Ads Back To School
digg it?
To get in the mood for back to school, check out Yearbook Yourself. It works better than a lot of similar sites that put your face on something, and its fun to see the crazy hairstyles. (found on kottke.org)
Did Michael Scott Order This?
I am now officially convinced that a blog exists for every subject. Cake Wrecks is a surprisingly funny blog about "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong". You wouldn't think there would be a ton of examples, but it looks like posting occurs daily. Nicely done.
The Edge Of Our Understanding
Cosmicvariance.com has created a list of things the Hadron Collider might find, and estimates the chances of finding each thing:- Black Holes: 0.1%. One of the intriguing aspect of brane-world models is that gravity can become strong well below the Planck scale -- even at LHC energies. Which means that if you collide particles together in just the right way, you could make a black hole! Sadly, "just the right way" seems to be asking for a lot -- it seems unlikely that black holes will be produced, even if gravity does become strong. (And if you do produce them, they will quickly evaporate away.) Fortunately, the relevant models make plenty of other predictions; the black-hole business was always an amusing sidelight, never the best way to test any particular theory.More images at The Big Picture. (thx, Stef)
- Stable Black Holes That Eat Up the Earth, Destroying All Living Organisms in the Process: 10-25%. So you're saying there's a chance?
Movie Review: Dark Knight
Dark Knight 
OK, I've been slacking on the blog, and slacking even more on movie reviews. I seriously watch a ton of movies. Maybe 3 a week as a minimum. My new goal is being publicly declared so maybe I will follow through: I will review every movie I see that I haven't seen previously. There, I said it. That being said, I'm late on writing one up for Dark Knight, but I've seen it twice now and it is obviously the movie of the summer, so better late than never.
I was already excited about this movie, because Batman has always been my favorite comic book character. He doesn't have super powers, hes just your average handsome billionaire.... Matt and I went to see it on opening night, and the only place we could get tickets was AMC Dublin. It was an ok theater, but the air conditioning went out. On Batman opening night. With every seat filled. In July. The movie seemed really long (and it is), but felt longer because we were all about to have a heat stroke. But, the fact that we stuck it out shows how entertaining the movie is. I was afraid to go out and get a soda because I didn't want to miss anything.
Heath Ledger was great; funny and scary at the same time. Christian Bale was good looking as always, but his Batman voice sounds like a bad Clint Eastwood. And the city of Chicago is stunning in an old-timey mob-connected way. Some of the scenes seemed like the were cut off abruptly, but there is so much going on in this movie, I'm sure it was hard to get it all in.
Dark Knight brings up a lot of cool questions, like if common citizens are inherently good or bad. Are they selfish, or do they value others more? And it points out that a lot of people are happy to let someone else do their dirty work, and then throw them under the bus when things get tough. The end was definitely setting up for a sequel, and I can't wait for the next Batman. I would recommend that you go see it, but you probably already did....
OK, I've been slacking on the blog, and slacking even more on movie reviews. I seriously watch a ton of movies. Maybe 3 a week as a minimum. My new goal is being publicly declared so maybe I will follow through: I will review every movie I see that I haven't seen previously. There, I said it. That being said, I'm late on writing one up for Dark Knight, but I've seen it twice now and it is obviously the movie of the summer, so better late than never.
I was already excited about this movie, because Batman has always been my favorite comic book character. He doesn't have super powers, hes just your average handsome billionaire.... Matt and I went to see it on opening night, and the only place we could get tickets was AMC Dublin. It was an ok theater, but the air conditioning went out. On Batman opening night. With every seat filled. In July. The movie seemed really long (and it is), but felt longer because we were all about to have a heat stroke. But, the fact that we stuck it out shows how entertaining the movie is. I was afraid to go out and get a soda because I didn't want to miss anything.
Heath Ledger was great; funny and scary at the same time. Christian Bale was good looking as always, but his Batman voice sounds like a bad Clint Eastwood. And the city of Chicago is stunning in an old-timey mob-connected way. Some of the scenes seemed like the were cut off abruptly, but there is so much going on in this movie, I'm sure it was hard to get it all in.
Dark Knight brings up a lot of cool questions, like if common citizens are inherently good or bad. Are they selfish, or do they value others more? And it points out that a lot of people are happy to let someone else do their dirty work, and then throw them under the bus when things get tough. The end was definitely setting up for a sequel, and I can't wait for the next Batman. I would recommend that you go see it, but you probably already did....