Funny news

Egypt donkey jailed for theft

CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian donkey has been jailed for stealing corn on the cob from a field belonging to an agricultural research institute in the Nile Delta, local media reported on Thursday.
The ass and its owner were apprehended at a police checkpoint that had been set up after the institute's director complained that someone was stealing his crops, the state-owned Al-Ahram daily said.
The unnamed ungulate was found in possession of the institute's corn and a local judge sentenced him to 24 hours in prison. The man who had his ass thrown in jail got off with a fine of 50 Egyptian pounds (nine dollars, six euros).

a collection of interesting or funny things

Wandering across the World Wide Web, sometimes I come across things which are interesting or funny. Or I see them in real life, and they have an online counterpart.

Here are some links:

Heat Sensitive Paint. Cool! Admittedly heat-sensitive colour changing things aren't new (think about mood rings), but I didn't know anyone who had applied it in this way. It's like living art! On your walls!

Wandering on the site, I also found this. So apparently there's now a "peaceful" version of the Swiss Army Knife. Might not be nearly as useful if you're stuck in the wildnerness, though.

And this. Hehe. And apparently Halo 3 ads are very artistic.

***

List of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. Surprisingly (to me), LOLCATS is on the list...hehe.

***

(This is for you Josh)

On the Colbert Report last Thursday (June 19), Cookie Monster was on the show. To me, this was a weird coincidence, because not too long ago, for art class I had to make an illuminated letter, and I chose to do one with Cookie Monster because C is for Cindy and C is also for Cookie. And then even more recently, I had to write an article on Cookie Monster for our school publication.

Anyway, Colbert interrogates Cookie Monster on why he has recently started eating vegetables (GASP), placing them over cookies. And apparently Elmo, who's something like 3 1/2 years old, can drive. And, oh yeah, Cookie Monster eats Colbert's Peabody award.

This is the link to Thursday's episode on Comedy Central, but it doesn't seem to be working for me for some reason, so here's the link on CTV Broadband. Go to "Watch It Now" and find the June 19 one. You do need Flash 9, though.

***

I love the Comedy Central channel, as the above reference to the Colbert Report bears testament. I like to watch MadTV and standup (Just For Laughs). And now that it's summer I can actually have time to watch TV!

Two of my favourite stand-up comedians right now are Demetri Martin (I like his website) and Russell Peters. You can search them up on Youtube.

Demetri Martin has a Youtube account, and here's a good video of Russell Peters.

***

This game is funny. It also reminded me of Fibonacci.

***

I was at Indigo yesterday with a friend, and there was this hilarious book in the humour section, called The Man Book. There's some sports trivia and all of that, but some just hilarious bits.

"This book contains everything you need to know to be a man. "Everything," It will prepare you for every situation you can imagine, from the office to the bedroom. It will improve your life no matter what you're doing...whether you're in a bar, in a fight, in a wedding, in an argument, at a game, at work, or in a stranger's bed.
It's time to be a man. Read this book."

***

Ok, that's all for now.

It's summer so I'll be going on vacation in 2 days; I'll see you in August :)

- Cindy

EDIT: I forgot this. Ukeleles are cool!

The Challenge Part 2

Well no one has posted probably due to exams so here's an update, our contest ends on June 25th. No one else messaged me to join so it seems it will be just me and Josh competing, and I have posted my song on Youtube under the name Azerkablam, the song is called Gangplank Galleon and was the song from the final boss fight in Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo. The fight and music resemble a pirate ship. Josh plans to do a theme from Mario tennis so we should expect something fun. Anyways till the end of the contest or when the next post occurs,

Aaron

The Challenge

So I made a challenge with Josh today, who ever can produce the better piece of video game music on Mario paint composer wins.

The rules are as follows:
1. The song can't have been done on youtube before.
2. Songs must be declared in advance
3. If the song is on youtube during the contest and after the song was declared then the song can still be produced.
4. Any and all resources and programs can be used
5. Have fun with this.

