2007 Phallic Logo Awards

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you...the 2007 Phallic Logo Awards!

(I just wrote "some great entries this year," and then I realized the pun, felt ill, and erased it...)

Oh...dear...

Science gone horribly, horribly wrong...

Your daily douchebag (2/4/07)

Today's Daily Douchebag: Jack Thompson.

Now, granted, Jack Thompson is kind of a pervasive, ambient douchebag, but I feel it important to occasionally re-raise the point. Just to refresh your memory, Jack Thompson is the ambulance chaser bar-none who gets his jollies by claiming that every time some crazy-fuck kid offs somebody, it's because he played Grand Theft Auto.

His latest set of stunts may earn him a disbarment. Among other gems is this comment sent to Alabama judge James Moore, the judge hearing the case:

"You’re the guy who wants to give (Grand Theft Auto publisher) Take-Two my scalp. You chose to believe people that you knew were thieves and liars, and now you are their useful SLAPP Bar complainant… These are your corporate criminal buddies, Judge Moore. These are the folks with whom you made your bed, the folks whom your good friend said he could fix the case."

For this, good sir, you earn today's Daily Douchebag.

Why you should never, ever feel bad for the RIAA

They're fuckers, and they serve absolutely no purpose other than to absorb money.

Bill Gates is a profoundly boring individual

Jesus...fucking...Christ. Just watch 5 minutes of the interview with Bill Gates and try to resist the urge to gauge your eyes out from boredom. The best part of the interview was the fact that they put up the screen saver before going to commercial.

The pinnacle of totally wrong, utterly nerdy humor

You have no idea how much I hate myself for finding funny this comment at Slashdot on the story of how Jim Gray, one of CS's great luminaries, is missing after going on a solo sailing expedition:

Hm...

(Score:5, Funny)

by Cyberax (705495) on Tuesday January 30, @01:41AM (#17810566)

> SELECT loc FROM Locations loc, People p WHERE p.name="Jim Gray" AND p.loc=loc.id

The query returned 0 results.

I heart Baratunde Thurston

I heart Baratunde Thurston, especially for his t-shirts. I take totally unjustified pride in saying that I knew and worked with Baratunde at Harvard.

Geostationary Banana Over Texas

I swear to god, I've been laughing continuously for at least the last 15 minutes. They seriously want to put a giant banana in geostationary (sub)orbit over Texas.

Every time I read, or even think about, the first sentence, I am doubled over laughing. It just captures the essence of the current moment in history so goddamn perfectly.

"GEOSTATIONARY BANANA OVER TEXAS is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere and Earth's low orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas and its surroundings. From the ground the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day and night; it will stay up for approximately one month.

Basically, the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. It will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to an extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length. The expected launching date is August 2008 from around Baja or Sonora, north-west of Mexico. The total costs for this project is roughly estimated at one million dollars.

The project has passed preliminary developments and at the moment is in the final phase of its engineering stage."

The history of Tetris

An absolutely fascinating BBC documentary on the history of Tetris. Did you know that the creator of Tetris worked for Microsoft until about two years ago? Or that he also created Hexic (which is pre-loaded on every Xbox 360)?

Stupid elephant

You have to admit...the guy's got a point. That block ain't going anywhere with that elephant in the way.

Digital Maoism

This is perhaps the most brilliant article I've read in a while. It elucidates both the danger and the power of the "wisdom" of the crowd.

The collective isn't always stupid. In some special cases the collective can be brilliant. For instance, there's a demonstrative ritual often presented to incoming students at business schools. In one version of the ritual, a large jar of jellybeans is placed in the front of a classroom. Each student guesses how many beans there are. While the guesses vary widely, the average is usually accurate to an uncanny degree.

This is an example of the special kind of intelligence offered by a collective. It is that peculiar trait that has been celebrated as the "Wisdom of Crowds," though I think the word "wisdom" is misleading. It is part of what makes Adam Smith's Invisible Hand clever, and is connected to the reasons Google's page rank algorithms work. It was long ago adapted to futurism, where it was known as the Delphi technique. The phenomenon is real, and immensely useful.

