Then there’s this:

And I don’t care what anyone says, this scene still kills:

[Props=B3ta]

Wired magazine has posted rare footage from the Wright Brothers’ first filmed flight in 1908.

The footage shows the brothers checking the plane and preparing for takeoff, followed by an awkward moment when Orville refuses to remove his shoes and belt for a security check prior to departure.

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Nearsightedness – or myopia – is on the increase in the United States, according to new research.

Scientists cannot explain the increase in myopia, which can make distant objects blurry, but note that it does seem to account for the acting career of Paris Hilton.

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Pentagon officials are in hot water over reports that Iraqi insurgents may have intercepted the video feeds from US drones.

Commanders began to get suspicious when the feed of a drone on a mission over Pakistan displayed six hours of a deli counter at a Safeway in Muncie, Indiana.

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Good news for movie fans as Australian scientists announced the development of a new technology that will allow a single DVD to hold up to 2,000 movies.

The bad news is that they all star Larry the Cable Guy.

Over at Huffpo, Carolita Johnson has some gift suggestions for the disaffected hipster in your life. It’s all so . . . sigh . . . jejune.

To my beloved Hebrew friends, I would like to send out my warmest greetings for Chanukah or Hanukkah or Honika or however You People are spelling it these days and also to express my condolences that your annual celebration of the oil lasting significantly longer than expected is not as awesome as Christmas.

Now go drink too much Manischewitz and get Kosher-faced!

[Props=Funny or Die!]

As Joltin’ Joe strives to strangle the last anemic reforms in the health care bill like he’s Hercules in a box of snakes (apparently for no more cause than that it was supported by liberals), let us all pause and remember a time in the not-so-distant past when Joe Lieberman was not the personification of all that is craven and withered in this fallen, desolate world. In that spirit, this seemed a good time to rerun this blast from the past, which was written the last time Joe started acting up.

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Real Joe Lieberman Found Captive in Dick Cheney’s Basement Crawlspace

A shocking development today in Washington DC as federal authorities, acting on an anonymous tip, searched the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney at the Naval Observatory in Washington DC, where they discovered the real Senator Joseph Lieberman held captive in a basement crawlspace. According to initial reports, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) was abducted just after 9/11 as part of the “extraordinary rendition” program and replaced with a life-like animatronic robot.

The Lieberman robot, which was developed under a joint program by the Army Research Lab and George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch, was initially controlled directly by Cheney, except on weekends, when the Vice President often would turn control of the four-term senator from Connecticut over to some of his oil buddies. “We had a blast with him,” Vice President Cheney told Happy Valley News in an exclusive interview. “We’d knock back a few and see what kind of mischief we could get ole Joe into this time. Did you see the one where he said that Connecticut voters who didn’t vote for him were terrorist sympathizers? That was us — lit, of course.”

In later years, control of the Lieberman robot was auctioned off to Republican campaign donors, or provided as a courtesy to visiting members of the Saudi royal family. At other times, the controller was simply left lying around the Cheney household, where it was frequently used by the staff, who enlisted the Lieberman robot to perform rudimentary household chores, pick up dry cleaning, and prepare basic meals.

As for the real Senator Joseph Lieberman, the man who emerged today from the 12 foot by 12 foot cell was dazed and slightly malnourished, but grateful for the rescue and eager to return to work. “I’ve been out of commission for the last eight years,” he said, “But the thing I’d like most right now is to get back to my job of representing the great state of Connecticut as a proud Democrat.”

When asked whether he still supported President Bush’s Iraq policy, the real Senator Lieberman asked, “What are you talking about? Did we do something in Iraq?”

Photo: The real Senator Lieberman, shortly after he was discovered in a small cell in Dick Cheney’s basement.

(Thanks to Kathleen Fisher for the graphic.)

Over at Videogum, Gabe rips into Fernando Meirelles’ 2008 movie Blindness in his on-going Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time (though in the end he is non-committal on whether Blindness has earned a place on that ignominious list). Go figure, because here is a movie that I liked quite a bit when I saw it six months ago. But it’s a funny take on the movie, and having caught the second half of Magnolia the other day, I have to admit that he’s got a point about how Julianne Moore (aka the Tears Monkey) seems to have become the go-to actress for on-screen crying jags.

For a workshop I’m doing at Improv Boston, the assignment was to write some fresh monologue jokes for a late-night show. Here is what I came up with.

This week, Jenny Sanford asked South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford for a divorce due to his affair with an Argentinean woman.

Responding to suggestions that this reflects poorly on the Republican party, Mark Sanford said: Hey, at least I’m straight!

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Here’s a sad story. In New Bedford, Mass, a 98 year old nursing home resident is accused of killing her 100 year old roommate because she was ‘taking over the room.’

If nothing else, this tragedy finally answers the age-old question: What is a fatal dose of Polident?

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A lot of controversy this week in the global warming debate as leading climate scientists were accused of cooking their data.

It was kind of a dumb mistake. I guess climatologists forgot to shake down the thermometer after each use. (accompanied by hand gesture of shaking down a thermometer)

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A recent USA Today investigation reported that school lunch programs were serving kids meat from old chickens.

School administrators responded that this was the only way they could make the Wednesday special: Over-the-Hill McNuggets

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A new study from researchers at the University of Minnesota found that young people did not suffer any adverse psychological effects from engaging in casual sex.

The study’s authors were careful to point out that this included casual sex with researchers at the University of Minnesota.

Following up on the last post of movie lists, Unreality has a list of movies with numbers in the title, all the way from one to 25. Why? How the hell should I know, it’s the Internet.

It’s actually not hard at all. Without doing any research whatsoever, I was able to do the numbers one through ten right off the top of my head (I’m pretty sure I got the titles right):

How the West was One
Two Amigos and a Casual Friend
Three Predators and an Alien
The Four Seasonings
Five Easy Pizzas
Six Lies and Videotape
Seven Brides for Four Brothers
The Eight Commandments
Nine, Nine Mein Liebchen (hey, foreign films count too!)
Do You Come Here Of-TEN? (had to cheat that one a little)

A few more ‘Best of the Aughts’ movie lists for you (fact: 78% of the Internet now consists of lists).

First, Pajiba has the 10 Best Horror Movies of the Aughts. Can’t find much to argue with on this list, and I’d especially like to second Let the Right One In. And The Descent. And Drag Me to Hell. And . . . ah, just go see the list.

Next up, Unreality has a list of the 15 Best Science Fiction Films of the Last 10 Decade. I like this list because it pushes the boundaries of the genre by including a few that most people wouldn’t even consider science fiction, but unmistakably are. But hey, if Children of Men is at the top of the heap and District 9 and Wall-E are on there somewhere, I’m not gonna argue. (But still, Revenge of the Sith? Matrix: Reloaded? Dude is trying to make the fanboys’ heads explode en masse.)

Alberto Gonzales from the new Esquire interview, yet another stop in this troll’s on-going ‘Stop Picking on Me’ Tour.

The notion that what happened at Abu Ghraib was a result of the policies of the Bush administration I just think is totally ridiculous.

Let’s go through this one more time, Mr. Gonzales.

From the SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY:

Conclusion 1: On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

Conclusion 19: The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.