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August 29, 2003
"Carabella Goes to College"
This is actually a good use for a video game, sensitizing kids to the ways in which their identities are tracked and monitored by marketing organizations and - potentially - other not-so-well-meaning parties. In this game you balance convenience with protection of your personal information, with consequences either way. It's possible that there may be way too much focus on the message, and not enough on the game experience, but it has potential.
Posted by John at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
As my dear old Dad used to say
"It's better than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick."
Posted by John at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2003
Bad Science Alert! Whoop! Whoop!
I've told you before about our ongoing Mystery Science 3000 commentary during movies around my house, and in particular the "bad science alerts" that go off with alarming frequency. Intuitor, home of the amazing resonance site, brings us a site dedicated to "Bad Movie Physics", complete with a new ratings system and ratings on some popular movies. Very entertaining. I especially like the alternate theories proposed that would make the movie physics work, like the attractive force that glass exerts on bullets.
Posted by John at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2003
OK, I'll admit it, and
OK, I'll admit it, and certainly it will come as no surprise to those who know me well, but I do have a sick sense of humor. Black Market Babies.com is perfect. By all means cruise around and check out the other links, the form to "Sell Your Baby" (Need cash? Why not sell your baby?), and the pricing sheet on acquiring a little bundle of joy all your own. Just hilarious.
It's Bonsai Kitten taken to the next level.
Posted by John at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
The Case of Michael May
I hadn't heard about this. Michael May was blinded at the age of 3 by a chemical explosion. That was 46 years ago. Three years ago, doctors performed an operation covering the burned cornea on his left eye with stem cells in the hope they would replace the scar tissue. It worked.
This article gives a quick overview of the extensive study of developing regained vision (published in full detail yesterday in Nature Neuroscience, available for download for $18 if you really want to dive into combined psychophysical and neuroimaging techniques to characterize the effects of long-term visual deprivation on the human cortex).
FYI, the current issue also has an article on Music and the Brain that promises to be interesting...
Posted by John at 10:42 PM | Comments (1)
Most amazing waste of time
Christopher Walken's appearance in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" remains the most surprising and delightful music video I've seen. Done with a stick figure in Flash, it becomes the most amazing waste of time I've seen. Cute, but man....
Posted by John at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2003
Another Whittle essay worth your time...
Bill Whittle at Eject!Eject!Eject! launches another essay, this one on RESPONSIBILITY. It is long, so don't tackle it until you have 15+ minutes to devote to it. But it is worth it. Trust me.
Posted by John at 01:58 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2003
Levers
Amazing game, simply amazing. I'll add this to Keelhauling's Best Games Page later, but for now suffice it to say that once I used the lava rock to melt the snowman, God was too heavy, and I still couldn't figure out where to put his hat. It's hard to think with all the birds flying around.
Posted by John at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2003
Today's bon mot
Welcome to the Compendium of Lost Words, a component of Forthright's Phrontistery. Lots of juicy words here, like "boscaresque", "obacerate" and "uglyography". Umberto Eco must have had this close at hand when he wrote Foucault's Pendulum.
Posted by John at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2003
Matthew's belated birthday party
Out of town, friends gone on vacation, it's been almost 7 weeks since Matt's birthday, but he finally got some friends together down at the swimmin' hole for some fun in the sun.
Posted by John at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2003
Fun Things to do During the Apocalypse
You know, when the end times arrive, you aren't going to have time to go reading up on it. You're going to be flying blind, and no time to consult a map, so it might help if you took a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the game plan. This site is amazing! It's an introduction to Armageddon, a study guide for the Apolcalype, your tour guide to Revelations. There's some sucky frames-based navigation, but learn to drive the right mouse button ("open in new window"), and you'll be OK. Very, very cool art gallery.
Posted by John at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)
"I Brought The Wrong Ammo Again"
The Complete Guide to Military Hand Signals. For communicating when you're operating covertly, of course.
Posted by John at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
Diamonds could become a cheap date.
Now that 3-carat flawless diamonds can be grown in the lab for less than $100, I wonder what will happen to DeBeers? I saw this cover article from Wired in the airport as I was running to catch a plane yesterday, but didn't have time to buy the issue. I can't help but think that being the in business of producing lab-grown diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from natural ones (the equipment to detect the lab-produced diamonds is getting more and more sophisticated and therefore expensive) could be... dangerous.
Posted by John at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)
Google now has a calculator
Google's new calculator will take mathematical expressions as well as plain English. Try "square mile in acres" in the search box to see what I mean. Scroll around this page for introductions to other nifty Google features, like the dictionary and the street maps engines that you may not be aware of.
