Move over Jedward. Ireland's most watched YouTube video is of family trio Crystal Swing - the wonderful Mary, Dervela and Derek. You may have seen them on Ellen's Paddy's Day show or RTE's The Late Late Show.

The Tale of JavaScript. I Mean ECMAScript. (MP4 version, slides) Yahoo! JavaScript architect Douglas Crockford, the creator of the JSLint JavaScript quality tool and the JSON data-interchange format, talks about what he says is simultaneously the worlds most popular and unpopular programming language. Previous JavaScript (sadly video linked by the FPP is down, try here). Previous Maniac Mansion. More video from MIX Online. A similar, more in depth talk at Google.

Honk if you've missed a payment A disgruntled former car dealership employee was arrested in Austin for bricking 100+ cars using a dealer-installed debt collection black box. Made by Pay Technologies, the system allows the dealer to disable a car's ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due.

Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka brings together ten other people also named Hirokazu Tanaka, and they all sing a song about being named Hirokazu Tanaka.
You may know Hip Tanaka's other work already--he's one of the original chiptuners, having written the score for many popular Nintendo video games throughout the 1980's: [ Earthbound • 2 • 3 | Mother | Metroid (live) • 2 • 3 | Super Mario Land • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 | Tetris (arr.) | Balloon Fight | Fire Emblem | Kid Icarus ]
10-min Youtube (in French) which features his more famous works with accompanying gameplay • Interview • Interview • Bio

UC Irvine neuroscientist James Fallon gives talks about the biological traits of psychopathic killers using brain scans and genetics. When his mother suggested he should look into his own biological traits, Dr. Fallon discovered that he has an inactive orbital cortex -- a common trait for psychopaths (pdf). He also found that he has all five gene variants linked to aggression, and is related to two infamous murderers. So, why isn't he a killer? He attributes it to nuture.

Scientists supersize quantum mechanics. "A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving."

David Byrne on Collaborations: "A writer at Pitchfork critically said I'd collaborate for a bag of Doritos. I do love it, and the results are sometimes surprising, sometimes creatively successful and sometimes even popular ("Lazy" was a huge hit everywhere except the US)." On song writing, "After the initial transcription of verbal sounds into nonsense sentences made of real words, a long, tedious process begins. I then begin to write out every phrase I can think of that matches that sonic/syllabic flow — no phrase is too mundane or stupid. I try not to pre-judge anything that occurs to me at this point — one never knows if something that sounded stupid at first will, in a new context, make the whole thing shine."

40 years ago, a small crew of filmmakers set out to document some of the more pressing issues involving wildlife in America. They made eight half-hour films around the country and in doing so made what is believed to be the first environmental TV series in the US. Entitled Our Vanishing Wilderness, all eight episodes are now online and free to view here.

Mobutu Sese Seko of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? has written an excellent deconstruction of sitcom laugh tracks at Something Awful. (last embedded video is probably NSFW)
Elsewhere, Jaime Weinman of Macleans muses on the use of laugh tracks in WKRP in Cincinnati, and Gawker shows us what Arrested Development would have been like with a laugh track. Still not convinced that laugh tracks are the enemy? Maybe these two videos will change your mind.

Potency: a photo series of a baby dressed up as evil historical dictators by Nina Maria Kleivan.

Google Alleges That Viacom 'Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There' Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube in its litigation with Viacom, explains: For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. [...] Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself. [via DF]

A new report from the Climate Action Network Canada- Réseau action climat Canada details a "troubling catalogue of actions" by the federal government to muzzle its own climate scientists and weaken the research capacity of Canada's climate science community.

Joseph Casias recently decided, after 10 years, to alleviate the pain of his sinus cancer with medical marijuana--which is legal with a doctor's recommendation in Michigan. A commended Wal-Mart employee for five years, Casias was promptly fired by the company after failing a drug test. Now, Wal-Mart is working to deny Casias unemployment benefits.

On February 3, 2010, Autechre celebrated the month-early release of their new album Oversteps with a 12-hour netradio broadcast.
Rather than a 12 hour stream of incomprehensible noise as some may have expected, the broadcast was an excursion across all manner of genres: dub, techno, hip hop, rave, dubstep, rock, and possibly more, reminiscent of their recent mix for FACT magazine which managed to include tracks from Raekwon, J. Dilla, Meat Beat Manifesto, and the brutal death metal band Necrophagist.

The on-site chat room was disabled for the duration of the broadcast, and there was no published tracklist to this behemoth, but the Internet is working on one, and you can help.

After decades of selling tampons and "sanitary products" with ads containing nebulous, euphemistic images and language, Kotex launched a new product line, 'U by Kotex' and a 'Declaration of Real Talk Campaign' to encourage girls and women to speak about menstruation without embarrassment. Ironically, their ad was rejected by the major US television networks for mentioning the word 'vagina'. Here's the 'safe for the viewing public' version. / YT channel.
For every person who signs up at their website, Kotex will make a $1 donation to Girls For A Change.

First Lieutenant Dan Choi has been arrested after chaining himself to the White House fence.
"You've been told that the White House has a plan," Choi told rally protesters. "But we learned this week that the president is still not fully committed. ... Following this rally, I will be leading [the protest] to the White House to say 'enough talk.' ... I am still standing, I am still fighting, I am still speaking out, and I am still gay."

To promote mission awareness, NASA authorizes the creation of posters. Some may look familiar. Via Gizmodo.

The Pop Culture Translator

Significantly what? ...Or how our most common statistical methods really weren't meant to be used that way and why that study result is likely spurious. Since mefites like to argue about stats, here's some background for us all (and I'm not talking correlation vs causation)!

Click here? Was structuralism, the big idea of Claude Lévi-Strauss, more cult than science? Apostolos Doxiadis, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna – the team behind the bestselling graphic novel Logicomix – investigate.

Lessons learned from 2009's high-profile rape cases.

The Daily Dish (no not that one): This is artist Klari Reis painting on petri dishes, creating surprisingly organic words of art.

"When you see a wildlife photo or film that looks too good to be true, it probably is." Audubon Magazine's Ted Williams investigates game farms and the widespread use of captive animals in wildlife photography. (via)
Related: Wildlife photographer of the year stripped of his award, Photographer captures amazing images of lions after submerging himself in watering hole for three months.

That's What Bea Said

One World Technologies, manufacturer of Ryobi tools, has been ordered to pay damages of US$1.5 million to Carlos Osorio who injured his fingers while using a Ryobi table saw. The case hinged on the Ryobi's lack of "flesh sensing technology" which is found only SawStop's [previously] saws.
SawStop garnered extensive bad press in hobbyist circles by attempting to make their patented technology mandatory on all table saws after they failed to find a market for their blade stopping technology with other manufacturers.

If the judgment is not overturned it will usher in sweeping changes to stationary woodworking tools of every description as SawStop's technology could be adapted to anything with a blade or electric motor.