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press for Cuckoo’s Nest in the Baraboo News Republic

Ben Bromley wrote an article in today’s Baraboo News Republic about our production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

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This is my new favorite thing.

[via Dave Holmes]

A Gaythering Storm

Heterosexual spouses beware! If you don’t act soon, your marriage will be undermined by…um…well…I guess it won’t be affected in the least bit, but…gay people shouldn’t get married, just because!

on open-mindedness

On occasion, when I’ve said I don’t believe (or believe in) something, someone will say I’m not being open-minded.

This video simply but thoroughly explains why not believing something has absolutely nothing to do with open- or closed-mindedness. It also demonstrates why being willing to accept things without evidence or allowing oneself to be easily persuaded is not exactly something to brag about.

[from kottke]

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

These two videos take about 11 minutes total to view and explain what’s happening to the economy in a way that’s pretty easy to understand.

[via BoingBoing]

Hang on to your hat.

“Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.” …one of the many amazing (alarming?) statistics illustrated in this video that shows how quickly the rate of technological advancement is increasing.

[via Open Culture]

DIY RFID scanner for $250

This is why putting RFID tags in passports and driver’s licenses is a bad idea. It’s really easy to read the information from them at a distance without the “mark” knowing they’ve been scanned. Hacker Chris Paget explains how this could violate your privacy.

[via BoingBoing]

Beardyman and “Flutebox” perform at Google

I can’t even imagine how much dedicated practice it takes to be able to do something like this.

Things in Space That Kill Us

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, describes with humor what it would be like to die by being sucked into a black hole, and also describes the Apophis asteroid that might hit earth in our lifetime.

The 99942 Apophis asteroid might impact Earth on April 13, 2036, in which case it would likely wipe out the West coast of the U.S. with several tsunamis. According to Wikipedia the chance is only 1 in 45,000. Of course, if an asteroid doesn’t kill us, there’s always Y2K38.

The Big Beer Bailout

For Immediate Release:

Statement by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., following Congress’s passage of today’s rescue package:

“As we all know, lax brewing practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible brewing and irresponsible drinking. This simply put too many families into beers they could not finish. We are seeing the impact on drinkers and neighborhoods, with 5 million drinkers now behind on their drinking. Some are just walking away from beers they should never have been drinking in the first place. What began as a sub-prime drinking problem has spread to other, less-risky drinkers, and contributed to excess inventories.

These troubled beers are now parked, or frozen, on the shelves of bars, brewpubs, and other drinking institutions, preventing them from serving drinkable beers. The inability to determine the worth of these beers has fostered uncertainty about beers in general, and even about the cultural condition of the institutions that own them. The normal buying and selling of nearly all types of beers has become challenged.

The role of the ratings agencies cannot be overlooked in the creation of this crisis. The Pulitzer, beerer and the National beer Foundation continued to award these beers their top ratings, even as empties piled up all over America.

These undrinkable beers are clogging up our beer drinking system, and undermining the strength of our otherwise sound beer drinking institutions. As a result, Americans’ personal refrigerators are threatened, and the ability of drinkers to store, and of refrigerators to dispense, has been disrupted.

To restore confidence in our beer markets and our beer drinking institutions, we must address the underlying problem – the loss of confidence in our nation’s brewers. That collapse in confidence is choking off the flow of ideas that is so vitally important to our beers. When the beer drinking system works as it should, ideas flow to brewers and home brewers who brew beers, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of beers to households and businesses. But stresses in our leading breweries have led to the current severe and systemic brewers’ block that threatens to undermine access to beers for working Americans.

This bill contains a broad set of tools that can be deployed to strengthen brewers, large and small, that serve businesses and families. Our brewers are varied – from large breweries headquartered in Milwaukee, to regional breweries that serve multi-state areas, to community home brewers that are vital to the lives of our citizens and their towns and communities. The challenges our brewers face are just as varied – from full-scale brewers’ block, to restructuring failed beers, to simply facing a crisis of confidence.

We must implement these new programs with a strategy that allows us to adapt to changing circumstances, and attract the private inspiration which has always made our cultural system so resilient and innovative.

In these difficult times, leadership – and sacrifice – must start at the top. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and I are agreed it is imperative we take the bad beers out of the system, and slowly work our way through these toxic assets. Yes, it will be painful; it will be difficult; but at times like this, the Government must step in and perform its duty, as drinker of last resort.”

Thanks to Julian Gough’s satire [via BoingBoing] for inspiration.