Best way to go green: stop having so many fucking children

Not that I think China's draconian one-child policy is the best way to go about it, but somehow, in the noise about airplanes and carbon footprints, the simple fact that "a person who was never born has no carbon footprint" has been lost.

The growth in air traffic, oil consumption, and just about any other environmental issue you can think of is being driven my one simple fact: people keep fucking, and they keep popping out children. There's more air traffic because the number of _people_ is increasing. The rate at which we're consuming oil, and the rate at which we're belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, are increasing because there are more goddamn people on this little planet of ours. Deal with that issue, and the rest will, if not take care of itself, become drastically more tractable.

So environmentalists: how about instead of harassing air travelers, you hand out condoms and free birth control?

Saul of the Mole Men

...is, without a doubt, the single stupidest thing ever put on television.

Your daily douchebag (8/29/07)

Today's Daily Douchebag is a first: non-political, and awarded posthumously. Yup, today's Daily Douchebag goes to the great Leona Helmsley, a waste of genetic material if there ever was one. What has the decaying corpse done to deserve such an honor (to be fair, I think most people referred to her that way when she was alive)? Well, she cut out two of her four grandchildren from her will. Not all...just two. Half. But that's not even the worst of it. What's worse than leaving some of your vast fortune to only half of your grandchildren? Why, leaving $12 million to your Maltese rodent of a dog, of course!

Man, what a bitch.

Dumbest. Hypothesis. Ever.

“girls prefer pink because they need to be better at hunting berries”

These people actually _published_ that??

Wired does Penny Arcade

A really nice article on Penny Arcade at Wired, if I do say so myself. My two favorite quotes, which literally made me laugh out loud:

"But gaming is increasingly a mainstream activity, with titles like Brain Age and the jock-friendly Madden NFL franchise selling more than anything else. A recurring theme of the strip is resentment that the cool kids are encroaching on their turf.

"It's not fair," Krahulik says. "They could be having sex. With women. Why do they want my hobby?"

...and...

"Kara gained a rep online as the perfect gamer wife after Mike revealed the particulars of their sixth anniversary to readers: They parked their son with the grandparents, holed up in a hotel room... and logged into World of Warcraft. "There's no time to run a raid on Molten Core with a kid at home," Kara says defensively.

Mike thinks the anniversary story has been blown out of proportion. "It's not like we didn't have sex, too," he says. Over his wife's shrieks of protest, he adds, "We took breaks. Long breaks, if you catch my drift..."

Your daily douchebag (8/27/07)

A Daily Douchebag and, frankly, a, "wow...did they really just ...? ....wow." to Coral Ridge Ministries. Bravely venturing forth on journalistic fronts other "reputable" and "actual" and "not completely batshit insane" news organizations have feared to explore, Coral Ridge has apparently blown the top off the whole Hitler-Darwin connection.

How do we know it's good journalism? Because Ann Coulter says so, of course.

“I never knew about the link between Darwin and Hitler until after reading Richard Weikart’s book,” said Coulter, a popular conservative columnist and a featured expert on the new Coral Ridge Hour documentary, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which airs August 25 and 26. Hitler, she said, “was applying Darwinism. He thought the Aryans were the fittest and he was just hurrying natural selection along.”

But for the most eloquent exploration, we look to Dr. D. James Kennedy, PhD (from NYU, his biography claims, but doesn't say in what...somehow I'm guessing it's not history of science. Or history. Or anything that might involve facts.). Sayeth Dr. Kennedy:

“To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler,” said Dr. Kennedy, the host of Darwin’s Deadly Legacy.

Kennedy angry! Kennedy smash! No Darwin! No Hitler! Kennedy want cookie!...

"Things I Learned From Movies"

Original link.

1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.

2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.

3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.

5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.

6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.

11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.

12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.

13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

15. All single women have a cat.

16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.

17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.

18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.

Will Ferrell and his vicious landlord

I had heart about this clip from people but hadn't gotten around to finding it until now.

Nearly. Died. Laughing.

Redneck homepage

This would be funnier if I weren't FUCKING LIVING IN IT.

*grumble*

No, I'm not tired, bitter, and irrationally spiteful, of course not...

Images that changed the world

Wow. I hadn't seen some of these.

Best license plate ever

Random nerdy thought

I really miss the Cartoon Network's Ghost in the Shell series (both Stand-Alone Complex and 2nd Gig). Both were by far the best cartoon series to be put on television, and I looked forward to them every week when they were out. (Oh wikipedia...you just reminded me of the weirdly adorable Tachikomas!) The episodes are also probably my favorite shows of all time behind Battlestar: Galactica (aside: why must I wait until fucking January for new episodes?! Cruel, cruel world...and what the fuck am I supposed to do after next season when the series ends?! *whine*).

Sadly, I've heard no suggestion that a third series is in the works. Nor, for that matter, have I heard any suggestion that there will be a third movie since I suspect the last one (best cartoon basset hound ever! And it even played an important symbolic role in the plot! Apparently Oshii has a basset named Gabriel...I knew I liked him) was rather a flop.

(fyi, the reason I was thinking about it is because I have the theme song in my mp3 collection. Yes, I am _that_ much of a nerd...)

Today's "scare you shitless" link

I wish I could say I was surprised that it's easy to hack into a nuclear power plant...

"10 Things I Learned From My Patients"

Just had to share. :)

1) Never, ever leave flashlights, beer bottles or any other long, circular object on the floor because someday you will fall on it… and it will somehow impale its way up your rectum.

2) Always do woodwork with your skillsaw before using meth.

3) White latex paint, despite being luxuriously thick and creamy, does not coat your stomach and provide relief like pepto bismol does.

