Thursday, June 25, 2009 | by nathan

Streaks on the China

Now that I get home an hour after Brian does, I often come home to find him playing Wii in the living room. Imagine my delight to come home the other night to find him about to complete a puzzle on the mid-1980s video game edition of Wheel! Of! Fortune!, especially since I not only got to yell out "MISTER BELVEDERE!" really loud, but also to start up singing the theme song, which I remember very, very well, thank you:

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | by nathan

Feel Small For A Minute

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Thanks to Sweetney for posting this; it really does murk with my brain to realize just how tiny we all really are.

Thursday, June 4, 2009 | by nathan

Now I Need To Find A Mop!

This has gone around the world and back this week, but I’m going to go ahead and join in the party in case you haven’t seen it yet. There are a lot of "literal" versions of music videos out there, but this one is undoubtedly my favorite.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 | by nathan

Yellowstone

Yellowstone from Andrew Curtis on Vimeo.

My dad’s doctoral thesis was all about Yellowstone, and can you believe that I’ve never been there? This video makes me want to go; it is, after all, in one of the 14 contiguous states I have yet to visit. This video also makes me want to trade up my SLR to something that can do HD video, but if I had to guess which one of those two things was gone to happen first, well, it’s anybody’s guess. Someday!

Saturday, May 16, 2009 | by nathan

Turbinomic

A building that generates its own power and supplies the surplus back to the grid. THESE are the kinds of solutions we need, people; we’ll see what feasibility studies have to say about whether or not this is a real possibility, but if it is, I can’t think of a better place for it than OKC. Read more about Turbinomic here.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 | by nathan

A Grand Old Relic, With A Grand Old History

Brian took this photo of me when we pulled off the side of the road near Black Mesa State Park to hike some very cool rock formations, and despite the fact that I’m not super-crazy about having my photograph taken, I really like this one. That sweatshirt I’m wearing is probably the single most comfortable piece of clothing I own. I’ve had it since 2001 and now that they don’t make that particular one anymore, I really mean it when I say that when it inevitably wears out - I figure it’s got at LEAST 8 more years in it - that I might give it a funeral and a military burial. If Mary Chapin-Carpenter hadn’t already done it, I’d even write it this song (the embedding is disabled, so just click the video player to watch/listen at YouTube).

Monday, April 13, 2009 | by nathan

Nobody Poops But You

I don’t know about you, but when I saw the trailer for the Spike Jonze-directed film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, it sorta made me want to find the nearest hipster and beat the living snot out of him. It was just so - I don’t know, it just looked like it was trying too hard to be cool. This movie listens to bands that don’t even exist yet.

And so, when Schmutzie posted this, a hilarious send-up of the aforementioned trailer, well, I sorta instantly adored it. Ladies and gentlemen, Spike Jonze presents Everyone Poops: 

Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | by nathan

Courage

I’m currently writing a column about Sally Kern - or, I should say, I’m TRYING to write a column about Sally Kern and it’s proving exceptionally difficult - but in the meantime the news out of Iowa and Vermont is really buoying up my spirits and maybe thinking that "mean and unfair in the name of Jesus" won’t be the prevailing order of the day. Check this video of Iowa’s Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who refused cooperation in pushing forward a bill that would amend the Iowa Constitution to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman:

Saturday, March 21, 2009 | by nathan

Computer Owner

As someone with a journalism degree, who loosely ascribes that phrase to some aspects of his career, I find the current changes in the journalism industry at once fascinating, thrilling and a little alarming. The idea of major newspapers vanishing entirely confounds and depresses me, while the prevailing wisdom that an internet connection and a bit of time automatically makes a person a "journalist" makes me worry greatly. Still and all, I think the possibility of greater access to real journalism via the internet and mobile devices is a promising one. All that is to say, I was deeply interested in this local news piece from 1981, which is remarkably prescient. It took two hours to download the entire contents of a day’s newspaper, about four to six times longer than the average person spends reading it:

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 | by nathan

I’ve Dreamed This

Flying from Sam Fuller on Vimeo.