Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme

Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme. Doomed I tell you, doomed.

They won't be so cute when they are swarming around your carcass harvesting brains for the first prototype Cybermen.

Haterade: Fictional Racial Slurs

Finally got around to watching Gran Torino this weekend. Turns out Clint Eastwood is the ultra-violent racist grandfather I never wanted or had. Anyway, he spewed so many ethnophaulisms I needed the help of The Racial Slur Database to fully comprehend the movie. Which got me thinking about scifi/fantasy. (Well fine, when am I not?) But this time it was mostly about the fictional words and contexts authors create to express racism in their universes. Here's a list of some I think are interesting.

For expressing racism against robots:

• Skin Job - Blade Runner (1982), Battlestar Galactica (2004)
• Toaster - Battlestar Galactica (1978, 2004)
• Outmodes - Robots (2005)

For expressing racism against the undead:

• Suckheads - Blade (1998)
• Fanger - True Blood (2008)

For expressing racism against genetically modified/different organisms:

• Windup - The Windup Girl (2009)
• Heechy Keechy - The Windup Girl (2009)
• Mutie - X-Men
• Mutts, Muttation - The Hunger Games (2008)

For expressing racism against aliens:

• Prawn - District 9 (2009)
• Buggers - Ender's Game (1985)
• Spoonhead - for Cardassians in Star Trek: TNG

For expressing racism against half-wizards, half-muggle people:

• Mudblood - Harry Potter

For expressing racism against humans:

• Meatbags - Bender in Futurama  (1999)
• Fleshy Ones - Nextwave (2006)
• Milksucker - Men in Black (1997)

For expressing racism against cartoons:

• Toon - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Are there any universes out there that non-homogenous and free from racism? Cause that would be cool.  Any interesting ones I missed above? Leave some haterade in the comments. I always thought when people called me a pizza bagel it was a compliment.

How Much Would the Death Star Cost to Build?

How much would the Death Star cost to build? Eleventy billion dollars? Close.

Happy Presidents' Day

Watch this cool/creepy video of all the POTUSes morphing from one to the other.

Can we all just agree now that Franklin Pierce was the hottest? Sorry, JFK, but dude looks like Jon Hamm!

14th President

Don Draper

Hmmm. Don Draper for President?

Inspector Spacetime

My fellow dorks, there comes a time in the life of dorks when we must band together to do what is right in our dorky world, when we must stand up and support our fellow dorks, and when we must throw money at the internet in order to make awesome crawl out of the womb of brain thoughts.

That time is now!

Rise up, my friends! And throw your money at the internet! Inspector Spacetime needs you!!

Travis Richey has promised that if he can raise the funds from fans, he will make a multi-episode web-series of Inspector Spacetime, the Doctor Who homage from Community. Richey has experience as an independent web series producer, and he also plays Inspector Spacetime on Community. It's a thousand (okay, three) nerdy things coming together at once! Help out by giving to his Kickstarter campaign.

Cease. And also, desist

Hi,

I know a lot of you come here looking for the bacon post. How do I know? Google analytics + that's the only post I put on reddit.com/baconswarm

Well, you've noticed it's not here. It's gone. There is no bacon.

I know. My heart aches, too. I mean, bacon! We all love bacon! It's made of bacon! And it tastes like awesomeness.

Here's the thing. Couple months ago, Google (they run Blogger, if you didn't know) took down the bacon post because they'd received a Cease and Desist. Crummy thing is, I don't know who sent it or what they were upset about, so I can't even edit the post to make everyone happy and smiley again. My guess is either Kevin Bacon's people are hella busy making sure no one ever associates his name with a delicious food (good luck with that one, fellas) or the clip from Wife Swap made someone grumpy.

BUT I DON'T KNOW!!!

It could just be that someone else is claiming that they had thought number 7 on my top ten reasons I love bacon list before I had thought number 7.

If I find out what the issue is, I will fix it with Time Lord speed and repost the bacon post, but until then, I just want everyone to rest assured. I still love bacon. And I always will.

xo,
The Dorktess

Doctor Who Bingo

I'm dying of bronchitis in NYC. The only way to get better is to visit the Doctor.

