One of my students posted this on her blog... she'll be presenting it tonight in class.  I'm looking forward to it!  Here's a parody, by Meagan Gemperlein

At the beginning of the semester, I had blogged about hating blogging, but really in the end it wasn't that terrible. I came to see how it can be useful in a classroom setting and help promote classroom discussion. So the song parody is a realization that blogging can only help you understand something and not hurt you.

BLOGGING IN THE USA

A Song Parody of "Party in the USA" sung by Miley Cyrus

I started reading Huck Finn mid October with a hope to understand the text

But then who's this dude who's talking weird

Woah, gotta be a dialect

Figured out it's Huck an he's the main character

The book's his adventure down the Mississippi River

But this is all so crazy

Cause I can't understand a word he's saying

My head is hurting and I'm feeling really confused

Too much reading and I'm uptight

That's when I mark the page and just move on

I'll just blog it later on, I'll just blog it later on, I'll just blog it late on

CHORUS:

So I sign on to my blog and I write my thoughts away

My classmate comment like yeah

And I get new ideas like yeah

So I sign on to my blog

Now I'll write a thesis that will be OK

Yeah, I'm just blogging in the USA (more)

Wired gives Star Wars a good drubbing, focusing on the ending:

There are somewhere between 20 and 30 one-man fighters in the assault, right? And of all of those guys, only Luke, Wedge and some guy in a Y-wing make it back (and Han and Chewie, of course, but they weren't part of the original team). So that means that in this fight, despite its amazing success, the rebels lost somewhere between 17 and 27 of their very best, bravest pilots. Yet all they can do is cheer as Luke descends the ladder of his X-wing. Luke cheers, too, hugs Leia, and is absolutely ecstatic ... until he realizes that R2-D2 got badly damaged in the fight, at which point he is nearly distraught. Losing fellow human beings, including a good friend of his, that doesn't matter; possibly losing a cute but replaceable machine, now that's sad. --GeekDad

A scientific study that came out this year is the first to offer firm evidence that human beings undergo a chemical reaction deep in their brains when they look at babies. It was conducted by biologist Melanie Glocker of the University of Muenster, while she was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and it has resulted in two groundbreaking papers published in the journals Ethology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, Glocker's series of experiments demonstrated that the act of looking at baby pictures stirs up an ancient part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.

"It's in the midbrain," Glocker says, with a slight Teutonic accent, "which is an evolutionarily older part of the brain involved in reward processing. This region has also been shown to be activated by a variety of rewarding stimuli, including sexual stimuli, food stimuli, and drug stimuli."

Dr. Glocker is too much of a scientist to say so, but her experiments more or less prove that cuteness is physically addicting. --Vanity Fair

In California, the governor's office reacts to hearing of a vulgar message hidden vertically in the first row of letters in this gubernatorial veto. As The Swamp puts it:

"My goodness. What a coincidence," a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

A few years ago, my daughter was thrilled to receive a hand-me-down fanny pack. (See the price tag hanging on my spiffy new one?)
Earlier this month, when my wife took the kids on a family visit for about 10 days, my daughter cried for me at night.

Jaw-droppingly cool-- though it probably helps if you've ever worked with Flash.

Animator vs. Animation

Walkthrough

pifie Errol

All kinds of awesome metatronics going on here.

Dear MR BAGGINS, Fellow Conspirator,

I am Thorin Oakenshield, descendant of Thrain the Old and grandson of Thror who was King under the Mountain. I am writing you to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices for rescuing our treasure from the dragon Smaug. -- Stephen Granade riffs on the Nigerian e-mail scam (see 419 Eater).

Okay, this is my one frivolity before diving into my hell Monday (featuring an unbroken stretch of three back-to-back classes and a committee meeting):

According to a Natural Resources Defense Council survey, 78 percent of sinister one-eyed industrialists based in the Arctic have been forced to relocate their powerful underworld shadow governments, with many now secretly orchestrating world affairs from dormant volcanoes on remote islands. --The Onion

I'm not sure many people really care that today marks the 10th anniversary of the date that the moon was supposed to have blasted out of Earth's orbit in the British sci-fi show Space: 1999, but here's a YouTube clip that presents an alternate opening of Star Trek, redone in the style of Space: 1999.

Yes, this is very, very obscure, but I need a break from marking papers, so here it is.
 

Not as cleverly written as that video that has a line or two about each U.S. president (which I can't locate at the moment) but still very nicely done.

