Now that's some recycling I can get behind

Weird statistics

Observe.

Question: how does one end up between Minneapolis and St. Paul on...anything? Isn't this kind of like ending up on a ranked list of characters in Hamlet between Rosencrantz and Gildenstern?

(Oh, you know you liked the quasi-obscure Shakespeare reference, didn't you?...)

Ron Paul grilled on slavery remarks

You know, the truly remarkable part of this interview is less what Paul did or didn't say about slavery but that he's trying to talk about history without engaging in demagoguery and he's challenging preconceived notions of history and policy. This is the reason people like Ron Paul so much and why I, at least, enjoy listening to him. I still think his fundamentally libertarian platform is dangerous, but he genuinely believes in it and argues honestly about his positions, which is admirable and sorely lacking from any other candidate on either side of the isle.

Actually, I take that back...you hear it also from Kucinich and Gravel, but both of them are so weird that it gets lost in the noise. Also, it's more remarkable to hear from the Republican side given most of the Republicans of at least the past 7 years have been...what's the word...idiots. And demagogues.

Well, see, now I want to see all of these

The Most Controversial Films of All Time.

Mmm...criteria-less internet list-tastic...

The French are dumb

We rename side dishes, they ban the use of ubiquitous words because they sound too English-y. And stupidity knows no borders...

The worst movies ever

Care to guess what the worst movie ever is on RottenTomatoes.com's list of worst-reviewed movies? If you guessed "Baby Geniuses 2," you're wrong. Close, but wrong.

Huh...maybe there's something to this Internet thing

You know, I reluctantly have to admit: many of these startups don't seem like half-bad ideas (except the natural language search engine...I tried Ask Jeeves, it sucked, and Google has far more talent than you guys do anyway).

Have a merry fucking Christmas

You'll have the joy and love of the lord in your heart, Michael, or god help me I'll beat it into you!

(wonder why Michael's not too keen on religion at the moment?...)

Also, Merry Christmas. :-D

Peanut butter: an atheist's nightmare!

Apparently the culinary arts continue to pose an enduring threat to those that would foolishly oppose Creationist thinking. First it was the banana, now it's peanut butter.

(Wow. Just...wow.)



This is perhaps a better summary of Creationism:

Presents opening children

It's things like this that allow me to deal with Christmas.

In three days...

I will no longer be forced to go walking in a Winter Wonderland.
I will not have to be subjected to dreams of a White Christmas.
The little drummer boy will STFU.
And the nativity scenes will finally go away.

Oh, it will be blissful...

Overanalyzing stupid Facebook data

From Facebook:

3rd in "Who is more entertaining"
4th in "Who is sexier"
6th in "Who is more organized"
6th in "Who would I rather kiss"
8th in "Who is more powerful"
16th in "Who has a better smile"
21st in "Who is a happier person"

I find so much of that weird. Okay, dead last for "happier person" is downright predictable. Anyone who has met me would struggle to describe me as "peppy." And while mildly flattered that I did as well as 4th in "sexier," I am mystified by the combination of that with 16th for "better smile." Don't get me wrong, I have complained frequently that I have a goofy-ass smile that makes me detest most pictures taken of me, but how does one reconcile the "sexy" with the "detestable facial expressions"? Am I a brown bagger/butterface? Is that it? 'cause I've seen me with my shirt off. It's not pretty, people. I mean, I _am_ a beautiful Adonis of a man, but still...

Update: Found out each of those constituted 1 (or at most 2) comparisons. Statistically insignificant sample, anyone? Come on people! I know you procrastinate! You can do better!

Bill Maher's dickheads of the year

Bill Maher is kind of an asshole, but he's an asshole whose opinions I often agree with. And the commentary in the list is priceless. Case in point:

Sen. David Vitter

"Even more disgusting than Craig. Caught dead to rights as a customer of the D.C. Madam, and explained it away by saying, "Several years ago I received forgiveness from God in confession." Oh, well, all righty then, it's all good, then you're obviously not a disgusting, horrible hypocrite who runs on family values and then fucks whores at home and in Washington."

Being a skeptic for fun and profit

Supposedly haunted Chinese building: $6500
Supposedly haunted Chinese building after haunting has been debunked: $133,000
Look on former owners' faces when they find out their dumb, superstitious asses could have made six figures by removing 10 catfish: priceless.

Fox News: "Want a better sex life? Get pregnant! (We're talking to you, teens!)"

This is the mouthpiece for the same set of people that object to sex education because it will induce teens to have sex, right? And they're saying that women often have their best orgasms when they're pregnant? What kind of message does _that_ send??

What are the writers doing?

Turns out, still writing. But for the intertubes.

Please, for the love of god, stop taking the Bible literally

Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ. Evangelicals are stupid. Wow are they stupid...

Signs you might start worrying about Microsoft's future include

...when the army starts buying macs for security.

Actually, I think the combination of virtual machines (because they allow you to run one OS for backwards compatibility and another OS for newer stuff that actually, you know, works, thus providing a migration path out of Windows) and web applications (because they only need a web browser to work and are much easier to deal with maintenance-wise on the client's side) are the more likely downfall of Microsoft. But that won't happen for a while. 5 years at the very earliest, likely longer.

A quick defense of the anthropic principle

I have touched on the anthropic principle before; a concise metaphor occurred to me while watching a documentary on the formation of the solar system. (aside: did you know that all the water on Earth is believed to have accumulated from rocks displaced from the asteroid belt by Jupiter and hurled at Earth in the early solar system? Or that the moon was formed from the aftermath of a collision with some other nameless proto-planet? Crazy shit...)

Anyway...anthropic principle. Design arguments always seem so...anthropocentric. Narcissistic, even. They claim that the universe seems to be profoundly well-tuned exactly to support life. You start hearing the facts and it starts to sound compelling: tweak the weak nuclear force just a tiny bit, and atoms either collapse on themselves or fly apart. Tweak the gravitational force a bit, and the universe itself does the same thing. The universe has just enough mass, produced just enough carbon, etc. etc. etc.

But then you have to step back. Isn't this all a bit self-centered? Why are we so surprised? Let's use a simple metaphor: Imagine you just won the lottery. 6 numbers, each between 1 and 30. Right there are more than 400 million possible combinations, and YOU WON! Holy shit! How could this be?! 400 million possibilities and you got exactly the single combination that would win you a million dollars?! Surely it can't just be luck. That's so profoundly improbable, someone must have chosen you to win. God! God must have chosen you to win! There can't be any other explanation. God designed the game so that you won! How else could such a fantastically improbable event have come to pass?

See the logical fallacy yet? It feels very personal, but if you step back for a minute, something doesn't jive. Look at the lottery as a whole. Any single number, including the winning one, is highly improbable. But remember: there are millions upon millions of people playing, so _someone_ is going to win. And someone always does. There's always some excited woman with a bad hairdo who goes ballistic when they tell her she won. Every time. And indeed, that's the point: _someone is going to win_. The fact that the chance any single person is going to win is astronomically small doesn't change the fact that someone, somewhere, is going to win the lotto. It is a near certainty.

In fact, wouldn't it surprise you if you heard someone _hadn't_ won? It does happen every so often; they occasionally have to roll over the jackpot, which is when you get those really big lotto drawings. But what if the lotto went 10 times without a winner. Or 100. Wouldn't that freak you out way more than hearing some particular person had won?

Well, of course, the same analysis applies to the Design theory. I've said before that there's no reason to believe all arrangements of physical laws are equally probable, and hence the whole argument is relatively meaningless, but let's pretend for a second. What if bazillions of universes without the finely tuned physical constants existed before this one? Or what if there are other such universes existing in parallel to ours? Remember, a Design argument implicitly presupposes that all such universes are equally viable and, in some sense, equally probable, hence the excitement about being in the one where all the physical constants work out.

