From the folks behind the time machine prank put pirates on Central Park Lake:
Link: https://youtu.be/RZVCpzTG44U
by 
Reply
Link: https://youtu.be/RZVCpzTG44U
by Link: https://youtu.be/RZVCpzTG44U
by The sort of thing that happens on a New York subway:
Link: https://youtu.be/Z1Gq7Q3B9xU
The same folks did a similar bit based on Back to the Future:
Link: https://youtu.be/Ad6b1-wuM3w
by Pediatrician Aaron Carroll summarizes findings of a study on the behavior and other attributes of kids today versus 1972. The news is surprisingly good — not perfect, but better than many people might expect: Less use of tobacco and alcohol, less sex, safer sex when they have it, fewer pregnancies, and so on.
Link: https://youtu.be/S429h7LkdiE
There are references here.
by In this six-minute “New Rule” bit, Bill Maher manages to be pretty funny while calling for more empathy, that is, at least trying to be concerned about other people’s problems and not just the things that concern ourselves and our friends and families:
Link: https://youtu.be/BVwFmdipfZg
Yes, his Bad Examples are all Republicans, and by no means all Republicans lack compassion and good sense. That’s just Maher being Maher. But in general terms, what he has to say is still valid. Besides, I now know why former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gave up hunting, and it makes complete sense.
by
Link: https://youtu.be/R89vhiua35A
My first reaction on seeing this was that somebody seriously needs to set up a commercial service that operates exactly this way. People would line up to hire them, myself included. Then I looked at the YouTube comments, and just about everybody had the same thought.
by Boston Dynamics is apparently developing robots that can walk, pick up boxes, and the like, and deal with problems in a reasonably human-like fashion. Here’s the result of adding an important new module that makes the behavior even more human-like. Somewhat indelicate languages here:
Link: https://youtu.be/zkv-_LqTeQA
Actually, I believe the soundtrack for the video was added by a YouTuber named Mr King and is unfortunately not a feature of the real robot. I hope Boston Dynamics takes the hint and adds the capability as soon as possible, because robots seriously need this, and their cow-orkers would appreciate it as well.
by Yet again John Oliver takes on a serious subject with combination of humor and a lot of solid factual information. This time the topic is Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. My brother Tom recommended this to me over a week ago and I very much regret that I only got around to it last night. Even if you think you’re fed up with hearing about Trump, please take time to watch this. It’s excellent, informative, and immensely entertaining. (Infuriating in spots as well, perhaps, but still fun.)
Link: https://youtu.be/DnpO_RTSNmQ
(The website Oliver mentions is http://www.donaldjdrumpf.com.)
I will say one thing in Trump’s defense: He’s right that Fox News has it in for him. That was demonstrated in the last debate, in which Fox News joined with Cruz and Rubio in ganging up on him, and Fox News even brought graphics. A lot of the points made were entirely valid, but several of those points — for example, that Trump’s tax-and-spending numbers simply don’t add up — apply at last as much to Ted Cruz’s budget proposals, and the moderators gave Cruz a free pass.
by This is nowhere near as clever as Rahat’s usual drive-thru pranks (skeleton driver and so on), but still reasonably amusing:
Link: https://youtu.be/1nD0dInC5W4
More posts referencing Rahat’s pranks here.
by Ben Stein is probably best known as a deadpan comic actor. He played the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who keeps calling “Bueller?” when taking roll, a lawyer helping Kramer prepare a living will on Seinfeld, and a sort of bureaucratic angel on The Drew Carey Show, among many other roles. He also hosted his own game show (Win Ben Stein’s Money). But he’s also a lawyer (valedictorian of the class of 1970 at Yale Law), was a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford, has authored several books, both fiction and nonfiction, and is a newspaper columnist and conservative political pundit who fairly often appears on television, including CBS News and Fox.
I often disagree with Stein’s views (he still goes overboard in his defense of Richard Nixon, for example, and he’s surprisingly misinformed on scientific subjects), but he sometimes says things that are quite sensible, about economics, for example. (His undergraduate degree was in that field and his father was a well-known economist.) For example, back in 2012 in an appearance on the Fox News morning program Fox and Friends (see this previous post), he broke it to his hosts that dealing with the deficit required raising taxes on the rich: “I hate to say this on Fox — I hope I’ll be allowed to leave here alive — but I don’t think there is any way we can cut spending enough to make a meaningful difference. We’re going to have to raise taxes on very, very rich people.”
Stein also strongly opposes Donald Trump. As I mentioned last July, he’s compared Trump to George Wallace “but without George Wallace’s charm” and said, “I can’t see him doing anything but damage to the Republican Party.”
Just yesterday Stein told CNN that his preferred candidate would be Marco Rubio, though at the same time he stopped just short of calling him dishonest. He also likes Cruz, he said, while observing that Cruz has a poor grasp of economics. He said he likes Trump but considers him “dangerously misinformed” and he thinks Chris Christie “made a mistake getting on the Trump bandwagon, and I just hope that bandwagon does not drag the whole party out to sea and sink us like the Goldwater bandwagon did when I was a young man. I don’t want to see that happen again to the Republican Party, but I’m afraid that’s what’s coming down the road.”
Here’s a two-minute excerpt:
Link: https://youtu.be/XJgvzTti990
by