Edit (2010-05-20): “hl=all” no longer works. Assuming you don’t want pirate-speak (“hl=xx-pirate” which still does), I rewrote the post.
If you can’t stand the new clutter on Google, there’s a blog devoted to reverting (the Opera userjs there worked):
http://theoldgoogle.blogspot.com/
To disable suggestions, make this your homepage.
In total, about a half-hour that should make your day.
Edit (2010-04-21): Fixed broken videos.
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*Sigh* Guess these typical theological definitions haven’t been echoed enough on the net… Do watch the Qualia vids though.
Youtube:
QualiaSoup – Faith
QualiaSoup – Flawed Thinking by Numbers
QualiaSoup – Absolutely Not
QualiaSoup – Critical Thinking
QualiaSoup – Betting on Infinity
QualiaSoup – Betting on Infinity Rebuttals
(I added a couple more Qualias to the Skepticism 101 post)
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Baloney Detection Kit
Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World, is an introduction to skepticism, critical thinking, and pseudoscience. The above video is based on one of its chapters.
(Wikipedia link) (Amazon link)
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For some reason, probably ignorance or lucky sampling, I get more fanboy rush from small-scale chemistry than astronomy. Any other excuse that I came up with just now got trumped with, “Nebulae do it way bigger with unparalled whiz-bang.”
No wait, “On small scales, the physics can be tinkered with.” *teehee*
I’ll start and end this linkdump with Theodore Gray, the persona MacGyver could’ve been if the producers didn’t mind lawsuits.
(see final link)
My chem background is really weak, but now and then, videos on the net turn up that are cool regardless. I’ve dumped links below the fold.
Aside: Hmm, I don’t recall any chemistry documentaries from PBS/BBC/Discovery/etc. Not exactly a shortage of material: polymers, explosives, acids, chirality, bonds, crystals, cell receptors, molecular modelling… C’mon, it could be dramatic and explody like Mythbusters. Or a cooking show. Just explain how the reactions work. : )
Edit (2010-01-31): Added BBC – Chemistry, A Volatile History #2
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Here are some more pages for your consideration:
Isaiah’s Job by Albert Jay Nock
The End of Wall Street’s Boom – National Business News – Print – Portfolio.com
Just when you thought you had found everything you can do with duct tape:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37928/title/Magic_tape
A nifty-ish list of people on twitter:
http://mashable.com/2008/10/20/25-celebrity-twitter-users/
The Jargon File (geek history for you kids these days):
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/
And some classic sarcastic quotes:
http://www.allowe.com/Humor/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.htm
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of reading case after case from the files of Encyclopedia Brown. Donald J. Sobol was a big enough part of my formidable years that he should probably be getting a card from me every December. With that in mind, I had to share something I stumbled upon today:
Edit: Let me clarify that this is a parody of EB, written by someone other than Sobol. If you’ve never read any of the original stuff, the parody probably won’t be all that funny to you.
http://adamcadre.ac/content/brown/
Enjoy.