Get Cynical

SF Signal unearthed some videos of Neal Stephenson giving a talk on speculative fiction. Videos of Stephenson talking seem to be quite rare since I just did a search using his name on YouTube and found virtually nothing. Does he not lecture often?

Update:
Full video is available here.

And more disgusting than ever (safe for work however)

From QuoteGarden.com:

On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.
~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 2

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.
~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 17

From deep inside the depths of Metafilter:

Here’s a true story about how awesome Pixar is.

As some of you know, when the trailer first came out, my girlfriend, Courtney, burst into tears at the trailer. She was emabrrassed but somewhat amused by this, as so she made a video of herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing she would start crying every time that little robot said his own name.

After a few months, she started to get trickles of emails from people at Pixar who said they had seen her video and really appreciated it. It was all sort of under the radar — mostly code monkeys, and they were sort of circumspect about the subject.

Then she got an email from one of the film’s producers, saying they wanted to send her something for Christmas. She received a Crew Jacket at a nice note saying that the folk at Pixar had appreciated the film.

Then, last month, she received another barage of emails from Pixar, again from producers. They were having the wrap party for Wall-E in San Francisco, and wanted to know if we wanted to join them.

They flew my girlfriend out (I paid my own way; we weren’t going to ask them to ) and put us up in the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel, the same one featured in Bullitt, at the top of Nob Hill. We met a few of the people who had contacted my girlfriend, all of whom were very nice, and some of whom she had gotten to be quite good friends with in the past six months. We walked over to a nearby Masonic Temple, which had been elaborately dressed to look like the interior of a spaceship, and then we settled into the the theater with a thousand of the people who had worked on Wall-E, as well as their families.

A quick way to check if a website is down from a different location.

From the NY Times:

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

From SeattlePI.com:

EVERETT — Sam Bloomfield presses his hands together and casts his eyes skyward in thanks for his country.

Under his left eye: “God Bless America.”

Under his right: “Land of the Free.”

He wants people to read the words inked into his skin and think about them, a walking testament to free speech. They are saturated with a love for his adopted country that he has carried for decades.

Unfortunately he’s breaching proper flag etiquette by hanging the flag on his face vertically in the wrong direction. Ooopsies.

(via J-Walk)