Keelhauling

Posted by John at 03:06 AM | Comments (0)

You are how you sleep.

How is it that scientists somehow have a never-ending stream of grant money to study really esoteric crap that nobody really fundamentally cares about, and which is destined to be a single entry in some weblog, quickly forgotten and only remembered when the search engine turns up the link on a search for "sleep" when its time to go shopping for a new mattress? What your sleeping position reveals about your personality. Mainly what mine reveals is that I'm tired, and need sleep, so if they wake me up coming into my room under some obscure provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that allows them to monitor my sleeping position without my permission, there's gonna be a ruckus.

Posted by John at 03:05 AM | Comments (0)

Left Prefrontal Cortex Activity Levels - UP

Scientists debate, theorize, test and measure happiness. The Dalai Lama goes to MIT, advises meditation. The scientists fall all over themselves agreeing, because they can't explain any of it. "Left frontal cortex activity = good" is about the sum total of their knowledge on the subject.

Those MIT scientists should just count their blessings. Interviewing the Dalai Lama in Kresge Auditorium is certainly preferable to some jobs in the science fields. In fact, most things are preferable to those jobs.

Posted by John at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Isabel photo

One of the strongest storms in modern times, Hurrucane Isabel is headed for the east coast. Flirting with a Category 5 designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale, it has winds broaching 150mph and is driving storm surges in ocean waves over 15 feet high. The damage potential if it makes landfall at this strength is estimated as "catastrophic." This photo was taken yesterday from NASA's Terra satellite network. Gorgeous and terrifying.

Posted by John at 02:53 AM | Comments (0)

SimCity comes to the web

Well, sort of. If you're a fan of SimCity, you're bound to get hooked on this... game? project? tool set? Go forth and build a city with City Creator! While you're at it, if your confidence level is high, you might hop on over to Learner.org and try building a roller coaster, and checking the physics to see if you have a viable design.

Posted by John at 02:26 AM | Comments (0)

Sideways biking

I see the pictures, and instantly visualize myself riding one of these. Every single time, about 8 seconds into the ride, I have a vicious wipeout on the pavement, and since I was 'just trying it out" and not wearing a helmet, I wake up a hospital bed.

Posted by John at 02:24 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2003

Dave Barry's mojo

So Dave Barry lashes out against the American Teleservices Association in his latest piece: "Ask Not What Telemarketers Can Do To You".

Leading the charge for the telemarketing industry is the American Teleservices Association (suggested motto: 'Some Day, We Will Get a Dictionary and Look Up 'Services' '').

Posted by John at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

A nifty little tool

The FontBrowser loads all the fonts resident on your system and allows you to quickly scroll through them to see which one you want to use. Nice little tool.

Posted by John at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2003

The Global Rich List

This one's been making the rounds the past few weeks, but I'm posting it just because I played with it long enough to figure out that if you make $868.25 PER ANNUM then you are still richer than 1/2 the people on Earth. So stop whining.

Posted by John at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

The wonderful world of carbon nanotubes

You probably wonder what fantasic and otherworldly uses we could make of the breakthrough work in carbon nanotubes (aka "buckytubes"). If you don't, you should.

Carbon nanotubes - long, thin cylinders of carbon - were discovered in 1991 by S. Iijima. These are large macromolecules that are unique for their size, shape, and remarkable physical properties. They can be thought of as a sheet of graphite (a hexagonal lattice of carbon) rolled into a cylinder. These intriguing structures have sparked much excitement in the recent years and a large amount of research has been dedicated to their understanding. Currently, the physical properties are still being discovered and disputed. What makes it so difficult is that nanotubes have a very broad range of electonic, thermal, and structural properties that change depending on the different kinds of nanotube (defined by its diameter, length, and chirality, or twist). To make things more interesting, besides having a single cylindrical wall (SWNTs), nanotubes can have multiple walls (MWNTs)--cylinders inside the other cylinders.

One of the things that these unique molecules could enable is a space elevator. Tie one end to a geosynchronous satellite, and the other end to the train station on Earth, and start selling tickets. NASA is funding the research to the tune of several million dollars under its advanced concepts program.

Posted by John at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Especially now that scientists have calculated that the memory capacity of a single human brain is greater than all the computers ever built. Significantly greater, if their math is to be believed.

Posted by John at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

And now for something completely different...

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is coming to Broadway! The working title is Spamelot from the song in the movie, of course.

We're knights of the Round Table,
we dance whene'er we're able.
We do routines
and chorus scenes
with footwork impec-cable,

We dine well here in Camelot,
we eat ham and jam and Spam a lot.

We're knights of the Round Table,
our shows are for-mi-dable.
But many times
we're given rhymes
that are quite un-sing-able

We're opera mad in Camelot,
we sing from the diaphragm alot.

In war we're tough and able,
Quite in-de-fa-ti-gable.
Between our quests
we sequin vests
and impersonate Clark Gable

It's a busy life in Camelot
[Knight solo]: I have to push the pram a lot.

Posted by John at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

The Moral Sense Test

Help out the researchers at Harvard University by taking this Web-based Moral Sense Test that explores the nature of your moral intuitions. How do humans, throughout the world, decide what is right and wrong? To answer this question, they have designed a series of moral dilemmas designed to probe the psychological mechanisms underlying our ethical judgments. By putting these questions on the Web, these researchers hope to gain insight into the similarities and differences between the moral intuitions of people of different ages, from different cultures, with different educational backgrounds and religious beliefs, involved in different occupations and exposed to very different circumstances. Participation in the study is easy, quick and completely confidential. It takes about 10 minutes.

Posted by John at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2003

The Best American Speeches

The Top 100 American Speeches of all time, with audio where possible, brought to you by American Rhetoric. This is a gold mine. You can come back for inspiration whenever your spirit is lagging, and find something that puts the wind back in your sails. Powerful juju here.

Posted by John at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

Just bookmarking a roofing site.

Nothing to see here, move along now.

Dreamroofs. Roof, roof, roof, roofing, roofing, roofing.
Because search engines are stupid, and I want this link to come up first when I search on "roof" or "roofing", that's why.
Because I'm going to need another one in a year, two tops.

Posted by John at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2003

WeWantYourSoul.com

<<shudder>> This is clever. This is sick. This is clever. This is sick. This is clever. This is sick. This is clever. This is sick. This is clever. This is sick.

"The contract is a legally binding document and on completion the holding company will own the full rights to the customer's soul and its use hereof. The company reserves the rights to use the soul for any purpose which it sees fit and retains the right to resell the soul. In the event that the soul is genetically-modified by the company, it will remain bound by the original contract. However, there are no guarantees regarding the long-term value or utility of a GMS (Genetically-Modified Soul)."

-- from the "Terms and Conditions" page at www.wewantyoursoul.com.

Posted by John at 12:48 AM | Comments (0)

American Social Hygiene Posters Database

For that retro perspective on the social graces. If some wise guy tells you that sexual intercourse is not dangerous, DO NOT BELIEVE HIM.

Posted by John at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)

What's Yer Inner Pirate?

My evaluation says: You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

Posted by John at 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

Arrrrr!

Regulars t' this website will know that Keelhaulin' brooks no excuses when it comes t' September 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If ye swabbies don't learn t' properly pronunciate the vocabulary, ye'll be a-walkin' the plank come dawn. And those that come back up, they get keelhauled! Ye have 'til next Friday.

Posted by John at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

What the Iraquis Really Think

Tired of the ambiguity around the conflicting stories -- are Americans perceived as invading oppressors meddling in affairs in which they have no business, or righteous champions of justice and defenders of freedom? -- the Wall Street Journal went and asked them. Imagine the audacity.

Posted by John at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2003

Canine Intersection

This is Joey.  Joey was our new dog for about an hour this weekend.  We were driving Colin to his first soccer game of the season, and there on Paradise Drive was my neighbor with her Mercedes stopped in the middle of the road, holding on to this dog.  I rolled down the window as we passed and asked if everything was OK.  She said he just ran out into the middle of the road and she didn't know what to do.  He had no collar.  She was stuck.  She couldn't let go of the dog because he might run off, and she clearly didn't want to put him the car.  I have a sneaking suspicion that she was acting the helpless female because she didn't want the dog on her new leather upholstery.

So I tossed Joey in the back of the station wagon.  We tried to palm him off at the firehouse down the road, but they weren't having any of it.  I drove Colin to the game with Joey in the back.  I dropped off Julie and Colin and came back and knocked on a few doors in the neighborhood near where we found him, but nobody knew him.  The neighbor called me on my cell phone and said she had put up some flyers on Paradise Drive that said "LOST DOG?"  with her phone number.  She asked what I planned to do with him.

Now this was a tricky one.  The typical male response when things like this happen is to try to put things back the way they were, and as quickly as possible.  The female response is mothering, trying to make everything OK for all parties involved. This was typified by Julie as we drove to the soccer game, when she'd said, only half jokingly, "Can we keep him?"  Well, maybe only 10% jokingly. This was not unfolding as I had hoped.

I had no intention of adopting this dog, particularly having had him foisted on me as I simply tried to take some decisive action to unravel the traffic jam that was developing on Paradise Drive.  We have a dog, and one's enough for now, thanks.  I might consider adopting a ravening wolf, just because I know he could easily escape our fence and eat the neighbor's cat.  The cat likes to crawl under the gate and saunter down our front walkway past the window to taunt our dog, Maggie.  Maggie goes insane barking at the cat, who picks up his pace just a little bit, like a debutante passing a construction crew.  I knew at least two residents of this house that would rejoice if that cat came to an untimely end, particularly if it were in canine jaws. All of this passed through my mind in the second before I decided how to respond.

"I'm not sure," I said, "we have a dog, so if they get along we can keep him for a day or two, but after that..."
"After that, what?" said my neighbor.
I dropped my voice an octave into the Darth Vader range, and said, "After that, we'll have to take him to the Humane Society."
"No!" she said, "we don't want that!"
"No," I agreed, "we don't.  But we already have one dog and ..."
"Bring him by my house," she said, "we have a dog too, and we'll keep him until the owner comes to get him."

So I stopped off at the house and snapped a digital picture of the littler fella to use on the posters, and took him over to the neighbor's house.  Joey's owner saw the sign on Paradise Drive immediately and called while I was there dropping the dog off.  That's when we learned his name was Joey, and from the way he responded when I said that name, I knew we had the true owner on the phone. 

Marin County's Humane Society has a "no kill" policy, but I doubt our neighbor knew that. I wish Joey well, and I hope his owner keeps a collar on the little guy from now on.

Posted by John at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2003

Sherman, set the wayback machine to 1996.

I can't believe I haven't linked this before. It's been around for awhile and is one of my favorites. The Wayback Machine is a search engine that contains over 100 terabytes and 11 billion web pages archived from 1996 to the present. It's an absolutely phenomenal gift to the web community. The archive doesn't contain every web page ever published. Rather, it's a collection of "snapshots" taken over time. Simply enter a URL and your results are a table of links to specific dates when snapshots were taken and stored in the archive. Clicking the link brings up the page exactly as it looked on that date.

The parent site, archives.org, also has separate moving images, text and audio archives. I really like the old TV commercials, like this gem from the year I was born: A special astronaut offer from Cheerios and V-8 juice (links to 2MB MPEG-4 file).

Posted by John at 05:43 AM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2003

Introducing the Aquada

Aquada. I'll take mine in red, thank you.

Posted by John at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

Test NetFlix's patented business model

That took less than 90 days. Gamefly. Choose from over 1,000 titles. Play 2 video games at a time. No due dates. No late fees. Free shipping. Only $21.95 a month. I wonder how big their cash reserve for legal fees is.

Posted by John at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

The most accurate map of Earth

A new complete global topographic data set generated by NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency enables the most accurate map of Earth ever produced. Links to high resolution photos at the end of the article. If you haven't seen it, browse around the whole Planetary Photojournal.

Posted by John at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2003

An interesting thing happened today. 

	An interesting thing happened today.  I bought my first computer back in 1986 for about $7,000.  It was a Compaq Portable II, the "suitcase" model.  I paid a premium price to get a huge hard disc drive, 20 megabytes. ("More space than I'll ever need", I thought.)
Today, I saw CompUSA offering a 120 gigabyte hard drive for $60.00.  That makes my old 20 megabytes worth exactly one US cent. It sort of reminds me of that old analogy: If Automobiles had developed as fast as computers since 1960, today’s automobile would have an engine that is less than 0.1 inch in length, would get 120,000 miles per gallon, have a top speed of 300,000 miles per hour and would cost $4.00. That quote is often attributed to Bill Gates (usually cited as a Comdex show presentation). Allegedly (shorthand for I'm too lazy to research it right now), General Motors came up with the classic response, reprinted here for your amusement: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics: For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "CarNT," but then you would have to buy more seats. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five percent of the roads. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt. The airbag system would ask "are you sure" before deploying. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off. Classics, both of them.

Posted by John at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

Who says math isn't fun?

The water in a decent sized hurricane weighs more than all the elephants that have ever lived. I am SO glad that's resolved. I can't tell you useful that's going to be. Hehe. Thank you, ABCNews.

Posted by John at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

Beloit College's Mindset List

Every year the college cites facts that establish this year's crop of college students in the timeline. For instance, for students born in 1985, "gas has always been unleaded." Here's the list for the Class of 2007.

Posted by John at 07:31 AM | Comments (0)

If you travel to Europe

If you travel to Europe at all, this map should be of interest. Makes you wonder how we got started calling other countries by their "English names". If Italy is called Italia by the Italians, why isn't that the name? España instead of Spain. Norge instead of Norway. Sverige, Polska, Deutscheland, and so on.

Posted by John at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)

Ticket scalping goes professional

Back in June when I talked about the runup in ticket prices on eBay and the need for better advance information about upcoming shows, I didn't know that the execs at TicketMaster were looking at the same eBay auctions and scratching their heads over all that money they're leaving on the table.

"The tickets are worth what they're worth," said Ticketmaster CEO and president John Pleasants, in an interview with the Times. "I think more and more, our clients - the promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves - are saying to themselves 'Maybe that money should be coming to me instead of Bob the Broker.' "

Tickets are about to get more expensive. Much more expensive.

Posted by John at 06:43 AM | Comments (0)

Used digital music files

Say you buy a song on iTunes for $0.99. You don't like it. Tough luck, right? Maybe not, at least if George's little experiment in digital rights works. George decided to sell his on eBay. This bid is currently at $16,000, although I don't believe that for a minute. Still, there are currently 79 bids behind that one, and at least some of them are probably real. It will be interesting to see if this is challenged by Apple or the recording company. More details here. The good news is that shipping is free!

Posted by John at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2003

Reminder...

"We desire peace. But peace is a goal, not a policy. Lasting peace is what we hope for at the end of our journey. It doesn't describe the steps we must take nor the paths we should follow to reach that goal."

--Ronald Reagan

Posted by John at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Lessons from the Buffyverse

Evil exists. Redemption is possible. Evil must be fought -- sometimes literally, with lives and weapons. Evil never goes away. We don’t get to choose our reality. We do get to choose what we do. Life’s pleasures are precious.

Posted by John at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)