Flour Power

The title says is all:

On a related note, have you seen how old French men settle their disputes?

(via CrunchGear)

Do you know those things that are so bad they’re good?

Well, this is not the case. This song is the perfect example of algorithmically-generated music, Auto-Tune-enhanced vocals and the best lyrics a 3 year-old could write. And of course, it went viral and is now one of the biggest things on Youtube and Twitter. It’s just so bad that people just feel the need to show it to everyone they know. Like I’m doing now, with this blog post. I know I’m feeding the beast, but here goes, Rebecca Black’s Friday:

This… thing… has garnered almost 30 million views on Youtube at the time of writing, and 1M of them just in the few hours since I’ve seen it this morning. It’s also a trending topic on Twitter and has already got the attention of music-mogul Simon Cowel. Not bad for the reported $2.000 paid to Ark Music Factory for the production of the video. And again thanks to the Internet, we now we can all enjoy the parodies.

What’s with all these songs with explanations of the ordering of the days of the week?

I’ve wanted to write my own contribution to the exposure of homeopathy as complete nonsense for a while now, so here goes. Let me start with a short introduction on this type of “medicine”.

Homeopathy is governed by two main principles:

• The “law of similars”, or ”let like be cured by like”, which states that by taking a preparation that induces the symptoms of a disease, it will cure the disease itself;
• The more diluted the preparation is, the more effective it gets. In some preparations the dilution is done to a point where not a single molecule of the active ingredient is left.

I’ve seen doctors calling it witchcraft, TV shows debunking the whole thing, and campaigns like 10:23 trying to raise awareness to what must be one of the biggest myths of modern times. But people are still spending billions of dollars per year in homeopathic treatments. Yes, billions!

Steve DeGroof at MadArtLab found a very interesting (and fun) way of explaining it. He looks more closely at that second principle, and uses Felicia Day to put it all into perspective:

He puts Felicia into various categories (like women named Felicia, redheads, people on Earth) and compares that number to how much homeopathy dilutes various solutions. The conclusion is that for typical homeopathic solutions, the concentration of the active ingredient is comparable to having one Felicia Day dissolved 100 million universes. If that doesn’t help you grasp the nonsense of homeopathy, I don’t know what will…

Just last week Radiohead released The Kings of Limbs, their 8th album. With it, a video for one of the songs, Lotus Flower, which I’m embedding below:

What did you think when you watched it? I thought “that’s some funny dancing by Thom Yorke”. And then I moved on with my life.

But some people have richer imaginations and way too much time in their hands, so the parodies started. So they started dubbing the Radiohead’s video with other songs, and the results are quite funny. Enjoy watching Thom Yorke dancing to Ke$ha’s We R Who We R, Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, or We No Speak Americano. Oh, the Internet…

And them some French ones came up with a “Course on Body Language with Thom Yorke” (in French), which is brilliant and hilarious in so many ways:

fig. 1: the shower head
fig. 2: the egyptian
fig. 3: the buffoon
fig. 4: the rag
fig. 5: the wall pocket
fig. 6: the karateka
fig. 7: the lotus
fig. 8: the acorn
fig. 9: the prayer
fig. 10: the fan

Oh, and one thing that wasn’t made as a joke, but I think it’s spot on. This guy thought that the crazy dancing would go well with the eclectic beat in Radiohead’s 15 Step. And I think he’s quite right:

Looking forward to see what else people will come up with.

UPDATE: Here’s some more good ones: Thom getting Rick Rolled, the Surfin’ Bird, and Benny Hill’s theme song.

(GraphJam)

A little help on the references:

• Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere
• Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
• Gladys Knight – Midnight Train To Georgia
• The Monkees – Last Train To Clarksville
• Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
• AC/DC – Highway to Hell
• Eagle – Hotel California