4) If you have taken 7 home pregnancy tests, and they’re all positive, when you come into the emergency department… chances are our test will come back positive too.

5) If you are given a prescription for narcotics, at least have the courtesy of leaving the lobby before you try to sell the pillz.

6) Drinking diluted Pine Sol with 5 friends is not a good way to get drunk.

7) When attempting self-circumcision, do not use dry ice to numb the area. As a corollary, when the dry ice sticks to your parts, do not attempt to remove it with boiling water.

8) When stealing a prescription pad, please fill it out correctly before turning it into the pharmacy. They know something’s up when you write for “1.2 pounds of morfeen x 1000 refills”

9) Carefully weigh your options before inserting a toilet brush wrapped in duct tape and saran wrap into your rectum and breaking off the handle. There are better ways to spend your Saturday afternoon.

10) When your 15 year old daughter gives birth to a bleating, underweight infant 30 minutes after presenting with “gas pain”, try not to run around the ED loudly proclaiming, “I don’t know what y’all did or who that baby is, but my lil’ girl warn’t pregnant when she come in here!”

Daily Show: America to the rescue!

I had meant to dig up this clip earlier when I saw it on the Daily Show. Absolutely succinct and genius explanation of just how badly we've historically fucked ourselves when it comes to the middle east.

That's it

I have tried to keep an open mind about Knoxville. Yes, it has all the aesthetic charm of Pittsburgh combined with the high-minded erudite citizenry you would expect from a land-locked southern state. Yes, the airport has only 12 gates, and it costs a minimum of $400 to get anywhere. Yes, Tennessee's major distinctions are that it is home to Elvis's house and Dollywood. But I was unwilling to condemn it based on stereotypes. Coming from North Carolina, I know that that southern drawl can connote charismatic, engaging, and welcoming personalities just as well as redneck, so I wanted to give it a chance to prove me wrong.

After three months of continuous right-wing radio, NASCAR, and oppressive, humid heat, I'm throwing in the towel. The nail in the coffin was tonight when some redneck kid threatened me and told me, "don't nev-uh come back, y'hear?!" because I...get this...said, "It was really nice to meet you...I'll email you sometime!" when I was saying goodbye to his girlfriend at a poker tournament.

Please, god, get me out of this redneck shit-hole. Tennessee now officially joins Florida in my growing list of states we'd be better off carpet-bombing.

Moan my IP address

A horrifying, unnecessary collision of technology and sex...(nsfw)

A refreshing spam subject

WELL IT'S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!!!

Jesus have I ever gotten sick of those poser, fanboy big dick porn site reviews...

From: ybydesigner@atbiz.net
Subject: Honest big dick porn site reviews
Date: August 22, 2007 3:03:41 AM EDT
To:

Anti-air travel environmentalism

You know, the growing focus by environmentalists on air travel is beginning to annoy me. Sure, improving awareness is always a good thing. But air travel is quite simply not something that's subject to particularly flexible demand. You either need to fly somewhere or you don't. Harassing people at the airport isn't going to change that. It's not like you can up and bike to Scotland. Sure, in Europe and the eastern seaboard of the US, you can potentially take a train instead, but a lot of times (particularly in Asia, where they said most of the growth is coming from) flying is your only logistically viable option.

It's a very different issue from other kinds of pollution. In cars, for instance, you can quite easily forego the gas-guzzling SUV you were going to buy for a car that runs on half to a third of the fuel and yet gets you where you're going just as well. As for factories, additional filtering and treatment technologies exist but may be more expensive. Alternative energy sources exist to polluting power generation technologies like coal and oil burning. Point being, there are viable alternatives out there.

For planes, that's not true. The profit crunch on airlines has pushed airline manufacturers to squeeze every last bit of efficiency out of their planes (since fuel is a major cost for the airline). The 777's engines are significantly more efficient than, say, the 747's engines. It's not like somebody out there is being lazy or cheap and not bothering to improve the efficiency of the airlines. They're about as efficient as they're going to get, and there are already incentives there to squeeze whatever efficiency the engineers can muster out of them.

So...what the fuck? What is it these douchebags want? There's nothing in this particular pollution ecosystem that can really change. Moreover, it's just not that big a relative source of pollution. You're whining about 3.5%?! Even if it is growing faster than other sources, and even if we can scale back the other sources much faster than air travel, how long before it even comes close to being a significant contributor (say, 40%)? Decades? Assuming current global economic and technological trends continue for that long (not bloody likely)?

Go do something more useful with your time and stop patronizing air travelers. That's the TSA's job.

Stupid but funny

...much like me.

Qualifications for being President

A truer sentiment, methinks, has never been expressed...

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
- Gore Vidal

High definition disc idiocy

I think they should just call this chart comparing studio support for HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray: "Why not to buy any next generation disc player until these idiots stop being fucking babies and agree on a format."

I guess that _is_ kinda long...

War from the perspective of soldiers

You know...the guys who were actually there?

Practical watermarking?

Didn't I say something like this should happen a while ago?

NYT: Changing the Terms of the Debate

Interesting little piece in the NYT today...they asked 7 people for their ideas on how a "new media" debate really should be run.

Predictably, most of the answers are stupid. KEVIN KELLY from Wired wanted the candidates to become cyborgs, wearing constant recording equipment so that their life would become one large debate. Is he retarded? He wants to turn candidates into the Borg? More importantly, he really wants to highlight the minutia of candidates lives so that their opponents can pick apart and dissect every trivial decision they make to a degree that would dwarf even today's seemingly pervasive media coverage? He really wants to turn the debate into a question of the political implications of a candidate's choice of candy bar? Food store? Failure to take obesity seriously given the impulse purchase of a Snickers? Jesus...what a fucking _terrible_ idea...

