George W. Bush goes head to head with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on this really funny parody of everyone’s favorite game show that aired on Jay Leno. Thanks to Chris24 for tweeting about this video!

Tags: Barack Obama, funny, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jay Leno, Jeopardy, parody, The Tonight Show, Video, YouTube

Don’t ask me why the guys at JibJab are so awesome, but they are, and the latest proof comes in the form of their latest video: “Time For Some Campaignin’,” which beautifully sums up the entire 2008 election in two minutes. This is simply awesome.

Tags: Barack Obama, campaign, election, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, JibJab, John McCain, Video, YouTube

The Fourth of July may have come and gone for this year, but the Muppets apparently have a really funny variation of the Stars & Stripes Forever that will top off any Independence Day Holiday. Kudos to whoever put this one together.

Tags: Fourth of July, Independence Day, Muppets, parody, Stars & Stripes Forever, Video, YouTube

Twitter is down (so what’s new?), so I guess that means that I’m going to have to blog my outrage to the news that a judge ordered YouTube to give its user data to Viacom. All this in the midst of the $1 billion lawsuit that forced Stephen Colbert off of the ‘Tube, made Google wish it had never thought of acquiring the video sharing service, sparked one of the major reasons for the recent writer’s strike, and now led into yet the latest infringement of internet privacy.

First off, what is Viacom’s problem? Why can’t they just do what the other major networks have done and partner up with YouTube! For Pete’s sake, I can already watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report IN FULL on their own website with almost no ads, why are they making such a big deal over YouTube?

But what really makes no sense is why Viacom even needs to see the complete records of every single video ever watched on YouTube, complete with username, IP address, and time watched (which must be millions of pages long, I would imagine), along with copies of every video ever removed from YouTube. That’s not copyright infringement, that’s privacy infringement. It shouldn’t be any of Viacom’s business how many times I watch three guys sing about their missing legwarmers or a tomato and a cucumber sing about the difference between a monkey and an ape.

But while those examples may be somewhat humorous and intentionally revealing, internet privacy is quite serious and has affected lives. The article I linked to gave an example of someone who was sent to a concentration camp because Yahoo! was forced to give up information to the Chinese government.

The judge at this case dismissed Google’s concerns over privacy as “speculative.” Well, I may not be a lawyer, and I’m certainly not one to gamble, I’d be more than willing to speculate that this is going to set a very, very bad precedent for the privacy of the internet as we’ve come to know it. I do hope that someone rules this to be illegal, and if not, then there had better be some sort of internet outcry, because this is just wrong and immoral.

Tags: court, Google, judge, privacy, ruling, Viacom, Videos, YouTube

This past week, my own San Mateo County (along with a small portion of neighboring San Francisco) held a special election on April 8th to vote for a successor to the late Tom Lantos, who had been our representative in Congress. Well, despite a very low turnout for this very small and under-advertised election, Democrat Jackie Speier (whom I have met on a few occasions) was elected with 75% of the vote, thus eliminating the need for a runoff election in June and making her our Congresswoman for the rest of this term (until January 2009).

Below you can see her being sworn in yesterday. Her initial comments were wonderfully provocative, and I sure couldn’t imagine seeing Tom Lantos saying some of the things that she said.

Anyway, congratulations, Jackie! Hope to see some good things from you up there in Capitol Hill.

Tags: comments, Congress, election, Jackie Speier, special, swearing in, Tom Lantos, Video, YouTube

This is an interesting movement that is taking place today, where many residents and cities around the world, including my native San Francisco, is agreeing to turn the lights off for one hour starting tonight at 8 PM. It seems like an interesting movement. If you are able to, consider doing your part for the movement, and help conserve energy usage by turning your lights off for an hour tonight.

Tags: climate change, Earth Hour, global warming, movement, San Francisco, Video, YouTube

Another great one from my science hero, Bill Nye. The groove of this one is quite addictive, you’d think that the song here was originally written for the Bill Nye adaptation. Totally awesome.

Yes, I do promise that I’ll start getting some good content posted on this blog again. I’ve been REALLY busy with school stuff recently, but Spring Break is starting…

Tags: Bill Nye, climate, cold, hot, online, Video, weather, YouTube

In Physics class today, our teacher was talking about the Hydraulic Press, and showed us this great video that he happened to find on YouTube. It’s from a very very old David Letterman, in which they crush various things under an 80-ton Hydraulic Press somewhere in New Jersey. As if the virtual gore wasn’t bad enough, you get Letterman making one-liners through the whole thing! Absolutely hilarious and amazing to watch! And I thought Will it Blend? was awesome…

Part 1:

Part 2:

Tags: crush, hydraulic press, Physics, pressure, School, Video, YouTube

Now wait a minute, wait a minute! That says “2005 in Review.” Isn’t it like, um, a few years off? Well, this video is actually a blast from the past–a funny short produced two years ago by the folks at JibJab, featuring Bush recapping his year 2005 to the song “Turkey in the Straw.” I loved this very clever video and I loved rediscovering it today on YouTube, and wanted to embed it here for your enjoyment.

Tags: 2005, Bush, cartoon, funny, JibJab, new year, review, Video, YouTube

The folks at Bill Me Later have started up their own viral web video campaign, called Operation Fruitcake. The goal of this video campaign is to find as many ways as possible to rid the world of the holiday scourge, known as fruitcake, that everyone likes to buy but no one likes to eat. One of their videos comes from Will It Blend?, as they blend up fruitcake along with everything else that you don’t need anymore thanks to Bill Me Later.

If you’re one of the anti-fruitcakers in the world, you might want to keep an eye on Operation Fruitcake this holiday season. I know that I’ll be keeping watch (and taking notes…).

Tags: Bill Me Later, fruitcake, funny, holidays, Videos, Will it Blend?, YouTube