Building Demolition Fail

From today's Mail Online, this video, taken on December 30, shows a 22-floor residential building being demolished in the city of Liuzhou in southern China. As you will see, it does not go quite right.

That reminds me of another classic demolition fail from last year. Turkish television showed successful examples of how to demolish buildings. And then they showed this.

A Very Cool ISS Animation

USAToday features an animated time line of the construction of the International Space Station. It begins with the arrival in orbit of the Russian-built Zarya module in November 1998 and ends with the future installation of the Jules Verne automated transfer module.

As each module arrives, you can click on the menu at right screen to get more info - and more animation - on each module. Very cool indeed. I could spend a lot of time in the Cupola attached to Node #3 (when it arrives).

Lots more on the ISS at National Geographic.

Happy New Year

May this new year and new decade be the best ever.

How To Grade Exams

Law professor Glenn Reynolds links to law professor Daniel Solove's pictorial essay A Guide to Grading Exams. Isn't this the way they all do it?

Ring The Old Year Out - Ring The New Year In

Bring us all good luck. Let the good guys win.

It's the 20th anniversary of a song I heard for the first time on New Year's Eve 1989. This is Murray McLaughlin's prayer for a happy new year with Tom Cochrane and Paul Hyde.

Let The Good Guys Win.

“And Then Tragically Obama Got Elected”

Victor Davis Hanson writes a year-ender about Barack Obama's Humpty-Dumpty view of the world and the dilemmas and paradoxes he is facing - or not:

And then tragically Obama got elected and discovered that the real world had no relationship whatsoever to his fantasy impressions of it. In a cosmos of radical Islam, Chinese bankers, Japanese exporters, and Arab oil producers, there were no more law school profs, Rev. Wrights, or Chris Matthews and Newsweek editors to wink and nod and reassure Obama that his mellifluous but empty rhetoric allusions were at all reality-based.

As always, Hanson's commentors add invaluable insights. Like this:

Seems to me Mr. Obama is much more interested in the interests of the mandarin class and the destruction of liberty around the world. He and his ilk are far more interested in taking away my rights and my liberty than in defending or expanding them. Go to Honduras, to Iran, to Georgia and Israel and see thou what interests Barack Obama. If I were Taiwanese, I would be dreading now what mean price we will sell them to pay for the financing of bureaucracy and union jobs.

Once In A New Year's Eve Blue Moon

In honour of tonight's very rare New Year's Eve blue moon (the last time was in 1990, the next one 's in 2028), here's Blue Moon performed by genius violinist Stephan Grappelli and the awesomely-named guitarist Martin Taylor in Australia in 1990. Jon Burr on bass:




More about the "blue moon" at National Geographic. And there will be a partial eclipse of the moon, for sky watchers in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia tonight.

Happy New Year to all my faithful readers!

New Chart From Chart Of The Day

As the zeros decade concludes, today's chart presents the price performance of the Dow for each decade since 1900. So how do the 10 years just passed rank? As today's chart illustrates, the performance of the Dow from the close of 1999 through 2009 was the second worst performance on record. Only the Great Depression decade of the 1930s was worse. The current zeros decade also shares an unfortunate outcome with the 1930s in being a decade during which the Dow actually ended lower than where it started. Happy new decade.

Why Is Printer Ink So Expensive?

I've thought about this every time the dang printer runs out of ink. Why is it the ink ends up costing waaaaay more than the printer? It really bugs the heck out of me that I had to hack my Brother 240C printer to print black just because one of the colour cartridges dried out.

From Boing Boing, a graph that compares the price of inkjet ink to other liquids. Hint: Ink costs more than human blood. Way more.

From the comments, one possible explanation:

Genuine HP Black Ink #45 is made by washing Karl Rove's soul in the tears of unicorns, for maximum opacity and colorfastness. Cheap 3rd party cartridges just aren't the same.

Pomplamoose - Always In The Season

Another great original from Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte, this time accompanied by Zoe Keating on cello, Anton Patzner on violin, Matt Payne on trombone and Andy Wilke on trumpet. I thought I saw Jack Conte on trombone for a second.


As always, brilliant mastering and editing give Pomplamoose a surprisingly big sound. Turn it up and wait for the good mic to kick in!

The Iranian Revolution?

The Times asks if the current uprising in Iran constitutes a revolution.

The Known Universe

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

For more information visit http://www.amnh.org

Be sure to watch full screen.

YouTube Christmas Extravaganza

Wade Johnston's Christmas video collection from 2008. Includes this Christmas ditty from Pomplamoose:

The Muppets - Bohemian Rhapsody

This video peaked when it debuted about a month ago. Then yesterday, it shot up again. Going on 12-million views...