April 3, 2012
Cartoon: “My Three Rocks”
First panel:
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Uncle John's Blog
April 3, 2012
License and Registration Please Oh Look a Pack of Wild Dogs
The timing in this short silent video could not have been done better by Hitchcock. It’s dark, a lonely road, a cop pulls someone over…the cop’s double take, then the quick little step he takes…okay, just watch:
April 2, 2012
Wo! Driver Jumps From Truck Just Before it Plunges Down Cliff
Watch – and then watch the guy exit the truck in front…
April 2, 2012
New Bill Murray Movie Trailer
It’s Moonrise Kingdom, it’s due out in May, and we should say it’s a new Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman – and directed by Wes Anderson – movie. Yowza – very promising.
Synopsis and more here and here, and the trailer:
April 1, 2012
Car Crash Victim Declared Dead (update)
…by a paramedic. Paramedics left the scene with other injured people, leaving the dead man in the car.
An emergency crew came – thirty minutes later – to cut the body out of the car.
And found a pulse in the body.
April 1, 2012
Internet Pinball
We don’t know why, but we just find this pretty darn cool. As you can see in the image above, it’s a pinball game that looks like it was drawn with a pencil on a pad in a notebook. And you can play it (not this one, you have to go to the link) using the arrows on your keyboard.
March 31, 2012
TV News Unfiltered: The C-SPAN Story
You may have heard in the news recently that Brian Lamb, founder and CEO of the groundbreaking TV news network, C-SPAN, is retiring after thirty-four years on the job. We told the story of how Lamb managed to get the network up and running, and how he made sure it was a truly independent news network - really a heck of a story – in Uncle John’s TRIUMPHANT 20TH Bathroom Reader. (It’s on page 243 for those of you who already own the book.) We thought it would be a good time to roll it out on the blog. Here you go.
TV NEWS UNFILTERED
Next time you think there’s nothing on TV, remember Brian Lamb’s story and spend a few minutes watching his channel. What channel? Read on.
Mr. Lamb goes to Washington
During the Vietnam War, a young navy lieutenant from Indiana named Brian Lamb was assigned to the Pentagon press office to report troop deaths to the media. The amount of information either omitted or censored in order to paint a rosier picture of the war appalled him. “The government lied to us,” he later recalled. “We just weren’t getting the straight scoop.” During that time, Lamb also served as an aide in the Johnson White House. Once again he saw a huge gap between what the American people knew and what was really happening. “I got a firsthand education about how the media interacts with the government, and it led me to think that there could be a better way.” That better way was a news outlet that would report what was happening in politics—with two major differences: 1) no censorship from government; and 2) no commentary from media pundits.
March 30, 2012
12yo Does “First Ever” 1080 on Skateboard
Not sure about the “first ever” (ESPN says it is), but this is pretty darn cool. A 1080 is 1080° – three complete revolutions in the air.
The 900 used to be the thing. Not anymore, apparently.
Gizmodo has this to say about it:
March 30, 2012
One Sneeze, Two Whacked Vertebrae
Simple sneeze almost left Monique paralysed
A SNEEZE was so strong it caused a Victorian mother to dislocate two vertebrae in her neck.
Monique Jeffrey may be Australia’s unluckiest woman, but she still manages to muster a smile.
“It was such a big shock when you have such a busy life,” she told the Herald Sun…
The 28-year-old said the injury happened less than two weeks ago while she was in bed reading emails on her phone and she let out an “ah choo”.
“I just knew something was wrong. I felt something move and I was in excruciating pain,” Mrs Jeffrey said.
March 29, 2012
Japanese Honeybees Cook Enemy Hornets Alive
“When the hornet, the Japanese honeybee’s natural enemy, enters a colony, the bees quickly form a ‘hot defensive bee ball,’ trapping the hornet inside and heating it up to 46 degrees C (115 F) with their collective body heat,” said Atsushi Ugajin, a University of Tokyo graduate student.
He said that while the high temperature phase lasts about 20 minutes, it often takes up to an hour before the hornet dies inside the ball.