ANDREW RASIEJ and MICAH L. SIFRY from TechPresident.com want to pose questions by majority vote over the web. That's nice and all, but how to you deal with sybil attacks (yes, I'm a giant nerd)? And there's a non-trivial chance you could end up with questions like, "What do you think about Britney Spears' last bender?"

DAVID ALL from some Republican consulting firm wants people to be able to interrupt candidate in real-time time over the Internet. Yes, brilliant, David. Clearly that problem with modern political debate is that people aren't talking over each other enough.

MATT BAI from the NYT Magazine suggested letting the candidates "Web 2.0" their opponents by scribbling comments about what they're saying on a screen over their head. Much as I like the idea of hearing the moderator say, as Bai hypothesized, “Senator Clinton, while you were talking about reform, Barack Obama just listed 10 of your corporate contributors over your head. Care to respond?”, I think this one has the same flavor as David All's "people need to interrupt each other more!" idea.

The two best, I think, were TOM BROKAW and a man who should win the "Weirdest Name of the Year" award, ZEPHYR TEACHOUT. Teachout's idea I actually like, and that's to have many simultaneous debates. In essence, he suggests having a round-robin tournament of debates between all pairs of candidates. He identifies, I think correctly, that the more useful benefit of "new media" is less the "user participation" part than the higher bandwidth part. There are infinite channels with infinite memory, so why not get as much debate as possible? So what if it's in parallel? The mob is good at digesting large amounts of information and redistributing it in comfortable, chewable form.

Brokaw, on the other hand, does little to hide his basic contempt and/or amusement at the question:

"IF this is truly the campaign of the new media, candidates should be required to answer questions only on their cellphone, BlackBerry or other personal digital assistant, so we can size up their personal text message codes, ring tones and thumb-typing skills.

The questioners could be sweaty fat guys muscling people aside as they get off airplanes, shouting loudly into cellphones: “Rudy, I just landed. Can we talk?” “Hillary! Hey! Mike here! Can you hear me? Hello? Hello?”

Calls would have to be routed through Mumbai so the candidates could offer their positions on Islamic rage and inquire about their car insurance rates simultaneously."

He goes on to say that the best thing you could do for the debates would be to give the candidates a few drinks before-hand. I think he has hit the nail on the head.

All the talk of "new media" is pointless if it doesn't address the fundamental problem with the debates, which is that it encourages speaking in pre-prepared sound bites, and it does nothing to actually get an honest answer out of them. Just opening the flood gates and letting any shmuck post a question doesn't really help that both because (I guarantee you) the handlers will quickly find a way to game the filter that dictates what questions actually get to the candidates and because, even if you can get some good questions, all the pressures that push candidates into speaking in sound bites are still there, and there's still nothing to hold them accountable to what they say.

This all reminds me of the rush to get computers into schools. It misses the point. Technology is a tool. It isn't an end in and of itself. You have to have a goal you're trying to achieve first. Once you have the goal, _then_ decide if the technology can help. Don't just decide a priori to use the technology and then retrofit a goal onto it.

Your daily douchebag (8/16/07)

John Gibson from Fox News. IIIIIII...think I'll just let the audio clip speak for itself (on the right side of the page). Or, perhaps, I'll let Keith Olbermann make the obvious comment.

Relatedly, there's apparently a guy who thinks Cheney is just dandy.

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

I'm not sure I'd actually wear it as a shirt, but it makes a great poster. Is there any more fundamental truth for our age?

A terrible visual math pun

If you actually get this, you're over-educated. If you think it's funny, there's something wrong with you.

Death of the Half Hour News Hour

Aww...now that's just a damn shame.

You know, I actually heard about this from a friend yesterday, and I've been thinking about _why_ the show is so horrible. Like trying to verbalize why Thomas Kinkade's art is such godawful mass-produced shit, it's actually somewhat of a challenge.

It's not that you can't make a conservative satire show that's funny, although doing so would be much more difficult in the past few years with a few conservative nutcases running the government and the more progressive forces, such as they are, doing exactly nothing. The reason Daily Show is funny is not that they tell left-leaning jokes, per se. The fun of the show is not in bashing their ideological opposites just for the sake of bashing them, and that is, I think, the piece that the Fox producers didn't get (I know...shocking that people at Fox News might have poorly developed analytical skills). If you watched Half Hour News Hour (and, god help me, I did), all they did was take sophomoric swipes at the usual right wing targets, e.g., Clinton (both of them), Pelosi, Reed, Kennedy, etc. All the jokes were basically of the form, "Hey, don't those guys suck? *self-satisfied chuckle*."

But Daily Show hasn't been successful and, frankly, _good_ because they just took pot shots at Bush, Rove, etc. Don't get me wrong, they did take pot shots. But what they were making fun of was the hypocrisy and incoherence of the public statements they made, not to mention the inherently comical oversimplifications they espoused to promote their ideologies. Certainly Stewart is liberal, and certainly his choice of guests and topics reflects this, but nonetheless the jokes didn't arise out of the fact that their targets were conservative so much as they arose out of the almost inherently laughable media spectacle those in power produced. When Bush responds to a question about the political feasibility of Rumsfeld continuing in his position by asserting that, "I'm the decider!", what's funny isn't as much that it's Bush saying it (though certainly that's part of it) so much as the fact that the leader of our country is responding to a genuine inquiry about the nature of our government with what amounts to, "'cause!" If Clinton had done it, they would have made fun of him too. When Democrats do stupid shit like that (see the clip of Clinton on her position regarding lobbyists I posted recently), they call them out too.

What I guess I'm saying is that the Daily Show has tended to focus on conservatives less because they are conservatives than because they're the ones most often saying indefensible, internally inconsistent, stupid shit. :)

_Another_ Jurassic Park movie?