Posted by John at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2003
Another icon of my youth disappears
Penthouse magazine publisher General Media filed for bankruptcy yesterday, surprising absolutely no one. While Penthouse is no great loss, I'll never forgive them for letting sister publication OMNI magazine go out of business. OMNI was the first magazine to deliver science news for the general public. It launched in 1978 and the first issue sold over a million copies on the newsstands for $2.00 a copy. For the record OMNI was also the first major magazine to go completely online. It was a landmark publication in many ways.
OMNI was a magazine with an identity crisis right from the start. With an average of about 125 pages of editorial content, it had a high level of information content. But roughly 1/3 of that was devoted to science fiction (SF in its broadest sense, including fantasy and horror). For awhile, it looked like the magazine might succeed at being both a sort of everyman's science journal where Popular Mechanics meets Scientific American, as well as a forum for new and emerging science fiction. Authors such as Isaac Asmov, Ron Goulart, Theodore Sturgeon and James B. Hall were frequent contributors.
OMNI was probably best known for their IQ tests, which were designed by high-IQ specialist Ronald Hoeflin. These tests with evocative names like Mega and Titan were skewed to the high end. Normal IQ tests like Stanford-Binet and Weschler (WISC III and WAIS) are normed to an IQ of 100. Thus most of the questions serve to differentiate IQ scores near the "norm", and the difference between IQ's of 100 and 110 might be measured by as many as 30-40 questions. The problem is that for very high IQs, correspondingly fewer questions are provided. Thus the difference between an IQ score of 140 and one at 150 might come down to 2 or 3 questions.
The Hoeflin tests were different. Normed at "genius" levels, they purported to do a much better job at discriminating IQs in the stratospheric range. (The lowest possible score on the Titan test, equating to zero correct answers, was an IQ of "below 110".) Some later studies confirmed this, and even today scores on Mega and Titan (before certain dates when the answers were published) are still valid for admission to many of the ultra-high-IQ societies. If you would like to see some of the questions, the Titan test can be found here.
The downfall of the magazine, though, was at least partly attributable to its schizophrenic target subject matter. I subscribed for several years, and watched it gradually veer further and further toward UFO theories, psychic abilities and various "unexplained phenomena". While that's entertaining in small doses, a magazine full is just too much, and, of course, it comes at the expense of hard science coverage which was the reason many of us subscribed in the first place. OMNI lost its way, and ceased print publication in 1995, went online in 1996, and folded online in 1998.
I remember when they published a group of little-known theories that was especially entertaining:
· When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.
· If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary works in Braille.
· Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.
· Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate ideas at a faster rate.
· The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.
· Birds take off at sunrise. On the opposite side of the world, they are landing at sunset. This causes the earth to spin on its axis.
· The reason hot-rod owners raise the backs of their cars is that it's easier to go faster when you're always going downhill.
· The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."
The saddest part about Penthouse going bankrupt is that the OMNI archives are no longer available online and some gems like these may be lost forever.
Posted by John at 02:48 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2003
Bye Bye Reflections, Hello Fishy
Had to yank Reflections off the Keelhauling Games Hall of Fame page, as the folks at Shockwave scarfed it up and put it into their pay section. To make it up to you, I rolled Fishy (mentioned here earlier) on to the games page, and tossed in Seven Seas as a free bonus. We aim to please. (Thanks Ty, for calling the Reflections situation to my attention! Thanks Travis for recommending Fishy!)
Posted by John at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2003
Maybe it would be better if...
California should just go ahead and slide into the ocean. It's OK, I can say that. I live here. Father Guido Sarducci just added his name to ballot for State Governor though, which is what is prompting my anxiety. Do you have any idea how screwed up this state is?
Posted by John at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
Spam filters that fight back!
Paul's on a tear with his spam filtering recommendations these days. Bayesian filters are by far the most effective, and they're only getting better. I like the idea of a spam filter with a "punish" mode that strikes back at the junk mailer. It would basically be designed to follow every link in the spammer's email n times, where n is a user configurable number, thereby hammering the spammer's server and consuming his bandwidth. I'm thinking 1,000 sounds about right for n.
Posted by John at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
Be careful where you swim.
Octopus vulgaris. Amazing video of a camouflaged cephalopod suddenly changing color and becoming visible. Nature's wonders never cease to amaze.
Posted by John at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)
Those magazine women don't exist.
You've often heard it said, no doubt, that those flawless women pictured in the glossy men's magazines, fashion mags and even ads in the mainstream print media are "just too perfect", that they've been airbrushed and photoshopped so much as to be unrecognizable in real life. But secretly, men harbor fantasies and women harbor jealousies that while there may have been some "touch up" work done after the photo shoot, those women are out there, in their radiant flawlessness. Forget it. Here's the most graphic illustrative proof I've ever seen -- the before and after pictures, or more appropriately the after and before. Scroll your mouse over the photos and recalibrate your reality. There's a whole interesting portfolio here, but see especially this one and this one. By all means check out the alternate images over on the left as well. The full body shot of the bikini model is amazing, the way her hips shrink and boobs pop out. She even gets a brand new bellybutton and her heroin-addict-eyes corrected.
