Christopher Walken performs Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.

Comfortably the strangest thing I’ve seen this Halloween.

[Via MetaFilter]

Best. DDoS. Ever?

As you may already be aware, recently the Atheist Founation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites were the target of a significant DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which began on Monday 19 October.

This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS (‘Divine’ Denial of Service).

The prayer minute will be at exactly 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) and 9am (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday 8 November 2009.

The prayer can be about anything you want (but say it as frequently as possible in the minute we have assigned to ensure DDOS is achieved) or to whomever god you want. Its mostly directed at the Christian god so as to ensure we don’t get too many return to senders from other gods.

[Via Net Effect]

President Obama has inspired Japanese youth to adopt his name as slang:

[It was found ...] as an entry dated 22 September in a collection of slang and modern usage put together by the Japanese Teachers’ Network in Kitakyushu. Here’s what they write:

obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think “Yes we can, Yes we can,” and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).

[Via James Fallows]

Just a quick note to say that posting is likely to become even more sporadic than usual over the next few days/weeks as I’m having severe connectivity issues with my internet connection at home and it’s unclear at this time when (or how) they’ll be resolved.

Watch this space…

The level of detail in this false-colour image of the Crab Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope is astonishing.

From a John Cleese interview at The Onion’s A.V. Club, intriguing news about a musical adaptation of A Fish Called Wanda:

AVC: Can you say any more about the musical?

JC: Yes, well, they suggested a musical of Wanda to me some time ago, and I was completely unenthusiastic, and then ever so slowly, the idea grew on me. Because it’s a chance to work with Camilla, and we enjoy each other a great deal. She’s very funny. She’s also very, very rude, but very, very funny with it. God, she’s rude. [Laughs.] Mainly about my age. So we have a lot of fun working together, and she’s very original and creative, so that’s fun. And I brought in this guy, Bill Bailey – I don’t think he’s very well-known in America, is he yet?

Is it just me, or is the idea of getting Bill Bailey in to work on the musical a masterstroke?

Two of the Guardian’s techies have produced the best short, non-technical overview of Google Wave I’ve read.

[Via currybetdotnet]

As linked to all over the UK’s corner of the web over the last 24 hours: Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time.

I think it’s fair to say that Will Self is not enamoured with the mobile phone:

Yet I don’t think inconsiderate use of mobile phones is simply the rudeness born of a slackening of social bonds: I believe it to be a form of collective madness. When I’m in a public but confined space, such as a train carriage, and some deranged person begins to Samsung-soliloquise, I try to bring them to their senses by reading aloud from Schopenhauer (I carry a copy of The World as Will and Idea with me for just this purpose). Soon enough they stop and, sadly often irately, ask me what I’m doing. Then I explain that while public declamation and conversation is as old as humanity, there is no precedent for a person holding a one-sided private conversation aloud in public.

xkcd now has an (unofficial) theme song.

[Via MetaFilter]

42 Essential 3rd Act Twists.

Includes The Vengeful Immigrant, Ancient Druids Lose Interest and several variations on the Double Shyamalan.

[Via The Sideshow]

Greg Knauss is pleased to report that he’s successfully passed on his values to the next generation.

The New Yorker profiles James Cameron as he works on Avatar. Not a lot of new information, unless you were unaware of Cameron’s perfectionist streak. Consider his instructions to his sound engineers as they prepare an excerpt of Avatar to whet fanboy appetites at ComiCon:

“If we had to ship this thing in, like, two hours I’d send the fucking temp,” Cameron hissed. “It was built with a real opinion. And that opinion is not gonna change, ’cause I personally cut it myself. My advice to you: Listen to it, study it, match what’s there. Your principle, like a surgeon with the Hippocratic Oath, should be, Do no harm.”

I’m hugely sceptical about the current push towards 3D films, but if there’s one director who could persuade me to don the goggles it’s James Cameron.

Part of me wishes Cameron had spent the last twelve years turning out three or four pretty decent feature films instead of messing around producing Dark Angel and Solaris and pottering around in submersibles but there’s no denying that the man has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants to.

The World’s Largest Gun Suppressor hardly seems worth camouflaging.

[Via MetaFilter]