You have a right to fail, as Wile E. Coyote demonstrates — another one-minute Public Service Announcement from Warner Bros., circa 1986.
Also see Porky Pig and Petunia about women running for office, here.
Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote on the Constitution
August 30, 2010
5 Comments | 
animation, Cartoons, Government, History, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: animation, Cartoons, Constitution, Government, History, Roadrunner, Warner Bros., Wile E. Coyote | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Bugs Bunny on the Constitution
August 30, 2010Was this from 1989, the Constitution’s Bicentennial? I dimly remember these PSAs.
This one isn’t brilliant — n.b., the Constitution can be amended — but it is Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
I just stumbled into it on YouTube. Is there a good collection somewhere? Are the others better?
1 Comment | 1789, animation, Cartoons, Government, History, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1789, animation, Bugs Bunny, Cartoons, Constitution, Daffy Duck, Government, History, Warner Bros. | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cat and Mosque, at Dogboy and Mr. Dan
August 19, 2010Mark Fiore’s latest animated political cartoon won’t be popular with Newt Gingrich. But then, Fiore won the Pulitzer, not Gingrich.
(This cartoon is not available on Fiore’s YouTube Channel, yet.)
(Oh, and remember: This is the guy whose app got Apple’s panties in a wad — while you’re there, iPhone users, get the app that Steve Jobs thought mean for ridiculing those who so richly deserve ridicule. Ain’t the First Amendment grand?)
Tip of the old scrub brush to Jennsmom.
1 Comment | animation, First Amendment, History, Political cartoons, Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom | Tagged: animation, Cartoons, First Amendment, History, Mark Fiore, Mosques, Politics, Religious Freedom, zoning | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Academy Award winner: “Logorama”
August 16, 2010Delightfully creative. Surely there is at least a bell ringer in here, just in identifying the different logos. For economics and sociology classes, this is a study in branding, done in very interesting fashion.
Can you use it in class, even at 16 minutes? The language may be too edgy for freshman and sophomores, yes?
A short description from the Vimeo post, by Marc Altshuler, who owns the company who created and recorded the music for the film:
This is a short film that was directed by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won a 2010 academy award under the category of animated short.
In this film there are two pieces of licensed music, in the beginning and in the end. All the other music and sound design are original. The opening track (Dean Martin “Good Morning Life”) and closing track (The Ink Spots “I don’t want to send the world on fire”) songs are licensed pre-existing tracks. All original music and sound design is by, human (www.humanworldwide.com)
Brilliant little work even if you can’t use it in class.
1 Comment | animation, Art, Economics, Music, Video and film | Tagged: Academy Award, animation, Art, Branding, Cartoons, Design, Economics, film, Logorama, Music, Sociology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
More Billy Blob: Bumble BeEing and the Butterfly Effect
August 16, 2010Also from Billy Blob (as the Space Probe cartoon posted here on August 15), “Bumble BeEing, Part 1: The Butterfly Effect.”
How to categorize such a cartoon: Philosophy? Science of Chaos (from which we get the hypothetical “butterfly effect”)?
Education? Religion?
Leave a Comment » | animation, Cartoons, Chaos, Philosophy, Video and film | Tagged: animation, Billy Blob, Butterfly Effect, Cartoons, Chaos, film, Philosophy, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We Are Science Probes
August 14, 2010
Still from “We Are Science Probes.” Full clip of movie below.
In animation, a parable about the dangers of being intentionally ignorant of science. In the not-distant-enough future, a probe from another planet arrives on Earth after the demise of human civilization. Unfortunately, the probes land in Kansas, the land of creationism and woo. The plot thickens.
[My apologies — the version I found did not come with a “pause” button. It will play automatically when you open this post. Fortunately, it’s almost perfectly safe-for-work. If you don’t like the music, turn it off. There is no spoken dialogue in the cartoon. If you wish to pause the playing of the cartoon, right click to get to the Adobe Flash Player controls. To pause the playing click the checkmark next to “play.”]
[Update August 18 — Okay, I give up — 100% of comments I’ve been getting ran against the video without the “start” or “pause” buttons. You’ll have to go see it at another site — here, for example.]
[Years later, it’s on Youtube!]
Found it at a site called NewGrounds, which includes several other animation pieces. The piece was created by a group that goes by the handle Billy Blob.
Sure would love this group to turn their creative faculties to hard history — say, the Progressive Movement and Gilded Age. (Probably less chance of commercialization there, and perhaps less chance of awe-striking art, too.)
4 Comments | animation, Cartoons, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History, Humor, Religion, Science, Space exploration, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: animation, Anime, BillyBlob, Cartoons, Creationism, Education, Humor, Intelligent Design, Science, Space exploration, War on Education, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Quote of the moment: Books as lighthouses in the dark sea of time
July 3, 2010
Jeffrey Robbins, a human character in the animated cartoon series, “The Gargoyles”
The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and prisms reflecting all possible futures. Books are lighthouses, erected in the dark sea of time.
