Robot

I'm not really sure what this movie is the winner at, but I think it is full of WIN ... so to speak.



Seen on youtube.

Fire Poker Zen

from deoxy.org:

Hakuin used to tell his pupils about an old woman who had a teashop, praising her understanding of Zen. The pupils refused to believe what he told them and would go to the teashop to find out for themselves.

Whenever the woman saw them coming she could tell at once whether they had come for tea or to look into her grasp of Zen. In the former case, she would server them graciously. In the latter, she would beckon to the pupils to come behind her screen. The instant they obeyed, she would strike them with a fire-poker.

Nine out of ten of them could not escape her beating.

utnapistim's comment:

If you wanted to find Zen, forget about it!

Nothing Else Matters - on Cimbalom

My mother called me tonight and told me about a youtube video of Radu Seu, playing Nothing Else Matters ... on a cimbalom.

The movie was shot with a phone camera, in a Restaurant. It started circulating a short while ago and it's apparently been passed around the internet virally.

It's good to see that people recognize it for what it is.

I mean, it's shot badly, and people still forward it.

It's in a restaurant, with people's voices in the background, and people still forward it.

The sound quality is bad and people still forward it.

It gives me a good feeling to see this.



Edit: Here's some more:

Bach's Ave Maria


He Who Loves and Lets Go (traditional Romanian Folk):

on enlightenment

Enlightenment is like continuously falling off the cliff,
and being completely comfortable with that.

Shinzen, in his talk on the ox-herding drawings

Top FPS

I guess you have to know the games to find this funny (I found it hilarious).

Why Homosexuality Should Be Banned ...

... NOT! :)

Everything is OK

Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

I got this through email. I thought I'd share:

Destino - A Creation of Walt Disney and Salvador Dali

Randy Pausch on Time Management

Some ideas from the talk:

• Time is the only commodity that matters
  
• Very few people equate time with money
  
• The money is not important. You can earn it later. Your time - you can never get it back.
  
• Time management is a mean, not an end. The end is to maximize fun.
  
• Being successfull doesn't make you manage your time well. It's the other way around.
  
• Doing things right is wrong focus. Do the right things instead.
  
• If things are not going well, it means you're learning a lot. They will go better later.
  
• If you can dream it, you can do it. (Walt Disney) If you refuse to allow yourself to dream it, you won't do it.
  
• Plan on multiple levels (today, this week, this semster), but be fluid. Have a plan.
  
• Break things into small steps.
  
• Being a boss is about growing your people.
  
• When you do lots of things, do the uglyest thing first.
  
• cluttered paperwork leads to thrashing.
  

Face Your Fear

(via Jay)

South Park - A Christian Critique

The internets have proven time and time again to be an inexhaustible source of fun.

In today's installment of the stupiamusing things you might find on the internet, we'll be talking about movie critique (Christianity-influenced).

These guys critique South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, from a Christian perspective. At least they try to - I found the critique to be ridiculous and funny, not Christian (except for the references to the bible and imagining of devils casting souls into the fire - or something).

I don't usually care for things such as these, but I found this one hilarious and wanted to share it with the world (along with some comments).

Here are some excerpts:

South Park is an incredibly dangerous movie for those who do not understand or are developing an understanding of the Gospel ....... INCREDIBLY dangerous. Some of the scenes in South Park reminded me so much of the image of demons screeching and dancing around a boiling cauldron as Satan gleefully looks on from the background as the demons pitch soul after soul after soul into the burning cauldron..

This is so full of FAIL I don't even know where to start. The scenes just made me laugh though.

Hussein waves his disembodied male member around. And it was not a cardboard drawing like most other images of the movie -- it was of photographic resolution.

Oh noes! Children watching the movie might see a P-E-N-I-S ... err ... I meant a disembodied male member! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Get a hint guys! Half of the population on this globe has one. The other half will see one by the time they are twenty (if they are educated and lucky enough, or uneducated and unlucky enough).

And you cannot imagine the depths of the influence of this sort of entertainment! In the months that followed our posting of this analysis report we received thousands of emails from adolescents who have seen this movie and spoke just like it. [...] And some people actually believe movies do not influence kids.

First, it doesn't take a big effort to imagine people influenced by what they hear. Why, it's only been a few centuries since people (influenced by the church) burned people alive for being afraid of them, just to eradicate them (in the case of Jews), justified slavery with a biblical story and killed people in the name of love.

