Alan Guth is the guy who first proposed cosmic inflation in 1980, seen here giving a lecture about it at MIT in the early 2000's. I find him nice to listen to as a lecturer. One important thing to keep in mind about cosmic inflation is that it is still highly theoretical--well, the Big Bang itself is still a theory, technically, I think, but inflation stretches things (haha oh boy I didn't intend that pun) further by proposing that there was this mysterious matter/energy state occurring in the very early universe where at least some fraction of the universe existed such that pressure/gravity was negative (I first referred to this clumsily in loopy ramblings here), leading to a very rapid expansion of scale; this stuff works out nicely mathematically--apparently--but whether it actually exists, who know.

Still, very interesting lecture. It also demonstrates that even really smart guys can like the much-hated font Comic Sans MS.

Not sure if you've ever seen these, but they are amazing animations.

Ohh yeah I do remember those! At the time the 3D was very technically impressive. Looks like they're still making them.

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Ah the good ol' days when signing up for the Army might have meant taking it easy in a foxhole in Nevada while they detonated a nuclear bomb nearby.

Man, that nuclear test film is absolutely fascinating. From a pure science perspective, its understandable why they did the kind of experimenting they did.
But holy sh*t man, I can't picture myself ducking down in a trench while they shoot off a nuke a couple of miles away.

How long from the time they detonated the atomic bomb until they had troops marching in there!? Yikes, gimme a geiger counter!

Captivating.

Yah, they were definitely much more laid back about the possible long-term effects of radiation exposure than we would be now--maybe because it hadn't been long enough since the A-bomb was invented for long-term effects to be well understood yet. Some of those troops do have Geiger counters, but they're just like "oh good the levels here are low enough that we won't fry, let's go check out the blast site, men!"

I thought this was a hoax at first. But there are several different youtubes of it. Pretty cool.

You hold the box up to the kiosk, andit shows you what the assembled toy looks like.

Also - Legos rule.

He said he'd be back.

Oh man, that's pretty sweet!


Yesssss. I kinda wanna see that Hercules movie now. >_>

What's the one where he's dressed like an Egyptian or something ("don't take my statue of me")?

Around the World in 80 Days (2004 version). Despite starring Jackie Chan and featuring Sammo Hung and Arnold, it somehow managed to be boring.