So, again, what about all those other universes? Well, there wouldn't be anyone there to see those other universes, now would there? They'd be lifeless voids, most of which would destroy themselves in short order. Not only would there be no life, there'd be no stars and perhaps no anything. Just a whole lot of nothing. Imagine it: a flotilla of parallel universes floating out there, dead. But remember: we know there's one combination of physical laws that does result in life. So somewhere out there, life crops up. On one of those myriad universes floating in that sea of nothingness, exactly the right combination of constants exist to foster life. Suddenly, that life wakes up. It looks around. Its eyes get wide, and it exclaims, "Holy shit! We won! God must really love us!"

Nope. Just probability. Combinatorics. Your little blue globe had to exist somewhere. We're happy for you and all, but it's just another lotto drawing. Someone had to win. And someone did. Yay. You want a cookie?

Generational divide in copyright

The obvious reaction is, "Well, duh."

But, of course, that's simplistic. Or at least, the issue merits further analysis. Why are kids much more willing to brazenly ignore copyright? I think the simplest answer is that they have grown up with modern technology a) that makes it easy to the point of being innate to copy data, and b) for which the instruments of copyright enforcement (i.e., DRM) present a perpetual annoyance and frustration when trying to do simple things like use a song that normally lives on their computer on their mp3 player when they go to the gym.

I honestly don't know what the right answer is when it comes to what public policy should be. As I've said before, I think watermarking, if it worked, would be a better solution than DRM. In general, I'm a big fan of using instruments of accountability for illegal activity over instruments of prevention. Indeed, that's the main problem with music distribution on the Internet. Think about it: when you walk into a toy store, you can play with the toys before you buy them. Hell, you can generally even walk out with them without paying and often get away with it. So why does anybody pay for anything? Partly out of an inner morality, yes, but I think more importantly because they stand to get caught. They, personally, can be seen walking out of the store. They can be caught on video with something they haven't paid for in their hands.

The point is that there's accountability. There ostensibly isn't prevention. It's not like there's a giant magnet that will suck the toy out of your hands. You aren't _prevented_ from doing something illegal (in the same way that your car's accelerator will not prevent you from going more than 65 mph). No, what keeps you from stealing, and what keeps you from speeding, is accountability if you do those things.

Lynne Spears parenting book held up

...for "obvious reasons." What? Why?! Hell, with Ms. Christy McPremaritalSex knocked up, there should be _more_ of a market for the book! Who wouldn't want to read something by a woman who was so deluded that, despite being the mother of two of the most public examples of fucked-up children in the country, she decided to write a book on how to be a good parent? That's fucking _entertainment_ if I ever saw it!

(P.S. Incidentally, no, Lynne is not a worse parent than Britney. Britney drives drunk, runs over people, and thought that Kevin Federline would make a good father. She wins for worse mother.)

Duke Nukem Forever: beyond sad

Oh, this makes me smile.

If you haven't followed video game development for the last, oh, decade, Duke Nukem Forever is notorious. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it doesn't exist. It has notoriously not existed for well over a decade. "Development" started on Duke Nukem Forever in 1997. Right, _that_ 1997. The one in the previous millenium. The one before I graduated from high school. That one.

It's never been released. But it refuses to die. Like a fucking immortal zombie, its decaying stench perpetually permeates the rumor mills. Indeed, a new trailer for it has even cropped up...yet again...in recent months. But don't worry...I have full faith we'll never actually see a real game. I choose to rest my vain hopes on Starcraft 2.

Evangelical hypocrisy

A nice little Washington Post op-ed pointing out the obvious: that Christian politicians aren't behaving like Christians (much like the supposedly Christian KKK members weren't behaving terribly Christian either).

Why Democrats get defensive when accused of being "anti-Christian" or even "anti-religious" is beyond me. The right response is, "We represent mainstream Christianity. You represent a fear-mongering cult that doesn't represent Christian values. Fuck off." Obama has done a little bit of this, but damn...those not on the Religious Right have the most remarkable ability to cede the terms of the debate to the other side.

Ees redeeeculous.

Quotes from my father

"A good Christmas tree should look like a middle-aged hooker."

Anyone who knows my parents knows I am not making that up.

So, are you busy Friday night?

...because we apparently need to have an orgasm at exactly 10:08 PST. For the earth. Or something.

The universe making it absolutely, crystal clear that the Spears family is trailer trash

Yup. 16-year-old sis is preggers. Awesome.

"It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected," Jamie Lynn told OK!, according to the Associated Press. "I was in complete and total shock and so was he."

Okay, you had sex, right? And I'm guessing you used no form of protection? And you're 16? Yeah. No, I can totally see why that would be unexpected...

Update: AH-HAHAHAHAHAhahahaha...

Two words for running tours of Rome

Fuck. That.

The Discovery Institute's talking about the Internet now???

Shit...really? _That_ Discovery Institute? Why are we listening to them?

Oh, and please don't use the term "scholar" and "Discovery Institute" in the same sentence. It physically pains me.

It shouldn't surprise me that the conclusion of Captain ID is that, "...and therefore net neutrality is bad." Incidentally, let me point out before moving on the following passage in the Ars Technica article:

"The first two [of Captain ID's] examples have nothing to do with any sort of commonly-understood concept of 'Net neutrality (neither Google, MySpace, nor Dell are network operators), but one sees what Swanson means."

How typical of Discovery Institute publications: "Well, it's kind of incoherent nonsense, but we can sorta kinda see the point the guy was ineptly trying to make."

First, let's point out that this is just the classic last-mile problem being rehashed. This has nothing to do with the capacity of the Internet itself. It's an economic rather than a technical problem.

Further, it's alarmist horse shit. They make it sound like we will continually need to upgrade wires into everybody's homes. We don't. Install fiber once, and the problem is basically solved, at least for the next few decades. The problem just becomes who is going to pay for the wire. And hey, psst, you know what? If private enterprise is balking at paying for it, we could...*gulp*...get government to do it. It's common infrastructure. That's supposed to be part of what government does. We did it with roads, we did it with electrical wires, and we did it with telephone wires. Why is fiber so different? Government builds the wires and then leases them to ISPs. You get the side benefit of inducing competition in the ISP market. Come on people, it's just not that hard!

If a bunch of schmucks from Utah can do it, I think we can handle the problem, don't you?

Fuck Apple

Despite being a relatively recent Apple convert, they still do things that piss me off. Case in point: if you want to upgrade the amount of RAM in your MacBook Pro, you can either order from Apple, or you can order the same goddamn thing from someone else for almost 1/4 the price.

The fuckers are taking advantage of the fact that people don't know any better to charge a 300-400% markup!

What the hell happened to arbitrage? If free markets worked, shouldn't this shit not happen?

Castro

According to the History channel, we tried to do the following to Castro:

• invade him
• get his girlfriend to give him botulism
  
• get his lawyer to give him a scuba suit infected with not one but two deadly biological agents
• pack a mollusk with enough explosives to kill him
• 634 other weird assassination attempts
  

Man, we're fucking assholes. No wonder that guy is so angry and bitter.

Also, rather unrelatedly, after the Soviet Union launched Laika into space, they launched Belka and Strelka, also dogs. Strelka had puppies after returning to earth, and one of them was named Pushinka. Pushinka was then given to Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, as a gift (inevitably kind of a "fuck you" gift, I have to imagine). Before Caroline could have Pushinka, the CIA had to screen Pushinka to make sure she was not a Soviet spy dog. I have to wonder how that interrogation went.

"WHERE ARE YOUR ALLIANCES?!"

"*turned-head, ears-up, inquisitive doggy look*"

"TALK!"

"Woof!"

"Don't fuck with me, dog! We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way!"

"*licks ass*"

Interestingly, one of JFK's other dogs boned Pushinka, and she had puppies that JFK referred to as pupniks.

Who says you don't learn anything on television?

Business people apparently don't understand English words

What you said:

“Universities don’t innovate,” says Curtis R. Carlson, chief executive of SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif., that bought what remained of RCA’s lab. “Innovation means you get it out so people can use it. The university is not going to take it to the world.”

What you meant:

"While universities do most of the innovation, they tend not to productize. Those innovations don't always turn out to be practical, cheap, scalable, or a thousand other things that a functioning product depends on, particularly in the time horizons that the short attention spans of MBAs like me can wrap their heads around."

We make orders of magnitude less money than you do; the least you could do is give credit where credit is due. You might have heard of a little company called Google? Care to guess whether that innovative little venture came out of a university or not? Want me to send you the list of companies that were started out of Stanford, Berkeley, or UW alone (nevermind MIT, Harvard, etc.)?

What's happening in New Jersey

I'm at a gate in the Newark airport. I sent this email to a friend and thought I'd kill two birds with one stone:

"There are two large, bald black men talking with two police office in front of our gate. I think someone coming off the incoming plane is about to have a very, very bad day...

Also, I just had the _worst_ panini of my entire life, and I paid $7 for it. New Jersey really is the shittiest place on earth!"

Your daily douchebag (12/12/07)

A DD to Representative Steve King (R-IA) for introducing this gem of a House Resolution. Admittedly, it should probably be shared by the entire House for passing such horse shit.

What's the matter, Steve? No more condiments left to rename in the House cafeteria?

Idiots...

A brave new world of social networking

Know what's a really weird sensation? Getting a Facebook friend request from a professor in your department. Gratifying, but weird. :)

...and, I'm back to Firefox

Blogger no likey Safari. It adds weird div tags to everything, and ever time I try to paste something into the blogger window, it appears at the bottom of my screen. Weird.

Plus, Safari seems to crash too. I think it's Flash killing both of them. Take me back, Firefox?

Clinton's earmarks

This LA Times article just makes me detest Clinton and like Obama more. And frankly, I have a proposed rule: anyone who voted to give Bush the power to invade Iraq doesn't get to play in national politics any more. At least not this election cycle.

Your daily douchebag (12/11/07)

What an asshole.

"Abraham said this condition [that he accept the scientific basis of evolution] was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish."

I...he...gah! I don't even know where to start. Frankly, I think this sounds like a ploy to me. You can't tell me he didn't know that he might, just might, be expected to apply evolutionary principles in his job at Woods Hole. Anyone competent enough to be hired to work there knows that. I think he got himself hired to provoke them into firing him just to fan the flames of controversy. The fact that he is now employed at Liberty University only confirms this fact, as far as I'm concerned.

More generally, of course, I don't even know what it means to do biological research if you're not using evolutionary theory. It's like doing physics when you question the validity of math. It's a meaningless concept. "Un-evoluationary biology" is roughly equivalent to "pixie-based optics research," and yes, those closed-minded assholes at Caltech are going to "discriminate" against you and your pixie-based theory of light just as well as the guys at Woods Hole are not going to be happy about trying to perform Jesus-based pseudoscience inside their doors.

(Idiots! This country is full of idiots! And I'm trying not to think about the fact that Liberty enjoys tax-exempt status...)

Barbie was a dirty whore

No, seriously, apparently Barbie really did start out as a German whore.

Who knew?

An automated way to turn hormones and desperation into money!

It seems the Turing Test has finally been passed: a robot that can flirt its way into guys' personal information at the rate of 10 an hour!

Have I mentioned what an awesome species we are?

George W. Bush: Still an asshole

Censoring scientific research that didn't agree with his policies?  Check.

Wang! (nsfw)

Predictable

A boy scout leader who was vehemently anti-gay turns out to have molested little boys?!  Why, I never would have guessed!!!

*bangs head against wall*

Will everyone who is vocally homophobic just come out and admit to yourselves and us that you're gay so we can save each other an enormous amount of stress and frustration?  'k thx.

The God Effect

...from the New York Times' list of the most important ideas of 2007.

In case you were wondering, it's shit like this that makes me pessimistic about the salvagability of the human race. We're all just selfish little animals at core. We need either the threat of divine retribution or the threat of social ostracism to induce us to be nice to each other.

What a fucking blight on the earth we are as a species, eh?

And speaking of being basically animals...

Also, from the same article: give up hope. Your happiness depends on it.

Finally, how sadly materialistic are we?

Let them eat OLPC!

Hear, hear! Glad to see someone whose opinion seems to be more valued than mine seems to agree.

The original human tetris video

Several of these have floated around, but this is (or claims to be) the first.

The Original Human TETRIS Performance
Uploaded by NOTsoNOISY

Flux capacitor

I am mildly embarrassed to admit I kinda want one.  Not $200 kinda want one, but kinda want one.

Oh, and while we're at it, I kinda want a TriForce, too...

I'm gonna shut up now...

Signs of the apocalypse

I had a very weird experience yesterday.  I finished my AI final project.  Then I got the weirdest sensation.  It was like...like...a _lack_ of impending doom and panic.  Suddenly, I realized why: I had finished a full two and a half days before the deadline.

WTF.

I became concerned about witnessing other signs of the apocalypse after that.  Luckily, though, all the video footage I had taken over the past two days for the holiday skit on Friday was torn to shreds by a malfunctioning miniDV reader tonight, leaving me essentially no time to reconstruct it.  So, you know, _that's_ good.  I was worried there for a minute things might actually be going well in my life...

What BC stands for

I think I need to have a new tag: physically painful stupidity.

I learned a new word today!

Rickrolled.

A better definition is here.

(you expected me to resist that?  Really?)

"Here comes another bubble"

The state of the business side of tech gives me a headache.

Google now officially terrifies me

What did it?  Well, in my last post, I wrote, "Fuck Yale."  Within an hour, that post showed up in Google search results for "fuck yale."

They're watching us all, aren't they?...

Signs I'm tired and slightly delirious

I just wrote the following in my final AI writeup:

"The results were then filtered to remove relationships involving pronouns in the subject and re-sorted based on the number of supporting instances of the relationship. These were then tagged using a custom web interface by the author as well as trusted members of his friends and family deemed competent to tag the validity of such relationships (i.e., they completed 6th grade in reputable school districts or held at least bachelor degrees if they were trained in institutions of dubious academic merit like Yale)."

Yes, it's staying in there.  Fuck it.  Also, fuck Yale.

Russia votes early and often

Lest you delude yourself into thinking Putin was democratically elected...

Software patent grumble

The more I see stories like this lawsuit against Apple for the iPhone's visual voicemail, the more angry I become at the state of IP law in the United States.

This is stupid.  Anybody can see that.  They're honestly claiming a patent on the ability to touch someone's name and hear a voicemail from that person?  Really?  _That's_ your significant scientific achievement, your innovation?

It's retarded.  You shouldn't be able to patent something any schmuck who has used a computer can think up in the course of having a cup of coffee, for fuck's sake.  Patents were supposed to promote innovation.  Now any time anybody designs any kind of hardware or software at all, they get sued for it.  It's ridiculous.

"I like my women like I like my coffee..."

...hairless?

Venezuelans vote aftermath

...and we have our answer: Yes, Venezuelans are stupid!

You know, after looking at Nazi Germany, Bush's election, and now this shit in Venezuela, I'm really much less keen on the idea of democracy as a means to promote effective government.  It empirically really doesn't seem to do a hell of a lot better than the other options, frankly.  And I'm half-serious here...even a dictator has to maintain his support or, at some point someone will come in and shoot him.  How much different is that from convincing a population to vote to give you whatever powers you want?

I suppose that sentiment is just a rehash of the now-infamous Goering quote:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Update: I, erm, take it back?

Romney squirms

Wow...two amazing things about this clip:

1. You can watch Romney flip-flop in front of your very eyes in the span of one minute!
2. To see how stupid Huckabee's and Hunter's argument is, pretend for a minute they were talking about black people in the military.  The argument is not one iota different.

Blond...so very blond...

Ow.  Ow ow.  Ow OW fucking ow.  I didn't think stupidity could inflict physical pain, but...OW.

It's suddenly crystal clear how George Bush got elected.

It is immensely entertaining to watch Foxworthy try to maintain a straight face.

Venezuelans vote

Alternative article title: "How stupid are the Venezuelan people?"

Also, doesn't the whole "vilify an external power for political gain" thing sound vaguely familiar?

When things are "false," they are not "in dispute"

A very amusingly concise commentary on the shit Rove is currently trying to pull by Krugman.  (click through his link to understand what he's talking about)

Cherry Chocolate Rain

It really, really freaks me out that that seems to be that kid's real voice.

Brilliantly composed photographs

Amusing/cool.

What the dilly-yo, Firefox?

Not that anyone cares, but I have finally given up on Firefox for the mac.  It's been really buggy lately and keep hanging at weird moments.  I heart FlashBlock, but not enough to make me suffer through my web browser not working.

Back to Safari it is.  <Dr. Claw voice>"You win this time, Jobs!"</Dr. Claw voice>

Your daily douchebag (11/28/07)

A long overdue DD (maybe it should be douchenozzle now?) to the distinguished Karl Rove. The Prince of Darkness hasn't really been in the spotlight lately. Then he came out with this gem.

Apparently, it was the Democrats who were in such a big goddamn rush to go to war in Iraq while Bush, level-headed, patient leader that he is, wanted to delay the Iraq vote until after the November elections so as not to, you know, politicize it.

Wow.

Is lying instinctual at this point for him? Does he lie about pointless stuff just out of habit? Like, does he just immediately answer, "Lucky charms!" when you ask him what he had for breakfast, regardless of what he actually had? I have no doubt he could pass any lie detector test on anything at this point. My question is whether there's any distinction left in that swirling vortex of evil that is his brain between his manufactured reality and the...oh, hell, what's it called?...truth.

Just...wow.

Fuck graduate school

I could be developing a true talent.

The failure of OLPC

This BBC article gives a nice summary of why I think the One Laptop Per Child project is misguided. First and foremost:

"In an interview with the BBC, Nigeria's education minister questioned the need for laptops in poorly equipped schools.

Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku said: "What is the essence of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

The whole concept is...okay, I'm not going to say dumb. Its heart is in the right place. But really, this is running before you can walk. Spend the money on teachers, desks...infrastructure, for chrissakes, before you go blowing $100 million on an unproven technology without the lesson plans, teacher training, etc. to go along with it.

Nevermind. Yes, it is dumb. And now Negroponte is spouting conspiracy theories about Intel and Microsoft undermining them. Actually, the problem isn't so much conspiracy theories as, well, the fact that he seems surprised that an effort to flood a good portion of the world's untapped markets with new hardware and new software might, you know, catch Intel and Microsoft's attention. Umm...duh? These are multi-billion dollar industries. You expected them to roll over out of some kind of corporate morality?

Daily Douchebag (11/26/07)

...and a hearty, "Hey! Fuck you!" to, well, to both President Bush and the National Review for taking credit for something that, not only did they not help facilitate, but more realistically did their best to impede.

Why? Well, maybe you heard about the recent effort to turn skin cells into stem cells. Apparently, at least according to the White House and the National Review, yeah, that was all Bush. Because apparently politicizing science and nixing basic science funding really inspired those guys to do their best work.

What a fucking douchenozzle...

"Cheney Found To Have Irregular Heartbeat"

The "irregular" isn't as surprising as the "heartbeat" part.

(You might think that joke would be beneath me. You'd be wrong.)

A bad combination

You know what I've decided is a really bad combination? Having lots of things you want to do, but at the same time being lazy, inefficient, and basically unproductive.

Funny, that.

Parasailing freighters

Very cool, but there's an important, unaddressed question:

"The Beluga shipping company that owns the 460-foot Beluga said it expects the kites to decrease fuel consumption by up to 50% in optimal cases as well as a cutback of the emission of greenhouse gases on sea by 10 to 20%. Interestingly, the ship will be hauling windmills from Esbjerg, Denmark to Houston, Texas."

...which is, why the fuck is Houston stockpiling windmills?

Color me dubious

A portable nuclear reactor, huh? Safe, you say?

“In fact, we prefer to call it a ‘drive’ or a ‘battery’ or a ‘module’ in that it’s so safe,” Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. “Like you don’t open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don’t ever open it or mess with it."

Hey! Wait a minute! What you're describing is...is...Happy Fun Ball!

If There Were a God... (11/25/07)

...he would have struck this man down with a bolt of lightening long, long ago. *shudder* (nsfw)

Whatever you do, _don't_ watch the video clips. I didn't. And I know if I did, my brain would break. The pictures were bad enough.

As the article says:

Not to be all “Think of the children!” — but seriously, think of the children.

Communication whine

If I'm not careful this might turn into an _actual_ blog if keep up this existential musing crap...

I've had a lot of academic frustration lately. Some of it is purely logistical and political; this is not unexpected, and it will pass. But I've also had a log of...hmm...let's say "pedagogical" frustration. No, this isn't a coded way of saying I hate my teacher(s). More, I don't understand things, and when I search out resources to help me understand them, those resources are more likely to infuriate me than enlighten me. Notable exceptions to this are the professors in my department; indeed, that's one of the reasons I (heart) my department: it's full of insanely smart people who are remarkably eloquent and lucid in their explanations of things. Unfortunately, I can't go bug them for every little question that pops into my head.

My frustration revolves much more around written pedagogy in my field. It drives me absolutely batty how profoundly incapable most people seem to be when it comes to verbally communicating an idea. I think I've mentioned at some point previously how dismal Wikipedia is in this regard. On most normal, run-of-the-mill topics, Wikipedia does an admirable job of giving a coherent overview of a given topic. When it comes to highly technical topics, however, it seems to go off the deep end. Technical articles are so inscrutably technical that you basically need to understand the topic before you look it up.

Let me give you an example that made me want to bang my head against a wall today. I wanted to learn about support vector machines (SVM's). Here's Wikipedia's first paragraph in the support vector machine article:

Support vector machines (SVMs) are a set of related supervised learning methods used for classification and regression. They belong to a family of generalized linear classifiers. They can also be considered a special case of Tikhonov regularization. A special property of SVMs is that they simultaneously minimize the empirical classification error and maximize the geometric margin; hence they are also known as maximum margin classifiers.

To understand my frustration, look no farther than the 3rd sentence: "They can also be considered a special case of Tikhonov regularization." What?! Why? Why the fuck is that the third sentence in the article?? If I'm looking this up in Wikipedia, chances are I want to understand what the fuck an SVM is from a high level. Why is the third thing you tell me related to an obscure formalism that I, and probably most people who look at the article, don't care about?

Then look at the fourth sentence: "A special property of SVMs is that they simultaneously minimize the empirical classification error and maximize the geometric margin..." Great. The third sentence told me about some weird formalism, and now you've used two terms ("empirical classification error" and "geometric margin") that you haven't defined, nor have you provided a link for. Meanwhile, you still haven't told me any of:

• What an SVM is in terms a lay-person (or at least a lay-person with a computer science degree) can understand
• What it's used for (in similar terms)
• Why it's called an SVM

Wikipedia goes on to note that there is "excellent introduction to the topic" at an external link. Let me excerpt for you what comes immediately after the opening notes of that "excellent introduction":

There is a remarkable family of bounds governing the relation between the capacity of a learning machine and its performance. The theory grew out of considerations of under what circumstances, and how quickly, the mean of some empirical quantity converges uniformly, as the number of data points increases, to the true mean (that which would be calculated from an infinite amount of data) (Vapnik, 1979). Let us start with one of these bounds.

The notation here will largely follow that of (Vapnik, 1995). Suppose we are given l observations. Each observation consists of a pair: a vector xi ∈ Rn, i = 1, . . . , l and the associated “truth” yi, given to us by a trusted source. In the tree recognition problem, xi might be a vector of pixel values (e.g. n = 256 for a 16x16 image), and yi would be 1 if the image contains a tree, and -1 otherwise (we use -1 here rather than 0 to simplify subsequent formulae). Now it is assumed that there exists some unknown probability distribution P(x, y) from which these data are drawn, i.e., the data are assumed “iid” (independently drawn and identically distributed). (We will use P for cumulative probability distributions, and p for their densities). Note that this assumption is more general than associating a fixed y with every x: it allows there to be a distribution of y for a given x. In that case, the trusted source would assign labels yi according to a fixed distribution, conditional on xi. However, after this Section, we will be assuming fixed y for given x.

What?! How is something that talks about a "fixed distribution, conditional on xi" an "excellent introduction"? Here's a general rule to go by, as far as I'm concerned: math is not ever an excellent introduction to other math. And indeed, this is the source of my frustration: people who have incredibly analytically adept minds (unlike mine) seem terminally incapable of explaining concepts in anything other than excessively, anally precise mathematical terms that obscure what the fuck they are talking about.

This has become a pet peeve of mine in no small part because stuff like this used to make me feel stupid. I thought I was an idiot because I found it really hard to understand. I am now of the belief that I find it really hard to understand because it's really fucking hard to understand. And, it doesn't need to be. Most people, including a lot of computer scientists and people who might be interested in a topic like this, *gasp* don't think in math. Like most people, a huge amount of their brain is dedicated to visual processing, so give me something to visualize. Also, like most people, it helps them to have a concrete example to frame what you're talking about before you go into the gory details of the theory. If someone would just take the time to write these things in an accessible manner, a lot more people would discover, "Oh, _that's_ what you're talking about! That's much simpler than I thought it was."

Here's what the article on SVMs roughly should have said:

"Support vector machines are a mechanism by which a program can learn to classify data. Imagine, for instance, your data lies on a 2D coordinate plane. Each data point is a dot on that plane, and the data falls roughly into two groups, which translates into two distinct clumps of dots on your 2D plane (perhaps one grouped somewhere around the y-axis and one around the x-axis, for instance). Support vector machines are a learning mechanism that allows an automated agent to segregate the data into the two groups (and, implicitly, to figure out which "clump" a new piece of data should belong to). It does this, roughly, by figuring out what line most cleanly divides one clump from the other."

See? Was that so fucking hard? That's the basic gist of support vector machines, and any schmuck with a basic college education can probably understand it. I'm not that smart. Other people just seem to have the communicative abilities of an orangutan. Grr.

Anyway, it's really really really really frustrating, and I hate it. I don't care how smart you are if you can't communicate your ideas effectively. Part of the reason I am not that interested in areas like security and things like puzzle-solving is that I hate having to figure out things that somebody else already knows but won't/can't/is too incompetent to explain to me. It feels like a profound waste of my time. There are too many problems out there that are hard to solve when we're _cooperating_ without introducing ones that arise just because we're incompetent dicks and can't or won't talk to each other.

The Discovery Institute can't even get copyright correct

Okay, that's it. The gloves are off now. It's one thing to spout anti-evolutionary pseudo-science. It's another to pirate the stuff biologists produce without attribution (especially when it's Harvard biologists who made it).

I hope Harvard Law has a field day with this one and sues those idiots out of house and home. Especially since they seem to have made their home in my backyard. I think the term "infested" might actually be more appropriate...

Kasparov arrested

Predictable but sad. Things seemed like they were looking up for Russia under Gorbachev, but it looks like they are descending back into the old ways. Sigh.

"Taking Science on Faith" - find the logical fallacy, kids!

This kind of horse shit apologetics (small 'a', not big 'A') just irritates the fuck out of me, even more so given that the author is a physics professor and should know better. Here's the op-ed, and here's the problem with it:

First of all (and this is mostly just kind of an annoyed aside), the observation isn't even remotely novel. It's been around for quite a while, and anyone who took even the most basic course in philosophy will recognize we've slammed head-first, yet again, into Hume's problem of induction. You just rediscovered it, Mr. Davies. Congratulations. You want a cookie for that brilliant insight?

Okay, so if we start worrying on a philosophical level about the methodologies of science, then yes, Hume threw us a hell of a curve ball, one that is basically unresolvable. We only expect the future to resemble the past because, in the past, the future has typically resembled the past, etc. etc., blah blah blah. It is entirely possible that we could wake up tomorrow, the sky would be green, everything would be floating, the sun would have exploded, and time would be going backwards. Nothing in science can guarantee that won't happen.

So? Why is that an indictment of science? If you read Feynman's stuff (as I was trying to get a certain crackpot, who understands science even _less_ than Davies does, to do) he'll tell you that doubt and uncertainty are quintessential to science. Let's remember what the scientific method is:

1. observe
2. theorize
3. test
   

Note the conspicuous absense of "4. Declare as absolute, inviolate truth for ever more." Scientific theories hold until they don't. If the sun turns purple tomorrow, fine. All the theories the sun turning purple violates get thrown out. Sure, that would definitely turn the scientific _community_ on its head as it would constitute a violation of a lot of principles that had certainly seemed inviolate. But that wouldn't indict science as a whole even slightly. Step 3 is ongoing. It's never, philosophically speaking, done. Just because we continue to take as given theories that have as-yet failed to be falsified and build on them does not mean that it is _impossible_ that they will be falsified in the future. We just, personally, would be really damned surprised if certain ones were falsified at this point, because there is a mountain of evidence that has failed to falsify them, and DAMN did we ever spend a lot of time and money trying to rip them apart.

So, where Davies claims that, "Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith," I claim that Davies needs to go the fuck back to school because he doesn't understand the philosophical underpinnings of science, and he should keep his damn yap shut (or at least refrain from publishing idiotic op-eds in the New York Times) until he does.

(yes, I know I'm taking on a cranky tone...I'm just tired of seeing this kind of shoddy thinking over and over again, and if a damn academic can't get it right, we have no hope of the voting populace differentiating between pseudoscience like creationism/ID and _actual_ science)

Now, an entirely separate issue Davies brings up is the origin of the set of laws that (seem to, so far) govern the universe. Davies off-handedly dismisses his colleagues who claim, "that’s not a scientific question," but in fact (again if Davies understood science at all), that's the right answer. Why? Because we have absolutely no way of testing any hypothesis we come up with. Any explanation you could come up with as to why the set of laws are the way they are is almost by definition untestable. Think about it: how the hell would you test any explanation you came up with? What experiment could you do that would invalidate your hypothesis?

Here's another way to look at it: our only experience is with the particular universe we live in. Religious philosophers always like to posit things like, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and then use that to justify a belief in god, but if we're being intellectually honest here, we have no justification for believing nothing is any more or less reasonable than something. We have no frame of reference, no way to control for variables. It's not like we have been in 99 other universes where there was nothing and then we happened upon this one where there finally was something. Nope. Just this one.

Similarly, we have no justification to believing this particular something is more or less reasonable a universe than some other, less life-friendly something. We have no framework in which to evaluate such reasonableness. We're kind of SOL on the scientific front in this regard. These are questions more suitable for philosophers and religions, although I of course feel the need to point out that any ideas they come up with are merely finely crafted bull-shittery since such ideas would be, say it with me now, untestable and unverifiable.

Sigh. The only thing worse than dumb people is dumb people who should be, and think they are, smart.

The Washlet

These people apparently have a way, way, way too intimate relationship with their toilet. (very mildly nsfw)

Ahmed the Dead Terrorist

Mmm...culturally insensitive-tastic...

AdultSheepFinder.com

"I am a Man/Woman/Couple/Group looking for Anything/1-on-1 sheep/discreet sheep/multiple sheep/shaved sheep/sheep fetishists/black sheep/"dogging"/transgender sheep"...

It's the official dating site of New Zealand!

Top 10 on wikipedia vs. top 10 on conservapedia

Obsess much???

Dude, that's a lot of thinking about gay stuff. You guys sure you're okay over there?

A sentence summary of all the Star Trek films

Because I was accused of sending a nerdy email today, to which I indignantly respond, "I have no yet begun to nerd!" Also, primarily for the benefit of my girlfriend, who has, perhaps fortunately, never seen a single one.

Some of these aren't even full sentences!

1. Take some acid, wig out on the trippiest special effects the late 70s had to offer, and be amused by the twist ending. (memorable quote: "V'Ger!")
   
2. A battle of overacting between James T. Kirk and an over-the-top, Shakespeare-quoting villain. (memorable quote: "KKHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNN!!!")
   
3. Steal a spaceship, battle some Klingons, and go revive an essential cast member. (memorable quote: "That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all the arguments he lost.")
4. Whales and time travel...'nuff said. (memorable quote: "We are looking for da nuclear wessels.")
   
5. The crew of the Enterprise join a cult and go looking for God in the center of the universe. (memorable quote: "Be one with the horse.")
6. A moon blows up, Klingons realized they're fucked, peace talks begin, and certain parties are none to happy about it. (memorable quote: "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.")
7. Malcolm McDowell zealously pursues the happiest, sparkliest zipper in the universe. (memorable quote: "Actually, Captain, I am familiar with history. And if I'm not mistaken, you're dead. ")
8. Bill Gates...sorry, I mean a group of insect-like cyborgs...try to fuck up the drunk who built the first warp drive by traveling back in time. (memorable quote: "Definitely not Swedish...")
   
9. Ugly people take out their frustrations on less ugly people. (memorable quote: "The Son'a wish to negotiate a cease-fire. It may have to do with the fact that we only have three minutes of air left.")
10. The Enterprise fucks with a big fuck-all tank of a spaceship built by angry people in desperate need of a tan. (memorable quote: "Ladies and gentlemen and invited transgender species...")
11. ???

...and for the record, 6 is still my favorite. And I'm still angry that all the Next Generation movies (7-10) sucked so incredibly badly. The series finale was better than all of them, probably combined.

God help you, J. J. Abrams, if you end up adding yet another shitty movie to the franchise.

Succinct and totally accurate job descriptions

1. Read things that don’t matter, then write papers saying they do matter, for points that don’t matter, in order to get a job doing something totally unrelated: Student

Chuck Norris and Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee is a fringe looney, but nonetheless, this is really funny:

"Fiscal responsibility"

(part of) Why I never want to hear another Republican accuse another Democrat of fiscal irresponsibility:



(although, admittedly, only the last red box is really relevant...otherwise the first thing any decent Republican debater worth his or her salt would bring up is who controlled Congress in those various time periods...)

Scientific basis for the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory!

From the annals of "Well, duh." scientific theory, we finally have independent, methodical verification for Jon Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint

An oldie but goodie. It needs to be preserved for posterity.

Halfnium fairy tales

I found this article in the Washington Post on "Halfnium bombs" profoundly depressing. This is exactly the way science is _not_ supposed to work (and why am I not surprised the Rumsfeld DoD had a part in it?).

We're talking about the next cold fusion in the sense that cold fusion also turned out to be a pipe dream. This is supposed to be _science_, boys and girls; if it can't be independently verified, it's a fairy tale. In this case, they tried to verify it once, failed, got yelled at by the kook who made the original claims because they supposedly did it wrong, ran it _again_ to his new specifications, and it still failed. On top of that, a group of the best and brightest reviewed the concept and said it didn't work, hadn't worked, and fundamentally couldn't work. In other words, independent verification failed. Spectacularly. So why the fuck are we still spending money on this horse shit?

On top of it all, the episode has all the telltale signs of pseudo-science. When you start claiming that the reason your idea has not been accepted is because of a cabal of established scientists who are too closed-minded to accept a "revolutionary" idea, that's pretty much sign #1 in my mind that you're probably a crackpot. The number of Galileos and Einsteins in the world is greatly outnumbered by nutcases with genuinely stupid ideas. Moreover, you'll notice that Einstein's theories were quickly proven _correct_ once objective experiments were devised. Reproducible results: there's a novel idea!

But you're right...I'm sure Einstein had much less resistance to his idea that time slowed down the faster you traveled and that gravity wasn't so much a force as a curvature in the 4th dimension. Clearly your ideas are much more threatening to the scientific establishment, and they're all just too incompetent to reproduce your results correctly.

Sigh.

I can't help but think this kind of shit is kith and kin to other forms of magical thinking Americans seem to be especially prone to lately like homeopathy and naturopathy. The terms "alternative" and "complementary" medicine, which have been bandied about a lot lately, drive me insane. They are idiotic, meaningless terms meant to suggest that somehow, you know, the scientific method just isn't quite cutting it. This is exactly the same logic used by people who try to tell you that you're being closed-minded when you won't consider the Bible as "another source of knowledge," "different" from science. Not inferior, or the refuge of crackpots, no! It's just "different."

Horse. Shit. I am so incredibly tired of this line of reasoning. Let's dispell it right now, shall we?

Science _is_ knowledge. The two are synonymous. If your "knowledge" is not scientifically acquired, it isn't knowledge. That was the whole point of the scientific method. Namely, if an independent 3rd party can't verify something, it isn't true. Period. End of statement. You can believe that extract of whosiwhatsis improves your mental health all you want, but if a double-blind study shows no difference between your extract and placebo, you're full of shit.

And indeed, that's the crux of the whole issue: the revolution that was science was the ability to objectively show someone was full of shit. See, the human imagination is powerful. It's capable of coming up with lots and lots of weird ideas about the world. But...psst...most of them are _wrong_. Hate to break your bubble, but there are certain rules the universe operates by, and if your rules contradict the universe's, hey, guess what? You lose. You can believe that your crushed DirtyHippyBerries will inspire your aura to enhance your body's natural disease resistance all you want, but in the meantime that cancer is going to keep merrily metastasizing until you're dead. Universe: 1, stupid hippy: 0.

There's no truth in belief, sunshine.

(In fact, it's even worse than that: the moment there _is_ truth in belief, it's not belief any more. It's been objectively verified, which means it's *gasp* science! So _by the very definition of it_, belief is not truth!)

The most important thing I learned from "Beowulf"

Don't, under any circumstances, bang a water demon, even if she looks like Angelina Jolie. Just...don't.

Conspiracy theorist fodder

Maybe they _are_ watching you...


In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?

Ken Hutcherson is batshit insane

I think his words speak for themselves.

Wow.

Giuliani

Fyi, Giuliani is a giant douchenozzle. Not as obviously a douchenozzle as GW, but a douchenozzle nonetheless. Besides, as Biden so eloquently pointed out, not being able to say anything that isn't of the form, "noun + verb + 9/11," he is nepotistic, short-sighted asshole. And apparently only European tv is willing to say so.

What depresses me most is that the following is going to happen: Hilary is going to win the Democratic nomination, and Giuliani is going to win the Republican nomination. A combination of a well-organized Republican attack machine and Hilary's simultaneous ability to shoot herself in the foot and alienate everybody is going to allow Giuliani to win. And once he gets in the White House, he'll be the same douchenozzle he is today, and the people who voted for him will act surprised. Just like they did when GW turned out to be such a monumentally incompetent asshole.

So...fuck Giuliani and fuck Hilary, in that order. I'll be over here trying to figure out a way to monetize the kind of stupidity that gets these people elected.

Hot, sweaty Fox News action (nsfw)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I may never forgive mrsmalkav for posting this:



(remember, boys and girls: my pain is your pain!)

Open source biology

Hey look! Wired just discovered what I was playing with last year! :)

Beat the lies out of the treacherous dolphin!

This was too good not to share:

Maybe cows have more sense than I give them credit for

"RUN! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!"

A former roommate poses an interesting question

Why _haven't_ the Japanese taken over the world?!

Cal's halftime show

I like to call this, "When Two Forms of Nerdery Combine"...

Minority Report-ish nerdery

How to make a Minority Report-like interface with a Wii remote, some reflective tape and some infrared LEDs.

Hehehe...

I'm still laughing at "douchenozzle." Hehehe...douchenozzle...hehe...

Scenes from my whiteboard, part 2

"Guys-
Please hit me with some cash for the K. lunch. Guys without jobs only pay for the people they're nailing. So, that's a second option."

-- name withheld to protect the guilty

People I don't feel sorry for include

Hey, news flash: every employer checks Facebook. Guess your dumb ass just found that out the hard way, didn't you?

Flasher flashes

What part of this was surprising, exactly?

Top 10 lamest tattoos

College Call Girl (henceforth CCG) recently did a post on the lamest kinds of tattoos out there. Granted, I am not "inked," nor do I know pretty much anything about the culture, but I certainly sympathize with the sentiment that if you're going to permanently mark your body, it had better be unique and interesting. Is there anything sadder than permanently embedding something in your skin that says, "Look! I do whatever the latest trend tells me to do, and I can provide the forensic evidence to prove it!"

(Aside: one of the comments in that post read, "He is a total douchenozzle." That is _so_ my new favoritest word.)

Your daily douchebag (11/11/07)

Congratulations, House Democrats! You've just earned yourself a Daily Douchebag!

I don't even know where to start with this one. I know: let's start with the embarrassment of pork that was the Bush-veto-overridden Water Resources Development Act.

The WRDA proved once again that if there's anything that brings lawmakers together, it's a bill chock full of pet projects that are of dubious utility. I don't even know what things are in the bill; all I know is that if Trent Lott says the bill is filled with, “good, deserved, justified projects,” it's almost certainly a bad idea given Lott's history.

Point being, while Democrats are being spineless pussies about the important stuff...like, you know, _torture_...they crow about defying Bush in order to do important things like give additional money to the Bridges to Nowhere. And btw Democrats: I hate you perhaps most for inducing me to link to a Heritage Foundation page. I feel dirty in a way that a week's worth of showers is probably not going to fix. *shudder*

But, let's get to the crux of their current douchebaggery. After bitching (rightly) about Bush co. and the Republicans' completely fucked up priorities (Terry Shiavo, anyone?), they turn around and come up with this gem. Because really...what's the point in training the next medical researcher if he or she is going to have downloaded music illegally? Even if they come up with the next Polio vaccine, if an illegal copy of the latest Britney Spears album is festering on their computer, hasn't the moral battle already been lost?

The Republicans think the greatest threat to our country is gay people getting married. Democrats apparently insist that, no, really it's music piracy that will be the downfall of our civilization, and we must threaten the livelihood of our educational system in order to do the RIAA's work for them. And everybody is pandering to their fucking political and financial base as we bleed $200 million _per day_ on a war no one can come up with a coherent explanation why we're waging. Meanwhile, China (authoritarian regime though they may be) is actually teaching its students science, a fact that _might_ just have some long-term ramifications.

I hate everything.

Oh, Fox...

I know...shocking that Fox News might not hold itself to high journalistic standards...

They...umm...like their boobies. I guess. (nsfw)

Umm...sure? Why not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1urmsYcJ9nk

Your daily douchebag (10/10/07)

A Daily Douchebag to a head of state: Hugo Chavez.

It's hard to be critical of such an outspoken critic of Bush, but it not the case that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Which is to say, Chavez is an asshole. I mean, after all, part of the reason Bush co. are assholes is that they are arrogant pricks who don't want to even listen to alternative viewpoints. That defines Chavez to a T. What kind of asshole interrupts another head of state at a summit? I don't give a shit if he's being critical of you. You're the president of a sovereign nation, not in fucking middle school. Grow the fuck up.

Oh, and stop trying to be a dictator, asshole. Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro are not models to emulate any more than Bush is.

Revisiting old school Simpsons genius

Way too much of my life plays out like this. Whether I'm Flanders or Homer I'll leave up to you to figure out...

Which Jesus do you believe in?

Jesus...or Jeezus(tm)?

Public Dick

Don't worry...safe for work. Sort of.

I'm pretty sure this guy is following in the distinguished trail blazed by the likes of Ann Coulter, who by comparison is downright eloquent. I think it's even clearer for Dick, but I still firmly believe that both of them just want attention and decided long ago that pissing off as many people as they could would be a good way to get it.

I mean, really...doesn't this clip run like a badly staged Jerry Springer episode to you? He's totally a heel! They guy isn't even a good actor!

Black people love us!

No, seriously...black people love us!

(Best. Website. Ever!)

Ron Paul

Having seen another car with "Ron Paul in '08!" written on the back, I feel the need to point out that just because Dr. Paul, unlike his Republican colleagues,

1. is not an utter moron,
2. holds a deeper understanding of and opinion about foreign policy than, "terrorists...bad!", and
3. is honest,

...that doesn't actually mean that his ideas are _good_. Yes, the whole, "we should never have invaded Iraq and should get the fuck out at the earliest possible moment" is a good idea and refreshing given the Republican field (hell, it's refreshing even given the Democratic field), but let's remember: this guy is a Libertarian at heart. He believes that, essentially, the federal government shouldn't exist. At all. We can have the military, but that's about it. No National Science Foundation. No National Institute of Health. No FDA. No EPA. Nothing. All federal research money would dry up instantly if he had his way. There would be no environmental or consumer protections. Hell, I'm pretty sure he'd get rid of the federal reserve as well. The guy is a nut. Just because he's a different kind of nut than the standard, modern neocon Republican fare, and just because he would be a more interesting, intelligent guy to talk to than most politicians doesn't mean he's any less of a nut.

Seattle light rail - it lives!!!

Egads! Looky what I saw on the bus today!



They wuz testing it 'n stuff. Are they really going to be orange?

Also, I was on a 2 Express bus tonight and it passed another 2 Express. I felt a slight tear in the fabric of space time as it happened.

Soul-killing sexual positions for the lonely and loveless

That...that ain't right. (more conceptually NSFW than anything else)

Weird foreign phrases

Hee. :)

Google releases Android

No, this is not the beginning of some bizarre science fiction movie. "Android" is their attempt to create an open source OS for future phone platform development. (aside: you expecting an ad supported free phone? What are you, retarded?)

What I actually hope comes out of this is for Apple (and AT&T, I guess) to stop being greedy whores and open up their fucking platform. Much as I like the idea of an open development environment, I have no faith that anyone at Google or anyone that uses their platform can design a UI any better than the idiots at Microsoft, whereas if Apple's proved anything it's that they are masters of the user interface.

NYT atheism blog post

I happened to notice there was a New York Times blog post on, not actually atheism, per se, but on the question of an omnipotent god allowing evil in the world and its effect on various religious and areligious philosophers. Or the ye olde "Why do bad things happen to good people?" question (isn't the reverse question just as interesting?).

It's an amusing exercise, but if you're arguing about atheism, it's absolutely the wrong issue to be hung up on. Sure, it's one nail in the coffin of theistic reasoning, but it's only one nail, and frankly, I don't even think it's that compelling. As several of the authors on both sides of the argument eventually, circuitously realize, "good" and "bad" are subjective words that depend on some kind of moral framework that just ends up begging the question. Where do our morals come from? How do we judge that which is good or bad?

The kook Flew decides that this question is the damning indictment of atheism and, apparently, has based his "magical transformation" from an atheist philosopher into some kind of born-again weirdo on it. Frankly, I think if you spend your life trying to make obsessively clean logical arguments on either side of the issue, there is probably something basically wrong with you from the get-go (and no, I don't think the occasional blog post qualifies). But, that's beside the point.