You don't even need to read the article. You just need to read the first sentence of the description to know what a _horrible_ idea this is...

3D projector

Goddamnit...how much longer must I wait for a holodeck?

Minesweeper: the movie

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?!"

"BECAUSE I'M BORED!!"

Awesome piece of Star Trek trivia

Awesomely nerdy, of course.

"...Hawking was on the Paramount lot for the video release of the film "A Brief History of Time". He was given a tour of the set, and when they reached the bridge set, he began tapping out something he wanted to say through his voice synthesizer. After about a minute, it said "Could you take me out of my chair and put me in the captain's chair?" Now, Hawking *never* asks to be taken out of his chair, so this was clearly a very big deal. Someone did, and a few days later the idea of a quick cameo came up for "Descent"

Hee. Also:

"...The transporter effect is accomplished as follows:

• 1) Fill a canister with water. Add glitter and shine a light through it. Stir briskly and tape.
• 2) Film the scene, first with the actor, then without. (Or vice versa)
• 3) Transfer the scene to tape, and use video technology to matte the glitter over the actor.
• 4) Use a video wipe to 'streak down' the glitter."

Amazingly, this picture is real

Check snopes if you don't believe me.




Wow.

I am a dirty, dirty Chomskyite

Just to pre-empt the predictable charge leveled at anyone who dares suggest Chomsky might actually have a point (unless you're Bush and can't even spell Chomsky)...

I don't buy the neo-socialist stuff. At least not all of it. Anarchic socialism...or whatever it is he's advocating...has the same problem every other system of government has, which is that human nature is basically dark. Any system that doesn't allow for and take into account a) that a certain, probably large segment of the population is greedy, and b) that people seem to naturally form hierarchical organizations around leaders whose main qualification is that they believe themselves to be leaders, is ultimately doomed to failure. Or more accurately, is ultimately doomed to reform itself into a system that allows for those things. Yes, a large corporation is basically unaccountable to anybody, and yes the powers that be tend to be self-serving, but setting up any governmental structure that attempts to pre-empt those inclinations is doomed, ultimately, to be transformed into different versions of the same thing. Sad, but, I think, true.

That said, I do think the idea that maybe people's primary motivation isn't money has become sadly taboo. Chomsky points to academics, but I think many people care about non-monetary benefits like time with family, leisure time, enjoying what they work on, etc. This isn't to say that such people aren't motivated by money at all. It's just to say that they aren't _primarily_ motivated by money, and that beyond some subsistence level of income, other factors dominate. Maybe not for some, but definitely for a non-trivial segment of the population, and moreover, as psych study after psych study has shown, it is these factors and not money that lead to a higher level of contentment with one's life.

With regard to the issue of media self-censorship, I don't really have anything to add other than to wonder what effect the Internet has or will have on the messages that end up being broadcast. Idealists might be inclined to argue that with ubiquitous access and such a low bar to publishing, more and more radical ideas should end up being published. While I think that's true, I don't see anything that would gain them any more audience than they already have. It has been pointed out by many people smarter than I am that the Internet, far from being unifying, is actually quite a divisive and compartmentalizing influence. It provides a means for people who already agree with each other to gather, reinforces their biases, and does nothing to force people to confront that which they don't already believe. Call it the Fox News effect, except that instead of pandering to such a broad and nebulous class of people like "conservaties," you can have separate communities for every weird little specific ideology you can imagine.

Who's changing wikipedia?

Really fascinating article on data mining IP addresses to determine who has been editing Wikipedia.

I think the most entertaining part is what the CIA has been editing (it's not what you would think). :)

Chess on a rollercoaster

...as opposed, of course, to Snakes on a Plane.

Nerds are weird.

I interned at the wrong goddamn place

While I'm holed up in Knoxville, which I've decided has the charm and natural beauty of Pittsburgh without the airline hub, apparently Wyclef stops by when you intern at Google.

A quick review of the top 100 songs on iTunes

In a moment of procrastination (act surprised), I sampled the top 100 songs on iTunes right now. I've decided that the songs can be roughly categorized as follows:

• The bazillionth version of that one archetypal rap song.
  
  I didn't like it the first time I heard it back in the late 90s. What the fuck happened to De La Soul? Or Naughty By Nature? Or Tupac? Or fuck, even Eminem? No wonder rap sales are declining...its the same posturing gangsta assholes using the same fucking loops under the same fucking distorted sound effects talking about banging the same fucking bitches. At least Eminem had interesting metaphors, which I'm pretty sure most of the current crew couldn't even spell.
  
  
• The bazillionth version of that one archetypal R&B song.
  
  I have never liked R&B. I probably never will. Will someone please explain to these guys that describing being dissed by a hot girl in a club while alternating between exactly two notes doesn't constitute a novel fucking artistic contribution any more?
  
  
• The bazillionth version of that one archetypal rock song.
  
  I didn't like the first guy I heard screaming over an electric guitar with too much much distortion, and until you give these emo assholes some fucking antidepressants and a lesson in rhythm, harmony, and plugging in their instruments correctly, I have no interest in hearing any of their subsequent work.
  
  
• The bazillionth version of that one archetypal pop song.
  
  My tolerance for bland, manufactured pop was exceeded somewhere between the Spice Girls and Kelly Clarkson. I think it was about at Hanson where my eye began to twitch and I began wondering if indeed society was beyond salvation.

Of course, this all begs the question of what epitomes of artistic achievement grace my judgmental ass's iTunes library. Look, I never said my tastes were any good. I just enjoy judging the other crap that's out there. :) My music tastes are really weird. Lately it's a lot of dance, some techno, etc. Basically, I pretty much never listen to the painfully trite lyrics musicians put in their songs (I'm a firm believer in the principle of, "That which is too stupid to say is typically sung"), so I believe that music should have an interesting rhythm and be dancable. That's about it. Do that and I'm happy.

