It’s Saturday afternoon, and I don’t feel like writing any more than I imagine you feel like reading. So let’s look at some cool pictures.

You definitely want to check out this photoset of the amazing hand painting of Guido Daniele.

Or perhaps, you might enjoy these pictures taken at just the right angle.

Then, imagine what “Relativity” by M.C. Escher might look like if it were made entirely out of Legos. Now, imagine no longer.

Finally, see what nice co-workers Walt has. They covered his Jaguar with post-it notes. Then they put the photos online.

Enjoy!

First, read the rules of the game.

This week’s challenge will be tasty beverage, erstwhile Boston terror suspect, and Lou Costello soundalike Master Shake.

I was able to link Master Shake to Sir Francis Bacon in four degrees, though that shouldn’t stop you from posting a longer response, or looking for a shorter one. Entries will be accepted until midnight on Thursday, February 22.

Good luck!

And congratulations once again to Lee for winning last week’s challenge by linking Peyton Manning to Sir Francis Bacon in six degrees:

Peyton Manning > Dan Marino > Courteney Cox > Bruce Springsteen > Elvis Costello > William Shakespeare > Sir Francis Bacon

Peyton Manning in 2004 beat the record for touchdown passes in a single season set in 1984 by Dan Marino, who appeared in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective with Courteney Cox, who appeared in the video for “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, who performed The Clash’s “London Calling” at the 2003 Grammy Awards with Elvis Costello, who based his ballet Il Sogno on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, who is believed by some to be Sir Francis Bacon.

SuchShakespeareStuff is now Shakespeare Geek. I was checking out the links over there when I came across a post by someone named Cesario listing her ten unpopular opinions about Shakespeare. I don’t agree with everything she says, but I applaud people who are willing to post unpopular opinions, and I’d like to add my twopence to the conversation.

1. This stuff about Shakespeare being [someone else] is arrant nonsense.

Strongly agree. There’s no good evidence that this is true, and most of the arguments you hear are either elitist or overly-ambitious.

2. Twelfth Night is at its root a deeply creepy and disturbing play

Mildly agree. The play does have a dark side, to be sure. The Andrew subplot is creepy, the Malvolio subplot is disturbing, and did I hear Orsino correctly in the last scene? He’s actually going to kill Cesario to spite Olivia?

3. Shylock is not the hero of Merchant of Venice. He is the villain.

Strongly agree. If you’ve read the play, it’s hard to make the case otherwise.

4. The Macbeths have the best marriage in all Shakespeare.

Mildly disagree. I’ve heard Harold Bloom express this opinion, and I get the equal partnership aspect, but I find their relationship too dysfunctional and codependent to pay them this compliment. The title “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” is a dubious honor, but I think I’d have to go with Brutus and Portia. They seem like they have a really strong relationship. The fact that it can be torn apart by the assassination is a testament to the earth-shattering significance of that event. We won’t count the marriages at the end of the comedies, because who knows how they’ll fare?

5. Lear’s Fool is a subjective reality experienced only by Lear himself.

Mildly disagree, though I like your spirit. Both Goneril and Kent talk directly to the Fool, and others talk about him (such as the Gentleman that Kent meets in the storm). I do think there’s an alter ego reading possible here, but perhaps this is more of a symbolic idea than something that’s literally demonstrable in the play.

6. Hamlet: not really a play.

Strongly disagree. Hamlet is a play. It has searingly powerful dramatic dialogue, a story arc, and character development. There are some stage plays that I would say are not really plays, but Hamlet is a play through and through.

7. I Henry VI is a better play than Richard III.

Strongly disagree, though I think I Henry VI is highly underrated. I also think that Richard III is a much better play after you’ve read the three Henry VI plays. The characters in Richard III have a lot of history, and understanding that history helps explain a lot of their interactions.

8. Claudio and Hero = so doomed.

Strongly disagree. This is the stereotypical couple of Shakespeare’s day. These are the people who wed unthinkingly and play their roles, living happily ever after because they never consider that they may not. They are used by Shakespeare to contrast the much more interesting Beatrice and Benedick who question everything about love.

9. I think Shakespeare was probably Catholic.

No opinion, though there is some reason to believe he may have been. I’m hesitant to make any generalizations about Shakespeare based on his writings, because he was so good at speaking from so many different points of view that it’s impossible to know what’s really Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare may very well have been a soldier, a king, a murderer, a nobleman, a shrew, a fairy, a Moor, an ancient Egyptian queen, or a boatswain. He’s much too clever for me to guess.

10. Titus Andronicus is a farce and would be best played as a Monty Python skit.

Mildly agree. I don’t think the farce is intentional, but playing it as a Monty Python skit would be an improvement.

In the home of the Pope, I’m a locus of prayer;
With a touch of divinity, high in the air;
That’s a strain on your neck if you linger to stare;
And I’m named for a Fourth, though I sound like its square.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Lee. See comments for answer.

Real life or parody? Sometimes, I can’t tell the difference anymore. That’s when it’s time for the Headline Game.

Below are two headlines from CNN.com and two headlines from The Onion. Can you spot which are the real headlines and which are the fakes?

1. Apple hard at work making iPhone obsolete
2. Group wants bus drivers to hang up their phones
3. Sharks kill four people in “dull” year
4. Westminster Dog Show finalists form elite Iditarod team

Note: CNN headlines taken from front page of CNN.com; headline of actual story may differ. Capitalization on the Onion headlines changed to match CNN.

Answers: Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 4

How did you do?

Conundrum won’t always be a picnic (what is?), but I’m having fun, so lets do one more.

