What I'd do with alot of money, pt. 1

I'd do the shit in these videos. I've always wanted to live in a haunted house, but one that is truly fucked with ghosts, none of the Ghosthunters bullshit. If I could find a house that does things like the the following videos I would have house parties constantly. Deadly house parties. With a cover charge.









Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go rewatch The Crucible and pretend I live in a shapeshifting castle. Happy New Everything.

easy, breezy, cyclopean covergirl

70% of the energy in the universe resides in empty space

I think I hate Richard Dawkins. His snarky face, mostly, but his snarky brand of atheism as well. He does, however, have some decent speakers on his youtube page, among them this lecture by Lawrence Krauss on the origins and nature of space. It's long, but he's got jokes. He suffers from the same snarkitude as Dawkins, but graciously just sticks to the science.

On nerds

To offset John's techno-enthusiasm I'm posting this three part webcomic. to clarify, I don't hate nerds, I just like to keep a balanced perspective on things.







Pictures for Sad Children

Breaking News: The Apocalypse is Irrelevant

No one likes a good apocalypse as much as me. that's what I thought, anyway, until I found out someone wrote an entire thesis on post-apocalyptic fiction. Her article, up at the much beloved io9 blog, is a pretty good summary of what and why apocalyptic literature means so much even when we have no idea how or why the world ended in the first place.

Disaster porn is no longer the point of the apocalypse. It doesn't matter how the world ends, just that it does. Making it to the End doesn't mean the story's finished; much of the time, it's only just gotten started. Stories of the End have never been about ending – they're about the beginning that comes after.

The bit about disaster porn is debatable, at least in the all powerful realm of the feature film, where the image, enhanced by calorie-induced popcorn euphoria, reigns supreme. The chance to watch every familiar feature of our modern world be destroyed is, I think one of the major drawing points for some of the most popular Armageddon stories, from Dawn of the Dead to 2012. But the also arguably recent tendency for global calamities to not be explained is fascinating and something I also noticed.

A video of Ms. Chanda Phelan presenting her thesis can be found at Vimeo here, and more random thought by her can be found at her blog.