Jon Stewart on Hillary Clinton on lobbyists (ewww...)

As usual, Stewart boils down Clinton's argument on lobbyists to its essence which, as you might expect, make no goddamn sense.




Oh, and Tancredo? If I weren't so lazy, you'd get a Daily Douchebag for saying your biggest mistake was not accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior. You fucking pandering douchebag.

It don't pay to be smart

Apparently being smart doesn't actually help you all that much (at least as far as IQ goes). Brings up some interesting questions.

Is it because IQ isn't a good measure of life skills?

Is it that higher IQ people have a fewer social skills, and that interferes with their ability to make money?

Is it that higher IQ people have a sense of entitlement that causes them to overspend?

Some combination of the above?

Raw military spending by country

Care to guess how many times the next greatest spender the US's military spending is?

Mario Kart Wii

*insert girlish squeal here*

"Stolen"?

Seriously, how the fuck does one go about "stealing" a 3-ton meteorite? How exactly did they slip that one by the guards?

"Heyyyyyyy...wait a minute...are you stealing the meteorite?"

"What? This? Oh...no...no no no. This...this is an old couch. A really, big, old couch. Shaped like a rock. And covered in a tarp. For some reason."

Also, shouldn't it be a "meteor" at that point?

Two best Family Guy moments ever

As per a conversation last night, the two finest Family Guy moments ever:

First, Stewie inquires as to the current physiological state of his female companion:

...and second, Stewie plays "Marco Polo" with Helen Keller:

Sheepies!

You...you mean the markets aren't rational? That all those clever bankers with their fancy computer models boil down, in the end, to lemmings? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Guerilla librarianship

I hereby urge you all to engage in guerilla librarianship. Let's shepherd these poor mis-categorized Intelligent Design books into the religions fiction section where they belong.

The fall from grace of Dennis Miller

A moment of silence, please, for the great Dennis Miller.

He at least used to have moments of being funny. But then he took a weird right wing turn. I wasn't happy about it, but ok. The final straw, however, came tonight as I watched the Half Hour News Hour (don't ask...I don't know why. I'm masochistic.) Turns out the crazies who run that show gave ol' Dennis his own bit entitled, "The Buck Starts Here." Nevermind that this is a shameless ripoff of "Back in Black" (just as the entire concept behind Half Hour News Hour is a shameless [and crappy!] ripoff of Daily Show). The subject of Mr. Miller's rant was "why I love Bush." As if that weren't bad enough, he had to alternatively dumb down his rant for his audience and explain his jokes. Oh, it hurt me. At one point one of his jokes was, "...and I love Bush because he would make fun of me for using the term 'vis-a-vis' in the previous joke."

Oh, Dennis. You might as well have just written "sell-out" on your forehead...

Are you Ghengis Khan's descendant?

If you're from Asia, apparently you have a 1 in 10 chance of being his heir!

What I learned from the roast of Flava Flav

Goddamn, Spinderella got fat!

Oh yeah, and Flava Flav is still batshit insane.

Btw, how pissed would you be if you were Sylvester Stallone and your ex-girlfriend started dating a guy who looked like that?

Yet more Flash crack

Battle-bot tournament!!! Very addictive, but fortunately it has an ending (you can beat the game). My two teslacoil juggernauts, Tuna and Halibut, just massacred the last level. Muahahaha...

Your daily douchebag (8/12/07)

Proof that Cheney isn't stupid; he's just evil.

Coda on the failure of US broadband

Be pissed at both the telcos and the regulators.

Ron Paul comes in 5th in Iowa straw poll

Eeeeeenteresting. Ron Paul seems to have beaten out both Thompsons, Guiliani, and McCain (the latter two by a fairly wide margin).

It's very weird to have someone in the Republican ranks I'm actually rooting for. :) He'll never in a million years get the nomination, but he's a fun dark horse to watch...

A review of Overlord that I know you don't care about

I just finished Overlord. I enjoyed it. It was entertaining. Not too challenging, but I enjoyed it.

The one big problem I had with it is that it wasn't polished. Maybe I'm holding it to an unreasonable Zelda standard of polish, but there were lots of dinky bugs in the game. For example, when fighting one of the final guys, there's a cut scene, and I swear that every single time I emerged from the cut scene, between 2 and 12 of my minions had become weirdly embedded in the boxes behind me. I pretty much had to write them off. It was annoying.

Plus, their object intersection code was clearly very poor. There was an obviously very large bounding box around pretty much every guy and every object, and it frequently felt like you were running into a magic, invisible forcefield. At one point, I found myself unable to go around a large boss who shouldn't have taken up more than half of the width of the passageway, and I died because of it. Just obnoxious shit like that.

I dunno...it didn't completely spoil the game, but it felt like it had been rushed out the door. I read online that there was a bug (that I fortunately didn't trigger) that could make it so that you would be unable to progress in the game. That's frankly inexcusable. It's poor game design.

So, basically, A for concept, C- for execution. You guys can do better. In the genre, I think Pikmin is strictly a better game, although it clearly doesn't have the humor. And it's a really weird Japanese game. And watching your pikmin die was fucking excruciating. Did they really have to show them drowning so graphically? *shudder*

But, I digress. I'm done with it. Now, I have Halo 3, Super Smash Brothers, Hellgate: London, and a variety of other games to look forward to. I'm also becoming slightly intrigued by BioShock...

