I suspect I've thoroughly mangled the memory but here goes:

A TV show from the late 80s or early 90s staring mostly kids. I only saw the last few minutes of one episode. A bunch of the kids were forced to dig out a blue glowing wall and if you touched it bad things happened. Then one kid touched it and they weren't hurt because reasons.

At the end there was something about transporting and the last shot was the hero group walking around the top of a modern looking tower but it wasn't where they wanted to be. It stuck with me because the end was a downer and, as I had up until then only seen such edgy stuff as Mr. Dressup and Polka Dot Door, I was all "Wait...the good guys didn't win? They aren't allowed to end it like that! It's against the rules!"

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(104 replies, posted in Episodes)

Don't need to learn. Been there. Done that. vhvhvhzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Congrats on getting half way there!

Woahoh livin' on a prayer.

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(104 replies, posted in Episodes)

You're probably thinking of Pinterest.

Kickstarter question: If I donated >$75 and chose just the $50 level naked DVD (whoo!) is blog access and/or early access and/or thanks credit still included?

Lamer wrote:

After 'sneaking' back into Gothem. Batman's first order of business is to paint a giant bat logo on the face of a building. I assume he does that with gasoline, making round trips up and down the building while being undetected in a city ruled by criminals. I would've thought that going after that nuke immediately would be pretty important too but no, arts and crafts always come first.

The obvious answer to this is not that he did arts and crafts that night, but it was a Wayne Industries standard to build large explosive bat designs into everything. Because Batman never knows when he'll need an explosive, and it better be bat shaped (see: Arkham Asylum).

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(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

big_smile Don't feel like an idiot Teague; I have a math degree and a Mom that's a biologist and a small obsession with phi (the most irrational of numbers), and still didn't know why there were Fibonacci numbers and phi spirals in plants before I watched Vi's awesome video series on it.

/liked Phi before it was cool

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(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Goyte remixes covers (and covers of covers) of Somebody that I used to know. The best moment is at 3:50.

And if you haven't seen this cover of it, probably worth seeing first:

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(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)


WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

On a related note, the diversity of athletic body types is pretty damn cool.

No hairy butts, promise.

What if other Olympic sports were photographed like beach volleyball? I for one am in favour of those swimmer abs.

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(449 replies, posted in Off Topic)

It's been a few years since I read the book, but it struck me as rather allegorical.

At the end... Show
At the end it's not even clear that the tiger ever literally existed and is implied that the tiger was an aspect of himself. A manifestation of his will to live or something.
Honestly I didn't think it held together as an allegory as much as I wanted, but I'm sure English teachers have great fun analyzing it to pieces to their students' horror.

Anyway, the trailer wasn't what I was expecting either, but it's pretty. Apparently M. Night was attached to direct at some point, and I'll take Ang Lee over him any day.

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Wait, how is it like Tintin? Sure the tiger is CG, but were you expecting a real one? Or are you implying that Suraj Sharma is a live human being in the uncanny valley?

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Squiggly_P wrote:

I can't watch it without thinking Gandalf just died.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7li1lfiy51qasydjo1_1280.jpg

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(33 replies, posted in Off Topic)

It's not horrible, just different. YouTube pays creators to get eyeballs on ads, and they generally show one ad per video view. They don't force you to do short or cheap or broadly appealing content, it's just potentially more profitable to do that. Compare that to the limits of an hour long network TV show, with 15-20 minutes of ads breaking up the episode and more restrictive content limits.

The people making a living on YouTube prefer the YouTube format with the subscriber model and easy distribution and ad revenue and like/dislike buttons and even the comments section (well, sometimes). I guess if TV and movies are seen as 'more real' with their big budgets and big distribution then there would be an assumption that online videos are a cute little stepping stone into the big boy shoes, but that's just not how the successful YouTube content creators see themselves.

Incidentally, Corridor Digital would love to release SYNC faster, but BAMMO, which funded it, required the once a month release schedule. BAMMO, along with Geek and Sundry and Crash Course and a number of other 'premium' channels are part of an initiative by YouTube to fund and distribute higher quality content.

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The YouTube revenue model encourages web series. The YouTube partner system pays between between 1-5 dollars per thousand views, depending on factors such as the video content and type of ads shown*. Releasing multiple shorter videos over a number of weeks leads to more views and more chances people will share your links since the content is "new" for longer.

For things like Halo or Battlestar Galactica they probably aren't using YouTube, but the ad revenue math is likely similar.

* Disclaimer: I am not a YouTube Partner

But exactly what are we moving relative to? The Sun? Another star? The gravitational centre of this galaxy? The gravitational centre of our local cluster of galaxies? Some other arbitrary point in the edgeless and centre-less universe? Coordinate systems require a fixed origin that everything else is relative to. Mathematician Phi chooses to define herself as the centre of the universe! This may make your math more difficult, but it sure simplifies mine tongue

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(64 replies, posted in Off Topic)

How did Death Race end up between Paul and Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz?

Also, where is your copy of District 9 hiding?

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So far everyone* has District 9.

*Except possibly paulou. Way to break the pattern before it was formed, paulou.

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In before Zarban
http://www.phispace.net/lj/DVDnBlurrays.jpg

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I always liked that the German word for glove is Handschuh. Translates back like it sounds. Also, bats (the animals) are Fledermäuse, or flying mice.

Jimmy B wrote:

That just makes it all the more pointless and technically not 'found footage' as it was advertised. It could/should just have been a movie, the way they used the cameras was redundant.

I didn't find it redundant because they actually integrated most of the cameras as an essential part of Andrew's character. Filming things was his security blanket (or red hunting cap).

Saw Immortals last night. It was not a great movie but it was better than I thought it was going to be, based on the trailer and reviews. I definitely have a soft spot for Tarsem. He makes the prettiest motion paintings.

+1 on Haywire "meh", but I do want to see Gina Carano kicking all the ass in more movies. Preferably ones that make sense.

Speed Racer is indeed entirely underrated. I could have done with less kid and less monkey, but it still has a special place...on my movie shelf.

I also like that the Speed Racer Blu-Ray disc starts playing the movie right away without any menus or ads. As it should be! It annoys me to no end to have to sit through advertising on something I paid for. It's so ugly.

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(30 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Bug Report: I can't get the search function to work. Typing in a search term and pressing enter does nothing to shrink the list.

Also, sorting by Year doesn't work for the Intermissions as far as I can tell. Also Serenity.

And what is Rating? Is there a way to rate the podcasts? Is it the iTunes ratings?

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(74 replies, posted in Episodes)

Trey wrote:

Slate decided to find out if the Missouri really could be started up again so easily.   

Spoiler: No.

See also: Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no')