Sources: 2007 photo, 2006 photo.

ZIPskinny provides demographic information about your zip code based on census data from 2000. Here’s the racial breakdown of my neighborhood:

Hispanic/Latino:	2.2%
White:	17.4%
Black:	77.6%
Native American:	0%
Asian:	0.9%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander:	0%
Other:	0.2%
Multiracial:	1.4

The site also supplies income levels, employment levels, education levels, age levels and a bunch of other information. Unsurprisingly, my current neighborhood has 0% “Farm/Fishing/Forestry” workers. I’m going to take up fishing just to mess with the next census update.

Via Neatorama and Big Shot Bob in Texas.

While Brown University has come into possession of a pair of Khrushchev’s shoes, they are sadly not the pair the Khrushchev used to emphasize his point (bang on the table) at the U.N. That pair was thrown out by his family:

No, this is NOT the pair that he wore at the United Nations on October 12, 1960‹after his death his family threw it out by mistake‹but another pair with which it had been confused. Sergei Khrushchev subsequently learned that his father had sent a bodyguard to buy a pair of American shoes more appropriate for the unexpectedly warm weather.

Lousy family.

What do President John F. Kennedy, First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, and President Fidel Castro all have in common? No, it’s not the Cuban Missile Crisis. They all slept with Lady Jeanne Campbell in the same 12 month period.

She also had affairs with William Ropner (”a scion of the British shipbuilding clan”), Sir Oswald Mosley (founder of the British Union of Fascists), Henry Luce II (”founder and owner of Time-Life Inc.”) and Norman Mailer.

The British sure know how to write up an obituary!

Via Post Mortem.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are going to go dark for one hour at 8pm on October 20th.  By not using light, you’ll be saving the environment.  Through your inaction, the world will be a better place.  I like efforts at change that simply require me to do nothing.  This is one I can totally get on board with.

Jen and Goat discuss a new medical advancement, from episode 1 (I didn’t rip this clip, it’s one of the two clips from Downtown that I didn’t post on YouTube):

My favorite search engine query that led someone to find RumorsDaily yesterday:

when is talespin going to come up with new episodes? 

Neverquest, the newest Simpsons video game, has a trailer that’s pretty much what you’d expect it to be.

This is really more CrazyMonk’s territory, but it’s surprising to discover that the following is a quasi-legitimate English language sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Who knew?  Anyone feel like attempting to translate it into understandable English without actually looking at the explanatory link?

… long live Nationals Stadium.

Star Trek, the Original Series episode title category from Jeopardy. Fill in the blanks:

1. The Trouble With ______
2. _______’s Brain
3. The City on the Edge of ________
4. Where No Man has ____________
5. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched __________

I got four right (three I basically knew, one was a guess), one I couldn’t get. Can you beat me?

Thanks jbg.

I’ve upgraded my Wordpress to 2.3 and am in the midst of fiddling with a few things. The webpage might look wonky for the next 24 hours or so.

UPDATE: The site looks crummy (crummier?) in Internet Explorer.  Use Firefox so I don’t have to feel guilty about how it looks in IE.  Of course, with browser stats like these, it probably doesn’t matter all that much:

I recently picked up the first season of Picket Fences on DVD and was surprised to discover that there is not one but three different Tom Lehrer songs featured throughout the season. Episode three features New Math sung by Sheriff Brock and one of Kimberly Brock’s school teachers while episode four features Douglas Wambaugh singing Who’s Next and The Vatican Rag in the background of a crowded bar.

Since this blog is basically used exclusively for posting clips from television shows that have been off the air for nearly a decade, it seems only appropriate to pose these as well.

New Math by Tom Lehrer on Picket Fences:

Who’s Next and The Vatican Rag by Tom Lehrer on Picket Fences:

I love Tom Lehrer.

I will likely never have a finite Erdős–Bacon number which is found by adding one’s Bacon number, with one’s Erdős number. The Bacon number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from Kevin Bacon in terms of film appearances, while the Erdős number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from mathematician Paul Erdős based on mathematical scholarly article authorship.

While my Bacon number is 3 (I appeared in Snakes on a Blog with Kenan Thompson who appeared in Snakes on a Plane with Rachel Blanchard who appeared in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon), it seems unlikely that I will ever achieve an Erdős number. This will leave my combined Erdős–Bacon number somewhere in the infinity-plus-three range.

For comparison, Danica McKellar (Winny Cooper) has an Erdős-Bacon number of 6, which I find very impressive.

A few years ago I saw this visual cognition experiment at a science museum and it’s been in the back of my memory ever since. I’m not sure how well it’s going to work online at YouTube quality but try to pay attention and we’ll see if it works.

Instructions - Part One: When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black.

The remainder of the instructions are after the jump. If you’re viewing this on one page, don’t read the text below until after you’ve watched the video once.

