Mother throwing knives at child

Note that this wasn't a "magic trick" with the knives popping out from the boards - you can clearly watch them travel through the air. Somehow I don't think this would be approved today - which is one reason to wonder which of our current behaviors/tolerances will leave people aghast one generation from now...

"Nice kitty, nice kitty....."

Will Rogers defined "diplomacy" as the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a stick. That was the thought that came to mind when I viewed these photos sent to me by a friend. The original claim was that these pictures were taken near the town of Spooner, Wisconsin, looking from the kitchen out toward the deck, with the cougar watching the family's children playing on the kitchen floor. Others have doubted the Wisconsin provenance of the images, and the second one showed up on Pizdaus, a Russian photo-storing website; as I view the first image, the wooden chair looks more European than upper-Midwest-American, so until I hear otherwise, I will assume this is a European/Russian cougar. Still, it's an impressive pair of images.

These are magnificent animals almost always harmless to humans, but the display of dentition in the second photo is a reminder of the respect that must be accorded to wildlife.

Things we learn from the movies

Lists like this have been on the internet since the days when hard drive capacities were measured in megabytes, so it's impossible to give credit to the original creator. There have been hundreds of entries, whose humor or relevance depends on which movies you've seen; the ones below are some of my favorites.

All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

The ventilation system of a building is a perfect hiding place. No one will think of looking for you there, and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.

Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

Vehicles that crash always burst into flames.

Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

All single women have a cat.

It does not matter if you are outnumbered in a martial arts fight; your enemies will wait to attack you one by one until you have knocked out their predecessor.

When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them.

When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to one other.

Many musical instruments - especially wind instruments and accordions - can be played without moving the fingers.

All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices so you know when they're going to go off.

It is always possible to park outside the building you are visiting.

Laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of an invading alien civilization.

All computer disks will work in all computers, regardless of software.

When driving a car, you should look at the person sitting beside you for the entire journey.

Having a job of any kind will make a father forget his son's birthday.

All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man beside her.

Kitchens don't have light switches; at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light.

Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles every morning, even though the family never has time to eat them.

Stolen clothes are always a perfect fit.

Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally when you turn the television on.

Computers never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.

You're likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

Clever fence, clothespin, and advertisement

Harnessing the energy of children at play

It's a common observation among mature adults that when they watch children playing they muse "I wish I had that much energy." Some extremely imaginative individuals have figured out how to harvest that energy for practical use. Playpumps International hooks a playground-type merry-go-round to a water pump, so that when children push it around, they pump groundwater up to where it can be stored and used. This virtually eliminates the risk of surface-water-related infectious diseases in the community.

The fence, clothespin, and advertisement in the post above this one are labelled "clever," but it's for inventions like this one that I created the category. I strongly recommend viewing the brief video at the company's website. It's the cleverest idea I've seen all year.

Is John McCain Electable?

This YouTube video is pure politics, and therefore of minimal interest to most of the viewers of this blog. It presents John McCain as being unsuitable for the presidency because of his bellicosity and apparent prevarication. It's almost 9 minutes in length and therefore will never be seen on television, so only the internet-savvy will have an opportunity to view it. It is decidedly not an uplifting viewpoint on the candidate, but it does present aspects of the man that will likely not be available from the mainstream media.

Those who have come to this blog for entertainment rather than enlightenment should skip this entry and continue further down the column, where there are links to some cheerful cartoons.

Anti-John McCain video

Those who have no interest in politics should just skip over this post also, as should McCain supporters. For the rest, this is a clever YouTube entity; at a minute-and-a-half it's a concise presentation of the reasons some people are wary of his candidacy. It is a parody of the pro-Obama "Yes We Can" video, and like that one, this one was not created by any official campaign committee (like most political videos, the best ones are done by the amateurs).

Happyness

Just finished watching on cable the Oscar-nominated Will Smith-and-son movie "The Pursuit of Happyness," which I can recommend without reservation; it's a heartwarming story of a man who works his way up from homelessness to financial success. The reason I decided it was blogworthy is that by coincidence I encountered two related items on the 'net today.

The first was this story in the Christian Science Monitor of a young man who after graduation from college decided to see if he could truly "work his way up" starting only with a gym bag and $25. He lived in a shelter, worked as a day laborer, and used common sense and thrift; ten months later he was living in an apartment, had bought a truck, and had $5,000 in savings.

In contrast to that is this older MSN article about lottery winners who blew their fortunes and returned to poverty.

p.s. - yes, I know the title of this post is misspelled; you have to see the movie to understand why.

"Gerald McBoing-Boing"

Michaelangelo Matos has done the internet-surfing time-wasting world a great favor by collecting in one blog entry links to YouTube videos of 44 Academy Award-winning short animations. (Wiki has a comprehensive list of nominees and winners from 1931 to the present).

I've selected seven animations to place here in TYWKIWDBI, starting with Gerald McBoing-Boing, embedded above, which won the Academy Award in 1950.

A brief note to several computer novices in my family. The videos are stored at YouTube and embedded here as an image. If you have a reasonably fast internet connection you can play the video by clicking on either one of the forward arrows. This will not save it to your computer; if you wish to view it again or send it to someone, you can use this blog's address, or click the "menu" button under the video to see the url for bookmarking. Some of these animations have no dialogue, but I recommend playing all of them with your computer sound on (for this one it's mandatory, since the text was written by Dr. Seuss.)

"When Magoo Flew"

I'll admit there's no particular "artistic merit" that distinguishes Mr. Magoo cartoons, but no child of my generation grew up without encountering him, and one would have to be a curmudgeonly grouch not to at least get a smile out of these six minutes of predictable silliness that won the award in 1954.

"Balance"

We now jump forward to the award-winning animation in 1989, and it is obvious that computer graphics have already supplanted traditional "cartoon" technology. "Balance" is frankly a bit bizarre, and one commenter at the YouTube hosting site indicated that he had "wasted 8 minutes of his life" watching it. That's a harsh judgment, and frankly if someone has time to browse the internet (and this blog in particular), then you can afford to spend eight minutes on this impressive creation.

"Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase"

In 1992 the winning animation featured "morphing" technology, which always fascinates me, and which I featured in a previous post on 500 Years of Women in Art. The one embedded above uses colored clay renditions of modern art sequenced using digital morphing. I don't personally care for most modern art, but many of the images used here are common icons of our culture (Lichtenstein, Warhol, Picasso, Munch, O'Keeffe etc), and whether or not you like the art, the morphing transitions are fascinating.

Wallace and Gromit - "The Wrong Trousers"

I'm embarrassed to admit that I was unfamiliar with Wallace and Gromit until I encountered this video. The two main characters (the man and his dog) are created with stop-motion clay modeling; the video I've embedded above is an "promo" excerpt (the chasing of the penguin bandit) from "The Wrong Trousers," which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 1993. After viewing this 3-minute episode I checked our library website and was delighted to find that they have DVDs of all three Wallace and Gromit movies.

"Quest"

"Quest" won the Academy Award in 1996. It has an alternate-reality, science-fiction-like appearance, with imagery that I believe would be better appreciated on a large screen. The "plotline" is circular and ultimately not particularly satisfying (in my view), but the artwork justifies the viewing.

"Father and Daughter"

The last animation I'll use is the one that won the award in 2000. "Father and Daughter" represents a return to a more "minimalist" style that looks like it could be created with a "flip book." It has no dialogue, a distinctly European flavor, and a striking poignancy.

As a reminder, links to videos of the other 40 award winning animations are stored at this blog.