This Week in The Daily Show… and Fox News’ Sean Hannity

It’s time for the 2nd week in November’s Daily Show roundup. It turns out to be a political roundup this week with a smattering of commentary on how media covers politics.

The US House of Representatives passes a healthcare bill (read the full bill text or get the pdf), but in the process, we find out how what happens when babies weigh in on the issue… it turns out the House of Representatives is a bizarre organization.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity covers the Republican protest rally on the House of Representatives healthcare bill and in the process, over represents how many people attended and even used video protest footage from September’s Glenn Beck Tea Party rally to distort reality.

The very next night Sean Hannity apologized for mistakenly using footage from a better attended rally in September while covering this November rally

Enjoy

Dany

Neuroscience, the Human Brain Theory and Conscousness Brought to you by TED

I just spent over an hour watching these three TED talks and I’m completely enamored with the human brain right now. It has been an extremely fascinating hour. Seeing these three extremely smart scientists, Jeff Hawkins (talking about creating a brain theory), Dan Dennett (explaining consciousness) and Michael Merzenich (neural plasticity) have some engrossing views on our current state of knowledge, how that knowledge has changed and what we can do to expand and better understand what we already know about our brain and each lecture is smart, funny and entertaining as well!

Thanks to the SGU Neuroscience Society for getting me started with the lecture explaining consciousness!

Enjoy

Dany

Verizon Wireless Hits AT&T Where it Hurts… Their Highspeed Network Coverage

Verizon Wireless has come out with some pretty scathing advertisements recently and now, they have started cranking out a fresh set of new Christmas themed ads… sure it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, but the early bird catches the worm, right?

Now I still think the iPhone on AT&T is still going to sell better than gangbusters this holiday season, but now AT&T’s biggest competitor is really taking their ad campaign hard at AT&T’s sparse 3G internet network availability.

Thanks to Engadget for pointing this out!

Enjoy

Dany

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRIqIWxhTIQ&feature=player_embedded

This Week in The Daily Show and Medicine

This week, there did not seem to be that many interesting, funny and entertaining clips from The Daily Show, so I am also including a couple of clips from a recent episode of 60 Minutes.

The Kanzius Cancer Machine, using radio waves and metal injected into tumors to fight cancer

Jon Stewart is flabbergasted to hear that John Kerry is involved in international news

Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics has a new book SuperFreakonomics

Fox News releases a statement that 9 of its 24 hours of daily programming is actual news content, Jon Stewart gives his opinion on this as well as on MSNBC

Michael Bloomberg is revealed as a hypocrite for changing his mind on term limits just because he now wants to get re-elected, I still feel he should have the right to run again (I hate term limits), but I still want him to lose

60 Minutes‘ reporting on the H1N1 Swine Flu

The Kanzius Cancer Machine

Uncomfortable Plot Summaries of Famous Films – by Postmodern Barney

I was listening to episode 90 of the screenwriting podcast, On the Page (subscribe here) and they mentioned the very funny page, Uncomfortable Plot Summaries by Postmodern Barney. It’s a very funny interpretation of many famous Hollywood films and it also shows just how important a one line movie summary is to how we perceive movies. Some of these entries are down right hilarious, describing movies you might have grown up with.

Here are a handful of my favorite examples:

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Peasant girl develops Stockholm Syndrome.
CHINATOWN: Father desires closer relationship with his children.
FRANKENSTEIN: Scientific advancement proves unpopular with general public.
GROUNDHOG DAY: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.
HARRY POTTER: Celebrity Jock thinks rules don’t apply to him, is right.
JUNO: Teen fails to get abortion, ruins lives.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
PREDATOR: American military-industrial complex ruins first contact with alien life.
SE7EN: Homicide detectives unable to prevent even a single murder by admitted serial killer, killer gives cop head.
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS: Layabout stepdaughter shacks up with seven miners.
STAR WARS – A NEW HOPE: Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
STAR WARS – THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Boy is abused by midget, kisses sister, attempts patricide.
STAR WARS – RETURN OF THE JEDI: Handicapped mass murderer kills septugenarian, is lauded.