But it is not infinitely useful. The collective can be stupid, too. Witness tulip crazes and stock bubbles. Hysteria over fictitious satanic cult child abductions. Y2K mania.

The reason the collective can be valuable is precisely that its peaks of intelligence and stupidity are not the same as the ones usually displayed by individuals. Both kinds of intelligence are essential.

What makes a market work, for instance, is the marriage of collective and individual intelligence. A marketplace can't exist only on the basis of having prices determined by competition. It also needs entrepreneurs to come up with the products that are competing in the first place.

In other words, clever individuals, the heroes of the marketplace, ask the questions which are answered by collective behavior. They put the jellybeans in the jar.

- Jaron Lanier

Yay AirTran!

Hooraaaaaay AirTran! Down with screaming babies!

PC vs. Mac: endgame

WOO HOO!!! 1000th post!!! Kegger at my house!!!

I am a mere 854,656,728 seconds old!

Yay useless birthday facts!

Other interesting facts:
I share a birthday with Jude Law and Charles Goodyear (I did not know this).
My life path number of 4 (yay stupid meaningless numerology facts!).

"You do not use the mouth"

Oh, I am thinking you are very screwed...and don't blame her periodical.

(I'm pretty sure they're actors, but it's still funny)

11?!

11?! Fucking 11?!

Goddammit I need a new flux capacitor!!!

Seriously, how can you _not_ list the flux capacitor as a replacement part for a Delorean?

I almost feel bad for the little guy

But not too bad.

(with props to Q)

Iguana getting winky wacked

Some stories are so weird they leave you utterly speechless.

Roddick

Roddick...angry!!! Ball leave stadium now!

Signs you need to get out more include

I'll leave it to you to figure out whether I'm referring to the authors or the readership.

The life lessons of famous scientists

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5164417-111414,00.html

What's remarkable to me is the stunning similarity of many of them.

Federer

You know what? Watching Federer has gotten boring at this point. There is simply no one that can beat the man. Yes, Nadal can occasionally pull a game out of his ass, but otherwise Federer is just a fucking juggernaut. Has the man done _anything_ with his life other than play tennis?

On top of that, I'm watching him make Robredo run around the court like a 6-year-old with ADHD.

When hi-def is too hi-def

With Blu-ray you can see even the most minute imperfection on a porn actress's body! Umm...yay?

There is a fundamental question here

...and that, of course, is: Does this count as a successful suicide attempt?

Iron Hymen

Yes. You heard me right.

"I understand that abstaining from sex protects me from:

Forcing my wonderful parents to use "tough love" and kick me out of the house for embarrassing them by being such a little whore.

Having adoption-hungry homosexuals circle my pregnant belly like vultures, hell-bent on corrupting my unwanted bastard child with their sicko "love."

You...EEEEEEEEdiot!

These guys are in serious contention for dumbest criminals ever.

Stealing GPS receivers? Really? Really?? Tell me something: if you saw a box labeled "Acme Homing Beacons," would you consider those a good theft opportunity as well?

Another fox guarding the henhouse

Not that anyone should be surprised, but in case you haven't read anything that makes you livid at the Bush administration in the past, oh, 15 minutes...

DRM vs. watermarking

You know, I've read and talked with people about digital watermarking before, but I haven't really thought about it as a means to deter piracy. But as I do so now, it's actually not such a bad idea. I don't know that we've come up with a mechanism resilient to fairly simple attacks, but if we did hae an ideal watermarking scheme, it might be a nice compromise for digital rights. The problem, as Butler Lampson has now famously stated, is not so much security (preventing people from copying) as it is accountability (knowing who copied what). If you can track down exactly who gave a copy of a movie to everyone, that's a big reason for them not to do it in the first place.

