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February 27, 2005
SOW: Week of 02-27-05
Song of the Week: Cara Valente ("Brave Face")
CD: Maria Rita
Artist: Maria Rita
You will like this if you like: Norah Jones, Simply Red, Swing Out Sister, Everything But the Girl, Diana Krall, Seal, Sade
I’ve been a fan of Brazilian music for long time, and on my last trip to Sao Paulo in June a friend gave me this CD, the self-titled debut from the artist Maria Rita. Provincial American that I am, I had never heard of her, and you probably won’t hear her on your local ClearChannel radio station any time soon, either. But it is an amazing CD.
Maria Rita has the chocolate-syrup-smooth voice of Norah Jones, but her musical stylings are more upbeat, jazzy, and reflective of her Brazilian bossa nova heritage. She won the 2004 Latin Grammy for both best new artist of the year and best Brazilian pop album for her debut. The songs are all sung in Portugese, but the emotions – love, sadness, longing, celebration – transcend any translation, pouring out like a busted fire hydrant.
Rita’s magnificent range – from a whisper to a wail – reflects her upbringing. She is the daughter of pop singer Elis Regina and pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano. Good genes will come through every time. Elis Regina helped popularize Milton Nascimento’s songs back in the 1970s and 80s, and Rita features a couple on her album as well.
I love her selection of songs on this CD. This album evokes a sexy, smoky, speakeasy atmosphere. Pure escapism at its best.
Posted by John at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2005
Coolest knife block ever
While I'm not by any means a kitchen gadget enthusiast, I have to admit this is the coolest knife block I've ever seen.
I had to post this just for the picture.
[via memepool]
Posted by John at 02:21 AM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2005
The Whole "Values" Thing
We watched two Netflix DVDs two nights in a row this week, Stepford Wives and The Village. Stepford Wives was clearly chosen just for fun, but I was hoping and expecting that The Village would be interesting and engaging and ... a little different. Wrong on both counts.
After The Sixth Sense and Signs (and I even liked Unbreakable, although it was admittedly a little slow), I was expecting another M. Night Shyamalan movie. Note there were big name actors in all the previous movies, but Signs wasn’t a Mel Gibson movie – it was all about style and look and method – just as The Sixth Sense wasn’t a Bruce Willis movie. These were directorial tour de force films.
This isn’t a movie review. They were both lousy movies. I can’t top comments like these:
Stepford Wives
- "Satirizing The Stepford Wives is pointless." – Salon.com
- "A Frankenstein's monster of a movie: clumsy, patched together from parts that don't align properly, desperate to be loved, destined to be chased by mobs with pitchforks -- those will be the critics -- until it stumbles into its grave." – Charlotte Observer
The Village
- “In his latest foray into the realm of the supernatural, M. Night Shyamalan turns an artful gothic tale into a homework assignment." -- New York Times
- “Every village needs an idiot -- and M. Night Shyamalan is hoping it's you." – Horror.com
But I saw something more interesting in these films. Something that they actually had in common.
Caution: Spoilers inside!
Buena Vista Pictures describes The Village this way:
M. Night Shyamalan's The Village finds the renowned writer-director crafting a suspenseful story of a small community whose inhabitants are plagued by fear of the unknown forest that surrounds them. For years, they have kept a truce with mysterious creatures in the woods by vowing never to breach a clearly defined border. However, when a young man (Joaquin Phoenix) becomes determined to explore the nearby towns, his actions are met with menacing consequences.Paramount describes The Stepford Wives like this:
Based on a book by Ira Levin which satirizes the roles of 1950s housewives, this is a remake of the 1975 film adaptation. Director Frank Oz presents a dramatic reworking of the horror classic, putting a totally over-the-top slant on the story that gives it true comedic value. In the early 21st century, a fast-paced Manhattan couple, Joanna (Nicole Kidman) and Walter (Matthew Broderick), both work for a major television network. While she is a leader and breadwinner in producing reality shows, he is a mere middle-management type. So when Joanna has a nervous breakdown, and Walter takes command, he's happy to find that for once in his life she's not stealing his fire. This sentiment is only asserted by the boys club that welcomes him when they move to the "perfect" town of Stepford, Connecticut. There, the women have been transformed by their husbands into a totally submissive, near-robotic state in which they are blissfully happy doing housework and looking pretty, and are totally compliant to their men.In The Village, the surprise ending (which sneaks up on you like a drunken elephant in a china shop) is that this village from the 1800’s is, in fact, a modern day village sequestered deep inside a national forest preserve. The village “elders”, who shared the experience of losses of loved ones due to violence, drugs and crime and other “evils” of modern day life, decide to retreat from civilization and go back to a simpler time, when men were men and women beat the clothes on rocks.