Thanks to Dork Shelf for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

Is Optogenetics the Key to Solving Disorders of the Brain and Prosthetics?

I found this story though Engadget, but it’s a story coming from Wired, where it goes through the fledgling history of a relatively new field of neuroscience, Optogenetics. Its is the study of using light and modified genes (inserted using modified viruses) to try and alter the brain to cure disorders like Depression and Parkinson’s! The trials from Stanford haven’t gotten past the animal stages yet, but they have started working on rhesus monkeys (which have very similar brains to humans) and already got Parkinson’s mice literally up and running again. The whole thing is very new, but very cool, especially if we can start using blue light to activate brain cells, yellow light to quiet them and green light to send response signals by activating different forms of rhodopsin (Channelrhodopsin-1, Channelrhodopsin-2 and Halorhodopsin).

Check out the article here to get the details, this could be very cool for diseased brains very soon.

Thanks to Wired for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

The Birdmen Come Close to Flying Off Norway’s Fjords

60 Minutes had an interesting segment recently about a group of thrill seeking daredevils that have been named Birdmen and after watching this video, it’s not surprising how they got this moniker. They don wing suits (fully explained here) and have basically been jumping off of Norway’s most famous and beautiful mountains into fjords. You can’t actually call it flying because once they jump, they never gain any air, but they do attain forward speeds of 140 miles per hour before they have to pull their parachute. The video is quite spectacular between the views from the mountains and the cameras set up on the Birdmen themselves.

Enjoy

Dany

President Obama Wishes a Happy Diwali

This week, President Obama sent out this message acknowledging and observing Diwali, the festival of lights. This was a great way for the President to reach out to followers of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. I didn’t realize it, but former President, George W. Bush was the first President to start acknowledging Diwai, so I say this is much of a change with the new administration, but personally I had never heard of the Diwali holiday, so I then decided to do a bit of research.

Thanks to Nilesh for sending me this video.

Enjoy

Dany

The Daily Show Weekly Roundup

In my constant attempt to keep up with the week’s absurd news, it’s time again for my Daily Show roundup for the week of October 12th, 2009:

CNN’s constant lack of actually digging deep into any issues or arguments, but instead, just leaving it there.

A DC protest is only as good as who is actually protesting and apparently none of the major cable news networks (CNN, MSNBC and Fox News) found a gay rights march on Washington, DC worthy of as much airtime as the tea party protests.

John Oliver spends over 10% of The Daily Show’s airtime (over 3 minutes of a 30 minute show) covering the gay rights protest in DC.

Giant baby gets denied health insurance and apparently Senator Olympia Snowe is the savior of Health Care?

When both Republicans and Democrats were outraged at ACORN with their latest 2009 undercover video scandal and passed a bill to defund them, the reaction from 30 Republican Senators to further clean up government contracts with Senator Al Franken’s bill against keeping contracts with companies that squelch lawsuits by victims of rape is the worst show of hypocrisy, but I am glad the bill ultimately passed.

H1N1 Swine Flu, what’s more dangerous this year, getting sick with the flu, getting the flu vaccine, that there might not be enough flu vaccine for everyone this year or should we just FEAR EVERYTHING for fear’s (or cable news’) sake?

As the RNC Chairman, Michael Steele, attempts to revamp the image of his party, he not only inadvertently condescends to the black community, youth and a tech savvy generation, he ends up turning himself into the much maligned Microsoft Clippy and reveals that the RNC has no unified focus or message to build on.

Enjoy

Dany

The George Washington University, The Top Twittering College… Also THE Most Expensive College

Well, not only has my alma matter, The George Washington University, remained the MOST EXPENSIVE college/university in the USA, according to CNN Money, but it’s now the #1 Twittering college/university. The coolest part though is the Washington Post article points out that this was a trait noticed by our current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates during lectures they gave to GWU students! I loved my time at GWU, I miss Washington, DC now.

Thanks to Brian for sending this article, he didn’t even GO to GWU! Also, thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

*Update 10/15/2009 – Here is the official event details that brought both Hilary Clinton and Robert M. Gates to GWU, along with the video: