Lizard (King) Video

When I embedded some lizard videos the other day, I found that it wasn't too hard (even though I had to edit the HTML). It got me thinking about videos in general. I don't want to turn into the guy who's constantly putting other people's videos on his blog. But there's one more video that I have to post, because it's way too awesome. It's Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison singing the Reading Rainbow theme.

I couldn't figure out how to embed it, but here's the link.

My only quibble is that the guitar sounds more like something from the early Beatles than the work of Robby Krieger.

I've been liking Late Night with Jimmy Fallon more and more recently. Fallon isn't as funny as Letterman was back in the Nineties, when Letterman was doing genius-level comedy, but Fallon's show is the one that I most enjoy in late night right now.

The Higgs Boson

Recently, there have been many news stories discussing the fact that scientists may soon confirm the existence of a theoretical elementary particle known as the Higgs boson. The headlines of these media accounts frequently call the Higgs boson by its nickname, the "God particle", which stems from the particle's great importance in certain theories of physics.

I have to wonder how many people who see these stories think that the God particle actually has something to do with God.

It's probably the same as the number of people who think that the Theory of Relativity is a defense of moral relativism . . .

. . . which would be pretty much everyone.

Lizard Videos

I am going to try to embed some videos. I had nothing to do with making them; I just like them.

The first has already gone viral. It shows a Bearded Dragon (Pogona) playing a video game. Well, really it's just trying to eat the ants depicted in the game.

The second video is one that I would like to see go viral. It shows skinks eating banana slices on a porch at Fort Story in Virginia. The source where I originally read about the video says that the skinks are Broad-headed Skinks (Plestiodon laticeps aka Eumeces laticeps). But I can't be sure, as I can't tell from the footage which of the three local Plestiodon/Eumeces skinks is actually being shown. No matter the species, though, this video is the first evidence of which I'm aware of frugivory in the skinks of eastern North America.

The Long, Dark Night Without Indentation

In an earlier post, I discussed how, when I started the blog, I couldn't indent paragraphs, until, just like magic, Blogger started letting me use the tab key to indent in my posts.

And then, just like magic, at some time between September 1 and October 13, just like magic, Blogger once again stopped letting my use the tab key to indent in my posts.

More Belated Halloween Blogging

December is beginning, so, as I noted in my last entry, it's much too late to blog about Halloween. Also, as Julian Lennon once informed us, it's much too late for goodbyes. I don't know quite how that quote applies here, but there you have it. It's much too late for things.

On Halloween night I enjoy reading a story by H. P. Lovecraft, while listening to King Crimson's classic In the Court of the Crimson King album. (By this point in my life, I am running out of H. P. Lovecraft stories that I haven't read, so I have to ration them carefully.) I find that the spooky, otherworldly strains of early King Crimson and the spooky, otherworldly words of Howard Phillips Lovecraft combine well on a night that one would want to be spooky and otherworldly.

This year, late at night, I came upon this accidental juxtaposition:

It looks as if it could be the cover of the book, but it's actually the book with the King Crimson CD on top. The CD cover art shows the 21st Century Schizoid Man, the song about whom was sampled by Kanye, in what might have been a sign of the apocalypse. (A picture inside the CD booklet depicts the Crimson King himself.)

Here is the book's real cover:

Such interesting coincidences will be harder to come by if recent reports that record companies will stop producing CDs in 2012 are true.

Belated Halloween Blogging

Thanksgiving is over, which means that it is much, much too late to be blogging about Halloween. I posted some entries about Halloween last year, and I wanted to post about Halloween this year. Unfortunately, I was trying to get several other things done, and didn't have time to write anything about Halloween. Also unfortunately, I was not able to finish most of the other things that I was trying to get done.

My main plan for Halloween blogging was to recount the story of attending my friend Adam's Halloween party ten years ago, the last time that anyone invited me to a Halloween party. But that story is much too long, and I don't think that I'll be getting around to it this year.

In addition, just as I marked last Halloween by using my computer to draw a crude jack-o'-lantern, I wanted to mark this Halloween with a crudely-drawn ghost. Now I have produced that ghost; you can see him at the top of this post. (I was trying for a ghost; it could be a really bad attempt at a baby seal, or maybe a white tree stump.)

I leave you with one final thought in the theme of Halloween, and also (for any twelve-year-old girls out there) in the theme of the new Twilight movie: To horseshoe crabs, we are the vampires.

Let's Play Some Moneyball

A few days ago I saw Moneyball. Everyone at the theater received a lovely gift bag containing a Brad Pitt bobblehead doll, a pouch of chaw, and an air freshener in the exciting new "locker room" scent.

That is not true. There was no gift bag.

But I did see Moneyball.

The movie is about a general manager and his assistant who led the Oakland Athletics to an unprecedented string of twenty consecutive victories by implementing a set of controversial hiring practices based purely on statistics. These practices were originally called sabermetrics, and eventually became known as "moneyball" after the book which first chronicled the events in question.

(The movie does not address whether the principles of moneyball have spread to other sports. For example, in professional hockey, is there moneypuck? If a hockey team cannot afford a player who is missing seven teeth, can it compensate by acquiring two other players, one of whom is missing three teeth, and the other of whom is missing four teeth?)

I am not a sports fan, and normally don't see sports movies. The reason that I saw Moneyball was that the general manager's assistant, a character named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, was based on a real person named Paul DePodesta. As I have previously noted, I went to school with Paul for many years in elementary and middle school. I saw the movie because I was interested in seeing a story about Paul, and also because I like to think that if someone made a movie about me, Paul would see it.

I haven't seen Paul in at least twenty years, but I could still pick out some differences between the real and fictional versions of him. Peter Brand looks like Jonah Hill; Paul DePodesta, to judge by internet search results, looks uncomfortably like Anthony Weiner. Peter Brand grew up in Maryland and went to Yale; Paul DePodesta grew up in Virginia and went to Harvard. And, most importantly, Peter Brand has almost no self-confidence; Paul DePodesta had more self-confidence when he was in fifth grade. He is someone whom I could imagine easily navigating the corridors of power in professional sports. He is even someone whom I could imagine being invited to play basketball with the President, kind of like, well, someone else with whom I went to school.

As I have said, I am not a sports fan, and thus the wrong person to appreciate a movie about baseball. And for the most part, it wasn't even a movie about baseball, it was a movie about people talking about baseball. (It was also a movie about spitting–most of the characters spent waaaaay too much time spitting tobacco juice into paper cups.) I suppose that the most interesting part of the story was how the general manager, Billy Beane, had to go to extraordinary lengths to convince or force other people in his organization to go along with his plans.

Beyond that I can only say that I was duly impressed by the smallness of Brad Pitt's nose, which is shown many times in profile.