cute..

It's cute if it's a little tounge-in-cheek. If it's actually serious, then she's one of the people who have been taken in by the hysteria and bad media coverage of the LHC. I'm glad that just in the last couple of weeks there's been a big push by CERN to try and alay the needless fears (and fearmongering), but there's still people out there acting irrationally about it all because they don't understand the science involved (not their fault), they've been taken in by sensationalist coverage (partially their fault), and they haven't bothered to actually look into it (completely their fault).



And that's not a slight against your sister in any way, Kahlan. Just a small vent about society's willful ignorance and mistrust of science.




I still think the Gordon Freeman thing is hilarious, though.

 

I blame the sensationalist media coverage on the right wing pundits in the US. You know, those folk who push Intelligent Design onto school science curriculums.

But I'd be inclined to blame pretty much anything on them today; I didn't get enough sleep last night and the caffeine's not making a dent, so I'm a bear currently

All that's going to happen is a lot of scientists are going to get very excited about things that the average person isn't going to understand. Sub atomic particle physics and the like. I'm very tempted to smuggle in a packet of rubber bands and a liquid lunch and see what happens though

The Gordon Freeman pic is hilarious, but unsurprising. Like sci-fi authors, male physicists grow beards to hide their weak chins

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Yeah it was tongue in cheek, although I'm sure it's the first she's heard of it all today. I don't see any hysteria on the streets or mass protests or hand holding vigils so I don't think anyone is taking the end of the world stuff too seriously, even the vast majority who don't understand it.

I don't really understand the scince behind it but support the attempts to understand the world around us. Those that mistrust and don't have any desire to understand science may see it differently. I tend to mistrust and don't have any desire to understand religion, so I tend to see religious events in different ways to many. We all come at the world in different ways, but I don't think the general masses are too concerned about this one.

 

The hysteria's mostly online, I think, but the media as a whole have really kind of glossed over the science and gone straight for the imagined controversy, like they always do. Grumble grumble, etc.

 

If I'd thought the world ending because of the LHC was for real, I'd have booked a ticket to Geneva, made up a sign saying "I told you so", and stood somewhere with a good view of it all. But then, I'm the sort who'll head to the coast, find a deck chair with a view and wait for a mega-tsunami to wipe out the world.

 

People should have just listened to the man:

Anyway, it'll all be forgotten about by christmas.

 

Keeping up the science bent, I love this, it's just classic.I love this, it's just classic



EDIT: Sadly, I have to temper that little piece of humour with some tragic news: A 16 year-old girl in India committed suicide on Wednesday because she believed the world was going to end when the LHC turned on.

This is the crap that I'm talking about: ignorance, anti-science mumbo-jumbo and shoddy sensationalist media coverage is not just something to laugh off. Bad things happen. People get hurt, people die. This incident is somewhat more obvious and in-your-face, but what about things like the anti-vaccination movement? We just saw evidence of the lunacy of that a few weeks ago when that Chinese(?) couple refused to get their child vaccinated for Hepatitis. And now that it's too late, that child is probably going to die at a very young age or at the very least be a carrier for the rest of his life.

It's fun to satirise Intelligent Design and to make jokes about particle accelerators blowing up the world, but this is exactly why anti-science needs to be fought.

Sigh. I was in a really good mood until I read this.

 

It's a very sobering reminder of what's at stake. Like the Bad Astronomer said, this is what happens when you don't exercise one of the human mind's more underrated gifts: doubt.

The following video is a solid blow against another faction of anti-science, but I'm posting it because it's just plain great. The crew of Apollo 16 encounter a "house-sized" rock, only to discover just how difficult it is to judge scale without the atmospheric haze that usually helps us identify distant objects.

Please, America, can't we go back there soon?

 

If you didn't find Tom Waits an insane genius already, you will after watching this.

 

I can see you doing the exact same thing HB

Oh, I've been waiting for this for weeks: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL!

Also, there's a Spaceballs Animated Series. I have a link to a trailer, but I can't post it in good conscience; it looks like something out of Stripperella! Which was fine for that show, as it was just Stan Lee exploding after 50 odd years of Comic Code Oppression, but here it seems kinda out of place...

Finally, How to freak out 'lil Magnus, age 5.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Something for Morgs to try:

make me one too!

 

Some terrible terrible person got a YAHTZEE TATTOO

What the christ.

oh, humanity . Why must you keep disappointing me so?

 

If it weren't for the money and artistic recognition, I'd really feel sorry for the guy. Few fanbases this side of Star Trek can get quite so oily.

With people like this keeping him at a distance, how will I ever get close enough to collect more samples of his beautiful, milky skin?