The Gob­lin Shark is a fas­cin­at­ing — not to men­tion slightly freaky-​​looking — creature, and this is a great video of one doing it’s thing, includ­ing some good foot­age of it’s sig­na­ture pro­trus­ible jaw. Take a look after the fold.

Read more

Last week xkcd had a strip pay­ing homage to the Dis­cov­ery Channel’s cur­rent(?) advert. Not hav­ing seen the advert, I didn’t really under­stand it. So, tonight I finally remembered to check out the advert on You­Tube, and liked it enough to stick up here; it actu­ally does do a good job of ignit­ing my sense of wonder.

Plus any song that rhymes “arach-​​a-​​nids” with “giant squids” gets my vote.

This might just be the most awe­some thing ever.

From You­Tube; check out his other tracks.

Props to my friend Brian for the link.

Edit: OK, no, him doing Sweet Child of Mine is the most awe­some thing ever.

Video on You­Tube.

While we’re on the sub­ject of those zany Blei­mans, this is their video of the week, and my video of the … week _​and a half_.

Viacom has issued a take-​​down-​​notice to a You­Tube user for post­ing a clip of one of their TV shows that included foot­age from one of his other You­Tube videos that they had used without his permission.

What? A big-​​media com­pany steal­ing and being hypo­crit­ical? Say it ‘aint so!

Appar­ently, it is. From the horses mouth:

“So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-​​profit pur­poses and without try­ing to acquire my per­mis­sion, used it in a for-​​profit broad­cast. And then when I made a You­Tube clip of what they did with my mater­ial, they charged me with copy­right infringe­ment and had You­Tube pull the clip,” wrote Knight in a new blog post­ing. “Folks, this is, as we say down here in the south, ‘bass-​​ackwards.’”

Ars has the details.

Per­son­ally, I’d like to see Viacom screwed for this. Not because I think what they did (in using the video) was par­tic­u­larly evil, but to high­light the rank hypo­crisy of the big-​​media com­pan­ies, and to show how out-​​there their legal policies really are. Here’s what I’d do; look at all of the copy­right infringe­ment suits they’ve been involved in in the past ten years, and find the most out­rageous case of claimed dam­ages you can. Then look at the annual income of the defend­ant in that case, and fig­ure out what you’d need to mul­tiply that income by to get the dam­ages claimed. Next mul­tiply Viacom’s annual rev­enue by that same amount and apply that as a fine, with the funds going to settle any out­stand­ing copy­right viol­a­tion cases, and offer fin­an­cial aid to people who’ve been ruined by over-​​the-​​top MPAA/​RIAA copy­right cases.

Legal? No. Fair? Pos­sibly not, but some­thing has to be done to send a clear mes­sage to big-​​media that they do not own us.

In com­mem­or­a­tion of DJ Dicky play­ing a Maiden song that isn’t Run to the Hills at the TUC tonight, I thought I’d share the joy. I give you Fear of the Dark:

Quick! Send the Dar­win­ist Thought Police des­troy all the Peanut-​​Butter factor­ies, before someone fig­ures out it dis­proves Evol­u­tion!.

From You­Tube, and linked to from just about every site in the universe.

Actu­ally, this makes me want to coin the term “Pea­nut But­ter Cre­ation­ist”, to refer to someone with just enough know­ledge to spew some vaguely scientific-​​sounding drivel (you know, using the word exper­i­ment) in sup­port of their obvi­ously non-​​scientific beliefs.

This cracks me up.

From You­Tube.

From You­Tube.

Next Page »