Anyway, the argument that Flew brings up is basically, "Where do you get your morals from? Doesn't the fact that you have some moral compass at all suggest something transcendental about the notion of morals in the first place? More generally, how can notions of truth, justice, morality, etc. arise from a purely materialistic world? What is the thing (i.e., you) that's making moral judgments anyway? Aren't you just a collection of chemicals?"

...which brings us to the _actual_ question we're apparently talking about, which has very little to do with morality. It is the venerable mind-body problem, and it has a long and distinguished history. It amounts, basically, to, "How do minds arise out of bodies?" Which is to say, where does the "you" that's sitting behind your eyes, perceiving the world and making judgments, come from?

And, you know, it _is_ a problem. At some fundamental level, I don't really have an answer for it. I think it's telling that you can get very compelling materialistic explanations out of brain research. How can you maintain the notion of a soul when damaging various parts of people's brains (don't do that purposefully, incidentally) can result in drastic personality differences? Look at the case of Phineas Gage, whose personality became _drastically_ different when a pole went through part of his brain. Doesn't that suggest, at the very least, that some piece of what we consider the "mind" does indeed arise out of the material, physical structure of the brain? And doesn't that drive a similar pole through the idea of an eternal soul? What are you if I can, in some fundamental way, change that you by changing your brain?

At the same time, I don't think even those experiments can explain you to _yourself_. Maybe it can tell you about other people, but on some level, it can't tel you about you. In other words, I perceive myself: there's some kind of personality behind these eyes looking at the world, making judgments, etc. Where does that come from? Objective observation fails here, because in this case the observer and the observed are inseparable. I can't objectively observe myself. It's quintessentially and philosophically impossible. There's always going to be some piece of me that is playing the part of "observer," and fundamentally that observer cannot observe itself. Sure, you can be introspective about your emotions, your thoughts, wonder to yourself, "Why do I keep thinking about pop tarts?", etc., but the point is, there's some part of you observing those thoughts, and it's that part...whatever it is...that cannot be observed by itself.

So, the scientific method reaches its limits here. Just because that's true, however, doesn't mean that materialistic philosophy is damned. It just means that there's something it has trouble answering. Note that it doesn't give a _wrong_ answer (as theists have so often historically done...irrefutably proved wrong, incidentally, not by their own reasoning processes but by scientists)...it just has a hard time coming up with one. I'm okay with that. Maybe it's a fundamentally impossible problem. There are lots of things that are impossible in the world. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle comes to mind: you can't, no matter how hard you try, figure out both the position and the momentum of a quantum particle no matter how what. Maybe the same is true of you figuring out yourself.

I still think that it's better framework to reason about the world than magical, unjustifiable thinking. Sure, religious people have an answer to this question ("well it's your _soul_, silly!"), but, let's be honest, that's retarded. Or, less inflammatorily, it's unjustified. It's an explanation pulled out of a hat that's true because someone, probably in Rome, wearing that silly hat, said it's true.

And that's a ridiculous and stupid basis for any kind of understanding of the world.

Written on the whiteboard on my fridge this morning

"I was more surprised to learn that Shirley MacLaine had a house here than that Dennis Kucinich thought he saw a UFO here." -- author unknown

Benny Lava redux

Okay, so the Benny Lava _actual_ lyrics are almost as weird as the transliterated ones.

Also, I think this is a far better sound track for the original video.

How the fed works

I was googling around for information on how the fed and inflation work, and after wading through a lot of crap, this howstuffworks link was pretty much the best resource I found. It's fairly simple yet thorough.

Just thought I'd share.

Our gigantic asses are sinking the boats at DisneyLand

We, as a country, should be fucking mortified by this. We're sinking the "It's a Small World" boats, people! SINKING THEM! BECAUSE OUR ASSES ARE TOO BIG!

Jesus. Fucking. Tapdancing. Christ. If there is a more appropriate metaphor for the modern American mentality, I certainly can't think of it.

Your daily douchebag (11/03/07)

A Daily Douchebag to Pervez Musharraf for being a typical douchebag dictator and declaring marshal law when the few checks and balances left in his country weren't being nice to him.

It makes me profoundly sad to see these cases where a country boots out an imperial power (England) only to descend into their own home-brewed authoritarian regime. Having watched V for Vendetta recently doesn't help matters.

Update: Musharraf: still a douchebag. Also, I can't help but see parallels here between Musharraf's rationale for declaring martial law and the Bush v. Gore decision. Both amount to saying, "we don't have time to actually sort out the legalities because not having a President _right now_ is just too dangerous!" Which is, of course, horse shit.

Benny Lava

Another amusing purposeful mistranslation of an Indian music video.

I'm pretty sure the guy stole some moves from Michael Jackson. Back when MJ had, you know, organic parts.

If There Were a God... (10/30/07)

I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be happening:

If There Were a God... (10/29/07)

An "If There Were a God" that needs no explanation. Or more accurately, there is no explanation on earth that can justify it.

The "prematurely rich" ain't sasified...

I don't really find this at all surprising. The eMillionaires quite often aren't in it for the money, per se, at least in the sense that they aren't after money just to engage in conspicuous consumption. Money is just a way to keep score. The fact that you can use it to buy jets, mansions, etc. is somewhat irrelevant. They do it because the business itself is interesting.

Now, of course, you can ask: okay, but would they still be interested if there _weren't_ a huge amount of money at stake? No, probably not. The money is part of it. But what I think makes this interesting to these guys are the dynamics the money makes, not the payoff. In other words, because consumers and potential clients value money so much, they choose (relatively) carefully what they want to buy with it, and it's the challenge of getting the money out of those consumers and clients that appeals to these guys much more than the fact that you get that money and the ability to spend it in the end (if your business is successful).

Point being, we always assume money is the prime motivator of people. Or, at least, it is a universal currency that allows you to get the (presumed material) things you want. I think that's an oversimplification. People want things out of their lifestyle that you can't really buy, or at least it doesn't really make sense to think of in monetary terms. Does it really make sense to think of "buying" your way into working into a startup that excites and challenges you? Not really...not in the traditional sense. Therefore, I don't think it makes sense to talk about maximizing people's income as a proxy for maximizing their happiness. (and it makes even less sense to talk about a stock market index as a proxy for the well-being of a country, but that's beyond my scope for the moment)

So here's the question: can you make an economic model out of that? Interestingly, it's not even "money + leisure," although I think leisure time is another important factor that should be considered when measuring a society's well-being. It's much more a question of, to use an overloaded term, freedom. To what degree to people have the freedom to pursue the things that make them happy? To what degree can they pursue their happiness, you might say...

Cheney and Obama related?!

No, apparently this isn't a joke. Go back far enough, and Obama and Cheney are related.

Isn't this a sign of the apocalypse?

Why you can't cite wikipedia

A really nice article on why a history professor at Middlebury College does not allow his students to cite Wikipedia.

Girl eye chart

This has to be the most frustrating eye chart ever. If you're a heterosexual guy, at least...

Boat elevator!

I'm sorry, but this French boat elevator is really cool.

Yes, I am a giant nerd.

Menacing plastic garbage island

Were you aware there's an island made completely out of garbage that's twice the size of Texas floating around the Pacific? This is a problem. Literally, a big problem. It's not like there's "some" garbage floating around out there. TWO TEXASES. Think about how much shit you don't like comes from or exists in Texas. Now double that. And imagine it getting an order of magnitude bigger every year.

You may now begin screaming.

Why gay marriage is wrong and evil

The most concise listing of the arguments against gay marriage I've ever seen. Well, I'm convinced!

Go North Carolina?

Your stupidity made Digg. Yay?

Chris Matthews on Kasparov

A great quote by Chris Matthews right after Bill Maher interviews Gary Kasparov:

"Do you ever get the feeling that the Russians are playing chess, and we're playing checkers?"