This week, I’m having a picnic for characters from Shakespeare. But only certain characters can be invited, based on a particular rule:

• I’m inviting JULIET, but not ROMEO.
• I’m inviting ANGELO, but not BASSANIO.
• I’m inviting VINCENTIO, but not LUCENTIO.
• I’m inviting ESCALUS, but not MERCUTIO.
• I’m inviting CLAUDIO, but not DON JOHN.
• I’m inviting ISABELLA, but not RICHARD II.
• I’m inviting FRIAR PETER, but not FRIAR LAURENCE.
• I’m inviting both POMPEY and VARRIUS, but neither OCTAVIUS nor AGRIPPA.

Have you figured out the rule? If so, please don’t post it. Just post one addition to the guest list to show us you got it, and to give an extra hint to later solvers. This time, it is not necessary to include the name of a character who is not invited, but you may do so if you choose.

UPDATE: The solution is now posted in the comments.

Blinking electronic signs advertising Aqua Teen Hunger Force recently triggered a terrorism scare in Boston.

Fortunately, the staff of the National Lampoon reacted quickly and professionally, and put together this 24/ATHF mash-up parody before any damage was done:

We live in strange times. The Dixie Chicks won five Grammys last night. Remember when they were untouchables because they dared to express doubt about the war, and the president who was bringing us to it? But now that the war is going badly, the Dixie Chicks are okay again.

Were last night’s awards all about the music? Or were the awards as much for their anti-war stance? Natalie Maines herself said “I think people are using their freedom of speech with all these awards. We get the message.”

If it was for their anti-war stance, does this mark a turning point in the nation’s conception of anti-war protesters? Or are the people who initially shunned them a different demographic than those who award the Grammys?

If this is a shift, in line with the Democratic takeover of Congress in November, what could this mean for the candidates for Democratic nominee for president in 2008? Republican? For the general election?

And where did the shift begin? I think the war going badly is certainly the main factor, but in my opinion the catalyst was Hurricane Katrina. That was botched so badly, and with such dire consequences, that even the expert spinmasters were powerless. Seasoned journalists who pride themselves on dispassionate analysis were screaming into the cameras. And that was when the people realized that the emperor had no clothes.

So where does that leave us now? With the Question of the Week:

What changes do you see in the collective national mood over the past two years and how might it affect the political landscape over the next two years.

Another plug for today’s Slings & Arrows marathon at 3pm on Sundance.

Again, this is Must See TV for Shakespeare fans and theatre folk, and well worth the watching for everyone else. It’s hysterically funny, true to life, and really gets at the heart of what it means to be passionate about Shakespeare.

The actors are all top-notch. They’re Canadian, so you might not recognize them, but that just adds to their believability. Fans of Kids in the Hall or Saturday Night Live will be familiar with Mark McKinney. And if you only know Rachel McAdams as The Hot Chick or one of the Mean Girls, then Season One will show you a whole new Rachel McAdams.

Sundance is showing all six episodes of Season One of Slings & Arrows today, Sunday, from 3pm to 8pm. This is the Hamlet season. Just start watching at 3pm, and if you’re not hooked by the end of the theme song, there’s no need to watch any further.

All six episodes of Season Two are availble on Time Warner Cable’s On Demand (under “Free Movies on Demand”), if you have it. This is the Macbeth season.

Season Three starts February 18 at 8pm. This will be the King Lear season. I’m giddy with anticipation in that very special Shakespeare Teacher way.

You can use the comments section of this post to discuss Season One. If there actually turns out to be any interest, I can start putting up a weekly post so we can discuss Season Three.

I found this really compelling, both in form and content:

I gave my take on the long-term ramifications of this in earlier posts Beggar’s Canyon and Optimism. What really struck me about this video was the idea that HTML tags define the form, while XML tags define the content. So when text from an XML document is exported, it can be classified and formatted by any number of disparate machines. That’s why I can have a blog, because I can just fill in fields in a form, rather than having to understand what a MySQL database is, or how to create one.

I also enjoyed the idea of the users of the Internet teaching the Internet about ideas that only humans can have. What is a hyperlink if not one person’s definition of the relationship between two realms of information? And with machines powerful enough to process those definitions in the aggregate, the Internet becomes an über-democratic negotiation about the nature of meaning. It’s a step beyond Wikipedia, where anyone can visit to add or revise content. It’s Google News, which proactively aggregates news stories from thousands of sources worldwide.

What about pictures? How can we really search for images, when computers can only see them in pixels? Some people tag their photos, but that’s just a start. Enter schemes like The ESP Game in which players log in and are randomly assigned an anonymous partner. The pair is then shown images and they have to come up with words to describe each image. Once they agree on a word, they may move on to the next image. They win if they can label a certain number of images in the pre-determined time. It’s packaged as a game, but what it’s really doing is finding humans to complete a task that computers can’t do, which is label a large quantity of images, so that they can join this network of information.

Some might be troubled by the thought of the “average” person defining the nature of information. Don’t we have specialists and experts who constitute a small minority of the population, but who can give us a much richer understanding of their field of study? Yes, and as their influence grows, we will be able to identify and access them much more easily through the shared mind of the Web. And they, in turn, will have greater access and ability to share their ideas with a wider audience. It will be a pure meritocracy.

There’s a website, FaceResearch.org, that allows you to digitally create the average of a number of different faces that you select or upload to their site. They discuss the hypothesis that the more average a face looks, the more attractive it is perceived to be. This may be partially because average faces tend to be more symmetrical and have smoother skin. But it’s a wonderfully egalitarian idea, if you think about it. The most attractive among us may not be any one of us, but may just be the average of all of us.

Web 2.0, then, may ultimately be a way of taking the average of all of our conceptions of the world and finding the most attractive face, the essential truths of human understanding, heretofore locked only within our collective unconscious. And then we may say, along with John Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’