Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

Preview of the latest from Joss Whedon (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity fame), a 3-part musical comedy entitled Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Simon Helberg:

update: Act I is available online now.

Hah!

“Thus, pedantic didacticism makes cowards of us all.”

I’m happy to see that the Horta made the list. For some reason, that’s the creature that I most remember from classic Trek (well, aside from the Tribbles). Always made me think of pizza.

Wired.com: ST Monsters Gallery

Today’s useless online quiz:

Which Peanuts Character Are You?
	You are part Charlie Brown. You are always optimistic and persistent, and everyone appreciates your simple sweetness. Sometimes, however, your anxieties get the best of you, and life’s mysteries can confuse you.
	You are part Schroeder. You are brilliant, ambitious, and brooding; you tackle tasks with extreme focus. People don’t always interest you as much as other pursuits, though, so you can come off as aloof.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

I first read Hamlet when I was in high school during the year Dad was my English teacher. I loved it. Studied it again my first year at Colby for a Freshman Seminar course on “The Fate of Being Human”, and have seen three movie versions of the play (hate Gibson; love Branagh; alas, can’t remember Olivier). I’ve only once seen it performed live, however; something I’d like to experience again.

This blurb from The Stage about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s upcoming season makes me wanna put on my travelin’ shoes:

Gregory Doran will revive his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and direct Tennant in both Hamlet and Love’s Labour’s Lost, in which he will play Hamlet and Berowne respectively. Patrick Stewart will also feature as Claudius in Hamlet, while an ensemble of actors will be cross-cast across all three plays. It is expected that Hamlet will later transfer to London.

Sigh. How FREAKIN’ AWESOME would it be to see Doctor Who and Jean-Luc Picard in one of my favoritest plays evah?

This should be the official mascot of the day:

[Link]

In case you were wondering why:

John Baur and Mark Summers, who have come up with a concept that is going to make you kick yourself for not thinking of it first: Talk Like a Pirate Day. As the name suggests, this is a day on which everybody would talk like a pirate. Is that a great idea, or what? There are so many practical benefits that I can’t even begin to list them all.” — Dave Barry, Miami Herald, Sept. 8, 2002.

(from http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ )

And in case you want to join in the fun, here’s a little training vid:

When my brothers and I were little, my mother made us a huuuge drawstring bag into which we dumped our collection of LEGO building blocks. I don’t remember using them much myself, other than to build the occasional small toy or, more often, spending an afternoon designing a LEGO floor plan for a house, complete with bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen layouts. Nothing too exciting, really.

It’s probably a good thing the book Forbidden LEGO: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against! (amazon) wasn’t around back then, or things might have been a little different.

The publisher’s page has the following:

Forbidden LEGO introduces you to the type of free-style building that LEGO’s master builders do for fun in the back room. Using LEGO bricks in combination with common household materials (from rubber bands and glue to plastic spoons and ping-pong balls) along with some very unorthodox building techniques, you’ll learn to create working models that LEGO would never endorse. Try your hand at a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates, a candy catapult, a high voltage LEGO vehicle, a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher, and other useless but incredibly fun inventions.

For an example, check out the YouTube vid:

Actually, I’m sure my folks would have nipped in the bud any interest my brothers or I showed in projects like these, right quick. I wonder how much trouble I’ll be in if I tuck this book aside for our nephew in a few years…

[via BoingBoing]

One of the guys in IT is big into fantasy leagues — particularly fantasy sports like football, baseball, etc. I’ve never really had much interest in those, not being a huge sports follower, but can certainly see the appeal for some. I even thought the Fantasy Congress league had some interesting potential (sounds like a neat way to teach kids more about politics — and lookee, they even have a FAQ about FC in Education). This latest variation, though… I’m not so sure. Fantasy.. Journals?? And no, that’s not the online diary-type journals they’re talking about, and not, as one commenter from that site speculated, the genre of more titillating magazines.

In a short paper [PDF] posted to his Web site, Bergstrom proposes creating the rules and Web infrastructure for a game of ”fantasy journals.”

“Players can select papers from across a field or even from across all of science for their own ‘fantasy journal,’ and then see how that journal performs according to the appropriate bibliometric measures.” (He suggests some function of the number of citations on Google Scholar after a period of time.)

(via Chronicle of Higher Ed Footnotes)

Uh. I just don’t know about that. Though I suppose it could be one way of teaching students about the various journals and publications they should be following within their discipline, but… huh.

Several years ago I was introduced to the first book in the Philip Pullman trilogy, and can remember waiting (and waiting, and WAITING) for the other books in the set to be written/released. I had mixed feelings - particularly about the Amber Spyglass (bk 3) - on my first reading, but that was so long ago I feel I should pick up the books again this summer, especially since the first book (The Golden Compass) is being made into a movie that’s releasing this December.

My daemon (after about three tries at the survey; I don’t wanna be a spider! ):

Not sure I agree with the “spontaneous” part, but that came up pretty much every time. *shrug*

My brother sent me the link to this fantastic YouTube vid today with a dire warning not to get any ideas (what with Nephew Andrew one month old!). Just goes to show you what kids’ll pick up when you think they’re not listening. Looks like Mommy’s raising an empowered young lady, despite the “not nice” word.