Thursday, August 14, 2008

Friday Collection of the WorldWide Internet


I'm back with more of the internet. Let's jump right on it.
  • The Spanish basketballers scoff at political correctness. Jason Kidd raises an interesting point: If the American team had pulled off a similar stunt, NBA Commissioner David Stern would have been none too happy, and suspensions or fines would be expected. But, wait a second, there are NBA players on the Spanish team; what's going to happen to them? Nothing, that's what. From the Yahoo! Sports article: "And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, 'They won’t do anything to them. It’s a double standard.'”
  • This has been getting lots of internet press lately, and for good reason. The Parallel Universe Film Guide is basically IMDB for movies that never existed. I thought at first that this guy collected fake movies mentioned in other media, like Troy McClure's complete filmography. But it's not. This guy made up all these movies that were never filmed and wrote brief summaries of them. The scary part is how detailed the thing is: he created this whole universe of movies. The fake actors and directors are used consistently throughout the database. So if Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is getting boring for you, you can play Six Degrees of Marshall Fair, who, remember, isn't real.
  • Here's a really tough WorldWide Internet time-waster: How many of the 100 most common English language words can you name in five minutes? It's cool to think about how we use words and which ones are most common.
We'll end off with some youtubery. The first is of Chris Chambers of the Classy Chargers football squad doing cool things, and the second is of (allegedly) Kelly Clarkson and two of her backup singers drunk at Fenway Park singing Sweet Caroline. I watched the video a coupla time and can't for the life of me verify that this is actually Clarkson, but this guy seems very certain.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Could David Stern reprimand NBA players for pulling a stunt like that? Can he police their personal lives because they "represent the league"?

Also perhaps the finite nature of literature reflects the finite nature of man's life in this world? Also it's really hard to write a good, truly satisfying ending to a story (which is why unusual suspects, and dumb and dumber are my favorite movies, and the very ugly duckling from the book stinky cheese man is my favorite short story).