Read more »

I just watched Chinatown for the first time and have been pondering the meaning of the title and the references to Chinatown in a film that sets only one scene there (albeit the final scene), and for no clear reason with the plotline. I find the Wikipedia analysis unsatisfying.

I had a few ideas, but does anyone have some good thoughts on the subject?

jbg has started up season two of This Podcast Sucks and a main theme of the season will be his search for remarkable activities that he can hopefully accomplish during season three.

This is an excellent idea.

I sent him a few suggestions, which he can use or dismiss as he sees fit, but my favorite suggestion, and one that I really hope he chooses, is:

Build an accurate and life-size version of yourself out of paper mache and then pose for pictures with it in public places around Boston.

I can’t explain why I think this would be fantastic, I just know that it would be.

Interrobang‽

My favorite story about a mislocated leprechaun is now a rap-ish music video:

This is part two of a continuing look into the comedy genius of Jonathan Lee Riches. Read part one.

Last time we told you who Jonathan Lee Riches was suing (everybody!), but it’s not only Riches’ list of defendants that is amusing, it’s what he thinks they’ve done. Here are Riches’ actual claims, as he presents them. For those interested in brevity, here’s a judge’s recap of Riches’ claims:

1. the plaintiff’s state and federal constitutional rights are being violated;
2. the plaintiff “seeks 299,000,000,000,000.00 Trillion dollars backed by gold or silver delivered by United States Postal Service to Federal Correctional Institution, Salters, South Carolina,” from the defendant;
3. President George W. Bush “is in a vast conspiracy of Uniform Commercial Code ‘UCC’ followers[,]” which include President Bush, the Queen of England, Chubby Checker, the Dalai Lama, Hillary Clinton, Bloods and Crips of Detroit, the trench coat mafia, Senator Arlen Specter, the Gambino crime family, Senator Trent Lott, RFID tracking devices, and radioactive chemicals released into the air by airline pilots;
4. the Federal Reserve System is a fraud and federal reserve notes “are backed by nothing of substance[;]“
5. President Bush has failed to build an anti-UFO defense system around FCI-Williamsburg and has released staph infections into the water system at FCI-Williamsburg;
6. the plaintiff has been subjected to microwave testing on a daily basis;
7. President Bush is secretly selling prisoners’ DNA to the Hitler Socialist Party;
8. President Bush is a “voodoo witch doctor involved with transforming Humans to Animals sometimes plants[;]“
9. FCI-Williamsburg has “robotic guards” made from President Bush’s NASA partners;
10. on January 4, 2003, President Bush stole the plaintiff’s identity;
11. on “April 20<th> 2002, George Bush Joined alliance to Al qaeda[;]“
12. “October 31 2001 George Bush is spelled hsub egroeG backwards[;]“
13. the Fourteenth Amendment was not ratified properly;
14. President George W. Bush is a “time traveler” who conspired with the Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings in 1066;
15. “George H. W. Bush is his front father [who] contracted with secret Wiccan’s [sic] to pervert America citizens via www world wide web.” In his prayer for relief, the plaintiff seeks a restraining order against President Bush because he (the plaintiff) comes in peace. The plaintiff also seeks a restraining order against “air force one.”

I like how he mixes somewhat conceivable legal arguments (#13); things that are clearly not possible (#14); and things that, while totally correct, aren’t really relevant to any legal case (#12).

I really, really like claim #12.

The judge, presumably lacking a heart, throws the case out for a number of legitimate and totally unfunny reasons. Boring!

Stay tuned for part three of my look into the comic stylings of Jonathan Lee Riches (Read part one).

Goat borrows Alex’s credit card and makes an unfortunate purchase, from episode 5:

You’ll be glad to know that I’ve encoded another bunch of Downtown clips, so for the next two weeks you’re going to see a new one online every other day or so. I know you’re ever so excited. Maybe I shouldn’t have started with underage midget porn, but it seemed like a real sweeps-week type winner.

More Downtown Clips.

The first post-TV Futurama DVD is available for pre-order on Amazon for $19.99.

I’ve started reading Left Behind.

The first hundred pages were actually pretty good. It feels like standard science fiction. The author poses a large what-if question (what would happen is millions of people suddenly and inexplicably vanished) and then attempts to accurately envision what would occur next. The writing’s a little bit hokey, but that just makes it feel more like standard science fiction. It’s actually rather enjoyable.

At first the Christian angle wasn’t overwhelming and the author did a good job of not assuming that the reader was going to know much of anything about Christianity or the rapture. I’m now approaching page 200 and the Christianity has started to become distracting; when a character simply sits down and reads the Bible my attention’s going to wander.

Welcome to the apocalypse, it’s mildly poorly written.

Canine Regulations

• Must be on leash (L.A.M.C. 53.56)
• Must be licensed (L.A.M.C. 53.28)
• Must pick up defecation by owners (L.A.M.C. 53.49)

Must pick up defecation by owners?! That’s a well trained dog, and a poorly trained owner.

Found and photographed by Lorelei.

Via Metroblogging.