Wonderfest 2009, The San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science, takes place on November 7th at Stanford’s Hewlett Teaching Center and on November 8th at UC Berkeley’s Stanley Hall. Admission is free, here’s how to register.
Through public discourse about provocative scientific questions, Wonderfest aspires to stimulate curiosity, promote careful reasoning, challenge unexamined beliefs, and encourage life-long learning. Wonderfest achieves these ends by presenting series of scientific events to the general public. At most of these events, pairs of articulate and accomplished researchers discuss and debate compelling questions at the edge of scientific understanding.
American author and humorist John Hodgman has appeared as the Resident Expert on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” “PC” on Apple’s “Get a Mac” TV ads, and was the headline speaker at the 2009 Radio and Television Correspondents dinner in Washington D.C. After graduating from Yale in 1994, he toiled in the trenches of the publishing industry. The experience led Hodgman to write an ironic advice column for McSweeney’s entitled, “Ask a Former Literary Agent.” In his first book, The Areas of My Expertise, Hodgman explores topics from the idiosyncrasies of famous detectives to Colonial jobs involving eels. In his role as Resident Expert on “The Daily Show,” Hodgman has offered insight and commentary on art authentication, presidential candidate style, hurricane season, and mixed martial arts. Hodgman’s latest book, More Information Than You Require, deals with more of the esoteric, charming and just plain eccentric topics that catch the author’s fancy. From tips on buying a computer from a street vendor to get-rich-slow schemes, John Hodgman’s humor revels in a culture saturated with experts of every stripe.
Creator of the website 43folders, Merlin Mann seeks to help ordinary people find “the time and attention to do your best creative work.” Mann’s forthcoming book Inbox Zero, will be published by HarperStudio in 2010.
ThinkGeek has a Electronic Rock Guitar t-shirt with a touch-sensitive guitar fret that you can actually play. A mini amp clips to your belt that you can turn up to 11.
The Electronic Guitar Shirt is not a toy that plays pre-canned musical riffs, it is a real musical instrument that allows you to play your favorite songs and sound great doing it. All major chords are recorded from a real electric guitar, and the included magnetic pick allows you to strum just like you would a real guitar. The included mini amp clips to your belt and gets plenty loud with great sounding amplification circuitry. The tone knob on the amp lets you adjust the sound just like a real guitar.
Critical Mass is a mass bicycle ride that takes place on the last Friday of each month in cities around the world. Everyone is invited! No one is in charge! Bring your bike!
You can also follow San Francisco Critical Mass on Twitter: sfcriticalmass
EDW Lynch created a wonderful contest promo video featuring “Senior VP for Nutcracker Operations, Sugar Plum Fairy, admitting to a severe shortage of magic (in excess of 2 million cubic dazzlemeters) due to the global magic market downturn”.
The latest xkcd comic features several insanely detailed Movie Narrative Charts showing the character interactions in various films. Here’s a larger version.
The Internet Movie Firearms Database is a website that allows users to find which guns were featured in certain movies, television series, video games, and anime, as well as contribute to the site in a wiki format.
Here’s the trailer for “Travesty City” a beautiful new animated short by Ryan Fedyk, who last year made the wonderful film “Anyone”.
A waiter fills his role with style and precision. As he leaves the restaurant and enters the streets of travesty city, this sense of purpose and stability begins to unravel. How will he translate his sense of belonging at work into the more unstructured reality of his personal life? Will he know alternatives when he sees them?
New York Times’ The Caucus reports on Halloween at The White House, where Barack Obama dressed as a casual President and first lady Michelle Obama in a cat woman outfit, greeted over 2000 trick-or-treaters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So what kind of loot did the president prepare?
A white-and-blue box of M&Ms — imprinted with Mr. Obama’s autograph — and a sweet butter cookie made by the White House pastry chef. And in keeping with the theme of healthy eating inside the White House that Mrs. Obama has promoted, the children were also given a dried fruit mix of cherries, apricots, pears, apples and papayas.
photos by Jonathan Ernst & Kristoffer Tripplaar
United States ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice dressed up as Goofy and The White House press secretary Robert Gibbs came as Darth Vader.
Laughing Squid is run by primary tentacle Scott Beale, who is also the publisher & editor of this blog. He is joined by several awesome guest bloggers.