In Stepford Wives, the surprise ending (ditto pachyderm and china shards) turns out to be that the Stepford women automatons are actually the byproducts of a brainy woman, who has created her very own robotic man to lead her initiative amongst the gullible male geek community. She longs for a time when a lady could be a lady, and men took care of the nasty details like making decisions and earning money.
Both movies adopt a rather sophomoric approach in retreating from the harsh realities of modern day life; rather than finding new and creative ways to fix the problem our protagonists simply choose to run away.
Both movies display a nostalgic fondness for the past, for a simpler time when the world was less difficult to navigate, when gender roles were clearer, when – at least through the rosy haze of glasses peering into the past – respect was one key characteristic of the interaction between civilized people.
This, of course, hardly qualifies as a profound revelation.
What I’d like to tickle your brain with for a moment, though, is this notion of values that has emerged as part of the national red-and-blue debate. Republicans, flush with their victory at the polls in November, chant that it’s all about middle-American values. Democrats, caught by surprise at their poor showing at the polls, chant that they have to communicate their values better, that middle America is really more in synch with their values than Republicans’, they just don’t know it.
Both are missing the point of what is really behind values. I think the missing element is time.
Democrats are right that most Americans – left, middle and right - probably share their principals. As Americans, we’re brought up to respect concepts like the fundamental equality of men and women, the rights of people to be free of persecution regardless of race, gender, or sexual persuasion, equality of opportunity and freedom from government oppression.
Values, however, are different. The concept of values involves long term consequences, and raises a different kind of question: What kind of world do you want to live in?
The focus on principals is an immediate, short term, tactical response-based focus. Given a situation, how should it be resolved? Invoke the right principal – fairness, justice, freedom – and you have an answer. Values, however, ask the follow on question: what does this mean for our future?
Yes we believe that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of gender. But long term that means women don’t get doors held open for them, men feel no special responsibility to be the provider for their household, women get drafted, go to war and die.
Yes we believe that two people that love each other, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, should be allowed the freedom to pursue their relationship. Long term, that means that institutions like marriage get legally challenged to be opened up to these types of relationships, devaluing this traditionally religious institution and diminishing the role of the traditional male-female nuclear family unit.
Yes we want to respect the rights of women to govern their own bodies, and we would like to free them from the responsibility – and the risk of bearing children they don’t want or cannot handle. But long term, that means an environment where abortion is readily available, human life is cheapened, and the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior are removed. Laws get passed that make it illegal for school or even a judge to disclose to the parents when a teenaged girl is seeking counseling about abortion.
When middle America turned out and voted red, I think this was at least in part driven by concerns about values. Considering values in the decision-making process gives weight to history, and what has worked in the past. This often leads to a conclusion that is typically characterized as “conservative” – i.e. not willing to make a change. Making decisions on principals alone misses this time-based aspect, evaluating each case on its own merits in a vacuum.
Historically, that’s what we – collectively as a society (burden shared equally between Democratic and Republican regimes) – have done, and by almost any metric it’s turned out to be a pretty poor way to make decisions.
The most startling example of the impact of this modern, values-free way of thinking about issues that I’ve seen recently was chronicling the “progress” made in our educational system. Each year, a broad sampling of public secondary school teachers is polled with the question, “What are your principal concerns for or about your students?” Looking back to the 1960’s the roster includes such heinous offenses as chewing gum in class, cutting in line, tardiness and the ever-popular talking out of turn. Cut to 2004, and the list is headed by gang violence, rape, drug use, unsafe sex, and weapons on school grounds. Maybe those glasses weren’t rose-colored after all…
What changed? If you look at the turning point, when the school teachers’ responses began to shift toward more violent crime, it coincides with the first laws against corporal punishment in schools. Action -> consequences.
Understanding and promoting and acting in accordance with a set of values requires a clear vision of the kind of world you want to live in. Unfortunately, it means making some hard choices. We cannot rely on the innate goodness of man to prevail; time and time again it's been shown that man is ethically flawed. Left to our own devices, we end up with despotism, authoritarianism, oppression and violence. Rules are necessary to preserve values. Sometimes those rules will act in opposition to short-term principals, due to perceived long-term consequences.
Values is a concept for political grown-ups. It is no wonder, given this context, that those who beat the drum for principals they hold dear are dumbfounded by the "stupidity" of middle America. From the perspective with which they view the world, and in the context of the situation right here, right now, they are absolutely correct. It is, however, they who are short-sighted. Those unwilling to make hard choices, unwilling to endure short-term sacrifice for long term gain, have created the world from which the heroes in our movies now strive to escape.
It’s interesting that both movies share this theme of desperation with the way the world has turned out, and both offer up a form of isolationism and denial as the solution. I’m convinced of the underlying truth of the values vs. principals argument, and think the time-based nature of values is worth further exploration. I leave such musing to you, Gentle Reader.
Posted by John at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
Too much information
Since I work in the field of CDI - Customer Data Integration - also commonly referred to as a "customer master", a CIF, an ODS and a variety of other TLAs, I'm constantly engaged in discussions about when information gathering on customers and the sharing of that information with other business units, employees, partners or other third parties is (1) lawful, (2) necessary and/or (3) improper.
It leads to some interesting discussions, such as the so-called "mistress problem" which all banks have to deal with. Where do you send which statements, and who is authorized to see what?
The ACLU has a nice little dramatization about what can happen when Pizza Hut gets its hands on too much information. Very funny, and sort of not funny at the same time. Sort of ha ha ha, ...wait.
Posted by John at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2005
CSS Revisions Underway
CSS is a righteous pain. It is righteous because it is, after all, the proper way to do things nowadays. It is a pain because no matter how good your understanding of the theory, it seems that you can't just lay out the page and have it simply work. Lots and lots of nudging and tweaking and checking back and forth between IE and Firefox - I'm not even worrying about backward compatibility to Netscape or any of that nonsense.
Anyway, here's the first version after many hours of work. All the links don't work yet - that's the easy part - and I am still trying to make the $MTInclude function work with CSS "div" formatting. I'd guess I'll be ready to switch over to this format in about two weeks.
Feedback welcome!!
Posted by John at 07:59 PM | Comments (2)
The Moral Matrix
Welcome to the Moral Politics Test.Several of the 16 questions have two or more answers that could be correct, and when I change them I move around the centerpoint into different quadrants, becoming successively Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent and "No Match".Take this new morality-based political test now to find where you fit on the Moral Matrix. Find out which party and candidates best match your core beliefs.
This test is (or at least tries to be) a different political test. Most tests assess your opinion by questioning your stance on political issues. This test explains why you think what you think by mapping your personal moral system.
Here's what I wound up with as my "best" set of answers:
The following items best match your score:
System: Conservatism
Variation: Moderate Conservatism
Ideologies: Capital Republicanism
US Parties: Democratic Party
Posted by John at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
Soggy weather, posting drought
It was a soggy three day weekend here in SF, raining every single day. I did zero posting to Keelhauling, as I've been working on the site redesign, teaching myself CSS. Easy in theory, difficult in practice. The biggest problem so far has been figuring out how to hack around Internet Explorer's incorrect handling of various tags. The whole idea of CSS was to separate content from design, and thanks to Microsoft, every piece of content requires design work to make it look right in IE. I hope they fix some of this stuff with v7.
Meanwhile, those of us in NoCal are not the only ones having soggy weather. It never rains in Southern California?
Posted by John at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2005
Email of the Future
The email of the future is here today! Thanks to Ben Sinclair.
Posted by John at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
MT Trackback Spam Solution
Finally, a plugin to stop Trackback spam. MT-TrackbackAntiSpam. (To install, unzip, put it in your plugins/ directory and make sure it is executable)
The way it works is fairly simple - if the incoming trackback does not come from the host as stated in the URL, it rejects the trackback. For example, if a trackback from url http://online-poker.psxtreme.com/ comes from 194.63.235.156 (an open proxy), then it is likely to be spam. (online-poker.psxtreme.com does not resolve to 194.63.235.156).
This solution has two pitfalls however: (1) it does not stop spammers from sending trackback spams from their own host - a small problem for now because spammers have generally been hiding behind open proxies (2) it may reject legit trackback if it is not sent by their blog-engine (e.g. sent by a blogging client). These risks pale beside the fact that I had to delete 67 spam pings from the trackback logs today, and that's getting more and more common. Here's hoping this works as advertised.
Major props to James Seng for the code.
Posted by John at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
Losing the Culture War
Regarding the Streetsigns below, Mark Steyn weighs in with some pithy commentary on the state of the nation.
Well, Jeffrey's 17. One day, with a bit of luck, he'll realize Bush isn't Hitler. If he were, Jeffrey would be in the Bush Youth doing patriotic exercises in shorts every morning and singing the special Texan lyrics to the Horst Wessel song, and he wouldn't have time to do dioramas of dissent. But what are we to make of everyone else in this sorry story? The art teacher who gave him an A. The 15 judges in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards who awarded him their ''silver key.'' The proprietor of Alperts Furniture Showroom in Seekonk where the winning ''art'' work is proudly on display. Are there no grown-ups left in Rhode Island?I wonder about things like this every day. Around our house, we try to keep the kids on an even keel (without having to keelhaul them!), but it's getting harder and harder every day as the world goes insane. I consider myself fairly liberal from a social perspective, but wrong is wrong, immoral is immoral and not every kind of behavior is natural, normal or acceptable. Everywhere I turn, that attitude is being challenged. I see some hope in the emergence of a moral majority defeating Kerry in the polls, but I worry if we, collectively, we silent majority of adherents to basic Christian values, waiting too long, if we were silent too long. Is it too little too late?
Posted by John at 09:07 PM | Comments (1)
Streetsigns on the Road to Hell #7
A Rhode Island high school student won an art award and an A from his teacher for building an abstract scene that juxtaposes Nazi swastikas and quotes by Adolf Hitler with American flags, desert-colored toy soldiers and an image of President Bush.
Posted by John at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
Streetsigns on the Road to Hell #6
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
Posted by John at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
Proof that Evolution Works?
This month’s Discover magazine (the People magazine of science) has a headline article entitled “Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State Prove Evolution Works”.
OK, let’s take this apart.
The article actually summarizes some lab findings based on work done using the Avida program. Avida is a digital world in which simple computer programs mutate and evolve. More technically, it is a population of self-reproducing strings with a Turing-complete genetic basis subjected to Poisson-random mutations. The population adapts to the combination of an intrinsic fitness landscape (self-reproduction) and an externally imposed (extrinsic) fitness function provided by the researcher.
This means that researchers can set up reward systems that cause programs (small pieces of code) to replicate faster, and punishments that eliminate pieces of code or cause their replication to slow down. Patterns of dominance emerge, depending on both differences in segments of the code, and on the reward/punishment paradigms established by the user.
The advantages in using Avida to test various theories of evolutionary adaptation are that (1) you can test thousands of scenarios at near zero cost, (2) no living things have to die, and (3) you can accelerate the timeline to run through thousands of “generations” per second.
Avida is a joint project of the Digital Life Laboratory (headed by Chris Adami) at the California Institute of Technology and Richard Lenski's Microbial Evolution laboratory at Michigan State university. It’s open source code, downloadable by anyone for free, so if you’re really curious and energetic, jump right on in.
Some of the results are pretty startling. To explore the issue of how living systems evolve complex systems (the “finding a watch on the beach” argument for intelligent design in the evolution debate), these scientists set up a reward for any code that could do a complex operation, comparing and adding two segments of binary code. The minimum code base to do the operation was 19 lines long. The odds of it “evolving” by random chance were one in one thousand trillion trillion (one in one octillion = 1027, if you care).
This is a good test of the “evolution of complex systems” argument. The parallel often used is the mousetrap. You can’t evolve a mousetrap. If all the constituent pieces – base, spring, arm, catch, and trigger plate - are not there, and assembled in the correct order, the mousetrap doesn’t work. A mousetrap with four of the five pieces works no better than a mousetrap with one piece. It’s a good argument. Similarly in this case, in the most efficient 19 lines of code version of the addition program, eliminating any single line of code would cause the whole program to fail.
They set the experiment to run 16,000 generations, and ran it 50 times. The complex code was successfully created 23 times. Most interestingly, the evolutionary paths to get there in each case were different. Some were 19 lines of code, some 20, some 21 or more.
Even more dramatically, when the researchers were playing with “natural resources”, numbers in the world of the Avida program, they found that setting up a system where programs could compete for scarce resources introduced species diversity. Instead of ending up with one dominant code strand, like a virus that overruns its host, several “species” of code could co-exist. In such a world, the experiment above generated the successful complex code 50 out of 50 times.
Now Discovery touts this as “proof that evolution works”. This is wrong on several counts.
I’ve watched with fascination the debate on the theory of evolution. I am personally a Christian and think God created us, but I don’t rule out that He could have used evolution to do it. I have come to understand, however, the role that evolution plays in the theology of the atheist. Yes, that’s right, the theology of the atheist. Because we all have faith in something.
Even if you’re not a student of the great philosophers, surely you’ve seen The Matrix, or had the thought that perhaps you could actually be asleep right now dreaming that you are awake. All of what we know as “reality” is, in fact, chemical and electrical signals running around in our noggins. What we know of reality is by interpretation of those signals, and based on our experience through our interactions with the external world. It isn’t that our “knowledge” of reality is necessarily faulty, but it is important to recognize it for what it is.