Posted by John at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2003
Proof that you exist.
You know, if the whole Time-with-a-capital-T not really existing thing bothers you, if you feel as though your moorings were ripped away and your life cast adrift on reckless seas of uncertainty... get a grip. Take a photo, along with thousands of others around the world, at precisely 17:17:17 GMT on August 17th (convert to your local time here), and join with your brothers and sisters in chronicling your insecurity for all time.
Posted by John at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)
Funniest line all week.
In this article about Arnold Schwartzeneggar's candidacy for California governor, Dick Rosengarten, editor and publisher of California Political Week, told CNN Wednesday that the California race was drawing so many candidates it was in danger of becoming a farce. Ahhhhnold, bankrupt midget Gary Coleman, melon-smashing comedian Gallagher, comedian D.L. Hughley, porn mogul Larry Flynt and "Angelyne", the model who self-promoted herself to stardom on SoCal billboards are all in the running.... what? What are you laughing at?
Might as well look on the bright side. Arnold will almost certainly win. As James Lileks points out, this is going to absolutely horrify the Europeans. Hehe.
Posted by John at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2003
Bullfighter: Stripping the Bull Out of Business
Bullfighter is a great idea for a program to audit your marketing text. The fact that a program like this is needed is appalling. But if you're tired of doing this editing manually, or your circuits are overloaded from reading phrases like "A future-proof asset that seamlessly empowers your mission critical enterprise communications," this might just be the answer. It uses a proprietary "Bull Index" based on overuse of multisyllabic words and successive lengthy sentences, plus the standard Flesch Reading Ease Indices. The FAQs are fun reading, too, with advice like "Don't let Bullfighter make you paranoid. It will anyway, but don't lose sleep over it. "
Most importantly, it ensures that no one scores in Bullshit Bingo when you're speaking or your text is analyzed, so you don't find yourself in the same position as Al Gore did speaking at MIT, where he was mystified by the periodic outbreaks of applause at unplanned times during his speech.
Posted by John at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)
Proof that God exists.
Peter Lynd's "Ground-breaking work in understanding of time" is causing a surprising stir in academia, although I can't for the life of me figure out why this is so surprising. His basic thesis is that there is no such thing as a fixed point in time, only intervals in time. This introduces tradeoffs in virtually all precisely determined physical values, in order for them to be relativistically consistent with one another.
This seems to me like a logical outcome of Einstein's space-time equivalency work in the special relativity theories and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal observed at subatomic levels. I don't understand why this a revelation. Everybody who has any interest in physics gets Einstein: the speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds, AND the laws of physics are the same in any inertial (that is, non-accelerated) frame of reference. Many people misunderstand what Heisenberg was saying, though. Heisenberg says that some pairs of properties cannot both be measured precisely at the same time. These pairs are called "canonically conjugate variables." They are LINKED. One such pair is position and momentum: The more precisely you locate the position of a particle, the less you know about its momentum (and vice versa). Another is time and energy: The more precisely you know the time span in which something occurred, the less you know about the energy involved (and vice versa)." One logical outcome of the intersection of these two theses is that time cannot be uniquely (discretely) identified.
Lynds did apparently make some breakthroughs on the mathematics of incorporating time into existing relativistic equations. Interestingly, he was able to solve (or more appropriately, reconcile) Zeno's paradoxes with these new equations.
Modern string theory -- what little I understand of it -- already uses a framework based on the concept of spatial transformations to build reality. I think this leads to the same conclusion as Lynd's paper. If geometric laws are a function of dynamic energy transformations, time cannot be a "property", it only exists in a relativistic sense in the sequence of events. I don't have the math to prove this, but I think that is also a logical outcome. (Also, by the way, mass does not exist, at least not in the way we think about it. More on that at a later date.)
So why is this post titled "Proof that God exists"? I always took Heisenberg's principle as evidence of an intelligent designer for the universe - and by the way, one that doesn't want us monkeying around with the machinery. Lynd's theories, if validated, will extend that argument. Either everything having to do with time and space is coincidentally unmeasurable - thereby limiting our ability to "know" our world (and encroach on God-like powers of supreme knowledge), or somebody set it up that way. There should be some reassurance there. I'm basically a Calvinist at heart, but with a practical attitude in the application. If everything is predetermined, but there's no way for you to know what that determination is ahead of time (a la Einstein, Heisenberg, and now Lynd), then the only option you have is to live your life as though free will obtains. Just know that there is somebody behind the curtain.