Our deadline is sometime in mid to late June, and I encourage any and all to join this competition. There is no prize however the winner will be known as the best Mario paint composer on Saddening Goat. All songs will be uploaded to youtube when completed under one user so that they can be watched at the end.

If you plan to join comment and tell us what song you plan to do, mario paint composer can be downloaded online free so go play with it!
Aaron

If you're bored...

...here are a few good online games you could play, that I have recently discovered:

http://www.addictinggames.com/theworldshardestgame.html

This game is pretty hard, but it's very satisfying to beat a level. Most levels generally appear impossible to beat at first, so you need a lot of patience to play this for more than 3 minutes, but otherwise it's pretty good.

http://www.addictinggames.com/doodledefender.html

This isn't actually that great a game, like most games of the genre, but if you suddenly have the urge to play a cheap shooting game, it's a good choice, since you get to draw your own ship! I suggest saving up for additional guns, as then you can draw even more!

http://www.addictinggames.com/magicpen.html

If you played the crayon physics demo that came out a while back, this is basically a slightly more developed version of that. Crayon Physics Deluxe should be out soon! Also, try building a catapult.

http://www.addictinggames.com/dropple.html

I don't know why they came up with a story for this game... but otherwise it's good.

http://www.addictinggames.com/accelerationmaze.html

Fun, though it gets frustrating at times. And, the music gets fairly annoying too, especially considering it's techno.


On a side note, did you know that Ash Ketchum was 10 years old when he began his Pokemon adventure? I don't understand who would send their child out to wander from town to town at 10 years old... yet apparently many people in Pokemon do. Maybe Pokemon is secretly trying to convince kids to run away from home at age 10. At any rate, good luck with summatives, exams, or whatever else you may be working on at the moment, and until next time!

oh, life is so depressing

What is it with me and extinction stories?

The real question is, however, where did the bees go?
A Mayan prophecy, Stephen Hawking theories, as well as an Einstein quotation all serve as damning evidence of inevitable doom. Apparently, Einstein believed that four years after the bees start to die, the world will collapse because they are so crucial to pollination and life.

Well, the bees started dying in 2007, so live it up already!

Males to become extinct???

Interesting title, isn't it?

But first...where have I been? Yes it's been a LONG time - almost 2 months - since I last posted. I have had good intentions but either lacked inspiration or time: there was a trip to Washington, D.C. and with May bringing about the end of the school year, there is much work to be done. And there was also an AP U.S. History exam. But I'm back now, so here goes:

***
I first heard about the topic in the title last weekend (and intended to write about it then, but never got around to it) when my parents showed me an article in a newspaper. It talked about how an Oxford Professor, Bryan Sykes, expects male humans to die out in as little as 125,000 years because of the degeneration of the Y chromosome.

My initial reaction was complete disbelief, because wouldn't the extinction of males imply the end of reproduction and therefore extinction of the species? Unless two females could produce an offspring? Or there were asexual reproduction? But shouldn't evolution progress forwards and not backwards - as in, sexual reproduction is more advanced than asexual reproduction, so if we went backwards wouldn't that be illogical? I also questioned the time period that he proposed, because 125,000 years in the scheme of evolution seemes way too short for an entire gender to die out just like that.

Anyway, I found the article online, here. The article also talks about a bill in the UK, and its implications on the lesbian community, but the middle section is the part that interested me the most.

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University and author of the book Adam’s Curse, is convinced that men will die out as the Y chromosome withers. He has calculated that, at the current rate of decline, heterosexual reproduction may only last around 125,000 years. “The core sex is female,” he says. “Male infertility is high because genes on the Y chromosome are packing up all the time. Many species become extinct because their Y chromosomes apparently disintegrate. In the end, the same thing will probably lead to the extinction of the male gender.”

The only glimmer of hope, he believes, may lie in the experience of the mole vole. This tiny rodent native to the Caucasus mountains of central Asia seems to have lost its Y chromosome somewhere down the evolutionary millennia, but the genetic material that confers maleness has nimbly transferred itself to another chromosome. If the Y chromosome turns out to be as useless as Sykes suggests, it would be possible to move the human SRY (the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome) and associated “maleness” genes to another chromosome and produce males with two X chromosomes.

