Today—Odds and Ends. You can now access all the past editions of The Daily Planet on the green Category bar on the top of each page under the heading PlanetPOV.
__________________________________________
SUPER MOON
Posted by Keith Olbermann from his cell phone:
SUPER LOONS
Viral Video
What if the video-game hero was really just drug-addled and lovesick?
Anyone who’s ever picked up a joystick is probably familiar with Super Mario — the heroic, mustachioed plumber who battles his way through platoons of pixelated reptiles to rescue Princess Peach. But what if Mario lived in Brooklyn instead of the Mushroom Kingdom?
Filmmaker Joe Nicolosi pondered that very question with a short film he produced for South by Southwest, which began last week and wraps up tomorrow. In it, Super Mario — now actually just a plumber — is plagued with romantic abandonment and substance abuse issues. As brother Luigi puts it: “You’re a plumber, Mario. You need to stop doing so many mushrooms!”
The Internet’s new anti-bullying hero
[Sorry that I can’t embed the video. It can be seen by going to the link above. It’s less than 1 minute.]
Casey Heynes had had enough. In a viral video that has been circulating this week, the overweight 16-year-old Australian student is confronted by a much smaller boy, three years younger than him, who taunts him as the bully’s buddies gleefully record the action.
[…]
Time elapsed from initial confrontation to the skinny kid limping away in defeat – 41 seconds. That’s how long it took for Casey Heynes to go from picked-on kid to viral hero.
The video surfaced Monday… and exploded across the Net faster than YouTube could keep taking it down.
[…]
So when Casey turned the tables, it seemed like an ass-kicking long in the making. The moment that video appeared, the scrawny jerk became more than the focus of Heynes’s pent-up, exasperated rage. He took a slam into the concrete for every survivor who’s been on the business end of a bully’s fists or teasing, for the far too many kids who couldn’t survive it.
One Minute Puberty
poem by Johannesson James Maratown
YOUR LIFE IS ON FIRE
NO CLOUD MAY HARM YOU IN THE HEAVENS YOU ARE IN.
NO FROST MAY BURN YOUR HARVEST THAT YOU HAVE NOT BROUGHT IN.
NO RAT CAN BITE YOU, IN THE DEEPEST OF ALL SLEEPS.
THE FIRE IS INSIDE OF YOU.
TRUELY, THE FIRE INSIDE OF YOU!
Last minutes with Oden
This video of Jason Wood’s goodbye to his best furry friend Oden is for anyone who’s ever loved (and lost) a pet. It’s beautifully shot and pretty much impossible to watch and come out on the other side with dry eyes.
“He showed me through his example how to love…”
“God is love…and love is God. God was that dog I held today.”
Oden, like so many pets, was a life-changer.
Helicopter aerial view video of giant tsunami waves
Mental Health Break
An escape into nature, set to the melodies of Nouvelle Vague’s “Killing Moon”:
BABES (down guys—as in babies!):
Charlie bit my finger – again !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM&feature=related
Baby Laughing Hysterically at Ripping Paper
8-month-old boy laughing hysterically while at-home daddy rips up a job rejection letter.
Ninja Baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a–3q4fOL5g&feature=related
3-year Old Piano Prodigy Richard Hoffmann
Violin Solo by Multi-Talented 4 Year Old Kid
Because yesterday was Purim: “Jew Are You?”
AND IN OTHER NEWS…
Test Your Insight
Scientists have found indications that your ability to jump to intuitive answers — what they term the “Aha!” moment — may be affected by your mood. After watching a humorous video, brain imaging and test results of subjects suggested that a positive mood prepares the brain’s insight.
What are the hardest words to translate into English?
“Hyggelig” is just one on our list.
When disaster strikes others: How your brain responds
Empathy and coping in the wake of a disaster
Research shows that when we see others being harmed, our brains react in similar ways as if we were being harmed. The areas of the brain involved in this reaction extend beyond the amygdala to regions of the cortex involved in analyzing and interpreting the behavior of others, the so-called “theory of mind.” These events also stimulate us to think of our own experiences of pain or trauma; in other words, our “autobiographical memory” … We remember the times when we were in danger or in pain and our brain, in a sense, reaches out and imagines how the actual victims are thinking and feeling.
Small Changes, Big Results:
Behavioral Economics at Work in Poor Countries
According to a standard economic model, a fourteen-year-old girl in Kenya will go to school if doing so will enable her to earn more than she spent on her education. A family will buy dilute-chlorine solution, measure out capfuls to treat their water, and wait for the chlorine to disinfect their water if the health benefits exceed the cost of the chlorine. Since a school uniform that lasts a year or two costs only six dollars, and a month’s supply of chlorine runs about $0.30, these costs should be fairly minor factors. Influenced in part by these arguments, many governments in the developing world and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with development have maintained small charges for education and preventative health care.
However, in recent decades economists have increasingly come to recognize what most of us have long known: human beings don’t always make the best decisions.
A new type of economics, dubbed “behavioral economics,” seeks to understand deviations from the simple “rational agent” model that has dominated economics for most of its history—why people procrastinate, say, or why Americans don’t exercise or save enough.
Our First Public Parks: The Forgotten History of Cemeteries
(Slideshow)
In his recently released Cemeteries, Keith Eggener, an associate professor of American art and architecture at the University of Missouri, uses more than 600 archival photos to depict the evolution of American cemeteries from small family plots into these very first “rural cemeteries” and, later, the less scenic 20th-century “memorial parks.” Alongside this visual tour, Eggener offers historical context, explaining how the living have interacted with these resting places for the dead. Eggener spoke with The Atlantic about what drew him to these morbid locales, and how the design of cemeteries has reflected America’s feelings about death.
Pushing Paper
Millions devote their lives to paperwork. So where are its heroes in mythology, literature, cinema, real life? Pessoa, Cavafy, Kafka, de Tocqueville, Trollope were clerks and bureaucrats. Why not a “Norton Anthology Of Paperwork”?
[…]
Who wrote, “Probationary faculty are reminded that enrollment, the needs of the department, teaching excellence, service, and the candidate’s scholarly productivity are essential considerations in annual pretenure reviews, third-year reviews, and tenure recommendations”?
If you guessed Alexis de Tocqueville and my dean, congratulations. Like Kafka, they are masters of the craft.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
~~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Cher, yesterday, govdick threw out the first ball at spring training for the Yankees. The crowed booed him from the time he was announced until he left the field!
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