So, with watermarking, you would still be able to hold people accountable for illegal copying, but at the same time, you wouldn't need all the draconian, infuriating constraints that prevent people from doing obvious, perfectly legal things like copying a piece of music from one device to another.

10 1-on-1 fight scenes

I don't know about ten best, but they are definitely ten badass fight scenes.

Point of trivia: the South Park "cripple fight" is taken nearly verbatim from the "Nada vs. Frank" fight scene.

Also, why is Luke v. Vader not in there?

Man, humor, legislature

It's probably the fact that it's 4 in the morning, but I really liked this quote:

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

-- Samual Butler

Today in Seattle

1. It snowed.
2. The expansion pack for World of Warcraft came out.

I'm pretty sure no one actually did any work today. Oh, they might have _been_ at work, but they certainly weren't doing any...

0.1% of the people on Earth play World of Warcraft

Holy mother of god. That is a terrifying statistic.

Boobs...in...spaaaaaace!

It seems somehow fitting that one of our first exports to space was porn. :)

(marginally NSFW)

*twitch*

Some days I am proud to be a Seattle resident. This is not one of them.

(Warning: this WILL raise your blood pressure)

"Flaccid with rage"

Only Stephen Colbert can come up with ingenious phrases like "flaccid with rage."

Your daily douchebag (1/12/07)

Today's Daily Douchebag is a bit of a surprise: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

"A Democrat?! Surely not." Turns out that just because you aren't a Republican doesn't mean you can't be a jackass politician. His crime? Fighting tooth and nail against an earmarking reform amendment. Not only that, the earmarking amendment just so happens to be exactly the same as the one proposed by Pelosi in the House since a clever Mr. Jim DeMint from South Carolina (a Republican! Maybe they do remember what "fiscal conservative" actually means...) took the House language and plopped it verbatim into the Senate amendment.

So, well done Mr. Reid. Thank god we have someone fighting against meaningful reform.

Chemistry is cool

Think an aluminum boat can't float on air? Think again.

Your daily douchebag (1/11/07)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new Daily Douchebag!

Meet Representative Kingston. You'll remember he was the one complaining about having to actually work 5 days a week in Congress? Yes, well, apparently he came to the realization recently that people are poor because they don't work enough (and aren't married, apparently).

We admire the profound depth of your douchebaggery, sir. Truly, we do.

The fair mistress porn favors HD-DVD

It is a long-standing truth that where go-eth porn, there follow the tech industry. DVD succeeded where LaserDisc failed largely because porn producers made content for DVD.

So when I see a that porn companies are shunning Blu-ray, that's pretty much a death knell for Blu-ray. Whether HD-DVD succeeds remains to be seen, but Sony is fucking retarded if they are going out of their way to prevent porn from being put on Blu-ray.

Mr. Beckham goes to Los Angeles

Holy shit. This is like Michael Jordan announcing he's going to Croatia.

The beginning of a life of disappointment

Poor, misguided baby...I will let your picture speak for itself.

Tivo's horse shit!

I was excited about the announcement of TivoToGo for mac (fucking finally)...until I read that it's only available as part of Roxio Toast Premium. What the fuck?! You're going to make me pay for the same service that Windows users get for free?? Fuck. You. This after the whole "Here! Have reduced functionality for $800!" Tivo3 debacle is really making me question my Tivo affection...

How much of a gamer are you?

Me? 72%, apparently.

RIP Ramen King

A moment of silence, please, for the Ramen King?

From the "truth is stranger than fiction" files

Read his and then tell me you think an alien coming millions of light years to hover briefly over O'Hare International Airport is more likely than a weird weather phenomenon.

Cool stuff

I don't know how else to describe it. It's just random materials that are cool.

That crazy Bush

Whoever said Bush doesn't have a sense of humor?

Silly Bush...you wouldn't know a balanced budget if it were handed to you on a silver platter at the beginning of your presiden...oh, wait...

(douchebag.)