Thank goodness for Doctor Who bingo!

Please leave suggestions for additional bingo cards in the comments!

edit: here are so many more of these!

Just a thought, Doctor

Based on all your adventures I've seen so far, I think you always look cool in your own way, and I do love Converse sneakers, but shouldn't you be wearing waterproof shoes most of the time?

Piggyback Bandit

I don't usually read the sports page, but every now and then you find one of these gems.

Did you know there's a big, bad man who goes from high school to high school to cheer at basketball games? Did you know that after a team wins and they all cheer together, he always asks someone for a..

a....

a PIGGYBACK RIDE!?!?


Only, apparently, one time he didn't even ask! He just threw himself on some high school basketball player's back and TOOK a piggyback ride.

1. For some reason this is news.
2. Just go read the article on ESP effin' N.com. The man's even called the "Piggyback Bandit."

I die.

Valentines Day Love Song: Positronic Pimp

You do know the Futuristic Sex Robotz, don't you? Perhaps most famous for their "Snakes on a Plane" song. But this one is better.

Tatooine Tuesday

How'd we miss this??

Last September a planet was discovered. Big whoop, right? RIGHT! because it's the first planet that has been discovered that orbits two (count 'em! Two!) suns!!!

NASA scientists found it using the cool as f**k Kepler space telescope in the Kepler-16 System about 200 light years away.

I know what you're all thinking. If Tatooine really exists.......... does Han really exist?

And since I like you, you get to watch this, too.

Mopey Monday: Forlorn Furniture

Ever wished your household was as sad and miserable as you are?

Wish no longer, you pathetic putz! Two MFA design students at Parsons have hacked some random household goods to make the mopey! Using the darkest side of artificial intelligence, the pair of students have made a lamp that fades out in exhaustion and a chair that feels so meaningless and adrift if you're not sitting in it, that it will start to wander aimlessly around your apartment.

The chair sounds super sad, but the lamp idea I kinda like, as I hate having to put in the effort to turn off my lamps after I lit around in their light all day. I'm not really joking. Turning off lamps is the worst.

Check out the forlorn furnishings below.

Burcum Turkmen and Katie Koepfinger's "Emoti-bots" from Michelle Calabro on Vimeo.

Wildlife Control: Analog or Digital

Spanning Brooklyn to San Fran in some sort of The Postal Service like collaboration, the band Wildlife Control has released a great pixel art style video for their song "Analog or Digital". It features robots, dinosaurs and aliens so what are you waiting for?

This Ape is Smarter Than You

This ape is smarter than you:

Don't believe me? Try it yourself.

Tattoos-day: Five Worst Batman

Well I was going to start off the first official Tattoos-day with some badass Hunger Games tats but some other site already beat me to it. Anyway, here's the clear winner over there. Instead let's check out the top five not so great Batman tattoos the internet has to offer:

#5. Batman or Superman. Pick one.

#4. Bat Hand. Might get a little awkward during special alone time.

#3. Lego Batman. Great videogame, bad tattoo.

#2. Michael Keaton constipation face Batman.

#1. Alf-Batman? No, really Doodlebug?

Here's a non-tattoo chaser:

THE AVENGERS!

It was worth sitting through all that weird sport thing to get to see the Superbowl commercial for The Avengers!

Can't wait for May!

Puppy Bowl and Dog-related conspiracies

Happy Puppy Bowl Sunday!

This is always a joyous day. I mean, puppies! PUPPIES!!

But of course this got me thinking about various dog-related media that I love. Particularly the 1961 animated Disney film 101 Dalmatians.

This movie always put a smile on my face. I loved that it was set in England, that the dogs had established a barking-across-the-country telegraph system, all those spots, and that the puppies watched TV quiz shows. I cheered for the goodies and hissed at the baddies.

What I didn't do was math.

Let's backtrack. In the film, Pongo and Perdita, a [married] dalmatian couple have 15 puppies! Excessive, but as Pongo's owner Roger reminds us, Pongo is an "old rascal," which I can only assume means he has a high sperm count. At about the same time as the puppies are born, Roger's wife Anita invites her old school friend Cruella De Vil to visit.

