Jumblerant: March 2014

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Now Why Didn't Anyone Think of That Before?

In the past I have waxed poetic about Sugru and how it is changing the world, one small step at a time. In the post I mentioned how, and showed the video of, an electric wheelchair being personalised for a young lady with an atrophic disease.

Taking that concept a step back, an ingenious Professor, James Galloway of the University of Delaware, has come up with a cheap and cheerful way to help all manner of disabled children, around the world:

Props to this man - and feel free to spread the word.

Hopefully we can help change kids lives for the better.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Colourful Semitism

Antisemitism is on the rise. Whether it is from the rocks and firebombs thrown in the Caucuses, the salutes of French comedians and soccer players or the ink from newspapers, it is all against the Jews.

Image of New Statesman Cover from wikipedia commons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No-one is surprised. There are no cries of 'leave the Jews alone'. I've written about it before here and here. That's fine. That's why Israel exists, you know like all other religions have their own country because they've been the recipients of hatred so much, like the Christians who have....sorry. The Muslims have...

Anyhoo, I was reading a few articles about the rise of antisemitism from such august bodies as The Guardian, The BBC, The New Statesman, The Jerusalem Post and of course, The Times of Israel and realized that if only the Jews had followed the more colorful of their ancestors, maybe the hatred wouldn't be so fanatical?

Over at Buzzfeed they have some great photographs of Russia in the early 20th Century from the Library of Congress, and I found this amazing image that would have made antisemitism nothing if not more colourful!

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

101 Kinds of 'Wow' - Zach Galifianakis

Way back in December 2013 I wrote a little piece about giving His Majesty the Justin of Bieber some respect for interviewing with Zach Galifianakis. I had no idea that this charming individual was taken so seriously as to have politicians come to his studio and his 2 ferns.

And yet, here is the most powerful man in the world. In between 2 ferns.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

Yeah, it blew my mind too.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Monday, March 10, 2014

Game of Thrones, Season 4

"I liked the product so much, I bought the company" to paraphrase Victor Kiam in his legendary Remington shaver commercials of the 80's.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I love me some Game of Thrones. I liked the TV series so much that I bought the books, on my Kindle Fire. Boy - is that an amazing series of books.

L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y. No, literally, he writes about legends.

The TV show is great, and I'm really looking forward to the 4th series, but if you can, I strongly recommend you buy the books. Well worth the time and money invested.

kthanxbai! Jumblerant

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Revenge Is Sweet

Jeff Gordon with the Subway Fresh Fit trophy in Victory Lane. Photo by Jordan McNerney, AARP. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jeff Gordon is a top NASCAR driver, and a bit of a hero of mine too.

About a year ago he joined up Pepsi to scare the bejesus out of a car salesman, by disguising his looks and then taking a car for a test drive. With the car salesman in the passenger sit, not knowing that he was driving with one of the top drivers in the USA.

The salesman's terrified reactions, and subsequent reaction to discovering it was a NASCAR driver all along, earned the Pepsi spot more than 40 million views on YouTube.

Not everyone was so impressed with the stunt, many taking to the interwebz to deride young Mr Gordon as a fraud and a falsifier. One of those deriding the stunt was Travis Okulski, a reporter for the Jalopnik website.

Okulski's words seem to have annoyed Mr Gordon, or at least, given those clever chaps at Pepsi a way to make yet another cheap and easy ad ;-)

in the ad below, Gordon disguises himself as an ex-con (I did 10 years inside) cab driver who gets pulled over by the local law enforcement. What ensues is quite funny, and I just wonder what I would do if I were in Mr Okulski's situation.

The video has just under 14 million views at the time of going to press.

"So, just as I was able to say with total certainty that the first Pepsi Test Drive ad was totally fake, I can say with total certainty that this second Pepsi Test Drive ad is unequivocally, one hundred percent, totally, absolutely real," Okulski writes.

Youc an read Okulski's side of the story here: How Jeff Gordon Scraed The Crap Out Of Me With This Epic Prank

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Just Plain Ugly

I was watching an amazing National Geographic show about the American Wild West, narrated by none other than his amazingness, Timothy Olyphant, of Justified fame.

The show is either great or abysmal - I'm still undecided. Its one of those shows where they stand on the precipice of good taste by making analogies of basically everything. in this instance, to the Old Days of The Wild West. There are 'Homesteaders', 'varmints', and they even call a banana snail 'Slick'.

Yes, its that bad.

On the other hand, the photography is stunning, showing us another angle to the western side of the USA.

Oh, and the ugly? That'd be an underwater elf shown as an aside in the first show.