Get Cynical

Amazing painter. Watch till the end or you won’t “get it”. It is worth the wait.

(via Reddit)

From Evil Mad Scientist Labs.

(And for those who never saw Balmer’s dance…. Oh hell, and Developers Developers Developers Developers…)

Update:

Apparently the video was made by a former Microsoft employee. I say former because:

If you’re sitting at your desk, staring out of the window and wishing you were running around in the sun, spare a thought for one Microsoft employee who will soon be doing just that. Permanently.

The japester appears to have used an internal Microsoft website to direct, well, just about anyone to this re-reinterpretation of Steve Ballmer’s infamous monkeyboy dance. Or is it a re-reinterpetation of Apple’s iPod advertising campaign? In these mashed-up days, it’s hard to tell.

Nevermind our ailing infrastructure, we have democracy to force down the throats of middle eastern nations dammit!

As of 2005, 155,144 of the nation’s 592,473 bridges or 26.2 percent, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A structurally deficient bridge is closed or restricted to light vehicles because of its deteriorated structural components. While not necessarily unsafe, these bridges must have limits for speed and weight. A functionally obsolete bridge has older design features and, while it is not unsafe for all vehicles, it cannot safely accommodate current traffic volumes, and vehicle sizes and weights.

Some breathtaking photos of the Hoover Dam.

From the Washington Post:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government’s terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government’s authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

Here are the Democrats who voted for the bill (all Republicans voted for it)

No Republicans voted against the bill. The following Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).

Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. Joe Lieberman voted …well, you know how he voted.

4 on 1 and the box still wins.

(via Arbroath)

I want to take a moment to chastise my British readers for not alerting me to Derren Brown’s Mind Control. Yeah, I’m calling you Brits out. You know I love James Randi, Penn Jillette and every other skeptic so the least you could do is alert me to Derren Brown. I’m bloody mad that nobody sent me a youtube clip or a wikipedia entry. If I have my history correct, the Boston Tea Party was caused by a similar incident.

But nevertheless, thanks to YouTube, I’ve started getting more clips of Brown’s show and there is now an American version of it on the SciFi network (which I just set a season pass for via Tivo). I’m going to have to track down the original version and Netflix doesn’t have any listed but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

After watching the clip above, I did some research on what exactly was happening and found out this entry on Milton H. Erickson and the Handshake Induction:

Confusion is the basis of Erickson’s famous hypnotic handshake. Many actions are learned and operate as a single “chunk” of behavior: shaking hands and tying shoelaces being two classic examples. If the behavior is diverted or frozen midway, the person literally has no mental space for this – he is stopped in the middle of unconsciously executing a behavior that hasn’t got a “middle”. The mind responds by suspending itself in trance until either something happens to give a new direction, or it “snaps out”. A skilled hypnotist can often use that momentary confusion and suspension of normal processes to induce trance quickly and easily.

Enter in your zip and cellular network and:

Find user-generated cell phone signals by major service providers. Find dead spots, and compare signal strengths.

(via del.icio.us/revgeorge)