Live From New York, It’s Saturday Night Live Not!

`Saturday Night Live’ Staged Amid Strike

Nov 18 09:56 AM US/Eastern
By DERRIK J. LANG

“NEW YORK (AP) – It wasn’t live from New York as usual.

About 150 audience members in a tiny Manhattan theater were the only folks in the world to witness a totally new “Saturday Night Live” episode starring guest host Michael Cera and musical guest Yo La Tengo.

Anyone who tuned into NBC was subjected to a two-week-old rerun featuring Brian Williams and Feist, thanks to an ongoing Writers Guild of America labor strike.

“It was everything that’s never been on the show before,” cast member Kenan Thompson told The Associated Press after the show. “Sometimes it doesn’t get a chance to shine, but it sure shined here.”

The “SNL” cast and writers collaborated on staging the special “Saturday Night Live—On Strike!” event at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to benefit the behind-the-scenes staff affected by the strike. The live performance was not officially sanctioned by NBC, but “SNL” executive producer Lorne Michaels, who celebrated his 63rd birthday, did attend…”

“He came and saw it and laughed a little bit,” said Thompson.

The performance included all the trappings of a typical “SNL” episode, such as a host monologue, musical performance, “Weekend Update” news segment and several comedy sketches—all without any commercial interruption.

Word of the Week: Meme

Meme. As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” In this sense, chain letter components are memes.

(From Link)

A meme (pronounced [miːm] in IPA), as defined within memetic theory, comprises a theoretical unit of cultural information, the building block of cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).

Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976. He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (similarly to Darwinian biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity’s reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate. “Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts.”

(From Wikipedia)

Includes Internet Meme‘s Like:

Thriller performed by prison inmates in the Philippines — Features a recreation of Michael Jackson’s hit music video, performed by prison inmates.

Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma sings along to the Romanian language dance song “Dragostea din tei” by O-Zone.

Hampster Dance — A page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It spawned a fictional band complete with its own CD album release.

Make Yo Face Orange Ghetto Boy

How to Make Yo Face Orange Ghetto Boy

Nomination for Deletion Reason: Low quality and incomplete article. Not enough information to be helpful to a reader.

Description: havent you eva wanted to be a ghetto orange face? now u can b holmes.

Steps
1 get orange peels
2 choppem up boi
3 get honey and put the orange shreddins in the honey
4 put it on yo face
5 sho yo friends

Tips
itss fun

Warnings
you might suffocate

Person of the Week: Liam Kyle Sullivan

Liam Kyle Sullivan (born July 17, 1973 in Norfolk, Massachusetts) is an American comedian and actor. Sullivan has made several guest appearances on television programs, including Gilmore Girls, 8 Simple Rules, and Alias, but is best known for his internet videos. He currently stars in the popular VH1 series, I Hate My 30’s.
Sullivan filmed a video for a song he wrote for the character Kelly called “Shoes”. The video is centered around a girl named Kelly wanting to buy shoes. The song incorporates elements of techno and electroclash, and the video features several other actors and comedians. Sullivan played Kelly (in drag) as well as her father and her twin brother, Chris. This video made her famous for her words “betch” (bitch) and shetbag (shitbag)
“Text Message Breakup” This video shows Kelly’s boyfriend breaking up with her by text message. Kelly and her friend Heather go to the club where he is and tell him off. They get him kicked out of the club, and he earns the hatred of various girls, who say (rather explicitly) that they want nothing to with him and that he is a good-for-nothing. Margaret Cho makes an appearance in this video. (Via Wikipedia)

How to Do Nothing When You Are Working

How to Do Nothing When You Are Working

“This is an instruction page on how to do nothing productive all day at work and fool people into thinking you’re a hard-working employee.

Steps
1. Pick a company that has had multiple profitable years. They are often flush with cash and have a lot of ambitious managers/salespeople working there that think they need more help or an assistant. Once they get you they won’t know how to utilize you, so you’ll do little more than an occasional dinner reservation. Even better, look for an organization where they want to ‘grow’ the companies infrastructure so the hire a bunch of accounting and admin people before they have much for them to do. Also, one that has a very liberal internet and email usage policy. This is critical because internet and email is what will save you from committing suicide from the boredom.
2. Seek out an hourly administrative/accounting job that has been ‘newly created’. Often times the new position is created because other slackers have complained that there is ‘too much’ work (FYI, in a large corporate office, there is no such thing for an admin), or they work late (to pile on the overtime pay) a lot so management finally decides to hire someone to ease the burden. Enter you!
3. Give a great interview. Pretend to be really interested in doing the job, tell them about your great ‘organizational’ skills and your desire to ‘help people’. Most admins detest helping people, and it shows on their face, so someone who smiles says they enjoy it will be a rose among dandelions. Go in there dressed to the 9’s so they think you’re totally into getting the job. Don’t go overboard, but be super upbeat and energetic; HR people and hiring managers eat that stuff up…”

Mighty Mouse!!! LOL

‘Mighty Mouse’ Gene Linked To Humans

“Mighty Mouse – a genetically modified rodent who can run faster, live longer and eat twice as much as normal mice without putting on weight – has been bred by scientists in the US.
Normal mice tire more quickly

The creation of the amazing specimen could have implications for humans too.