Jeffrey Robbins, a character in the cartoon series, “The Gargoyles”
Now available on Youtube. To get the quote above, to go to 21:30 in this video:
Tip of the old scrub brush to James Kessler.
9 Comments | animation, Books, Cartoons, Famous quotes, History, knowledge, Libraries, Quotes | Tagged: animation, Books, Cartoons, Famous quotes, History, knowledge, Libraries, Quotes, The Gargoyles | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Great animation: “The Chesnut Tree”
March 14, 2010Wonderful film from 2007, by Hyun-min Lee. I found it on PBS World this weekend, and then found a YouTube version.
Watch it with your young children.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsS4Tk-lrxo]
Leave a Comment » | animation, Cartoons, children, Video and film | Tagged: animation, Cartoons, children, film, Hyun-min Lee, Mothers, The Chesnut Tree | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hubble Deep Field , 3-D animation
August 28, 2009Here’s something that will make the Texas State Board of Education cringe and cower under their desks; watch it in good health:
2 Comments | Accuracy, animation, Astronomy, Big Bang, Science, State school boards, Texas | Tagged: 3-D, animation, Astronomy, Hubble Deep Field, Science, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Fun in merchandising
July 25, 2009HEMA is a department store in the Netherlands. Like all other businesses, it now has on-line shopping.
Inside a HEMA store in the Netherlands - Wikimedia image
But it’s online with a diffference. Load this page, and then wait a few seconds . . .
(Can you tell whether this is a real HEMA page, or just a good parody? Anyone?)
(And, what kind of software does one need to do that kind of animation? Is there any classroom use for this?)
3 Comments | animation, Business, Humor, Technology | Tagged: animation, Business, HEMA, On-line Shopping, Parody, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cy? Si! Mel Blanc and Jack Benny
May 22, 2009One of my favorite comedy routines from the Master of Voices, Mel Blanc, and his accomplice Jack Benny:
We were talking about this old routine today, and sure enough, we could find it on YouTube.
In 1974, they repeated it for old times’ sake, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson:
Note: May 22 is the anniversary of the last time Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show, in 1992. George Bush the elder was president then; the Soviet Union had been out of existence only five months. Osama bin Laden was a little-known, former ally of the U.S. in the Russo-Afghanistan war. E-mail was just coming on, cell-phones were rare and expensive, as well as analog, wireless broadband hadn’t been invented. Apple was still making computers far, far behind the IBM-compatible PCs — new chips like the 486 promised a revolution in computing. A lifetime ago.
Why is this post tagged “animation?” You remember, don’t you? Blanc was the guy who did almost every voice in the Warner Bros. cartoons from the classic era. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn . . . as someone noted, remarkable to think Yosemite Sam and Tweety Bird are the same guy.
Update, 2014: Mel Blanc’s birthday was May 30, as Richard Daybell reminded us; sweet, short tribute to Blanc at ‘Tis Pity He’s a Writer.
1 Comment | animation, Cartoons, History, Humor, Television | Tagged: animation, Cartoons, comedy, Cy Si, Humor, Jack Benny, Mel Blanc, Television, Vintage Television | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Darwin speaks out, sorta
April 27, 2008In his on-camera parts in his mockumentary movie “Expelled!” Ben Stein paid a visit to the statue of Charles Darwin in the British Museum (too bad Stein didn’t bother to visit any of the exhibits).
It was a brave move. Stein, ever the prankster, surely understood that his move would be open to pranking itself. Sure enough, The Beagle Project sponsored a captioning contest, similar to The New Yorker’s cartoon captioning contests.
Here’s the winner, in a .gif animation from Eclectech:
See the other entries in the captioning contest at The Beagle Project.
Oooh, and see all the other creativity Stein’s misstep created:
- Adamant notes the review of the movie in Variety; if I do say so myself, Seitz has a way with headlines, no? See also Dr. Seitz’s other comments: “Frankly, Stein”
- Time Magazine’s provocative review of Mr. Stein’s wading into the waters
- Collin Purrington notes the initials that would grace Mr. Stein’s tomb — intelligent design? By whom?
3 Comments | Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, Movies, Science | Tagged: animation, Ben Stein, Darwin, Entertainment, Mockumentary | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Return to normalcy
March 14, 2008For at least one hour this past week, the Bathtub got more than 11,000 hits. Who could have foreseen that a post about an ancient piece of pseudo-animation would catch the fancy of so many? I gather that the word “animation” played a key role in the enormous popularity of the post.
