Open Hatch

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Improbable Research, a university organization devoted to highlighting the absurd in real-life scientific research and development, is today radio broadcasting their annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony, which awards this farcical prize for the most improbable scientific work of the year.

This short YouTube video from a series the organization assembles is a fine example of some of their hilarious findings.

This is their page about the broadcast today, linking to the NPR listing of local carrier schedules of the broadcast and Science Friday’s web broadcast page.

For my area I’m tuning into KUER-FM 90.1 from noon to 2 for the broadcast.

I’m posting this awesome tune from a commodore 64 game I never played. But I’m listening to it. This is by the renowned 64 composer Rob Hubbard.

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(Download MP3, ~4.5MB)

I was at Buy Low in Provo this evening, looking at toilet paper. I saw what seemed like a good bargain to me, and as I started to grab a package, an old woman driving an automated cart arrived, and held up a package from her cart.

This one’s got a thicker weave, but it’s softer, it’s easier on your buns. You get six in a package for four dollars, and it’ll last you longer.

Ya gotta shop when the right folks are around to help you out.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (34.0MB)

See my description and the YouTube upload here.

Every rare once in a while I get this surprise email from Zazzle saying my product sold. And I think, “Oh yeah, I want to, uh, market those things.”

$7.72 in royalties this year! Folks, we’re raking it in

Clearly, there could be a market (see the comment there) – I just gotta find it and market to it.

I am quite certain I recently spotted this kind of bird sitting in and then launching off a tree at the mouth of Provo Canyon as I drove around the bend of the road heading to that canyon. This was several days ago in the late evening coming home from work. This bird was very large, all black except a white sort of turkey-like neck and head.

I’ve learned this is a surprising or unusual claim, but a google search shows some support for its plausibility.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.0MB)

This is a taping of a pitch of this film concept, Extreme Mormons, to several producers in LDS film in Utah – some HaleStorm folks, and the woman who at the end says “Yeah – I doubt it” is Stin Hansen who was a producer on God’s Army and States of Grace. The folks pitching it didn’t make the trailer – they had interviewed the HaleStorm folks about LDS film for a documentary about the LDS and offshoot religions, and they were showing it as a favor to an LDS filmmaker in Australia who had used some of their equipment to make this.

The concept trailer is apparently clips from, or based on, an episode of a television show in Australia entitled “Saffron vs. God” with a premise of a (discontented?) Jew trying out various religions, this round being mormonism.

This to me is very funny – especially that the producers were very charitable and didn’t laugh: they probably see stuff that rediculous pitched all the time that is not farce. I don’t know.. if I were a producer and that was pitched to me I think I would lack the charity to not laugh my head off. Or at least, I did when I saw what was being pitched.

I wonder if the folks pitching it weren’t pulling a gag on the producers – the whole tone of thier pitch is serious, but the concept trailer they show is completely over the top. It is just way too extreme to not be farce.

If I had money to burn I’d pick this up for production in a heartbeat. It’s made me laugh my head off. But I’d market it to non-mormons.