Holy crow!

I love displays of intelligence in other animals - I love anything that makes us reconsider our perceived exceptionalism. A while back I was on dolphins, now it's onto the family Corvidae. The corvids include jays, ravens, rooks, magpies, and crows, along with a few others. The species that has been getting the most attention over the past decade have been crows.

More after the caw cut

What if Seinfeld still on today?

Alright, this one takes a little set-up. I came across this on slate today during some down time at work. Apparently the twitter account @SeinfeldToday was named one of Time's top twitter accounts of 2013. The author basically posts synopses of would-be Seinfeld episodes if Seinfeld was still on the air today. For example:

Jerry's parents video chat him but always call it "THE Skype," which slowly drives Jerry crazy. JERRY:"There's no 'the.' Stop adding 'the'!"

Kramer becomes an obsessive, but almost always wrong wikipedia editor. George can't keep himself from texting women back right away

Once you comb through a few dozen of these you basically get the idea. Just put the words Jerry or George next to words like iPhone and Craigslist and presto! That's what it would be like if Seinfeld were on TV today. I think it was the Slate article that made the valid point that these tweets are really just random strings of nouns. Enter Seinfeld2000. This account directly parodies SeinfeldToday and at the same time mocks every trend and meme we hold so dear, which at the end of the day seems closer to the real 'spirit' of Seinfeld. I found it really hilarious. There are lots of spelling mistakes, all purposefully done, which adds to the absurd humour, and kind of makes it seem like these tweets are being pumped out by a spambot.

 If you like that then you may also like this video created by the same person (who remains anonymous). I can't embed the video, so you'll have to go to the website:

http://seinquest2000.com/

Mars or bust

Maybe you've heard of this, the story has been published in most media outlets, has made the blog circuit, and has surprised a lot of people in the process. The Mars One project was announced some time ago - the project hopes to send four people to Mars in 2022 to begin colonization of the planet. The catch? You can never return. You must say goodbye to this world and everyone in it. So how many applicants have they received? Well, the count has now surpassed 100,000.

Clearlake

I used to listen to this band Clearlake quite a lot back in the day. Then I moved, packed up my cd's, lost all the music on my hard drive - you know, history became legend, legend became myth and for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge until...no wait, that's something else.

So anyway, Clearlake, good band. Figured I mention 'em. Here are some songs:

The Myth of Sisyphus

“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

Enhance.....enhance: a homage to enhance

Enhance....

Enhance....

Enhance...

Dolphins and such

I saw a youtube clip recently where a wild dolphin - struggling to move because of a hook and a bit of net on its pectoral fin - presented itself to some divers and made it quite clear that it wanted help getting free. It is a pretty neat video; I'm gonna embed it after the cut, along with some further musings.