For Your Enjoyment - The Epic Split

...With Jean-Claude Van Damme...

A Feature, Not a Bug

I am an avid watcher of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. While I truly enjoyed John Oliver’s stint as the host of TDS this summer, I am thankful to have Jon Stewart back as host. He can, at times, deliver the most powerful critiques of our media, especially of the 24-hour cable news networks, and the critique he delivered on his Tuesday, September 17th show, was one of the best I have seen. Below is a money quote and the aforementioned portion of the show.

“So my final, not initial, conclusion is: This is deliberate. The chaos, the vomit onto the screen, the very thing we thought news organizations were created to clarify, is a feature, not a bug.”

Must Watch

Maybe in the last week or two you saw the video of the girl who is "twerking" and falls over and catches on fire. TV stations (local and nationwide) shared the video as a viral YouTube clip and news anchors said there were implications for twerking, meaning that this video showed it was a dangerous form of dance. Well, Jimmy Kimmel featured the now famous dancer on his show last night. Watch.

Mastermind? What a joke.

I used to spend my college summers listening to 93.3 and painting houses with a guy I called Dirty Dean. Now I never paint houses and I rarely listen to 93.3, but I tuned in during a short drive today and I heard a song by Lazyboy called Underwear Goes Inside the Pants. I had never heard it, but I identified with a lot of the spoken lyrics in the song even though I don't smoke marijuana, I am not obese, and I don't go to strip clubs. The spoken lyrics are apparently from a comedian, Greg Giraldo, who is piercingly honest in his critique of American culture. I especially enjoyed his witty remarks on marijuana, the absurd labeling of a terrorist as a "mastermind", and the obesity epidemic as a foolishly named consequence of the spoiled American lifestyle. I found the video on YouTube. It's NSFW (that's not-safe-for-work for the uninitiated). 

Full song and video below...

To Space and Back

I really have always wanted to see the journey of the solid rocket boosters after they detach from the shuttle following a launch. Now, thanks to NASA, one can watch the entire journey with sound. The video is 400 seconds. Speeds of nearly 3000 mph are reached. And everything ends in the water. This is an incredible video. If you have a little time, watch the whole thing. Full screen this thing (lower right icon in YouTube window).

Bromance

I watched this from bed last night and I could not stop laughing out loud for a good minute.

The Most Interesting Main In The World on Bromance...

The Tour

Le Tour de France is over. I believe it was one of the cleaner Tours in a while, but truly, only time will tell. The victor, Chris Froome, announced in his victory speech that this is one yellow jersey that will stand the test of time. That is obviously in reference to all the former winners of the Tour who have now been disgraced by revelations that they were cheating, but I particularly enjoyed the line because it was a great dig at the press and at Lance Armstrong, fraudulent winner of 7 yellow jerseys. If Froome holds up, then that line will be remembered for a long time. 

One of my favorite parts of the Tour are the video clips that outlast the race itself. That's what this blog is really about, just an excuse to share some video from the last few years of the Tour. 

This first one is of a spectator tripping another spectator who is running alongside Tejay Van Garderen. I understand the temptation to run along with the riders in the Tour, but as soon as someone starts getting too close, gets in the way, or gets too disruptive, I immediately start hoping that the rider punches the fan or that the fan falls on his ass. Naturally, I watched this video several times. At the end, the cameraman or one of his friends says, "Well, don't run with the riders you twat!" That's classic.



One of my favorites of Contador punching a fan a couple years back. The dude deserved it. These guys train year round. This is their job. I too would punch a guy really hard if I thought he was about to disrupt years of training and hard work.



And this last one is just from the last few days of this year's Tour. Froome rightfully lashes out at another moron running too close to him.

A Trained Jumper

Via the Dish.

Loving This Video

A message from Kid President...

Getting Some Air

A little fun from one of Andrew Sullivan's mental health break posts. 

FDR and the Republican Strategy

This isn't the first time FDR has blown my mind, but this may be one of the best quotes I have ever heard from him. It's exactly what we are hearing from Mitt Romney right now, the new, supposedly-moderate Romney, who campaigns on cutting government spending, getting rid of tax loopholes, and lowering tax rates by 20%. But Romney also refuses to elaborate on what government programs he will eliminate, he wants to build even more warships and submarines than we currently have, he doesn't elaborate on tax loopholes he will be eliminating, and he is not going to touch the current social welfare programs we have. The problem is, well, FDR will explain...

Watch Out

If you can't tell, classes at DU have started once again and I don't really have much time to blog, but I do intend to post pictures from my trip to London and Scotland this summer. For now, here's another video. I took this on our way back into London from visiting Windsor Castle. It's a very short video, but it shows the incredible speed of the trains that pass through stations at which they obviously aren't scheduled to stop at. It seems extremely dangerous, but it does make for some good pictures too. I'll get around to posting those eventually. 

London to Edinburgh

30 seconds of our train ride from London to Edinburgh. August 20, 2012.

Pastimes

A sweet little video of my friend, artist and photographer, Jarrod Renaud, catching some air. Check him out.

Bond, James Bond

You can tell it is the last two weeks of the quarter and I have three papers looming over me. My words are going elsewhere and I have quite a string of video posts going. Here is another one, the teaser trailer for the new James Bond movie, Skyfall.

Another Big Wave, Why Not?

A 90-footer off of Portugal.

Behold

Surfing at Teahupoo, from Chris Bryan films. Amazing! There's a mighty God behind those waves.

Worries About Iran

John Mueller has a good comment on Iran published on The Guardian's website on February 16. For all those people getting their panties in a bunch about Iran's nuclear program, this is a good read. So much of the talk about Iran is exactly like the talk about Iraq in 2002 and 2003. Have we forgotten how that turned out for us and thousands of Iraqi people? Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Haven't all the saber-rattlers in the US seen The Princess Bride:

Money quotes:

Iran would most likely "use" any nuclear capacity in the same way all other nuclear states have: for prestige (or ego‑stoking) and to deter real or perceived threats. Historical experience strongly suggests that new nuclear countries, even ones that once seemed hugely threatening, like communist China in the 1960s, are content to use their weapons for such purposes. 

Indeed, as strategist (and Nobel laureate) Thomas Schelling suggests, deterrence is about the only value the weapons might have for Iran. Such devices, he points out, "would be too precious to give away or to sell" and "too precious to waste killing people" when they could make other countries "hesitant to consider military action".

...

There is also an uncomfortable truth. If Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon, the only way it can be effectively stopped is invasion and occupation, an undertaking that would make America's costly war in Iraq look like child's play. Indeed, because it can credibly threaten invaders with another and worse Iraq, Iran scarcely needs nuclear weapons to deter invasion. This fact might eventually dawn on its leaders.

Air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities might temporarily set them back, but the country's most likely response would be to launch a truly dedicated effort to obtain a bomb, as Iraq's nuclear weapons budget was increased twenty-five-fold after its facilities were bombed by Israel in 1981. Moreover, Iran might well respond by seeking to make life markedly more difficult for US and Nato forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Iced Coffee

My new best friend in grad school.

Huckabee Fail

Remember when some people were saying Jon Stewart wasn't going to be as funny and witty because Bush was leaving the White House?

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