Thou Shalt Not Be Colloquial: why the King James Bible endures (New York Times) Sadat Shami: “Awesome overview of the New York Times’ R&D Lab’s Project Cascade – a tool to explore the life stories in social spaces” (Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard) @StartupJesus: “Googling ‘Torture + Friday’ used to return hits about Good Friday, …
Category Archives: Humor
An epic rickroll
This is the ultimate rickroll:
The best Barack Obama impression
If you search for “obama impressions” on YouTube, you’ll get a ton of hits. But for my money, the best by far is by a comedian named Marlin Hill. Check out his appearance on a radio show in Milwaukee (part 1, part 2). Uncanny. Part 1: Part 2: (Updated October 13: added part 1)
Asian-American cultural tidbits
Just in time for the end of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: Secret Asian Man by Tak Toyoshima is a nationally syndicated comic strip (one of the few, if not only, by an Asian-American), that often deals with racial issues in the U.S. I first saw it in the Mercury News. One book on my …
Music tidbits
On my recent trip to Italy, the first two songs I heard in that country was Supernatural Superserious by R.E.M. and Love Song by Sarah Bareilles, in a taxi in Pisa. At first, I wondered if the cab driver was playing American music only to satisfy the tourists, until he started singing along to “Love …
Roundup
A few months ago I said I’d blog about the highlights I had gleaned from my friends’ blogs. Well, here they finally are: Twitter is the latest social software craze from the valley, whose appeal I barely understand. Anyway, if you want to know what the buzz is about, Thomas Han, an avid user, has …
More Internet video fun
For you Billy Joel fans, Here Comes Another Bubble. Earlier this year, Conan O’Brien was in San Francisco for a week. Watch his visit to Intel (part 1, part 2) and you’ll be impressed with what he gets away with. And I bet Sam Wo Restaurant in Chinatown is getting a bump in business after …
Jonathan Coulton
My colleague Jeff clued me in to a singer-songwriter, Jonathan Coulton. His gentle voice and smooth delivery belie lyrics that are often twisted and bizarre. Good stuff. He has a good introduction to his music on his web site. I recommend “Code Monkey,” especially if you’re in the software industry. His music video, “Flickr,” shows the …
Phil Frank, Bay Area cartoonist, dies
I was truly saddened when I read in the San Francisco Chronicle that Phil Frank died yesterday. Phil Frank drew the only local comic strip in the country, Farley, which was published in the Chronicle. Indeed he captured the spirit of the Bay Area through his cast of distinctive and wacky characters, and because it …
The Lincoln Highway on the Colbert Report
Michael Wallis, author of The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate, was featured on the Colbert Report! That’s more than a million people who now know what the Lincoln Highway is.