WikInvest

Go Harvard classmates! Not sure the idea is really viable, but hey, go them anyway!

Evangelical Third Party

Oh please please _pleeeeeease_ let them go through with it! My fervent hopes and dreams would be answered...

(of course, it's an idle threat...I don't think even they are that stupid)

Dice stacking

If I didn't like boobs so much, this video might make me question my sexuality.
(also, what's the second song?)
(Ed. It's Fatboy Slim "Right Here Right Now")

Of course you realize, this means war...

Okay. That's it. The bicyclists clearly need to be stopped. Let history remember that they started this. They declared war. We merely defended ourselves.

It's bad enough when one self-righteous bicyclist in ridiculous pants holds up traffic on a road. It's an entirely different abomination when an organized group takes to the streets specifically to impede traffic. Before, I was content merely to be annoyed by them. Now, they must be destroyed. Delenda est bicyclibus.

Here is my idea for a counter-protest. Some particular day, we get a lot of people together and find a heavily used bike route. Preferably one bikers use to get to work. And we walk. We walk in their bike lanes. Slowly. Arduously. Frequently stopping to tie our shoes. Or even just yawn. And we accost any bicyclists we see. We angrily condemn them for using up our precious natural resources on the construction of their environmentally oblivious and selfish bicycles, those wantonly wasteful devices of convenience that are contributing to the destruction of our planet. We must vilify these people at all costs so that their selfish behavior is highlighted to all the world, and government action can be taken.

We must construct self-congratulatory websites that claim our actions are to promote the fun of walking and the sense of community among walkers despite the fact that our actions are clearly meant to piss off as many people that we don't like as possible. We must shroud our assholicism in the cloak of activism. And then we must go home and eat beef that has been injected with as many growth hormones as possible (shouldn't a cow feed as many people as possible?) while we stew in our self-satisfied juices knowing, deep down, that just as we have saved the life of a defenseless soy plant, our actions have made the world a better place.

(Fuckers.)

Purdy!

Best Science Images of 2007.

Deep thought from my AI textbook

"Consider the sentence:

J. R. Lucas cannot consistently assert that this sentence is true.

If Lucas asserted this sentence then he would be contradicting himself, so therefore Lucas cannot consistently assert it, and hence it must be true. (The sentence cannot be false, because if it were then Lucas could not consistently assert it, so it would be true.) We have thus demonstrated that there is a sentence that Lucas cannot consistently assert while other people (and machines) can. But that does not make us think less of Lucas."

Like, whoah, man...

A geographic challenge to Islam

For anyone who doesn't think arbitrary religious dogma is ridiculous...

Lessons learned

What I learned from this very techie thread on whether Linux's chroot should be used as a security sandboxing tool: Alan Cox is an asshole. Why is it that uber-nerds regard expertise as a license to be a complete and utter fucking tool?

How to save the world by not doing stuff

This man is my hero in so many ways...

No more Daily Douchebags for Jack Thompson, but...

...still, and seriously, _what the fuck is wrong with him_???

I can has a fedrul cort kase?

Wow. Just...wow.

A suggested koan

Confucius say: "When a mime dies, do you hold a moment of cacaphony at his funeral?"

Penguin classics

Sweet mother of Jesus Haploid Tap-dancing Christ!

Storkism

Sex by country

We're losing to the fucking Swiss?!

Wires at an airport

How fucking retarded do you have to be to wear a hooded sweatshirt with a circuitboard and wires attached to it to an airport, ask about an incoming plane, and NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RAT'S NEST OF ELECTRONICS ON YOUR CHEST when asked?!

Jesus fucking christ...until now I didn't think it was possible to be so socially oblivious that it was life-threatening, but leave it to a goddamn MIT student to prove me wrong.

Just because you're smart does not mean you have license to tune out the world around you. You still have to be cognizant of the social environment you live in, for fuck's sake.

My shame

I have this theory that the Universe sets out specifically to turn me into a hypocrite whenever it can possibly manage it.

Consequently, I caved and bought an iPhone yesterday. Look, alright, they dropped the price $200, gave me a $100 credit on top of that, and my absolutely shitful Cingular 8125 crapped out yesterday (how can you make a pda where IMAP doesn't fucking work? What the fuck is wrong with the Windows Mobile developers?). Oh, and did I mention the fact that it cut my data cost in half? The damn thing practically pays for itself!

I didn't have a choice.

Randy Pausch's last lecture

Randy Pausch's last lecture is up. Very much worth watching.

Banned from K-mart

Probably fake, but still funny...

A problem of credibility

Who exactly are you going to believe: the former 20-year head of the Fed (who probably knows a thing or two about economics), or Dick Cheney?

Seattle has a sense of humor

What? I see no problem with the South Lake Union Trolley.

Also:

"The $50.5 million project should be completed with streetcars running in December. Underlying the lighthearted opposition, however, is resentment over changes in the old working-class neighborhood.

"There was a meeting with representatives from the city several years ago," Johnson recalled.

"They asked us, 'What we could do for you?' Most people raised their hands and said, 'Affordable housing,'" he said. "Then the people from the city huddled together -- 'whisper, whisper, whisper,' -- and they said, 'How about a trolley?'"

Grizzly vs. black bear dung

Hoover Dam and Death Valley Piturthes

Randy Pausch

Sadly, I recently learned that Randy Pausch, on whose philosophy I have previously ranted, has terminal cancer and has roughly 3-6 months to live. Yet more proof that the good die young and assholes live forever (see Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, etc.).

(Incidentally, his jarringly-described "last lecture" on his philosophy of life will be webcast tomorrow [Tuesday, September 18th] at 4:30 Eastern at mms://wms.andrew.cmu.edu/pushit01. I encourage you to watch. Incidally, you need Windows Media Player to view it.)

Even though I still disagree with a lot of Randy's credo, he's still a really great guy, and what he and his family have and will go through is fucking awful. Listening in the car to George Carlin on the way from Death Valley back to Mountain View yesterday, I was reminded how similar my philosophy on life is similar to Carlin's. Yes, Carlin is a profoundly cynical, sarcastic, nihilistic old coot, but I am reminded once again of something I saw he said in, actually, more than one interview (the quote below is from Salon, which I don't have a membership with):

I'm a disappointed idealist. I think of myself as a skeptic, a realist. I think the cynics are the people who left the gas tank on the Ford Pinto, companies that kill people and just cross them out because they can't afford to retool. That's a cynical position. But the saying goes, if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist, and that's what's going on with me. Down deep and underneath, the flame still flickers.

I've always thought that adage, the one about scratching a cynic and finding an idealist, was very true. No one should have to go through what Randy has, especially not someone like Randy. Why is it that Randy gets pancreatic cancer while an asshole like Donald Rumsfeld hasn't had his nuts bitten off by rabid wolverines? I know, I know...the answer is that there isn't any reason. Shit happens.

...which makes me wonder, actually: Randy's the kind of guy who, though he's probably too intelligent to assert that shit only happens to people who don't make sure it doesn't, would probably nonetheless assert that shit happening is merely an obstacle to get around on the way to achieving whatever it is you want to achieve. But what happens when the shit that happens to you is too big to get around? What if it's some "Game Over" shit like pancreatic cancer?

I dunno...I imagine what he would say is that, in the face of something that could prematurely end your life, it's all the more important to be efficient about achieving whatever it is you want to achieve. But still, I reassert the point I made in my earlier post: maybe it's the case that a guy like Randy actively enjoys the process of organizing and efficiently regimenting his life in pursuit of his goals, but what of the rest of us? What if it's the case that you hate that regimentation? Does the fragility of life not suggest that you spend at least _some_ of your time in this mortal coil dicking around and spontaneously enjoying yourself lest the opportunity pass you by? Isn't there a profound, important difference between putting a calendar item in Outlook that says, "Enjoy life" and waking up on a Wednesday and saying to yourself, "You know what? Today, I'm going to have a milkshake for breakfast, play Zelda, and then do whatever comes to mind after that. Fuck the rest of the world."?

More Grand Canyon Piturthes

Grand Canyon Piturthes

A friendly piece of advice

If a gentleman tries to return a shotgun, accept it. For the love of god, accept it.

Your daily douchebag (09/07/07)

I have to resist giving a Daily Douchebag to Jack Thompson for pretty much every breath he takes, but I think sending subpoenas to both George W. and Jeb Bush as part of his defense against being disbarred. I mean...wow. I think we need to make a new "megalomaniacal" subdivision of "paranoid schizophrenic" just for ol' Wacky Jacky.

So are the cable news channels going to still invite this nutjob on their programs? Oh, probably...he's still entertaining. In the way that that homeless guy yelling at invisible gremlins is entertaining.

Fastest banjo in the world

WHOOOOOOO-EEEE! That thar's a fast daggum banjo, I tell you what!...

John Cleese hates jews. And Belgians. Mostly Belgians.