Category: Videos

A Sunset on Mars

Watch and behold, a sunset on Mars. At first it struck me as “another” interplanetary video, but come to think about it, it is pretty amazing.

Out there, one year away from our own planet a little robot landed and shot HD video — and it all looks like Arizona. It’s crazy how a place that far away can look so familiar. Imagine going on a hike into the wild, spending a whole day trekking through hills and slopes. You climb a small mountain and finally arrive at an outlook. You probably feel completely at one with nature; small, fragile, an observer of something greater.

Now, keep that concept in mind but imagine that you travel upwards in a one-man space shuttle through deep space. After one year you arrive at the location below, totally alone on Mars. Everything looks familiar but you are one year away from anything you would remotely call home.

The universe is full of these places, there are billions of them. And most of them are incredibly vast and incredibly empty. We are truly small and insignificant in the eye of the universe. I wonder what other kinds of species might be dwelling out there somewhere in space, seemingly all alone in a vast empty void just like us. The next time you are moved by a sunset, remember the video below. Every day there are billions of sunsets but most of them will go unseen forever.

Sour Times as Houses Seized by Banks

You know things are bad when you measure the performance of the economy in the rate of houses seized by banks. Nevertheless, in these sour times it is a good indicator of how screwed we really are. There should be a how-screwed-we-are index for this.

Reuters reports that the rate has slightly gone down which is good news and might shed some hope on the future of America.

We should probably also spend a minute thinking about why people buy houses they can’t afford. But let’s not rub salt into the wound at this point.

Innocence of Muslims vs. Life of Brian

I have written a lot today about censorship and politics. But this news story caught my eye. The U.S. ambassador Christopher Stephens was killed in Libya because a guy posted a video on YouTube making fun of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. If you have seen the movie Life of Brian you know the drill: a religious figure is being made fun of on the expense of everyone else. But what struck me here was the reaction. Killing the ambassador, really?

Below is a clip of the movie Life of Brian. The notorious YouTube trailer for the movie Innocence of Muslims follows after.

Below is the Innocence of Muslims trailer. Can you see the connection?