(again, I'm never going to graduate)

In which I defile Thriller

Don't ask me why. There really isn't a good explanation. Or excuse. Or pretty much anything. All I'll say is that I seem terminally incapable of _not_ dramatically imitating Vincent Price's part in Thriller every time I hear it. It seemed only natural, therefore, to do so in a cartoon voice. Into a microphone. And overlay it into a sampled version of Thriller in GarageBand.

What?

<Nick's defiled Thriller sample>

The 3 heresies of Freeman Dyson

A _really_ thought-provoking essay by Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson (I just checked, and yes, that's the same Dyson that came up with Dyson sphere that Star Trek fans may be familiar with).

That may be the first essay to make me seriously question to what degree climate change is really a crisis. That said, I think his distinction between humanists and naturalists is specious. As Dyson himself so beautifully illustrates, we basically have no fucking idea what the planet is doing, let alone what it would do in response to any actions we might take. What we do know is that nature, as we have experienced it thus far, is capable of adequately sustaining human life. We don't know if that will continue to be the case if we fuck with it. Hence, when the very fate of humanity is at stake, erring on the side of "don't fuck with things" seems prudent. Moreover, seen in this light, "if we stop fucking with things, there are some people who won't make as much money!" seems a particularly retarded argument.

Spam poetry

I just found this spam in an old email account I never use any more. It's downright poetic:

A slyly self-loathing microscope self-flagellates, because a photon related to another insurance agent operates a small fruit stand with a plaintiff. The warranty ceases to exist, and the carelessly impromptu tornado ruminates; however, some pompous scythe buries a paycheck beyond a bottle of beer. If the food stamp over a mortician finds lice on the spider, then a jersey cow around the insurance agent reads a magazine. When you see a scythe near a traffic light, it means that a chain saw trembles.

A chestnut A defendant beyond another grain of sand is worldly. The mitochondrial power drill wisely competes with the usually highly paid globule. The skyscraper of the bartender flies into a rage, because a precise girl scout throws a phony chestnut at a spider. Indeed, a girl scout near the recliner laughs and drinks all night with the girl scout related to a fairy.

A South American stovepipe

A stovepipe somewhat pees on the paternal short order cook. A ball bearing defined by the skyscraper operates a small fruit stand with a hockey player over the sheriff. A tabloid beyond the wheelbarrow caricatures a squid about a vacuum cleaner. A lover caricatures the fairy related to the bottle of beer, and a worldly chain saw figures out an apartment building. The pig pen from a sandwich seeks a movie theater from a blood clot, but some cough syrup from some football team barely organizes a fighter pilot.

Tesla Coil Speaker

Bad. Ass.

Turns out you can construct a speaker solely out of a tesla coil. Just to be clear, it's the electrical sparks themselves that are generating the sound (not a speaker)!

Frighteningly accurate 14-second depiction of US foreign policy

Things I didn't know you could do on crutches

Conversations I have never had with myself include

"Should I have sex with this guy even though I'm a lesbian?"

Perhaps the most entertaining part of this is the comment by "Gwenwhyvar":

"Well, how's this for the reverse side: I'm straight, but I have had sex with women before. It's something I fantasize about sometimes and find kind of hot... ok VERY hot. But, I have no interest in a relationship with women and I don't normally find women attractive- as in walking down the street taking a glance and thinking, yeah, I'd fuck her. But, put a naked woman in front of me who I know wants to have sex and I find that very attractive."

Sweetheart? Could you, umm, run your definition of "straight" by me again? I thought I understood the concept, but clearly I don't given the whole you're-straight-but-you-fantasize-about-having-sex-with-women thing.

Shocking facts about breast implants

You...you mean women who get breast implants might have self-esteem issues?? Almost as if, I don't know, going so far as to undergo voluntary surgery just to get more attention from men might not be something a psychologically healthy woman would do?

I'm...shocked!

More self-indulgent atheist humor

Hee.

Fundamentalists: believe 2+2 =5 because It Is Written. Somewhere. They have a lot of trouble on their tax returns.

"Moderate" believers: live their lives on the basis that 2+2=4. but go regularly to church to be told that 2+2 once made 5, or will one day make 5, or in a very real and spiritual sense should make 5.

"Moderate" atheists: know that 2+2 =4 but think it impolite to say so too loudly as people who think 2+2=5 might be offended.

"Militant" atheists: "Oh for pity's sake. HERE. Two pebbles. Two more pebbles. FOUR pebbles. What is WRONG with you people?"

More Flash crack: Boomshine

I beat level 12! Ha! And it only took me about 6 tries!

Crack Flash game

I have no idea why it's so addictive to stack blocks. All I know is that I lost the past several hours of my life, and I'm currently #21 on the high score list with 238,110.

Flight of the Conchords: Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

I like it if for no other reason than the lyric:

Yeah sometimes my lyrics can be sexist /
But you lovely bitches should know I'm working to correct this

P.S.

FYI, NO. CLEARLY I DON'T EVER FUCKING DO ANY USEFUL WORK _EVER_.

Just...thought I'd make that clear.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

What...what the fuck just happened to Charlie Brown? Why is Linus threatening to kill "japs"? Why is Charlie Brown yelling that assholes cover the earth? Why?!

If you were to learn about sex from Mario, Luigi, and Captain N

I figured I hadn't irreparably damaged your soul in a while. (nsfw)

Thriller re-enactments

As far as Thriller re-enactments go, if you can't have Phillipino prisoners, there is a strict hierarchy. Somewhere in the middle is a wedding party (hey, at least they're not doing the chicken dance):

...and at the very, _very_ bottom is this shameless Bollywood ripoff:

Oh hell

I just noticed that I'm the first link you hit in Google if you search for "dateline defcon".

So, umm...hi world!