Hep C drug patent workaround

Jesus Christ...what a fantastic example of just how fucked our intellectual property system is.

Yet another "Google isn't a benevolent dictator?!" story

For fuck's sake. When are people going to stop being surprised that Google is behaving more and more like a normal, self-interested corporation???

Numbers stations

Huh. I had never heard of the so-called "Numbers Stations," stations that broadcast random strings of letters and numbers and are thought to be coded spy agency transmissions.

I have a suspicion that most of the transmissions are garbage so that it's not obvious _when_ a transmission actually occurs.

European view of America

Business class alternative NYC <-> London

Saw a random advertisement for Silver Jet, which seems to be a new airline catering solely to business travelers. Seems like a really nice alternative to standard business class if your company's willing to pony up for business class in the first place...

What it's like to be a CS (or math) student

Child's Play makes the big time

Nice to see video games getting good press for once.

The growth in scale of Child's Play is mindboggling. And as the article mentions, video games make surprisingly good therapy for sick kids.

Today's creepy news

Girlfriend sexy? Maybe it's 'cause she's...infected with a parasite! Yay!

94% of Spanish bank notes have cocaine on them

Wow.

American view of the world

My bare lady

I...have no idea what to say. Except, don't open this at work.

Water...in...spaaaaace!

It's shit like this that makes me wish I could play around in weightlessness for a while.

RIP James Brown

Boo. James Brown died this morning.

You are an atheist

To celebrate Jesus' birthday, I thought I'd share one of my favorite quotes:

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

-- Stephen Henry Roberts

Merry Christmas. ;)

New Transformers trailer

Please don't suck? Please? This is my childhood you're fucking with here...

Dear all 9/11 conspiracy theorists

Shut it.

You will be assimilated

One of the trickiest things that criminal law will have to deal with in the next few decades, assuming of course that it doesn't bury its head in the sand, will be the erosion of the idea of free will. Personally, I think this is something that needs to be absorbed into the public consciousness before we can ever get public policy right.

Are you lactating?

Or: mmmm...delicious baby...

Wisdom of the Crowds

I find this a bit disturbing. I'm not sure why.

New Firefox logo

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the new Firefox logo.

Relatedly, this seems to be becoming an internet meme...

Wow.

The failure and ineptitude of the 109th Congress summed up on one concise article.

Pennies not even worth a penny

Wow. Has the dollar turned to such shit that the metal in the coins is worth more than the coins themselves?

Deep.

Work

I really liked this article on, well, work that was linked from David Brooks' latest column. It's surprisingly Marxist given that it was linked by a conservative.

I'm not sure what to say about it. One of the asides really resonated with me, which is that self-esteem comes from one's own achievements in and of themselves rather than external sources. In some ways I think that's the point of the article: cubicle jobs are soul-crushing precisely because they are rote and involve no personal investment, and yet the relentless trend in modern capitalism is to concentrate what can only be described as the "interesting parts" of work into fewer and fewer hands, leaving only the assembly-line jobs leftover.

How chilling.

God has a dark sense of humor

This is some kind of divine poetic justice for the fact that Jeffords left the Republican party, isn't it?

Oh sweet baby Jesus, save me...

PCWorld's 15 best time-wasting sites piece may be the single most dangerous article ever created...

Family Guy voices

Dude...Meg is hot.

Solace in scientific research

I take some solace in the research that says night owls are more creative. Now, does the fact that I inverted my schedule imply I'm really, really creative?

Top 10 supercars

...according to some metric.

I actually still prefer the Lamborghini Gallardo to all of those (although I'd take Murcielago in its place, of course). Too bad I'll never have anywhere near enough money to own one. *wistful sigh*

Long distance relationship with my computer

From:
Subject: [Cs-grads] ah, technological progress
Date: December 10, 2006 4:28:42 PM PST

Just for the record, I would like to highlight a uniquely modern dilemma I'm having. I was given access to several machines. I now find I might need physical access to them.