Second, to believe the people writing you hate-mail are using vulgar language because they saw the movie and that's the whole reason implies a level of naivety that is startling.

That's all about the actual review.

The guys apparently also have a scale called WISDOM to rate movies on. Sounds nice?

It stands for:

• Wanton Violence/Crime
  
• Impudence/Hate
  
• Sex/Homosexuality
  
• Drugs/Alcohol
  
• Offense to God
  
• Murder/Suicide

Wisdom is not quite the best acronym for that. Guys from CAP, trust me on that!

Absolutely Free to Be Funny

How Differential Gear works (BEST Tutorial)

This is the best explanation of a car differential that I've ever seen (with fun images and great comentary):

UFOs on Youtube - kind of

I came upon a movie on youtube where Paul Hellyer, ex vice-premier of Canada(*) talks about UFOs and exopolitics.

Usually when I see stuff like this I look for reasons it is wrong (errors in logic, leaps of faith and so on). The guy was unassuming and not trying to convince anyone (well ... not is any obvious way) as the interview is not on a "hey they are real" tone, but more about expolitics as they are currently practiced (?!).

Then, I decided that I'd like to see what else one can find on UFOs on youtube and came upon some interesting stuff.

Following are three videos - feel free to come up with your own conclusions (**):

First, here's the original interview:


Here's a compilation of UFO (that is, flying objects that were not/could not be identified, not necessarily aliens) sightings, most of them official footage from the Russian Space Agency and NASA:


Here's a montage/interview with Buzz Aldrin recalling an encounter with ... something during the Apollo 11 mission:


There are much more, but the sources and connections they do are ... making me stay away.

---

(*) He was not actually Vice Premier. The position was (according to wikipedia) Senior Minister in the Cabinet, a position roughly equivalent to what the Vice Premier position is today.

(**) I automatically dismissed videos with titles like "MUST SEE!!! ABSOLUTELY AUTHENTIC" and generally videos commented in ALL CAPS or with lots of exclamation marks, people talking with what seemed to me to be a quasi-fanatical conviction and so on.

Midnight Ramblings - and the Half-Blood Prince

It's midnight and I felt the need to write. I'm not sure why; maybe I needed somebody to listen to my thoughts and ramblings and there was nobody available. It doesn't matter much 'why' I guess.

We went and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tonight (just got home). I found it entertaining (in the same way I used to find fan fiction entertaining), but the party I was with, got bored.

I can see where they're coming from: the movie is a continuation of the previous one, and ends by opening the path to the action in the last book of the Harry Potter series. Thus, you have no introduction at the beginning and no ending at the end and the characters are completely unknown if you haven't seen the previous ones.

I wanted to post some more random stuff (like "hey, when I go to sleep I like standing in the dark in my room and watching the clouds pass by in the sky outside") but I'm getting sleepy, tomorrow is a long day, and it's around my usual bed time.

As such, good night and all that.
Pleasant dreams!
utnapistim

First Documented Death by Marijuana ...

... well ... in a manner of speaking.

Antwerpen Station

This is cheesy.

And funny.

It reminded me of the Frozen Grand Central by improveverywhere.



I understand it may be a commercial to something.

A Study on the Effect of Reiki on Cells

I found a post on The Reiki Digest that Gloria A. Gronowicz performed a vigorously designed three-year study on applying Reiki treatments to test-tube cells. The study was designed so the application of Reiki did not involve touching the tubes, heating them, or manipulating them phisicaly in any way.

The results showed (against her expectations) that Reiki had no effect on cancer cells, "but that the process improved bone cell growth by a statistically significant percent. Skin and tendon cells also grew under the Reiki regimen.".

The study was performed by the University of Connecticut Health Center and financed by the US National Institutes of Health Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and apparently* published in the Journal of Orthopedic Research.

---

*) "apparently" means that I could't find or access the study dirrectly (but then again, I didn't want to pay for access on the CCAM website).

---

Later Edit: Following a discussion on reddit, It seems there are some points of this study that were contested as part of peer review (as I said in the discussion, the statistics part is a bit above my statistics-fu and I'm not willing to put in the effort to understand the issue, so I'll take the affirmations in the critique at face-value). Please take the conclusions of the study with a grain of salt though.

A Disaster ,,,

Is this a comedy?