"Just make sure that you spell everything wrong and swear a lot."
Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Clever DVD Verdict review (written by recent SHU graduate Mike Rubino)

DM: You pick up Dungeons & Dragons: The Animated Series, and find that it is lighter than expected. Your nostalgia level receives a +5 for the next nine hours and 54 minutes.

(Thanks for the link, Josh.)

Dude! Your shirt looks just like the blue walkway and the brown sand! How do you do that?

From the MailOnline, via.

A couple days ago, I posted to Twitter about hearing a strange whining noise, which didn't seem to change in volume when I moved inside or outside. Later I realized it was my voice recorder in my fanny pack. So this story hit home with me.

Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic

People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big O-M-G. -- Katie Couric, advocating a "designated texter."

Zombie math. Yay! (PDF. Boo!)

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all. --  Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress

Mike points out the professor named "Robert Smith?" ("the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake," according to the BBC).

Many specific things come to mind when I ponder writing a 200 word paragraph on my identity as a writer. First of all, when I think of producing that many words about my writing identity, I think of my ability to start immediately writing, using the first thing that pops into my head, since the word count is so important.  A second tip for producing the required number of words on my identity as a writer is to repeat the assigned writing topic as many times as possible. But most of all, I think of how useful it is to begin with a couple of unrelated points about my identity as a writer, and then bring in a random third point, unrelated to the first two, and by calling it my "most important," giving the impression that I am building towards a conclusion. Finally, after repeating my points about starting with the first thing that pops into my head, frequently repeating the assigned topic, and picking a random point to call the "most important," I can squeeze out more words by summarizing what I've written. Therefore, I hope these 200 words convey a specific point about who I am as a writer.

Here's how Ebert ended a review he wrote yesterday:

It's said that Richard Harding Davis was dispatched by William Randolph Hearst to cover the Johnstown flood. Here was his lead: "God stood on a mountaintop here and looked at what his waters had wrought." Hearst cabled back: "Forget flood. Interview God."

A wonderful story. Checking out the quote online, I found a blog entry by Dennis G. Jerz of Seton Hill University, reporting that I have related this same story four times in print since 1993, sometimes changing it slightly. Good gravy! My only defense for using it once again is that it's more interesting than anything else I could write about "The Answer Man." -- Roger Ebert

He's talking about "Forget Flood. Review Movies."

Good luck with that, Rupert.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said. "If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online.

I think it probably makes sense to charge a bit in order to get unique content early, before it's released to the general public.  Maybe some tech and business bloggers would pay a little bit in order to get an advance peek at high-profile investigative reports, so that they have time to research their own localized version of the story, ready to be put on their own websites along with a link to the original story.  Maybe if Blogger Joe pays to access News Source X's premium content, Blogger Joe can post a permalink to the premium content, within some reasonable restrictions, so that spammers lose their license if they simply copy the entire stream of premium content and post it on their own site.

I think it's far more likely that Big Media as we know it will change drastically, rather than consumers the world over will ever get used to paying for content they've been used to getting for free.

Political message? You decide.

Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo.

Colbert's tag line brought tears to my eyes. (Thanks for the suggestion, Kerry!)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Library Crime
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for--thought they owned.--David Pogue, NYT

The citizens whose Kindles needed rectification had purchased unauthorized George Orwell books.  So 1984 disappeared down the memory hole, and Animal Farm got shipped to the glue factory.

The LA Times technology blog critiques the new Google Reader interface.

For example, let's say we have a news article that we like. Well, might as well click the "like" button, right?

OK, now we've told the Internet that we think it's cool, and we can see a list of strangers who also think it's cool.

Hmm, we should also share this with our friends to make sure they see it. Let's click "share."

No, wait.

Let's "share with a note." "This is cool," we write.

OK, cool. Now, let's leave a comment.

Wait, we don't have much to say besides, "This is cool." Let's not.

Maybe we'll tag this as "cool." Done.

Our cousin doesn't use Google Reader, but she'll think this is cool. I'll click the "email" button to send her a link to it.

In fact, we think this is so cool that we're going to click the star button so it will save so that we can come back to it later and just reflect on how cool it is.

In short, these new features aren't that cool.

A bit predictable, but still enjoyable.

Clearly by "Them" the sign means "dogs," but the since the sign refers instead to "Your Dog," so it was already in need of some attention even before this alteration took place. Via Bryan Alexander.

Post office boxes! Post office boxes!

My face hurts from laughing.


New Live Poll Allows Pundits To Pander To Viewers In Real Time