In two days the Bathtub got more than 100,000 hits; that’s big blog territory, about where WordPress phones and suggests it’s time to move to a paid format. The first day was chiefly driven by Reddit; the second day by Digg. At this point traffic is coming from about five different flagging services.
I wish other, more serious posts would merit such attention. In the real world, People magazine sells a lot more than Time, and a lot more than Natural History, and those magazines throw away an equivalent of the entire press run of The Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association just because of a crease in one page. Content quality bears no correlation to total circulation. But that’s my judgment; who can say that my judgment is better than the crowd’s? Santayana’s Ghost is a more amicable companion, but Galton’s Ghost haunts us, too.
So, some observations:
1. Archaeologists and anthropologists need to flack their finds better. The animated .gif was created in 2004 as best I can determine. I picked up the story from a tiny note in a monthly archaeology newsletter Kris Hirst’s blog at from Ask.com, which picked the story up from a note on a piece of controversy about the bowl (regarding whether it was the Assyrian Tree of Life depicted or not). The bowl was found, depending on the source, in the 1970s or 1980s (surely someone knows which date would be correct).
In other words, this “news” has been kicking around for a quarter to a third of a century. What other magnificent archaeological finds would people find fascinating, if they only knew about them?
This is a constant problem. News gatekeepers — editors — generally do a good job, but the volume of news means many things people would find intriguing, get overlooked. Some day I’ll write up my experiences as a press secretary, telling how editors would repeatedly reject tips as “not news,” then run the items months later when the item came in through a different source, or a different route. (“She came in through the bathroom window,” the Beatles sang, and every press secretary understands why; the door and the grand staircase were occupied.)
The problem is compounded by the internet and computers. Most people who looked at the post did not start out the day wondering what had happened recently in archaeological digs in Iran. News reader filters for our “interests” may shut out things we really would be interested to see. I called it “animation,” and 100,000 people crowded to see. There’s nothing like an old fashioned newspaper to pique our interest in odd items we were not looking for at all, on pages where we read other stuff we were looking for.
2. We all need to marry the cyber world to the real world. I still know precious little about the artifact in question. Where can I find information on it? I don’t have access to archaeology journals. Without knowing exactly where to look on the internet, we are all at a loss as to where to turn. What museum is this piece in, if any? (If it’s not in a museum, Iran or its owners could auction it off at a pretty good price right now, I’ll bet.) Who were the Italians who found it? Where can we find the papers describing it? What about the 11-minute film mentioned in the press releases — where is that film, how can we see it? Those people who hold this information appear not to be plumbed into the tubes of the internets, or the spigots are turned off. There is an information vacuum here, and good, real information is difficult to find to fill it.
3. Most of us know precious little about the world; the internet is often limited in the help it can offer to cure our ignorance. Several commenters seemed to have some knowledge about Iran’s archaeological heritage. Most of us had never heard of the Burnt City, most of us still couldn’t find it on a map, and most of us don’t know where to go to get the next chunk of fascinating information. The internet is a great institution, but in these matters, it’s still hit or miss for people who really want to know. We’re missing the boat on using computers and the internet as education tools.
Readers: What else have we learned from this experience?
6 Comments | Archaeology, History, History and art, On-line education, On-line learning, Santayana's ghost, Weblogs | Tagged: animation, Archaeology, blogging, History, Technology, technology in education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
World’s oldest animation, 5,200 years old
March 10, 2008
An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the bowl goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.
The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.
According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:
The artefact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures.
Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.
The bowl has some controversy associated with it. Some researchers claimed the tree on the bowl to be the Assyrian Tree of Life, but the bowl dates to a period before the Assyrian civilization.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Kris’s Archaeological Blog at About.com:
Now this is deeply cool. The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) in Iran has made a short film using the images on a bowl from the Burnt City. The Burnt City (Shar-i Sokhta) is a site in Iran that dates to about 2600 BC, and has seen some decades of investigation. The bowl shows five images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree.
Bugs Bunny has nothing to worry about yet, if you ask me.
- World’s oldest musical instruments?
- Reddit’s link, with about 100 comments on this post, some of them serious criticism
Animate discussion, share the word:
183 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, History, History and art, History blogs, Science | Tagged: Ancient Iran, animation, Archaeology, History, Humor, Pottery, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Our cat, Smokey, made famous
September 22, 2007Can’t figure out how to embed this in WordPress (there’s gotta be a way). You need to see it, especially if you are owned by a cat like our Smokey. Fortunately, Smokey hasn’t found the baseball bat, but she plays mantle hockey with anything and everything. Plus, she’s fond of shredding paper — books, magazines, bills to pay — knowing that such noise usually gets us out of bed.
It’s a production from an English group. Big money, no doubt — could we ever hope to find such productions for classroom use?
3 Comments | Personal, Video and film | Tagged: , animation, cats, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 