Here's the problem: no one seems to know where they are. In, you know, the real world that some of us occasionally inhabit.

(names withheld to protect the guilty and because I probably will still need their help)

If I had more time, I would love to dwell on the philosophical ramifications of this fact. In the meantime, it's reminding me of this apocryphal story about UNC (my home town):

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2001-05/sunflash.20010521.3.xml

Nick

Indian wangs too small

Find your nearest male Indian associate and make fun of them for this.

The chronicles of Big Milk

A very nice example of how utterly fucking broken our system of government is. And just because pretty much every government out there is worse doesn't make it any better.

Johnny Cash doing Hurt

For some reason I've been in rather a sober mood lately. So, continuing in that theme, I felt like posting the Johnny Cash "Hurt" video, which is amazing (and, frankly, better than Nine Inch Nails' original).

The paranoid optimist

This is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. Bless you, Onion.

Your daily douchebag (12/8/06)

Today's daily douchebag, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, can, I think, easily take the cake for Douchebag of the Year if not Douchebag of the Decade. As much as Bush and Rumsfeld suck, I don't think they can really hold a candle to holding a conference on whether the Holocaust happened. I'm really, honestly having trouble coming up with even a hypothetical act that would rival the event in douchebaggery.

Congrats President Ahmadinejad! Truly, you are a douchebag among douchebags.

Sunset on Mars

I am not religious. I do not see the hand of God in this picture, as those who are would. What I see is the profound beauty of the universe, a beauty that exists despite the profound myopia and stupidity of humanity.

...and as I am tempted to make a joke here to cut the gravitas, I won't. I will let the moment stand. It is beautiful. That is enough. I am reminded of Jodie Foster's line in Contact:

"They should have sent a poet...they should have sent a poet..."

Family Guy and its inspiration

I had no idea these scenes were actually taken from viral videos!

This hurts me

What if chat rooms were real?

I can't ride a bike

I thought I could. Then I saw the video of this guy.

Fund more research! Fund more research!

Fund more research! Fund more research! (or at least restore the funding Bush cut [that fuckhead])

Well, there's good news and bad news

The good news is that I'm slowly acclimating to Chinese time.
The bad news is that I am not, nor do I have any specific plans to be, in China.

Sigh.

The porn vote

...and this kind of genius, boys and girls, is why Stephen Colbert now has his own show.

Say it ain't so!

You mean...Google is the next Microsoft? And it's a monopoly? And it's engaged in monopoly maintenance? But...but...Google isn't supposed to be evil!

Chickens of doooooooom!

Zombie chickens!

The terror that is Santa

For some reason, I find this set of pictures of children terrified of Santa deeply satisfying.

Chuck Norris and technicians

1. Guide to technician terminology
2. Facts about Chuck Norris

Allow me to highlight a few of the latter:

• When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.
• Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
• Chuck Norris doesn't actually write books, the words assemble themselves out of fear.
• Chuck Norris grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage.

Every Playmate of the Month in the history of Playboy

Obviously, NSFW.

Very surreal.

Ewwww.

There was an episode of X-files like this.

It's a tossup whether the insects or the fungus are more creepy.

Science is cool

I'm sorry, but this is a really cool video of the sun. I know that makes me a nerd, but really, what doesn't these days?

Silly string: the difference between life or death

Support our troops: send them silly string today!

Your daily douchebag (12/1/06)

Today's douchebag: Walter E. Williams.
The winning entry today managed to compare social welfare programs to slavery. For that, Mr. Williams, you are our Douchebag of the Day!

"Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery."

Local students make good

The Nike/iPod stuff seems to be getting a good deal of press coverage. These are fellow students and in my security class with me. Go them. :)

It's all downhill

In the past few days, I've

• Played ping-pong
• Edited something on Wikipedia
• Made a reference to Kobayashi Maru

Apparently, I'm slowly making my way through every verse of Weird Al's White and Nerdy.

I hate being a stereotype. *sigh*.