I was wondering why I was attracting attention from NBC Universal (hi NBC Universal!):

altabur231.nbcuni.com, Tue Aug 7 11:10:20 PDT 2007, page viewed: http://halcyonic.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-from-datelinedefcon-fiasco.html
altabur233.nbcuni.com, Tue Aug 7 11:11:08 PDT 2007, page viewed: http://halcyonic.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-from-datelinedefcon-fiasco.html
altaec231.nbcuni.com, Tue Aug 7 11:11:11 PDT 2007, page viewed: http://halcyonic.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-from-datelinedefcon-fiasco.html
altaec231.nbcuni.com, Tue Aug 7 11:11:35 PDT 2007, page viewed: http://halcyonic.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-from-datelinedefcon-fiasco.html

...

altaec231.nbcuni.com, Tue Aug 7 12:03:21 PDT 2007, page viewed: http://halcyonic.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-from-datelinedefcon-fiasco.html

I'm going to be sued for something now, aren't I?

Relatedly, I'd like to title this next picture, "Why We Are All Google's Bitch":



Also, I (heart) Google Analytics.

The cost of space travel

Of course, you can make a similar argument about almost everything but social security, medicare, and defense in the federal budget, but still...

I really think it should be a high school graduation requirement to draw a rough pie chart representing proportional federal spending from memory. How much would the national dialog change if we did that?

Beds in coach?

I would totally pay more on an international flight to be able to have a bed in coach.

I've actually wondered for a while why it was so infeasible. I realize the airlines are in the business of cramming as many people as humanly possible into a plane, but it seems like it wouldn't actually take up that much more room if you could figure out a way to stack the beds. I came to conclusion that the issue was how to create beds that would satisfy safety guidelines, which it sounds like is the problem here. I can hope though!

If There Were a God... (8/6/07)

If there were a god, there would be certain places sexual role playing would not be allowed to go (at least when there's documentation of it), and this is definitely one of them (nsfw).

Moneychangers? Temple? Anybody??

Hellooooo?

Inexplicable controversy

I must say, I'm kind of confused by what the issue is here. A supercomputing contract was awarded to UIUC. Okay, fine...that doesn't seem that unreasonable. They're one of the best computer science departments out there, and they have a long tradition of dealing with supercomputing. Now people in Pennsylvania and California seem to be griping about it. Okay, they're unhappy. They didn't get the contract. That's to be expected. But there's no mention of any specific problems. No mention that some politician intervened on somebody's behalf. No specific claims of improper procedure. Nothing.

Similarly, there are "related" gripes about Oak Ridge getting a supercomputing contract. At least here there's some vaguely specific issue: people don't seem to like the idea of a nominally Department of Energy-run lab hosting a National Science Foundation computer. Huh? What's the issue? Do they think they'll be an armed standoff between DOE and NSF or something? That DOE will block their path? That DOE will hide it and then stick out its tongue at NSF? Seriously, what the fuck? I don't understand the issue.

The fact is, Oak Ridge got the contract because they're in the best position to host the damn thing. They underwent a recent renovation, so they have the space (first and foremost...these fuckers take up a large cargo bay), the power capacity (ever heard of the TVA?), _cheap_ power (when you're talking about something that eats as much power as a town, California is probably not the best place to put it if you don't want to give your entire operating budget to Pacific Gas and Energy), cooling capacity, expertise, etc. Plus, it already hosts the second fastest supercomputer in the world.

Seriously, someone explain to me what the fuck the problem is?

NSF funding doubled

Yay! Good news for once.

No matter what you do, you're fucked

Interesting little piece on the impact of various activities on the environment. Did you know that you actually pollute more by walking to the store than driving?

Personally, I think the best thing I can do for the environment is not have children. I'm pretty sure that no matter how small someone's carbon footprint is, I can quite handily achieve a lower environmental impact simply by not reproducing. You take into account the damage your children will cause, and no matter what you're pretty much ravaging the planet.

In fact, I think it should be the new clarion call: love the earth? Stop having so many fucking children.

Yay Ron Paul!

Oh, and Mitt Romney, you almost get a Daily Douchebag for trying to interject, "Have you forgotten about 9/11??"

Jesus by committee

Interesting history of Constantine and the origins of Christianity. I am, of course, too lazy to cross-check the information, but at least there are references.

Aww...poor millionaires...

A net worth of only $3.5 million?! Why, these people are on the verge of poverty! The pain of having to give up your winery subscription, it's just...god...it's unfathomable...

I have to wonder if these people know how stupid they sound. It's one thing to wander around your life whining about this shit, but it's yet another to whine to a New York Times reporter about it. Is it that they're really so oblivious that they don't know their bitching is ridiculous? Do they know, but the desire for notoriety overwhelms what's left of their common sense?

I _am_ a bad person

ROFLMAO...

Okay...okay...*catches breath*...just to make sure you didn't miss it:

"Wiley taught himself to drive after losing both arms and a leg in an electrical accident when he was 13. He has already spent more than three years in prison for habitually driving without a license, kicking a state trooper and other charges."

He's missing both arms and one leg and he went to prison...hehehe...not just for _driving_...hehe...but for kicking a goddamn state trooper...AHHHHH-HAHAHAHahahahaha...

Best of video game music

Have I mentioned how much I miss Mega Man? I still remember dodging those goddamn side-sweeping lasers in the Flash Man level...

Video from the Dateline/Defcon fiasco

To Catch a Dateline Producer

Quoth Nelson: "Ha ha!"

Oh Dateline...I strongly suggest you stick to capturing _stupid_ people doing illegal things on camera. Taking on people who are a) smarter than you, and b) could totally fuck up any part of your life available somewhere through the Internet (which is pretty much all of it, at this point), is just not the best of ideas.

There's a reason that the people I know who attend Black Hat don't bring _anything_ electronic with them...

