Abstruse Goose

Over the past weekend, I discovered the webcomic Abstruse Goose. It's totally awesome. Here are some of my favorites:




I think that I heard a sermon like this once, except that the speaker arrived at the same conclusion through a somewhat different route.


A long time ago, I realized that people didn't change after junior high; they just became a bit more discreet.


I've thought the same thing about environmentalism for years.

Star Wars Street Art

Interbent has a great collection of Star Wars-themed street art.

Link via Neatorama

Super Emo Friends

Artist J. Salvador lampoons Emo culture with this summation of the laments of superheroes.

Link via Popped Culture | Artist Website

If R2D2 Had Been Built by Hewlett Packard

From the webcomic Abstruse Goose, via Gizmodo

Pop Culture Wedding Invitation

Image: Maureen Alarid

Maureen Alarid of Off Beat Bride created this invitation for her wedding, featuring Admiral Ackbar's prudent advice about marriage. Alarid writes:

The wording [on the back] is my favorite part. It reads: '[We] request the honor of your presence as two geeks save the princess, resist the dark side and pledge their lives (extra, or otherwise) to each other.' And we snuck a Hyrulian crest in there too!

Link via Geekologie

Star Wars Facebook Updates

Yeah, but they're teddy bears that eat people, so don't feel too bad. Brian Murphy of CollegeHumor put together five Facebook update pages as though they had been written by Star Wars characters.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket

Che Trooper

In a juxtaposition of totalitarian imagery, artist Derek Fridman creates busts of Che Guevara and stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Link via Nerdcore

Time Traveler Essentials

Image: TopatoCo

In an episode of The Twilight Zone, a businessman travels back in time and buys land where he knows oil was later discovered. But he's unable to capitalize on the purchase because the drilling equipment necessary to extract it hasn't been invented yet. Although he knows how to use the equipment, he doesn't have the ability to built it.

Such is a common complaint of time travelers: they know how to use modern technology, but have no idea how to duplicate it in a world that knows nothing of such marvels. So be prepared by keeping this image in your pocket at all times. It'll tell you the basic information you'll need to partially reproduce modern sanitation, medicine, measurement, and chemistry.

What would you add to the poster?

Larger Image and Product Page via Nerdist

Thanksgiving Bingo

Via Ace of Spades

Being Flexible

From the webcomic Calamities of Nature.

Video Footage of Man Marrying Video Game Character

(YouTube Link)

When I first heard this story of a Japanese man marrying a fictional girl in a video game, I thought "How sad. He's so disconnected from reality that he can't have a normal relationship -- and there's no one his his life who can jerk him out of his fantasy."

But then Alex Santoso pointed out: "A wife with an on/off switch! I don’t know if this is crazy or genius...."

Well, there's one advantage, for sure.

Your Kid, Your Responsibility, Our Ears

Amy Alkon relates the story of a woman and her screaming 2-year-old son, who were thrown off a Southwest airlines flight (before takeoff) for causing so much noise. Southwest eventually apologized and gave her a free flight voucher. Alkon expresses my own opinion:

I know, I know -- because I am not a parent I cannot possibly understand how hard it is to keep a child from acting out. Actually, that probably has more to do with the way I was raised -- by parents I describe as loving fascists. As a child, I was convinced that I could flap my arms and fly, but the idea that I could ever be loud in a public place that wasn't a playground simply did not exist for me [...] It really does come down to this: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin.

There have been times when I've had to leave a public place because my daughter was out of control. It's inconvenient, but my screaming kid is my problem, and other people shouldn't have to put up with her noise.

A parent has a duty to deal with his/her misbehaving child. No one else does.

HT: Instapundit

10 Modern Measurements

John Madden of GeekDad relates the story of how the 'smoot' became a measurement of distance:

Way back in 1958, the MIT chapter of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity used pledge Oliver R. Smoot to measure the Harvard Bridge in Massachusetts, coining the smoot as a unit of measurement in the process – one smoot equaling five feet, seven inches. Smoot (the man) lay down on the bridge, his position was marked, and he moved on (or was moved on – eventually he so tired from the movement that his frat brothers carried him), until the bridge was established as being 364.4 smoots, plus or minus an ear, in length. Appropriately, Smoot would later become chairman of the American National Standards Institute.

Madden then passes on ten more recent forms of measurement, including some of his own devising. These include the milliwheaton (number of Twitter followers), the Warhol (fame duration), the milihelen (beauty sufficient to launch one ship) and the Emmet (power). The latter comes from the movie Back to the Future:

1 Emmet = 1.21 Gigawatts, or the amount of power required to operated the flux capacitor in a modified DeLorean DMC-12. GeekDad note – when describing the Emmet, it’s pronounced ‘Jigga’ watt. There was briefly some debate as to whether this should be called a ‘lloyd’ or a docbrown’, But for simplicity (and to honour the character rather than the actor - though don’t get me wrong, Christopher Lloyd rocks) I’ve gone for ‘Emmet’.

What measurements would you suggest be added to our lexicon?

Stained Glass d20

John F. Talarico of the podcast show Bloodthirsty Vegetarians created two 20-sided dice out of stained glass and black and copper patina. The orange one is called "Fire." There are more detailed images in the flickr photostream.

Image via d20 Blog | Flickr Stream | Official Website

Visualizing the Rise and Decline of Four Empires

(Video Link)

Pedro M. Cruz, a graduate student in information visualization and interaction design, created this time-elapsed representation of the rise and decline of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish overseas empires from 1800 to 2000. He writes:

The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. I chose the maritime empires because of their more abrupt and obtuse evolution as the visual emphasis is on their decline. The first idea to represent a territory independence was a mitosis like split — it’s harder to implement than it looks. Each shape tends to retain an area that’s directly proportional to the extent of the occupied territory on a specific year. The datasource is mostly our beloved wikipedia. The split of a territory is often the result of an extent process and it had to be visualized on a specific year. So I chose to pick the dates where it was perceived a de facto independence (e.g. the most of independence declarations prior to the new state’s recognition). Dominions of an empire, were considered part of that empire and thus not independent.

via Hit & Run

A Song About the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual

“Monster Manual” is a song by the band Mixel Pixel. It tells the tale of a role-player’s struggle with a particularly brutal Dungeon Master, who is throwing just about every creature in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual at him.

via Popped Culture

Wanna Come Back To My Cave?

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Question of the Day

What is it?
	hero sandwich
	submarine sandwich
	grinder
	hoagie
	poor boy
pollcode.com free polls

Congratulations to Jeff the Baptist

...on bagging his first deer.

When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A...

Career aspirations that I had at various points of my childhood:

1. Submarine captain
2. Fashion designer
3. Zookeeper
4. Explorer

How about you?