Let's just ignore the fact that Anita would no way in hell actually be "old school friends" with Cruella De Vil who is clearly 30 years older than Anita and made of pure oozing hatred. Anita is a very mild-mannered dog lover who fell for a musician. Not the type to be buddies with rich, evil, 60+ year old fur collectors.

IMPORTANT: Since I have become a dog owner myself, I've had the luck to meet many a dalmatian puppy. In case you didn't know, dalmatians are mid-sized to large-ish dogs. Mature ones can weigh more than 55 pounds.



In a scene right after the puppies are born, Cruella calls the newborns "horrid little mongrels" because they have no spots. Roger and Anita laughingly let their nefarious friend know that dalmatians don't show their spots right away, but that the spots become visible over time. They don't give her exact dates, but it's usually 8-10 weeks before the spots are showing. So, at least 2 months.

Anyway, Cruella sends two goons to steal the puppies in the night. The goons take the puppies back to a creepy old house that apparently only has enough electricity to run a TV, but not the overhead lights. At the house are a ton of pet-store-bought puppies. All the puppies are the same size, except for one fat one, who is fatter than the others. Fat. So, the puppies are also, we can assume, fully weaned as pet stores aren't going to sell you a dog you have to bottle-feed. Therefore, even if they all miraculously got their spots early, they're at least 6 weeks old.

Margot Tennenbaum's coat

But let's say these puppies are 8 weeks old, k? An average 8 week old dalmatian puppy weighs around 14 pounds. The average fully grown red fox weighs 10 to 12 pounds.

Who cares about red foxes? Well, apart from PeTA, I do at the moment, because I'm being logical!

It takes about 18 red foxes to make a coat. Red foxes weigh LESS than 8 week old dalmatian puppies.


WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS SICK WOMAN NEED 100 PUPPIES FOR ONE COAT?????????

But the drama doesn't end there. NO!

Because it's not 101 Dalmatians, my dear dorks. It's 116!

In 1997 Tim Whyte wrote this blog post in which he analyzes the film that his child forced him to watch on repeat. When an ugly cat arrives to rescue the puppies, he meets one who tell him that the majority of the puppies were "bought and paid for" from pet stores. This puppy continues on, informing the cat that there are 99 of them.

I know you're thinking 99 plus Pongo and Perdita. 101.

WRONG!

There are 99 puppies from the pet store. The puppy then points to the fifteen stolen puppies wearing collars and watching TV. Puppy lets the cat know that they "never counted them."

Well, Perdita definitely counted them as she shoved them from her womb. There's 15 of them. Plus your 99 pet store puppies. Plus Pongo and Perdita. 116 Dalmatians.

Sadly when Roger counts all the dogs at the end of the film, we're back to 101, which of course means that 15 puppies were not rescued. So Cruella still got her coat.

Science vs Delirium

Science vs Delirium. Exceptional psychedelic illustrations of famous scientists.

Purrs-day thursday

What what? Not "Hers Day Thursday?"

Nope. But only because I was thinking about purses. Yes, purses. I am a girl after all.

Anyway, I carry a huge purse. It's ridiculous. Some days I just carry a camera bag as if it were a purse. Not so good. The camera gets dirty and I can never carry all the crap I MUST carry, because AAAAAAACK I'm basically Cathy from the Cathy cartoons, so AAAAAAACK! Where's my car-sized purse for all the grimy chapstick tubes I must have with me at all times?!?!?

So of course I started thinking about that magical bag that just holds everything. Don't you wish you had that bag? It seems like weight is never an issue with it. Weird? No! Effing brilliant.

And screw Mary Poppins. Being a girl I automatically HATE anyone who claims to be "practically perfect in every way."

I'm talking about Felix the Cat's magic bag. Not only did Felix's bag hold everything, but it also doubled as a form of transport on many occasions.

I'll let the video do the talking.

Calamities of Nature

Rejoice dorks! A fantastic comic that's been around since mid-2007 has been discovered by me. And you should know about it if you don't. It's Calamities of Nature, and it's about physics, religion, space, philosophy and fuzzy animals. Now if you'll excuse me I've got 640 back posts to catch up with.

Crap! And don't forget to hover over the image with your mouse on their site for the alt text!