Reid Gower:
I got frustrated with NASA and made this video. NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.
In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanities grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts. I have a lot of ideas for a NASA marketing campaign, but I doubt they’d pay me even minimum wage to work for them. I literally have an MSWord document entitled NASAideas.doc full of ideas waiting to share. I thought maybe, just maybe someone might be able to work their magic for me on that. But the primary point of this post is to vent my frustration with NASA. Sure, they’ve fallen victim to budget cuts but I honestly think cutting media will seal NASA’s own fate. Unless they can find a way to relate to the general public, support for their projects will always be minimal, and their funding will follow suit. A social media department would easily pay for itself in government grants because it could rekindle the public interest in the space program.
via eric
via mom
via cameron
My favorite Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes song! I am extremely impressed with this guy’s whistling skills.
via tiffany
Did I ever tell you guys about my wisdom teeth debacle? I got them removed when I was a freshman in high school. The procedure itself wasn’t painful—I was under full anesthesia—but when I started to come out of the drug-induced fog, I had the uncontrollable urge to cry. I wasn’t sad, or upset, just physically needed to cry. My mom told me she experienced something similar when she’d had general anesthesia for her tonsils, so I didn’t panic too much. Actually, I was still way too drugged up to experience any strong emotions.
Recovery sucked. I couldn’t eat solid foods and quickly got tired of herbed mashed potatoes. I was in a lot of pain, and the painkillers I was prescribed made me extremely nauseated and I had to resort to Advil or something, which did NOT cut it. Eventually I healed up a bit, my face wasn’t swollen anymore, and no one else could tell that I had big stitched up wounds inside my mouth. I went back to school; things seemed to be going well. Then, at least a week after the surgery, when I felt great and pretty much healed and everything…
I was on stage rehearsing our fall play, “Charlotte’s Web”. I hadn’t done anything unusual—hadn’t gargled acid or gotten punched in the face—I was just standing there on my marks. And then. My mouth FILLED WITH BLOOD. A gushing stream of warm blood was coming out of one of the upper wounds (which I had thought was healed). I had to run off-stage to the bathroom to spit out my mouthful of blood and shove some toilet paper up in the oozing hole and wait it out.
I don’t really remember the immediate fallout of the mouth o’ blood incident, but I do remember that for months afterwards, when I sneezed or inhaled with my mouth just so, I could feel cold air going in my mouth, up through the hole in my gums and jaw, through my sinuses and out my nose.
Everything is fine now (well, mostly – have I mentioned the possible problem with one of the nerves in my face?), but when Ellen sent me this animation, I couldn’t help but experience some very strong sense memories. Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the other time I ended up with a mouth (and throat) full of blood. Fun times!
do yourself a favor and watch this chap-hop offering, then go and watch professor elemental’s first video for cup of brown joy.
via brad via chris
by michael black
by justin majeczky