Althouse: "Although there are cool things and crappy things, they all vie for our attention with equal fervor."

October 30, 2008

"Although there are cool things and crappy things, they all vie for our attention with equal fervor."

Hey, watch this thing for me, will you? It might be wonderful, but I have some other things vying for my attention right now.

(Via Metafilter.)

17 comments:

Michiel said...: I don't get it. The male gets pregnant, and the female shoots off her eggs into the male, who then fertilizes the eggs. By what definition is the male, you know, male? Because his gametes aren't eggs? Why not call it a female who has sperm instead of eggs?

I don't want to appear like Melville, who ridiculed the idea that whales were mammals, not fish, because, you see, they swam in the sea, and had finns, so obviously they were fish

But really! Females are the ones who get pregnant. Period!

I got bored after that, will the next commenter please watch the bit about mammoth design?; 10/30/08, 1:10 PM
wind.rider said...: The only thing that pops to mind is a paraphrase of the classic line from one of Sandler's movies:

We're all stupider for having watched this (beyond about a minute or so).; 10/30/08, 1:34 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Very few things have been designed using the simple rules of fractal geometry.

The rules of the natural world, self similarities, copies are all around us, above us and underneath us. We are for lack of a better definition - fractals.

In some ways you could say, designing has until now been like the infinite numbers of monkeys expecting to come up with a Shakespearean Play.

Whenever something like Ray-ban comes along; it has been a complete accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal; 10/30/08, 1:38 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: This video says we are making "cooler things".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/; 10/30/08, 1:50 PM
Peter Hoh said...: I gave it a try. After a couple minutes, I began to wonder where it was linked from, for some clue as to the value of sticking with it.

Hmm. Maybe I'll run it some time when I'm sorting seeds or doing some other tedious task.; 10/30/08, 2:59 PM
Harwood said...: I made it about 97 seconds and then shut it off out of boredom, wondering why you posted this.

You exhort commenters to "Amuse us!" Ladies first.; 10/30/08, 3:39 PM
Ron said...: twenty minutes playing pocket pool is vastly superior to twenty minutes watching this video, thus rendering the whole project null and void!; 10/30/08, 4:36 PM
Anonymous said...: I was infinetly more interested in watching the beagle escape. Bad science and bad humor multiplied together, unlike in mathematics, does not come out positive.; 10/30/08, 4:54 PM
blake said...: Mandelbrot set
You're a Rorschach test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wires
You're one bad-ass fucking fractal

And you're just in time to save the day
Chasing all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way; 10/30/08, 5:06 PM
blake said...: I didn't make it past the opening acronym. CICINA, was it?; 10/30/08, 5:06 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I couldn't stick with it, but at least one Metafilter commenter makes me think it would be really great if you settled in and watched for 20 minutes. So come on, somebody's got to do it.; 10/30/08, 5:15 PM
KLR said...: If you do not think this video is funny, then you either stopped too soon or you are completely square.

It is painfully enjoyable.; 10/30/08, 5:39 PM
Ron said...: I did watch the whole thing and was unimpressed.; 10/30/08, 5:43 PM
Wince said...: Ever get the feeling that Althouse is the lady sitting on the park bench and we're the pigeons picking at the bread crumbs she throws?

Not that I'm complaining!

Cooo. Cooo. Cooo.; 10/30/08, 6:24 PM
T J Sawyer said...: Is it just my computer?

I had to keep moving the mouse or the audio (can't really call it a video) stopped. I think maybe this is a feature, not a bug, though. Otherwise, I would have fallen asleep.

And no, I couldn't finish it either.; 10/30/08, 7:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Huge drop off from The Great Beagle Escape video.

Tennis Lookalikes; 10/30/08, 7:11 PM
Sofa King said...: I watched the whole thing. It was like a Saturday night live skit - it had one really funny joke that it milked about 10 times longer than it was funny, and it didn't know how to end.; 10/30/08, 11:41 PM