Whew.... dusty in here

It seems I've neglected this blog. Social networking seems to have overtaken blogging since Thoughts About Corn's 2006 heyday. I guess it's time to turn out the lights. Have fun out there in 2010, cornies!

Voice actors honor roll

Any fan of cartoons and animation will appreciate this list of some of the best known voice actors. They deserve our love for giving cartoon characters their unique personalities, while staying mostly out of the public eye themselves. And, truth be told, I've always secretly wanted to be the voice of a cartoon character (yeah, I know...).

Incidentally, this list was put together by the lovable weirdos behind the Archie McPhee catalog - known to many as the original vendor of the librarian action figure!

I'm inside this geeky gateway

But probably not too far.

The A/V Club's Gateways to Geekery - Guided By Voices.

OK, so I like GBV, but most of what I know of their music comes from a single, lengthy "Best Of" CD released about five years ago. And I honestly enjoy much of Robert Pollard's recent solo material, though I haven't heard all of it (nor do I want to). "From A Compound Eye" is one of my favorite records of the last few years.

So, where does that leave me, on the GBV Geekery scale?

T. rex is just a big chicken

No, wait, it's not.

No, wait, it's - uh...

Seriously, this is a very interesting article about how science works, how it is supposed to work, and the complex interplay between scientists and the news media that communicate their discoveries to the rest of us.

My god, he's right

30 Rock is based on The Muppet Show.


This is not a conspiracy theory, people.

A World Wide Web of data

The video above is a TED talk featuring Tim Berners-Lee presenting the idea of linked data. It's a tremendous idea, though I wonder if Sir Tim has sort of given up on his push for the Semantic Web and gone about it sideways with linked data. Data can give documents on the web semantic meaning, but it can also exist all on its own - kind of Sir Tim's point.

Also, how cool is it that he can just say "that World Wide Web thing? Yeah, I made that."

So this hasn't died on the vine?

Wow, I've been away a long time. Things are going well - I'm wrapping up the first college course I've taken in eight and a half years, I'm involved in a library leadership institute once a month for most of this year, and so on and so forth.

But that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting to ask everyone a very important question: what is your web culture quotient?

More madness

My former employer's Binghamton Bearcats have qualified for their first ever NCAA men's basketball tournament. Too bad it's been done under a cloud of allegations.

Big Red repeat

For the second year in a row, Cornell's mens' basketball team has won the Ivy League championship. That means an automatic invitation to the NCAA tournament and a likely first-round drubbing against some big name ball team. Maybe I'll actually get to watch the game this year - I had to work during last year's tournament game.

Does anyone care about the FCC?

I think Barack Obama finally does.

This is an encouraging thing, after the wilderness of the Michael Powell/Kevin Martin years.

It's a winning combination

Hey, it's Groundhog Day again, my favorite useless holiday!

This Groundhog Day, I'm most looking forward to the new film "Coraline." Here's a brief snippet featuring a little ditty by They Might Be Giants' John Linnell:



This movie has it all - kooky stop-motion animated puppets, a creepy story by Neil Gaiman, silly music, and John Hodgman. It is apparently marketed to strange, antisocial preteen girls who rarely leave their rooms... and me.

Be prepared - with chains

Invisibility cloaks still years of fruitless, tedious research away? You can always make the best of this bad situation by taking the advice posed in "five tips for surviving the worldwide economic crisis learned from watching The Road Warrior."



Just walk away? Yeah, right.

Want to jumpstart the economy?

Then invest in the development on invisibility cloaks and other amazing technologies. Let's get cracking on the hovercar too!

It's 2009 - last of the double zero years

Happy New Year everybody! My New Years' Day was very enjoyable. I had too many entertainment options at my disposal - a Monk marathon, a Mythbusters marathon, and classic Looney Tunes (not to mention football).

So this is the future...