Matters of Great Import

Blooms on our Maple – in February, originally uploaded by Chris P..

A few days a year, you can walk out into our front yard and stand under a tree and be surrounded by buzzing. Not around you, but above you – humming along as local bees go mad for the maple blossoms which stay around for about 3 good days…

I’d like to let you in on a very self referential and very geeky in-joke posted to the web.  It takes a bit to get to the punch, but if you’re in on XKCD, you’re probably rated just to skip to the bottom.

Geeks like the Discovery Channel, in general… I mean how could you not like a channel which gives guys like Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman a budget, a ton of resources and research material and explosives.  Last year or so, the Discovery channel did an ad expressing its love for the world with many of its stars taking part in singing a silly song – see Ref 1.

Ref 1.

Geeks, if they’ve been exposed to it also love XKCD.  What is XKCD?

xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe,^[1][2] a former contractor for NASA.^[3] Munroe describes it as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”^[4][5] It is widely read^[6] and has been recognized in such mainstream media as The Guardian^[7] and The New York Times.^[8]

Ok, so there was this XKCD take on the Boom-de-Yadda video above… see Ref 2.

Ref 2.

So – given these two separate artistic endeavors, in the great modern tradition of the web… we have a mashup.  This web-comic has been re-created in video, with significant web-geeky folks taking the roles of the speaker in individual cells…

The Result:  XKCD Boom de Yadda….

Tons of in-joke references for why certain folks were chosen to sing certain parts – You may not recognize them, but Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Lawrence Lessig, et al are here – see the full rundown.

‘Calvin and Hobbes’ fans still pine 15 years after its exit | Living – cleveland.com – - cleveland.com.

I had to blog this just for an opportunity to embed a Calvin and Hobbes…

(Released in 2005, “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes,” a three-volume collection of every C&H strip, has sold more than 500,000 copies. Perhaps not all that impressive — until you realize the set weighs 23 pounds and retails for $150.)

This has a special place on my shelf.

Magnum’s Photo Archives Make Move to University of Texas – NYTimes.com.

The Harry Ransom Center at UT is getting over 180k photos from over 50 years of journalistic photography.  I hope to one day go down and look at a few in person.

Two 7 Year Old Newsies, Profane and Smart, Selling Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee, originally uploaded by The U.S. National Archives.

The National Archives has joined Flickr and is digitizing much of our photographic history…

From: Series: National Child Labor Committee Photographs taken by Lewis Hine, compiled ca. 1912 – ca. 1912, documenting the period 1908 – 1912 (Record Group 102)