5 Funny Songs by Tim Minchin

If You Open Your Mind Too Much by Tim Minchin.

I’ve just added Tim Minchin to my directory of famous atheists. Minchin is an Australian comedian, composer, songwriter, pianist and actor whose songs include the politically incisive Peace Anthem for Palestine, the inanimate love song Inflatable You, the environmental mega-anthem Take Your Canvas Bags and the self-deprecatory career-crisis confession that is Rock N Roll Nerd.

Minchin is also responsible for probably the most comprehensive atheist-related song lyric in the history of atheist-related song lyrics:

‘And if anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.’

Tim Minchin on YouTube

Here are four more Tim Minchin classics from YouTube:

Peace Anthem for Palestine by Tim Minchin

Inflatable You by Tim Minchin

Take Your Canvas Bags by Tim Minchin

Rock N Roll Nerd by Tim Minchin

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Vancouver Film School Videos

Here are three passionate, creative and inspirational short movies that have won scholarships to the Vancouver Film School in Canada for three young filmmakers from Mexico, Germany and the United States.

The challenge was to make a three-minute video on the theme ‘What matters most to me’. A judging panel picked ten finalists, then YouTube users voted for the winners. The results were announced last week, and here are the three winning videos.

Jorge Rolando Caneda Estrada from Mexico

Stefan Ramirez Perez from Germany

Christopher Harrell from the United States

More Videos

You can see hundreds more videos on the Vancouver Film SchoolYouTube Channel.

If you want more information, here’s the School’s website.

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5 Funny Songs by Tom Lehrer

The Vatican Rag by Tom Lehrer.

Tom Lehrer, who is eighty this year, is an American mathematician who wrote and performed musical satire in the 1950s and 1960s. Best known for his darkly comic Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, his political and social satire also included the Vatican Rag, National Brotherhood Week, Who’s Next and We Will All Go Together When We Go.

Lehrer is in my directory of famous atheists. In 1996, he said that, while he was not a spiritual person - “I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don’t get me started!) without having to worry about God” - he believed that to be an atheist was almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. However, by 2000, he had told Cosmik Debris magazine “I used to think atheists were arrogant, but now I am one and I like it.”

Tom Lehrer on YouTube

Here are four more Tom Lehrer classics from YouTube:

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park by Tom Lehrer

National Brotherhood Week by Tom Lehrer

Who’s Next by Tom Lehrer

We Will All Go Together by Tom Lehrer

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The Road Not Taken

A Poem by Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Poem: Robert Frost, 1916
Photo: Yellow Wood by Micky (cc)

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5 Very Funny Comedians

Here’s some very funny stand-up comedy from Demetri Martin on his new useful pajamas, the late Mitch Hedberg on why B is an unlucky letter, Jimmy Carr on hearing voices in your head, Eddie Izzard on French monkeys in trees, and Steven Wright on speed-reading accidents…

Demetri Martin

Website | Wikipedia Entry

Mitch Hedberg

Website | Wikipedia Entry

Jimmy Carr

Website | Wikipedia Entry

Eddie Izzard

Website | Wikipedia Entry

Steven Wright

Website | Wikipedia Entry

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