Watch What Happens When You Dump Lots Of Plastic Balls On An Escalator

Maybe not the safest thing to do, but pretty fun, anyway.  

Here's a couple guys who maybe don't do much for pedestrian safety, but had a novel idea.

They dumped a whole bunch of little plastic balls on an escalator to see what would happen.

The result is pretty fascinating: The balls try to roll down the stairs, but the escalator is going up, so many of the balls stay on the escalator, bouncing up and down as the escalator moves.

It's sort of a perpetual motion machine.

The video was released more than two years ago but has lately gone viral. It popped up on the Web site BoingBoing recently, via JWZ

Here's' the fun video:

A Little Girl Dances On A Subway Platform, And Makes 1 Million+ People Happy

A little girl in pink and a gruff sounding musician
caused some magic on a New York subway platform
and the incident is now the subject of a happy viral video.  

Several days ago, a guy played a cover of the Grateful Dead song "Me & My Uncle" at the subway platform, Bedford Avenue Station, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

A little girl in pink liked the music so much she started dancing. And started a mini-dance party in the process.

A dual called Coyote and Crow were responsible for the music. In this case, "Coyote" sang, and "Crow" video'd the proceedings.

The gleefulness in the girl wearing pink, and several others who started dancing is so infectious. No wonder the video has gone so viral.

Here is is, to make a gloomy winter Monday morning that much brighter:

"Gangnam Style" Kinda, Sorta Broke YouTube

The world has collectively watched this guy 2.1 billion times

Today's earworm attack news: Psy's "Gangnam Style" almost broke YouTube.

Or at least their system of counting how many times a video has been viewed.

Inexplicably, the "Gangnam" video was viewed more than 2 billion times, and YouTube had to make some quick readjustments to accommodate all those views, says the BBC. 

YouTube used a 32-bit integer, a unit to represent data in computer architecture, and under that system, the most views a YouTube video could get was 2,147,483,647.

One would think a video featuring a pudgy Korean pop star would not be watched more that 2.1 billion times, but one would be wrong.

Now that YouTube has fixed its view counter so that even the most obsessed people on the planet can watch the same video over and over again for the next 60 years,  the most any video could be watched is 9,223,372,036,814,775,808 times.

How's that for precision?

I really hope we don't all watch "Gangnam Style" 9.2 quintillion times.

The BBC has also noted that the world has collectively wasted more than 16,000 years watching "Gangnam Style" instead of doing something more productive, like curing cancer, ending terrorism or stopping the discussion of Kim Kardashian's butt on the Internet.

Anyway, Psy fans, watch "Gangnam Style" until you drop. You probably won't break YouTube's view counter again. We can all breathe a sigh of relief on that one.

Which Travel Woe Would You Rather Encounter

Would you rather encounter this fog on an afternoon's drive
 

Driving home from work this afternoon, I encountered dense fog and slightly slippery highways in northwestern Vermont.

It was a bit of a pain, trying to peer through the fog and making sure I wasn't going to slam into anything hidden within the murk.

I suppose that was better, though, than what travelers along I-78 in Union Township, New Jersey, encountered.

I don't have a lot of details about Union Township, but it does look pretty icky to me.

Or would this scene in Union
Township, N.J. be more to
your liking. 

So, between the two photos in this post, the dense fog near St. Albans, Vermont and the dense smoke and fire near Union Township, New Jersey, which would you pick?

I feel kind of lucky that I only had to deal with the fog in Vermont.

Bah-Humbug! North Korea Threatens To Bomb A South Korean Christmas Tree

North Korea's leader, Kim Jung-un, apparentlly hates
Christmas and bad movies from Sony.  

As Slate puts it, it is a little obnoxious if your next door neighbor puts up a super bright, super big Christmas tree two feet from your window.

I maybe would grumble a bit if my neighbor did this, but I'd stop well short of bombing it.

Not North Korea. It's bombs away, if their public statements are to be believed.

According to Slate, citing the Wall Street Journal, a religious group wants to put up a big Christmas tree in South Korea, right near the border with North Korea.

"On Tuesday, the South Korean defense ministry gave the go-ahead to a Christian group to build and light a 30-foot Christmas tree-like structure on top of a hill near the North Korean border.

Seems pretty innocuous. It's not like a 30-foot tree is visible from outer space. The only problem: North Korea isn't that into Christmas--at all. In fact, in the past, 'Pyoungyang, which views religion as a threat to its leadership cult, issued frequent objections against 'the tree,' calling it a tool for psychological warfare and threatened to fire artillery at it," the Wall Street Journal reports."

A little sensitive, those North Korean leaders. I don't think anybody is going to be that psychologically damaged by a distant 30 foot thing that sort of looks like a Christmas tree.

Then again, North Korea is a leading suspect in the hacking of Sony's internal computers because Sony is coming out with a movie called "The Interview," a comedy about a plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jung-un.

That seems like a lot of effort just to give a movie a bad review.

I'm making jokes, but there is a serious side: Whoever hacked into Sony is threatening employees who work there. 

Geez, spies and hackers in most countries break into other nations' Web sites for military or diplomatic intelligence or to steal trade secrets. But doing it because you're pissed off over a bad movie?

Aren't we taking things a wee bit too far, Kim Jung-un?

Maybe it's our own propaganda of sorts that makes the North Korean leader seem like a wacko who takes offense at Christmas tree-like structures or stupid movies to the point of wanting to go to war.

Or, even more scary, and perhaps more likely, he is that much of a wacko.

I just hope Kim Jung-un doesn't break into my computer just because I'm not exactly a big fan of his.

And until now, I wasn't interested in seeing "The Interview." It looks stupid, frankly. But now I want to see it just to thumb my nose at Kim Jung-un. Just for the hell of it.

Friday Cuteness: This Pug Is Sooo Into His Bath

Bath time! Enjoy.  

After a hard week, you don't want to think, and all you need is a little cuteness and warmth.

Maybe a nice bath, too.

So here's a random video of a pug really enjoying his bath.

Hope you have as blissful a weekend as this little guy is having in his bath:

Idiotic Couple Mocks Eric Garner During News Report

Today's New York Daily News
Front Page was graphic, but much
more tasteful than an idiotic
couple mugging for the cameras
behind a journalist reporting on this.  

Gawker calls them America's Worst Couple and it's hard to disagree.

The couple in question were two of those types of idiots who make goofy gestures in the background as a television reporter gives a live update.

In this case, WPIX-TV reporter Allison Kaden was giving an update on demonstrators near the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, which had its lighting ceremony Wednesday evening.

That lighting ceremony happened as demonstrations continued across New York City and elsewhere against a grand jury decision in which a New York cop was not indicted despite fatally choking Eric Garner.

That move was caught on videotape as police tried to arrest Garner on suspicion of illegally selling cigarettes.

Anyway, Kaden was giving her update on the demonstrations and the tree lighting, when a couple moved into position behind Kaden and on camera, the guy cartoonishly pretended to choke the woman, who cartoonishly reacted by waving her arms and faking a scream

What a classy couple. I'm sure they thought they were hilarious.

The Internet is pretty unforgiving, and I'm sure this couple will be identified soon, and all hell will break out. They'll get death threats, lots of flame, lots of harassment on line and elsewhere.

No, this couple doesn't deserve death threats or harassment. But shame on them!

The video of this moronic couple is below, but to soften this up, I also posted an image of the excellent New York Daily News front page today which uses Garner's last words "I can't breathe!" as he was being choked by the cop.

Here's the stupid couple video: