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December 5, 2007

Viral catchy video; Silly GPS routes; Should Dalai Lama be reborn? Solar spray paint; Vatican astronomer debunks...

"Won't you blog about this song?"

Here Comes Another Bubble, created by Matt Hempey of the a capella Richter Scales (of San Francisco, of course), and sung by them, is a viral musical satire (cf. Jib-Jab) to the tune of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire.. Fortunately, the lyrics, by , are in subtitles.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. All the cool kids are in it -- of course it's hot. (Kind of like Dr. Hook angling for the cover of Rolling Stone.)

Geek trivia: YouTube displays the middle frame of an embedded video. Think this middle frame of TechCrunch's Michael Arrington deliberately placed there?

Following blindly: Rural Britain wants to take itself off the GPS map. A funny story from the IHT:

WEDMORE, England: This little village would seem to be an obviously poor place through which to drive your average large truck. It is in an obscure rural location. Its streets were built in the days of horses and carts. There is no room to pass and no room to maneuver.

But trucks and tractor-trailers come here all the time, as they do in similarly inappropriate spots across Britain, directed by GPS navigation devices, which fail to appreciate that the shortest route is not always the best route.

"They have no idea where they are," said Wayne Hahn, a local store owner who watches a daily parade of vehicles come to grief - hitting fences, shearing mirrors from cars and becoming stuck at the bottom of Wedmore's lone hill. Once, he saw an enormous tractor-trailer speeding by, unaware that in its wake it was dragging a passenger car, complete with distraught passenger.

With villagers at their wits' end, John Sanderson, chairman of the parish council, has proposed a seemingly simple remedy: getting the route through Wedmore removed from the GPS navigation systems used by large vehicles...

To be or not to be?Dalai Lama could forgo reincarnation to foil China crackdown. I didn't know it was optional.

The Daily Mail:

The Dalai Lama could end 600 years of history by forgoing rebirth in a bid to stop China seizing control of his reincarnation, he has revealed.

The exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader proposed to hold a referendum among his 14 million followers to decide whether he should be reborn.

If the majority vote "no" it would end a lineage that reputedly dates back to the 14th century, when a young shepherd was appointed the first Dalai Lama.

But if they vote "yes" he might appoint a reincarnation while he was still alive, breaking the tradition of being reborn as a small boy after his death...

I think that says he'd appoint his future self in advance. (Scratching head.)

Wasn't Galileo a heretic? Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer. The Scotsman.

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies....

Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a speech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled "Why the Pope has an Astronomer", said the idea of papal infallibility had been a "PR disaster". What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept "somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority".

"It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear," he said.

The Vatican has a meteorite collection?

Paint it warm: Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough. National Geographic. The solar motorcycle would be a natural. I'll have it in candy-apple red, please.

Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day.

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell phone or other wireless devices. A hydrogen-powered car painted with the film could potentially convert enough energy into electricity to continually recharge the car's battery....

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 2:33 AM | Permalink