I posted a while back about Video Games Live, an orchestral concert of video game music. They’re calling it quits. From Slashdot:

Video Games Live (‘The first major North American concert tour featuring music from some of the biggest video games combined with video footage, lasers, lights, and live action’) announced today that they have cancelled all tour dates in their national tour except for two scheduled for this weekend in Seattle and Vancouver. Fans across the country who have paid for tickets to these events must now manually request refunds and suffer convenience charges. The event was cancelled ‘because ticket sales were slow and did not reflect the great interest expected.

Coulda just said, “I don’t know what the fuck we were thinking.”

Oh, viral video… you will be the future’s pet rock, but for now, keep it coming.

If you liked the Star Wars kid or Numa Numa, you’ll love two Chinese students rockin’ out to the Back Street Boys.

The White House sent The Onion a cease-and-desist letter regarding the parody site’s use of the presidential seal. From the NYT:

“It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to ‘convey… sponsorship or approval’ by the president,” wrote Rochelle H. Klaskin, the paper’s lawyer, who went on to note that a headline in the current issue made the point: “Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country.”

According to the Journal (Wall Street, that is), Chipotle Mexican Grill filed an initial public offering to sell as much as $100 million in common stock.

Recommended ticker symbols:
CHIP
TACO
GAS
MMM

In case you didn’t know, McDonald’s is spinning Chipotle off.

San Francisco sculpted in jello.

From New Scientist:

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe , a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

Rothschild (plaintiffs’ attorney) suggested that Behe’s definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe’s definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS’s definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.

And Behe doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

Great peanut gallery quote:

“You’ve got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den,” says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. “But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class.”

…by Roger Ebert. This one for Doom. Very funny.

NYT writer Ian Urbina has written a new book about people fighting back against life’s little annoyances, called Life’s Little Annoyances. He’s also got a blog to go along with it. Do people who get in your way in grocery aisles frustrate you? Sneak some super expensive, tiny product into their shopping cart, like vitamins. Been hit with a bill that you don’t feel you should have to pay? Pay it in pennies. From his blog:

It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted “business reply” envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.



A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life’s Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.

Good gift idea for people who have an overdeveloped appreciation of vengeance (ex. Crabby).