Posted by John at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)
50 Things Every Guy Should Know
Great list. I'm out of synch with sniffling at The Princess Bride, though. Funny movie, though. I'll be content with my 49.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Robert Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
If you read it aloud, I think it's the way it ends that gets me, with a short punchy 4-word sentence after that long comma-laden list, and the way "fight efficiently, die gallantly" puts the finale note on the list (and your voice just naturally drops at the end) -- it's poetry.
Posted by John at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
Google offers ~synonym searching
Prefix your keyword with a tilde. ~
Posted by John at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2003
Operation Slaps
You know the drill. You hold your hands out and your "friend" tries to slap your hand(s). If he hits you, he gets to try again. You can dodge, but if you flinch 3 times in between real slap attempts, he gets a free hit. If he misses, it's your turn. It's OperationSlaps, at the HandToHandCombatFacility, courtesy of nowwashyourhands.com, who liketorunwordstogether.
We used to play this with the slapper's hands on the bottom facing up, and the slappee's hands hovering over them facing down. I prefer that setup for effective taunting; you could always tickle their hands and get them to flinch. This way, no touching. But that's OK, since it's all through the keyboard anyway.
The game is ridiculously easy to beat if your reflexes are good. It's much more fun to play against a live opponent, and fake them out by poking keys adjacent to the ones you really use, which does nothing. Three flinches and you slap the stew out of them. There's a pain meter, and when it's maxed out you lose (or win, if your opponent's meter is over the limit).
The pain meter does not begin to reflect the pain in my nine year old son's eyes, though, when I sent him whimpering from the keyboard. Life lessons: It's a dog eat dog world out there, son. Soon enough, I'm sure, I'll get what's coming to me, but that's a lesson for another day.
Posted by John at 01:51 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2003
Seeing in stereo.
You ever don 3-D glasses and look at one of those photographs taken by a 3-D camera? The lenses (there are 2) are offset about the distance between your eyes, and when you snap a picture, it actually takes two - one from each lens. Then when you get the film developed, the left half of each frame was exposed by the lens on the left, and the right half of the frame was exposed by the lens on the right. You place the picture in a viewer that is similar to one of those circular ViewMaster slide viewers you used to play with as a kid. It has a barrier down the center, and presents the left half of the picture to your left eye, and the right half to your right eye. If you've taken a picture with any perspective (such as a stairway leading away from you, or a fence, or a line of trees), the ability of this weird combination of camera and viewing equipment is able to produce startlingly lifelike 3-D images.
This web desinger/photographer has done a similar thing, but cleverly is presenting both the left and right side pictures together in a GIF file, rapidly alternating the presentation of the two. It successfully tricks your eyes into seeing in 3-D. This is wild!
We actually have a 3-D camera. This bears testing. Check back in a few days.
Posted by John at 01:51 AM | Comments (0)
Keelhauling as a job perk
No kidding. Keelhauling is mentioned as a fringe benefit in this job ad.
Posted by John at 01:38 AM | Comments (0)
Not quite holographic
But neato nevertheless. If that 72" gas plasma TV screen you've got hanging on the wall in your den isn't doing it for you any more, you could consider upgrading to fog. Yeah, fog. On demand, for projecting images on. Not damp at all, completely contained within its generator borders and capable of reasonably high definition displays. Videos and still pictures here for your perusal.
Posted by John at 01:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2003
No Clowns Allowed! You Have Entered a Clown-Free Zone.
Browsing around looking for games and I came across ihateclowns.com (sister site to ihatemimes.com). The games were lame, but I like the theme, and you can even get yourname@ihateclowns.com as your email address if your coulrophobia is in full bloom. And why wouldn't it be? There's at least 34 reasons to hate clowns (plus some bonus reasons!).
"THE CLOWN OF CIRCUS AND PANTOMIME, IN HIS BAGGY COSTUME, WHITENED FACE, GROTESQUE RED LIPS, AND ODD LITTLE TUFT OF HAIR, IS PROBABLY A RELIC OF THE DEVIL AS HE APPEARED IN MEDIEVAL MIRACLE PLAYS."
-- Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The site is filled with contributed personal stories that read like a Stephen King primer. (Remember IT?) Plus the site creator is a short story writer... But the best thing on the web site, in my opinion, is this excellent t-shirt. Christmas list!
Posted by John at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
The Middle East Forum Quarterly
Current issue features an editorial by Charles M. Brown, master's of arts student in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Utah who narrowly missed being called up in Desert Storm, and who consequently became very interested in Iraq. He joined the Chicago-based "Voices in the Wilderness" program and slowly discovered the truth. Fascinating read.
Posted by John at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)
If Google can't find him, the US government doesn't stand a chance.
Found this through Daypop on some site that I can't even interpret, or I'd give props here. :-(
Posted by John at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)
