Offbeat posts

April Fool’s Day is pretty annoying for the unprepared. The flood gates of false announcements, buyouts, and new products fill the feeds and often get people excited or discouraged until they remember the date. It gets bigger every year. Some companies such as Google play multiple tricks on people. Others do even worse – making announcements that aren’t so far fetched that they actually get some people to believe them for a time, embarrassing them when they spread the words to their friends. I’ve been a victim of that in the past. Never again. This year’s round includes some standard cleverness,…

In recent years, the popularity of SteamPunk seems to have lost its steam a bit in popular culture, but those who still love the mix of modern technological insights with 19th century style and sensibilities hold to the fictional beautification of society as if it were a full-blown movement. As art forms go, SteamPunk is most often manifested as a part of science fiction literature. It usually involves an alternate timeline where technology and fashion adhered to brass, analog innovations, and steam power to push into the 20th century and beyond with roots in the British Victorian era as well…

Leave it to Doctor Who to squeeze two intriguing lines into a single 41 second teaser. One might even argue that there’s a third. First, the Doctor says, “You are the only mystery worth solving.” Doctor Who fans (AKA real geeks) love a good mystery and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for us. Then, they cut to a scene that has the Doctor uttering words we never thought we would hear. “I am the Doctor and I am afraid.” Whatever it is that could scare him, we’re dying in anticipation to find out more about it. Here’s the teaser: …

There are many videos, both parodies and serious ones, that give a particular angle or treatment to the exceedingly-popular HBO series, Game of Thrones. As the start of season three nears, we’ve already broken down the real trailer, laughed at the mashup with The Princess Bride, and been blown away by the stunning Minecraft treatment. Now, we get to see what might be considered the best of them all – the 1995 re-imagining of the intro. It starts off with an ancient lead in from HBO, then we launch into a perfect compilation of the previous two seasons. Appropriate 90s music plays uncomfortably in…

In a country 11 years removed from the last major terrorists attack that is working through economic problems, why would a virus that has been eradicated in the wild for over 30 years prompt the government to spend nearly half a billion dollars to acquire enough antiviral to treat two million people? It’s a question that many are asking. The answers all sound pretty fishy. The smallpox virus once terrified the majority of the world. With a death rate of 1 in 3, it’s over thirty times more deadly than the worst forms of flu. Even today, it strikes fear into those who remember the 1940s and 1950s when smallpox…

“I gotta have more cowbell!” It has become one of the most popular skits in Saturday Night Live history. When Chistopher Walken played The Bruce Dickinson in a skit that had Will Ferrell playing Gene Frenkle from the band Blue Oyster Cult, the need for more cowbell was born. It was a good skit, but the absurdity of enhancing the song with the obnoxious sound of the cowbell really hit home and made it memorable. In social media, that’s the whole point. When you look at the various posting styles that businesses employ on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others, there’s something normally missing. Few…

“I brought you a special present,” Peter Falk tells a tiny Fred Savage. There haven’t been many shows that have as passionate of a fan base as Game of Thrones. With season 3 coming in two weeks, the promos, speculation, and anticipation have been almost as annoying as the weeks leading up to an Apple product release. Almost. Here’s an exception. Those who have seen The Princess Bride know that the whimsical tale of love, honor, revenge, and a prince named Humperdinck is actually two stories – one of the Princess and her long lost Prince, and one of a grandfather and grandson bonding around the telling…

We know what it is. We know what it does. We have an idea of how it’s being spread. Despite a large number of concerned scientists focused on white nose syndrome (WNS), the bat fungus that is spreading rapidly and that has a 95% mortality rate, we still don’t know how it started, how to slow its spread, and how to cure it. Bats are not normally considered essential parts of the ecosystem, but they are an integral part in balancing the natural infrastructure of the world, particularly in insect population control. Areas where the bats have been hit by WNS have noted a measurable increase in insects, including…

Let’s face it. Not every superhero can live the life of Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark. Some might even contend that if Peter Parker didn’t have to make a living, he could spend more time saving the world rather than doing the bidding of J. Jonah Jameson. Corporate sponsorship actually makes a lot of sense. Of course, that would probably be the case in the real world if superheroes like Superman weren’t just stuck in fiction. If athletes can get endorsements, who wouldn’t want to pay to have their logo flying around the city or on the front page of the NY Times after a superhero saves the world again? There’s…

They say you shouldn’t judge by appearances or even fashion styles. Einstein often looked like someone who couldn’t even dress himself or comb his hair, but he turned out to be pretty smart. The best barbers don’t always have the best haircuts. In North Korea, the best surgeons often wear a chef’s hat when presenting new technology to their leaders. That’s the conclusion that can be drawn by the image above, which was released by the state-controlled news agency describing the new Taesongsan General Hospital being built by the army on orders of Kim Jong Eun. As The Atlantic’s David Graham pointed…