I had heard about this, but I hadn't seen any pictures of it.  As you may well know, in 2005 Andre Agassi and Roger Federer played a tennis match on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab hotel.  The Hotel is the tallest/second tallest in the world.  Of course, the title of tallest anything seems to change every other day now that Dubai has decided to take over the world.  (Note: 1991, 2005)  Anyway, these tennis pictures are great.  My favorite part is the cones.  Look out!

Link

As if the place needed some more advertising (aren't there enough bloggers who will do that for free?), Tiger Woods earned $1M by hitting some golf balls into sea.  Shit, I'll do that.

Link

- Seth

Very Cool Idea

Today's xkcd has an algorithm that, given a point on the planet, calculates a random point within a certain distance of that and outputs the coordinates accordingly. The random point is based on the DOW Opening that day so each day it is, essentially, impossible to predict where the next day's coordinates will be. They call this geohashing (I always wanted to use that term for something else but whatever). I think the whole concept is very cool. What a cool way to meet people. Here's the implementation of the algorithm in Google Maps.

Matt

A Religion For The Rest Of Us

I've been looking for my true calling for quite a while. My Catholic baptism didn't really take. Then, I got sent to a Southern Baptist church for some reason when I was a child. In due corse, I found myself surrounded by Quakers for a long, long, quite time. Since, I've tried embracing the ideals of Pastafarianism, and Bokononism, with moderate degrees of success.  Today, however, I may have found my destiny: The Church of the SubGenius.  

I quote now from the Book of SubGenius:

The Church Of The SubGenius is an order of Scoffers and Blasphemers, dedicated to Total Slack, delving into Mockery Science, Sadofuturistics, Megaphysics, Scatalography, Schizophreniatrics, Morealism, Sarcastrophy, Cynisacreligion, Apocolyptionomy, ESPectorationalism, Hypno-Pediatrics, Subliminalism, Satyriology, Disto-Utopianity, Sardonicology, Fascetiouism, Ridiculophagy, and Miscellatheistic Theology.

I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake, as this is nothing new, but that's the story of my life.  I haven't read the whole wikipedia page about them.  Basically, I'm looking at the list of people who subscribe.  Check it:

• Pee-Wee Herman
• Ash Williams
• Dave Barry
• Timothy Leary

And, perhaps most importantly 

• David Byrne

of Talking Heads, who is responsible for these amazing music videos.

Okay, so I've been wasting a lot of time recently watching old music videos.  That's only because I didn't have access to the MTV machine until it no longer played music television.  So, here're a a couple of cool ones: A-Ha and the White Stripes.

- Seth

Something I Made is On TV

About two months ago I worked for some time on a project in Andersonville here in Chicago building this kick ass counter top and sales station for an eco-friendly children's store. I'm really proud of the work we did there. One of the materials we used was this kirei board. It's a pretty funky material. There is a TV show on NBC that was doing a short segment on this board and so they interviewed my boss and showed the piece we made on TV. It's pretty exciting really! Here's the link to the video. In case you are reading this more than a week after it aired it is in "Season 3, Episode 58."

Matt

Not Overrated

I had the fortune of seeing Barack Obama speak last night at North Carolina's most important building.  We got there almost two hours early, and several uninspiring people spoke for another hour,  but by 10:40 when Barack came on, it was all worth it.  I guess his public speaking skills have been well documented, but I'm here to tell you that everyone else is not wrong.  Furthermore, he said everything I wanted him to say.  From concerns about treatment of prisoners to funding for basic scientific research, I enjoyed what I heard.  He spoke about the Democratic primary stretching on to long, the ludicrousness of the questions he's received over his lack of a flag pin, McCain running for a third Bush term, our failing infrastructure, lobbyists, public education, environmental activism, and more.  And, he was spot on about every topic.  Anyway, here's a part of his speech:

Oh, and he played some basketball.

- Seth

Comedy Sketches

Boing boing posted a link to this list of the "The 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time" that was put out by IFC. It's not worth arguing over the order of their rankings or what was and was not included on the list at all. They put together one hell of a list. There are tons of classics on here (Dead Parrot, Land Shark, Who's On First?) and plenty that I had never seen before. I recommend tackling this list over a couple of days because there is a lot worth seeing.

Matt

Tab Benoit

This weekend my sister Cathi and her friend Robin came into town to visit and they took me to see a cajun blues musician named Tab Benoit.

I know nothing about the blues except what I've learned from The Blues Brothers which is to say I know nothing about the blues. Before he came on there was an opening act that seemed pretty good to me but boy was I wrong. I'm sure they were fine but even my ignorant ear could tell within the first 10 seconds of Tab Benoit's set that he was leaps and bounds better than they. I've never seen anyone wail on a guitar like that. The sounds he can force out should not be coming from a guitar at all. If you get a chance to listen to any of his music or, better yet, if you get a chance to see him live, jump on it. I can garantee you'll have a great time.

Seeing this show pointed out to me once again the fact that there is a lot of music in the world. Just when I think I have a pretty well rounded collection of music that I like I stumble across whole new artists, genres and worlds of music that are great. Alas, my collection may never be complete but I suppose it's better that way.

Matt

Solar Tsunami (No Shit!)

Did y'all see this?  Wild.

Link

Obama's Speech

I'm sure you've all heard about Obama's big speech on race this morning. I just got home and watched the whole thing on You Tube. I'm sure that he doesn't need my repost here but it can't hurt and I think the things he says are right on. I feel like this speech has the potential to go down in history as one of the great speeches of our time. It is 37 minutes long but I encourage you all to watch the whole thing. I know that seems like a long time but it is worth it. Anyway, here it is.


Matt

This Could Be It Folks

Check out this video of a robot with incredible balance abilities. The noise is annoying so I recommend muting it but the things this beast can do are incredible.

The frightening thing here is that at the end of the vid it says that it was funded by DARPA. The way I see it, that means that this thing can't be that far from having guns mounted on it. Forget the Turing test, a robot that can't be knocked down, moves like a gazelle and carries an arsenal of weaponry on its back doesn't have converse with humans it just has to know how to shoot at them. We're fucked.

Matt