I feel like I've posted this before but I can't find it despite Candleblog's excellent search functions.  Anyway, via Digital Digressions comes this wonderful Muppet Show clip (which reminds me of SNL's Tarzan, Tonto and Frankenstein singing sketches).  I give you: The Swedish Chef, Beaker and Animal singing Danny Boy.  (Make sure you have some tissues handy when you watch.)

 

Ah yes, as I start to mentally gear up for my annual SXSW Interactive and Film Conference trip, I am reminded that there is always a cooler conference. 

TED is going on in Monterey, California right now.  TED stands for "Technology Entertainment Design" and is a gathering of the big brains in those fields talking and performing for each other and generally feeling really, really smart about everything.  You have to either be invited to TED, or you have to ask to be invited and pay them several thousand bucks.  Here are some interesting TED-related links that I've stumbled across in the last couple of days...

• Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder has been live-blogging from the conference, recapping all of the interesting talks and performances he's seen.  The posts are littered throughout BB today and yesterday.
• BIL is the cutely named open-source counter conference to TED, held this weekend for free in Monterey.  Standing for "Breeding. Intelligence. Luminary." it's sort of like what Slamdance is to Sundance, I suppose.
• Burlington-based start up Kluster.com is at TED showing off their cool social network/brainstorming web app.  They posted video of (a very nerd-chic attired) Robin Williams stopping by and goofing with them at their booth. (via Vermont Tiger)

 

I teach class on Tuesdays, which results in me working the night shift at VCAM.  There's nothing scheduled tonight and with the weather, I have a feeling it's going to be a lonely, slow night.  That's okay though.  I can get some Exit Voices work done and organize my thoughts around SXSW.  Maybe start to create a schedule. 

In the meantime, here are a few links I want to share with y'all...

• Stuff White People Like is a blog about stuff that white people like. (via The Contrarian, via Tanner)
• Star Wars Episode IV according to a three year-old (via Gerry Canavan)
• More than that Yes We Can video, you should watch this video by IP professor and Smarty Pants Internet Folk Hero, Lawrence Lessig, if you still need convincing that Obama is the best choice for our next President.

 

Boing Boing has linked to the website of a nifty little library in Brooklyn, NY that features out-of-print books.  The Reanimation Library's site features an index of images scanned from some of these books.  Clicking through the images is fun.  Here's one...



It's a little like my favorite photo blog, Riot Clit Shave, from which I pulled the following image...


 

The fundies are right.  Give up.

via Five Before Chaos 

Here are some links that have been haunting my Firefox tabs...

• Scientist Valentines (Thanks e_to_the_em!)
• Marcel, the mime frog, has hightailed it to the left coast.  Eva Deadbeat has the pics.
• Fox is suing Warner Bros. over who has the rights to make the long-in-development Watchmen movie.  (Thanks Flameape!)
• Sigh.

 

Steve Benen linked to my film about him today, so a lot of folks are getting to see it now.  Also Kevin Drum linked to it about an hour ago.  802 Online has it up too.  That SXSW rejection is starting to sting less.  :)

UPDATE: Thanks to Candleblog pal Neil Jensen (who has linked to the film himself), MyDD's Breaking Blue has the YouTube video embedded.  Neil also does his due diligence and covers the Green Mountain Daily base too.  Thanks Neil!

UPDATE 2:  Here is a smattering of other sites that are linking to Digital Pamphleteer today...

• John Cole's Balloon Juice
• Matt Browner Hamline's Hold Fast
• Angry Bear
• Writes Like She Talks
• UmmYeah
• It's My Right to be Left of the Center
• Crooks & Liars (w00t!)
• Skulls in the Stars
• Shakesville
• Later On
• Too Sense

Weirdly, even though most of those sites have embedded the YouTube clip and have considerably larger readerships than Candleblog, the number of YouTube views has remained steady at 213 for the last few hours.  Most of those links are not registering either.  Methinks something is fishy with the YouTube stat counter.

LAST UPDATE: The YouTube stat counter jumped at some point tonight and now reflects 1,688 views of Digital Pamphleteer.  I still don't know how accurate that is, but if it can be trusted, that's 1,648 more views than there were when the day began.  Not a bad audience for one day -- certainly a larger audience than I would have had at SXSW, and the comments I've seen on the blogs are almost all positive.  Some folks wished it was longer, but I take that as a compliment.  Also, Candleblog had it's best day, visitor-wise, in months, even though the content that was being linked to wasn't on Candleblog, so there was some click-through stuff happening. 

I guess I've gotta give Steve more reasons to link to me.  Thanks to everyone who posted about the film! 

Spine has a couple of linkable items over at the Dose this weekend.  First he posts about an interesting dream he had featuring yours truly working at an establishment called "Only Bottoms."  No, he did not dream about me dancing at a topless club.  The Spiney one writes...
I wish Spine's dreams included a screen capture feature so I could see that "futuristic firefighter's uniform" for myself.  UPDATE: it turns out, Spine's cerebral cortex does indeed have this feature!

Spine's next post was a bit more on-topic for the Dose.  It's a telling indictment of the world's meat consumption and its significant effects on global climate change -- a fact not typically discussed by Al Gore and other environmental leaders...

Until Al Gore starts talking about this, his Nobel Prize–winning work is shamefully incomplete. Consider this: elsewhere in the article, Bittman cites two geophysicists’ claim that if “Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.” This is not about going vegan or switching from leather to hemp. We’re just talking about eating slightly less meat, for amazing, appreciable results. But what is Gore talking about? Light bulbs.

Light bulbs?  I don't know about Spine, but I light my house by burning lamps that are fueled by the rendered fat of veal calves. 

• If you've read that free Swamp Thing comic posted below and want to know more about this Alan Moore chap, watch this talking-head documentary about him called The Mindscape of Alan Moore.
• Today is the first anniversary of the tragic events of 1-31-07.  Boston is commemorating the event in LED art.
• PSFR #9 is up (finally).  If you've been asking yourself what a "superdelegate" is, you should listen in (hint: it's not someone who was bitten by a radioactive delegate).
• I'm sick again.  sniffle, cough, sneeze... ugh.

 

You've seen Tom Cruise's wacky Scientology video, now see Eugene Mirman's.



Thanks Katie!