It also talks about advancements in technology that would indeed enable two females to reproduce; sperm could also possibly be manufactured in labs from other DNA.
Anyway, just very interesting.

***
An added bonus:

A schoolmate and friend brought this to my attention - if you like food (all of you probably), and if you like food of the inexpensive variety, you might like CheapEats. It's a guidebook to cheap food (no surprise there). There's a book each about several Canadian cities, like Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. It lists 365 restaurants where breakfast is <$5, lunch <$10 and dinner <$15. The bonus part is that there's a sale on it right now so you can get it for under $10 including taxes and S/H (in Canada only, though). When it asks if you have a coupon code (that's step 2), type in "facebook", and don't forget to press "apply". Being a Torontonian I got the Toronto version, of course, but I'm not sure if the code works for other cities as well - I guess it doesn't hurt to try.

Oh, and hurray for PayPal :)



That's all for now,
Cindy

Rubiks = puzzles that take less than 10 minutes to complete.

So my dad came to me this weekend holding a Rubik's Magic that's been stowed away in our basement since at least 1986. From then it took me 1 day to understand it and 1 day to master it. By the end of Sunday (today) it only takes me 10 seconds to solve it. For those who dont know a Rubik's Magic is a set of 2 rows of 4 black squares bound together that works similar to the toy jacob's ladder. On one side are the pieces of 3 rings which when in the right positions and order are unconnected and on the reverse are similar patterns but with three rings that link. starting in the unlinked the goal is to link the back rings. Sound simple? Infact it is. it takes little to no time for it to be solved when one knows what to do. from is 2x4 shape it becomes a v shape with a 2x2 square with two sets of 2x1 squares on sides 90 degrees from each other. This now brings my collection of rubiks puzzles I can solve to 4 being the cube, mini cube(2x2x2), the revenge(4x4x4), and the magic.

Ok so it wasn't a video game post. I know it wasn't in my posting nature but that's all I have to say right now... I'm just filling the space until my fellow contributors post.

let the next post happen soon,
Aaron

Some Halo WTF

So, it's been 10 days since the last post, in part due to my laziness. In any case...

There's a saying that goes, "expect the unexpected". Well, I hope you expected these things to happen =) (ordered by relative WTF-ness, best first):

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KicJSFEgB_U
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ym0BtwmCvoc
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qXfwd4_ydLM&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-Y2mG0hYE&feature=related

Also, here are some... interesting... Rube Goldberg style contraptions people built. I should try making one of these some time =):

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Jje1m9DJp8k&feature=related

(sniper vs. noob series):
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qbELWI5nkPg&NR=1
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMITb5a2p8&NR=1
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=arB8hCCl7NY&feature=related

While we're on the topic of WTF-ness, worsethanfailure.com is a very amusing site, especially if you know a thing or two about programming. But even if you don't, just look at http://thedailywtf.com/Series/Error_0x27_d.aspx - guaranteed laughter.

Ooh, and I also found a very nice job on the WTF site (it's real!): http://jobs.thedailywtf.com/1001/listing.aspx?Ad=Y&JobId=1001237 . They must have been stalking me.

In any case, that's all for now. Until next time,

-squidout

...

Wait! The title's not a random phrase! Oh no! Where are you going to get your (not-so) daily exposure to random archaic vocabulary that only about 10 people in the world have a justifiable right to use?

Too bad, it's down here now. And no more definitions - I trust you can use Google by yourself =).

subcelestial cadaster

Between Battles

Just signed off of Nintendo WIFI Connection, I was playing a game of brawl with Josh and Jon, tons of lag to go around. Everyone played their favourite characters and if it wasnt for lag I can say each of us would have won at least one game each. The final results after 3 games: Josh -2 (Josh I probably would have won the game I was Toon Link had lag not occured), Jon -1, and sadly me -0. We each proved our abilities as each character and in josh's case, how he could annoy us by rehashing the same move 60 times. If any readers would like to face any of the three of us feel free to comment.

Til then,
Aaron