He was given his super-powers through the modification of a single metabolism gene shared with human beings.

Mighty Mouse was created by a 15-strong team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. There are now about 500 of the super-mice.

They can run up to six kilometres, at a speed of 20 metres per minute, for five hours without stopping.

Professor Richard Hanson, who led the research, said the creatures’ powers were comparable to a cyclist pedalling up a mountain without stopping.

They can also continue to have sex later in life than normal mice.

Prof Hanson told The Independent: “They are metabolically similar to Lance Armstrong biking up the Pyrenees.

“They utilise mainly fatty acids for energy and produce very little lactic acid. They are not eating or drinking and yet they can run for four or five hours.
Mighty Mouse in action on a treadmill

“They are 10 times more active than ordinary mice in their home cage. They also live longer – up to three years of age – and are reproductively active for almost three years. In short they are remarkable animals.”

He said they ate twice as much as normal mice but were half the weight. On the downside, however, he said “they are very aggressive. Why this is the case we are not really sure.”

Prof Hanson said the same experiement could not currently be carried out on humans – and said he believed it should not be even if it could.

Pharmaceutical companies could use the team’s findings to develop new drugs to enhance muscle performance, however.”

Miss Landmine

A beauty contest for survivors of landmine explosion in Angola.

(Via BoingBoing.net and subsequently Neatorama.com)

“There are currently no landmine survivors’ networks directed specifically towards women in Angola.

The Miss Landmine project is a possible nucleus for a national female landmine survivor’s network through a CBR (Community Based Rehabilitaion) -programme with practical guidance and support from national authorities (CNIDAH) and international NGOs.

Depending on the level of commitment from local authorities, each participant may be assigned as a Miss Landmine representative in her own province, with responsibilities of coordinating and providing information and assistance to other women in the same situation and monitoring ways of empowerment, such as education and specialized health care…”

“THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO (in no particular order)

* Female pride and empowerment.
* Disabled pride and empowerment.
* Global and local landmine awareness and information.
* Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity- historical, cultural, social, personal, African, European.
* Question established concepts of physical perfection.
* Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.
* Celebrate true beauty.
* Replace the passive term ‘Victim’ with the active term ‘Survivor'”

Remember How There was a Seal in the Delaware?

Whale Found Deep in Brazil Rain Forest

There was a Seal in the Delaware, now there was a whale in the amazon? no way!

“RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — An 18-foot minke whale ran aground on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle some 1,000 miles from the ocean, Brazilian media reported Friday. Globo television broadcast images of dozens of people gathered along the Tapajos River splashing water on the animal, whose back and dorsal fin were exposed to the hot Amazon sun. Sea creatures rarely venture so far into fresh water.

“It apparently got separated from its group and swam upstream,” biologist Fabio Luna said in a televised interview from the site. “It’s very unusual.”

Scientists said the whale was 18 feet long and weighed about 12 tons, and were working to dislodge the mammal and return it to the ocean.

The whale ran aground Wednesday near Santarem in Para state, Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency said, according to the Globo newspaper. Phone calls to the agency went unanswered Friday, when many government offices were closed for a long holiday weekend.

The creature reportedly is a minke whale, the second smallest of the baleen whales after the pygmy right whale, with an average length of about 23 feet.

The International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee estimates there are about 184,000 minke whales in the central and northeast Atlantic Ocean.”

Army desertion rate highest since 1980

Army Desertion Rates Rise 80 Percent Since Invasion of Iraq in 2003

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Primarily steming from the multiple duties soldiers are put into, Desertion rates are higher than they were in 1980. It’s a sad state of affairs when even soldiers don’t believe in this “Police Action”.

“Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

“We’re asking a lot of soldiers these days,” said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. “They’re humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I’m sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier.”

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year…”

Mathematical Curiosities in Futurama

Mathematical (and Physical) Curiosities

Fry’s defrosting
What day is it today?
Rather a “dull” number
Billionary interest…

Here’s an example:
Related serial numbers

The serial numbers of Bender and Flexo (see “2ACV06 – The Lesser of Two Evils”), can be expressed as the sum of two cubes:
Flexo: 3370318 = 1193 + 1193
Bender: 2716057 = 9523 + (-951)3
Moreover, this decomposition is unique.