The "flashed face" distortion effect.

Strange! Watch:

"But yeah, smart administrators understand that intellectual diversity on the faculty is a good thing, for purely self-interested reasons alone."

"Back in the 1990s when I was writing a lot of second amendment stuff, somebody tried to get my dean to fire me, saying that I was fomenting domestic terrorism. But my dean told me that he was glad to have me writing that stuff, because when alumni or legislators talked about ivory-tower liberal faculties, he could just send 'em a copy of my 'Critical Guide To The Second Amendment.'"

Heh. Yeah. Think about it. Let's say you have a state law school the legislators and alums imagine must be about 95% left-wing. Get one conservative lawprof out there in the public eye — maybe with a blog that's supposedly right-wing — and that vague mental percentage might readjust to 80% or so. That's value! Treasure your house conservative, oh lefty law school!

The Best Illusions of the Year.

These are fantastic optical illusions. Be sure to at least watch the full video of the winning illusion before proceeding to make jokes about Barack Obama or whatever.

Optics.

This only worked for me the second time, when I got really close to the screen. It's really cool, so get close. You have to stare for a couple minutes, but it's fun afterwards:

Cool Optical Illusion @ Yahoo! Video

(Via Cartago Delenda Est.)