Talion is “a concept of punishment whereby the prescribed penalty is identical with, or equivalent to, the offense.” With that in mind, tonight’s video is specially dedicated to all our resident trolls.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Hey, does anyone have a spare 18th century American
Frontiersman’s Pipe Tomahawk lying around?
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

In tonight’s Tippity amusement Jeremy Clarkson and the boys from Top Gear figure out how best to send a rocket-propelled Leyland Mini down a ski jump, during the unofficial Ski/Car Jumping Championship.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

A while back we saw a knife-throwning Mom who showed her skills by barely missing her two-and-a-half and six-year-old daughters. Tonight, we look at archival footage of a rifle-totin’ husband who tests out that newfangled bullet-proof glass by having his wife hold a sheet of it in front of her face while he fires away. Why so jumpy, hon?
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

At the height of her career Ethel Merman was famous for having a voice so loud that it required no amplification; no matter how big the venue, her klaxon-horn vocals could be clearly heard all the way to the back row. Tonight, Merman belts out a medley – if you close your eyes you’ll swear she’s Edith Prickley – consisting of “Lady With A Song” and I Got Rhythm.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

The Fleetwoods were a vocal trio from Olympia, Washington whose “angelic, mellow style” brought them a string of hits, starting with the 1959 single “Come Softly To Me”. In tonight’s selection, from the 1963 album that ended the group’s hit-making days, a young woman jilted by her former boyfriend asks his new girlfriend to do her very, very best to Hurt Him.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

The vast majority of Bob Dylan’s catalogue of recordings were pulled from YouTube and other such sites about a year ago, but thousands of cover versions of his songs are still available. For example, here’s American singer/actress Julie London’s rendition of Quinn the Eskimo.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

In 1964 playwright/songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler wrote a song inspired by the interpersonal marital nastiness in Edward Albee’s 1963 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Lyricist Jerry Leiber, whom Wheeler had been introduced to a few years earlier, suggested that Wheeler take the last verse – the “climax” of the song, in Wheeler’s mind – and open the song with it. The result was, er, hotter than a pepper sprout: From 1975, here are Johnny and June Carter Cash performing a frisky version of Jackson.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

In tonight’s entertainment en route to the Tips the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, and featuring violinists Shlomo Mintz and Isaac Stern, perform J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto in D minor for two violins, BWM 1043. Part one here, part two here.
The comments thread is open for your Reader Tips.

In the interest of keeping it light – both because it’s Saturday night, and because some people might be recovering from last night’s festivities – here’s a short video – it’s physical comedy, of a sort – that graphically illustrates the ridiculous gap in foot speed between an average Joe and some NFL football players. Cracks me up every time.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Happy New Year, SDA readers, and here’s to a healthy and happy 2011.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

In the right context, well-executed facial deadpan can be a very funny thing. Virginia O’Brien’s vaguely-unnerving facial expression – or lack thereof – in the Marx Brothers’ 1941 film The Big Store, for example, creates a cognitive dissonance that almost tickles. In tonight’s video, forwarded by an SDA reader, Irish dancers Suzanne Cleary and Peter Harding manage to remain incongruously poker-faced as they perform a vigorous, passionate, and highly-adept tabletop hand-dance to the accompaniment of some jaunty Latin music. Absurd, funny, and oddly hypnotic.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

It’s time for a singalong: to commemorate Kate’s remarkable achievement of twenty million site visitors, let’s all belt out Saskatchewan native Bobby Gimby’s catchy 1967 hit Ca-Na-Da.
Come on, don’t be shy.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

In tonight’s video a youngster finds himself in mortal peril, prompting a highly-concerned community of mothers to come up with a coordinated rescue plan.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

In tonight’s selection, brought to our attention by SDA commenter Erik Larsen, Armenian-born Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and the Sinfonietta Cracovia (Krakow Symphony) perform Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Important additional information in the video’s intro.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Tonight’s entertainment takes us back a few years and across the ocean to England: from the b-side of their 1958 single “Handed Down”, here are the sweet-harmonizing Kaye Sisters making an impressively extensive list of romantic requests, ending with Love Me Forever.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas day with family and friends. Tonight we wind down the Christmas music series with a bang, as the Tenebrae Choir, along with the London Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Sir Colin Davis, perform the Hallelujah chorus from George Frideric Handel’s 1741 oratorio Messiah.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

To my fellow Canadians of Scandinavian descent who celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th, god jul and glædelig jul! Now, under the direction of Steven R. Jobman, here is the Choir of the First Presbyterian Church in Davenport, Iowa favouring us with their bright, brilliant, and uplifting performance of Joy To The World.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

After hours of searching YouTube for a straightforward, reverential, calm, lyrical version of “Silent Night”, I was half tempted to type in “Eric Idle + Christmas” and post the result, but I restrained myself, because this is, in fact, the most wonderful time of the year.
Perhaps the purest, most traditional version I could find was by the Stockholm Church Choir, backed by the Högalids Chamber Orchestra; alas, the performance seems to have been recorded on a cell-phone camera from a detail-obscuring distance somewhere in the pews. The choir of King’s College, Cambridge, on the other hand, has a perfectly recorded and beautifully filmed version, but the director of the choir was evidently compelled to self-indulgently flower-arrange the harmonies in the second stanza, adding just enough flamboyant, mildly-discordant, outré notes to knock the wind out of the song. No one, apparently, was in a position to stop him.
No worries: here comes Munich-born pop singer Angela Wiedl to the rescue – thank you, Germany – as she and her young charges sing a firm, solid, meritorious and lovely version of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Like national anthems, traditional Christmas carols are meant to be sung, and not interpreted; there are far too many cloying, over-wraught, over-interpreted vanity-project executions of traditional carols that are more about the singer than the song. As a seasonal palate cleanser of sorts, then, here are three straight-shooting renditions of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: first, under the under the direction of Edward Higginbottom, here is the Choir of New College Oxford’s performance; next, a vigorous, nicely-imperfect public-spirited singalong-type version from the Northern Baptist Association’s Big Sing held at Newcastle upon Tyne in England; and finally, from a 99-year-old recording, here is the Trinity Choir’s upright and respectful rendition. Pick your own favourite.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.