Stupid comment of the hour

Dear Mr. survivor of the sinking of the Indianapolis-

I don't mean to belittle your experience of watching sharks devour your comrades and all, but I couldn't help wondering if you really meant it when you said, "Suddenly, they were everywhere. I...don't know where they came from..."

Really? 'cause if I were a bettin' man, I'd wager the sharks came from the giant ocean you were afloat in. Maybe they came from the east. Or the west. Possibly also north or south. Hell, they might even have just come up from underneath you. Pretty much the only place they _wouldn't_ have come from was up. Unless they could jump. Or fly. But I'm guessing you would have heard some splashing if that were the case.

My point is, usually such a comment expresses that the origin of the sharks was a total mystery. If, for instance, you were at the shop getting your car fixed, and then suddenly there was a girlish scream and you noticed a Great White devouring your mechanic, I could totally understand your confusion as to where the shark might have come from. I'd be downright shocked, personally. If interviewed, I very well might end up saying, "I have no idea where that shark came from." The reporter would agree with me, and the headline would probably be something along the lines of, "Mystery As Shark Eats Mechanic in Own Shop, No Water for Miles." Or, perhaps more directly, "Mechanic Eaten By Shark Downtown: What the Fuck?!" People all over the city would read the headline, and the mystery would grip the imagination of the citizenry until the next time a celebrity did something retarded.

But, "Bleeding Man Floating in Middle of Ocean Devoured By Sharks: Where Did They Come From?!"? Not so much. I mean, consider some similar headlines I thought of:

"Naked Man Wrapped in Raw Bacon in Serengeti Devoured Promptly By Lions: Who Would Have Thought?!"

"Man in Bronx Wearing Klan Outfit Bearing Sign Suggesting 'Darkies Go Back to Africa' Has Shit Beaten Out Of Him: Expected To Be Greeted Warmly and Given Cupcake"

"Mother Leaves Baby in Gaping Jaws of Crocodile During Nap: Horrified To Find Child Now Missing"

What I'm saying, Mr. Survivor, is that there are many mysteries related to your ordeal; where sharks might have come from while you were floating in the ocean surrounded by dead and bleeding shipmates is not one of them.

Cutest thing ever? You decide.

The kitten's got moxie!

"BANZAAIIIIII!!!!!"

Grr.

"The Porn Myth," by Naomi Wolf, I found surprisingly infuriating.

Her assertion is that, contrary to what anti-porn activists in the 80s claimed, pervasive availability of sexually explicit media did not turn men into rapacious, pawing beasts who were only capable of seeing women as sexual objects. Instead, she claims, it ended up setting the bar too high. Real women cannot compete with what they see in sexually explicit movies, and this had led to detachment, loneliness, insecurity, separation, etc.

Horse puckey. First of all, if you're going to make an assertion like that, I want to see some psychological and sociological research to back it up. Wolf provides precisely no evidence beyond the dubiously anecdotal to support her claims. It's nothing more than long-winded bias as she has presented it. She assumes her conclusion and then attempts to rationalize it. Bleh. It's all the more telling that she holds up the life of an orthodox jew as the epitome of the sacredness of sex and the ultimate "hot" to share your bedroom only with your husband and your very image (hair, body, etc.) only with your husband. Excuse me? You're honestly going to hold up a culture that defines itself by a fear of sexuality and the female form as the epitome of sexual enlightenment? A culture that almost _defines_ women by their physical appearance by mandating what must be covered?

Fuck.
You.

I don't buy it for a minute. At best, the insecurities that women feel in relation to their boyfriends' porn are, if real at all, self-inflicted. They're assuming that their boyfriends want from them what they want from porn. I don't think that's true. Porn is, at core, a masturbatory aid. It's almost the equivalent of a vibrator. Sure, some couples make porn a part of their collective sex life, but I think for most guys porn is, for better or worse in a world that still stigmatizes the sex drive (while at the same time relying on it for most of advertising, but anyway...), intensely personal. Ask any guy whether he stops jacking off, or even does it less, when he's in a sexually active relationship. I think you'll find that most guys don't, and the reason is that sex and masturbation serve slightly different purposes. One is cooperative while the other is intensely self-absorbed, and quite reasonably so.

Think about it, actually...Wolf seems to be implicitly suggesting that sex is nothing more than mutual masturbation. It's just masturbation that someone else is around to help you with. Is that really true? Is sex nothing more than that? Does she really think so little of men that she believes that's what sex for guys boils down to?

Lastly, whatever additional novelty a nude female body may have held in the pre-porn era is, I think, more than eclipsed by the byzantine notions of a guy's role in sex that were held back then. Remember that this is a world where popular culture didn't even mention the idea that a guy should worry about his partner's pleasure or even that her body might respond sufficiently differently than his own for there to be something to worry about. Maybe there was a brief moment in the 70s after sexual enlightenment but before sexualized mainstream media where you did, in fact, get the best of both worlds, but it seems to be there must be a natural correlation between a culture willing to talk, openly, about issues of sexual satisfaction and one that is more accepting of sexually explicit material.

You can't eat your cake and have it too, boys and girls.

More hyperbole

A thought regarding one of the Discovery Channel's more recent ads:

"Forbidden romance" and "meercat" should probably _not_ be used in the same context.

A history of MegaMan

GodDAMN there have been a lot of MegaMan games over the past 20 years! I still remember MegaMan 2 fondly. One of the few games I could utterly dominate back in the day.

(Apparently MegaMan was RockMan in Japan. Weirdos.)

Hey, you know what would be a really terrible idea?

Want to be freaked the fuck out?

Take a gander at Rupert Murdoch's media holdings. And did I mention he's set to buy Dow Jones, which includes the Wall Street Journal?