This Week in News, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for December 12th, 2010

President Clinton gives a 3omin press conference to support the tax deal that President Obama and Congressional Republicans recentyl made. I don’t like the deal, but I am more partisan than either the current or former President, so I think the deal should pass and the sooner that happens, the more likely other bills can also get greased through to the President’s desk finally. It also shows that Bill Clinton is STILL the best spokesman in politics today.
I can’t embed this video, so watch it here on CSPAN.

Oh how I love getting offended by nothing, especially around Christmas.
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Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Hugh Shelton, has some very interesting stories, but for me, none more interesting than how Veterans Affairs doctors cured his paralysis after a fall and head injury, thanks to Jeff Lang raising his blood pressure for several hours. His new book is Without Hesitation.
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When is printing money not printing money? I guess when Ben Bernanke says so!
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Seth Green promoting Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode III, which I think I need to see… NOW!
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Obama’s getting annoyed with his own base.
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Steve Martin gets grilled by Stephen Colbert as he promotes his new book.
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Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers comments on Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
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Enjoy

Dany

Admiral Snackbar – It’s A Snack by Scott Johnson

I just wanted to share this funny webcomic of Admiral Snackbar – Its A Snack from Scott Johnson’s MyExtraLife. If you want to buy signed print of this, click here. I love a good Star Wars, Admiral Ackbar reference.

Thanks to Current Geek Weekly #26 (subscribe here) for the comic.

Enjoy

Dany

Tech Roundup for the Week, Roger Ebert’s New Voice, US National Broadband Internet, Apple vs Google and even Nanomicrochips Inside Living Cells

There were a few interesting technology related stories I came across while sifting through Engadget recently, so I thought I would share what I found.

First, Roger Ebert, one of the most profound and prolific film reviewers in history has had many medical problems of late, thankfully he is still with us and reviewing films again, the problem is after all his health ordeals, he was left without a lower jaw and unable to speak… until now with some interesting help from CereProc. Here is the Engadget article, but just watch the video below, it’s hard to deny that this is an amazing step forward in science:

Recently, the FCC submitted its National Broadband Plan (download the pdf) to Congress, which includes a laundry list of goals for the next decade, essentially to provide access for “every American” to “robust broadband services,” meaning 100 million US homes with “affordable” access with 100MBps download and 50Mbps upload speeds, which sounds wonderful, but let’s see what their definition of affordable turns out to be. Here is the Engadget story with the reactions from Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Google and Comcast executives.

The above illustration is from Daniel Adel of the New York Times and it adds to the hyperbole around the idea that Google and Apple chief executives that were once close are now at war, iPhone/iPad vs Android. Here is the Endadget article that goes into the details.

Lastly, it looks like we’re on the road to implanting microprocessors… or in this case even smaller nanoprocessors into living cells. At this point, current research has been able to obtain 90% cell survival after such a dramatic procedure. It will be interesting to see where this ultimately takes us in the coming decades. Here is the Engadget story along with the original research article by Gómez-Martínez R.

Enjoy

Dany

The Daily Show Highlights for the week of February 26, 2010

Glenn Beck verbally berates the basic ideals of progressive thought… then we find out that he refutes that thought with knowledge he gathered while utilizing the very advantages those progressive ideals fought to provide. It would be funnier if he didn’t have so many followers:
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Ricky Gervais has a new show The Ricky Gervais Show, he’s hilarious as usual in the process
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John Hodgman has some interesting ways to spice up the Winter Olympics. I don’t know if they would work, but I almost fell off my chair listening to them
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Tracy Morgan promoting his new movie Cop Out, which I might have to go and see now!
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Enjoy all The Daily Show

Dany

Daily Show Roundup and Bill O’Reilly Interview of Jon Stewart for the week of February 4th, 2010

It has been an interesting week and I have been able to put together 5 different clips from The Daily Show and also included the interesting Bill O’Reilly interview of Jon Stewart.

Enjoy

Dany

It seems like Hamas has continued to create extremely racist antisemitic propaganda cartoons aimed at engendering pure hatred towards Jews to the point of planting the idea of martyrdom quite early in life. Jon Stewart‘s bit is a bit stupid, but it’s worth sitting through to see these cartoons
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President Obama goes to Congressional Republicans to publicly answer policy and political questions and seems to do well with the event broadcast on TV… let’s see if that gets him anywhere or if anything will change
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Stewart and John Oliver present a nice allegory between being an old Senator and being gay while in the military after Senate Republicans decide to chide Admiral Mike Mullen about supporting gays openly serving in the military
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Vice President Joe Biden sounds pretty absurd describing the movie Avatar, he may be a little out of touch
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Here is the link to the entire Bill O’Reilly interview of Jon Stewart this week, I can’t get this video to work on this site, so you’ll have to click on this link below to watch it on FoxNews

Claymation Chess

I might just be a sucker for claymation, but I found this great movie of a claymation chess (Digg it here) game after watching Best of Youtube (subscribe here). It reminds me somewhat of the old Battle Chess game from the pre-Windows days, I still remember playing it for hours on my first IBM computer, running on DOS.

Enjoy

Dany

Chainsaw Maid – The World’s Most Graphically Violent Claymation

After watching the short claymation film Chainsaw Maid from The Digg Reel (subscribe here), I knew that I had to share it. Claymation has always had a place in my heart starting with Gumby and Penny (from Pee Wee’s Playhouse) and more recently with Knox toons, but this is quite different… and much more violent.

Enjoy the short film, but remember, I warned you.

Dany

JibJab is Back to Crack You Up with Time for Some Campaignin’

I think most of you remember the hillarious JibJabers from their amazingly funny hit from the 2004 election season: This Land! Well, they’re back for this year’s presidential election with Time for Some Campaignin’… JibJab never really went away, they’ve actually been making videos since 1999 way back in the dial-up days and before the dot-com bubble burst.

Thanks to Net@Nite (subscribe here)for interviewing those funny JibJab founders. Hopefully soon, those crafty JibJab guys will set up their videos as a podcast to make them even easier for people to watch and keep up to date on their latest funny videos.

Enjoy

Dany

As an added treat, here’s the This Land! video below, just in case you forgot what I was talking about.

Pixar’s First Short Film from 1984: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B

After reviewing Pixar’s most recent success in Wall-E, it’s only fitting that I present the very first Pixar short titled: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. It’s hard to believe that Pixar‘s origins go all the way back to 1984, since they burst onto the scene over a decade later with Toy Story. What’s also interesting is that along with presenting the short film, The Experience Project also chronicles the early history of Pixar.

Thanks to The Digg Reel (subscribe here) for highlighting this early work.

Enjoy

Dany

Jessica Rabbit and Stewie Griffin untooned by Pixeloo

After finding out what Homer Simpson and Mario Mario would look like if they weren’t cartoons by Pixeloo, I knew I’d have to see what was the next projects were.

I really enjoyed Pixeloo‘s rendition of Jessica Rabbit:

and Stewie Griffin:

Also, here is the ~10 minute video going through the Jessica Rabbit untooning process.

Enjoy

Dany