Raven emailed me a link to this story in the Onion: Heroic Computer Dies to Save World From Master's Thesis:

"This fearless little machine saved me from unspoken hours of ex­as­per­at­ed head-scratching and eyestrain, as well as years of agonizing self-doubt over my decision to devote my life to teaching," said professor John Rebson, who had already read through three drafts of Samoske­vich's sprawling, 38,000-word dis­ser­ta­tion, titled A Hermeneu­ti­cal Ex­plo­ration Of Ono­matopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. "It was an incredible act of bravery. This laptop sacrificed itself in order to put an end to Jill's senseless rambling."

Nothing like …continue.

David Neiwert writes:

Go smugly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in stonewalling.

As far as possible, leave no chance of surrender

and be on superior terms to all other persons.

Speak your truthiness loudly and garbled;

and never listen to others,

especially not the wise and the well-informed;

they can all just go to hell.

Rest here.

President Al Gore on Saturday Night Live, spoofing the disastrous six years of Bush.

Via Bootboy, a video of "Jesus" singing Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.

Here's an in­ter­est­ing Campari ad, where things are not as they seem. Worksafe, but only barely.

Some background from Campari: The Secret

I hang out on the Source­Forge-hosted inkscape-user mailing list, where I pick up useful tips for the Inkscape SVG editor (vector drawing program).

For months, the list has been plagued with spam; largely because anyone can send to the list. The policy has been not to require new users to sign up for the list before being able to send questions. This is com­mend­ably friendly and user-centric, but the spam has become a real annoyance.

One of the Inkscape developers finally said that, if a dozen or more people said "yes, restrict posting to list members only" and no-one opposed it, he would lock the list down. I attempted to …continue.

Doing the rounds. John Cleese at the Institute for Backup Trauma.

On Saturday night, at the White House Cor­re­spon­dents Dinner, Stephen Colbert did something brave and unparalled. Standing 10 feet from George Bush and in front of an audience of hundreds of members of the Washington press corpse, Colbert, acting in his persona of a Bill O'Reil­lyesque pundit, flayed them with irony and sarcasm.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will. As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the …continue.

Via Win Tech Off Topic, an amazing collection of Rube Goldberg devices from a Japanese children's TV show. 13 minutes.

It reminds me of the famous Honda 'Cog' Ad, which can be viewed here.

Here's (left) a video of Chris Bliss doing a pretty amazing juggling routine to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of the Beatle's Once There Was a Way.

And here's (right) a video of Jason Garfield doing the same routine with five balls instead of three.

(Each video is about 4.5 minutes long.)