In such an environment, “proving” anything is a rather tall order. When we can’t with certainty even “know” anything beyond purely internal sensations like “I’m hungry”, drawing binding conclusions about external objects or actions is a stretch. Mathematicians can do it, by carefully defining “the world” (e.g. the set of all real numbers greater than zero). It’s harder to define “the world” when “the world” is, well, the world.
Moreover, the astounding leaps in astrophysics, quantum physics, microbiology and the other cutting edge sciences seem to fundamentally redefine our understanding of the universe every five years, on average.
Darwin took a series of observations about breeding in birds and extrapolated that to envision evolution across thousands of generations. It was a good theory. I don’t doubt that parts of it reflect what has actually occurred over the last several hundred million years. But… it’s just a theory.
I have more confidence in our understanding of gravity than I do in our understanding of evolution, and yet that understanding is widely known and accepted as “the theory of gravity.” Why, then, the push to include evolution in our schoolbooks, to be taught as “truth” to our children? Why, when religious groups push to have stickers put on those books that rightly force acknowledgement of evolution as a theory, is there such a hue and cry? Why, indeed, wasn’t it acknowledged as a theory in the textbooks to begin with, when even gravity was presented as theory?
The answer, I think, is in the theology of the atheist. If there is no God, then we need to have answers to the fundamental questions, such as “where did we come from?” Atheism relies on science as its gospel. If the answer does not lie in science, then it is not real, it is not valid – indeed, it is heresy.
This leads to some bizarre behaviors. Little Johnny gets taught in school about the Big Bang that created our universe. Little Johnny asks, “What was there before the Big Bang?” And the answer is, “That’s a question for religion, not for science.” Which is an almost explicit acknowledgement of the theology of atheism. If science cannot explain it, it does not exist!
Theories of the evolution of life falls into three major categories:
Unfortunately, students are deceived into thinking all three types of evolution have been proven because evidence is given for minor variations called micro-evolution. Following Darwin’s logic in postulating an explanation for speciation, microevolution – breeding – is extended across historical and unobservable time to encompass organic and macro-evolution. They are smuggled in when no one is watching.
Atheists cling to the theory of evolution as gospel because it is the bedrock of their faith. Many – most, I would argue – do not recognize that they’re doing this. It is a phenomenon of the unconscious mind, like a sort of cognitive dissonance that prevents them from seeing the role into which they have placed poor Darwin. (For an interesting read on cognitive dissonance in the context of 2001: A Space Odyssey, read this. Very fun.)
(As an interesting aside, I saw a PhD dissertation on Evolution and Religion in which a student polled evolutionary biologists and found that roughly 80% were self-proclaimed atheists. This is very much at odds with the profile of the general population, and indeed, even with scientists in general.)
Discover magazine needs to sell copies. I can understand the motivation to sensationalize the findings into headlines that overstate the conclusions therein. The real question is why the sensationalism "evolved" in this particular direction. The answer, it seems to me, is that atheists are searching frantically for evidence that will give their belief in evolution credence. In fact, if you follow the news, you’ll know that substantial strides have already been made in proving that one of the most complex organs of all, the human eye, could have evolved. The evidence provided by the Avida studies is interesting, but no more so than many other recent advances in the field of evolutionary biology.
Evolution, as a theory, is a long, long way from being provable. Theories of phenetics and cladism have pushed the envelope of our understanding and provided alternate paths for the theory to play out to successful conclusion. On paper. The real issue for “proof” of evolution lies in the discovery of transitional forms. Proof, to my jaded eye, would be an unambiguous succession of fossilized or frozen forms that could be reliably (+/-10%) dated from modern man back to a form that was definitely ape or monkey.
To be sure, efforts to uncover those fossil records of the so-called “missing link” still proceed, with fits and starts of success and failure. The holes in the line of succession to the title are massive. Personally, I doubt they can ever be filled in.
I have come to understand that the issue is not about creationism vs. evolution. The issue is that in the theology of atheism, God cannot be allowed to exist. Regardless of His role in the creation of the Earth and the creation of man, if He exists at all it imperils the structure of Science as religion. As in any religion, questioning the fundamentals is discouraged.
The more I have come to understand this, the more I see evidence of it. Take, for example, the National Center for Science Education, whose mission is to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools. Their statement of purpose is interesting. Note that evolution is never referred to as a “theory”, but they are not shy about making derogatory comments about other theories. The statement reads:
Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.[emphasis mine]
“Intelligent design” takes many forms, and does not necessarily conflict with the theory of evolution. Indeed, in some forms it is complementary! However, the very notion of “intelligent” forces at work implies God, and that is clearly unacceptable. This organization might more aptly be named the National Center for the Eradication of God.
So, the Discover article points out some interesting studies that seem to disprove an argument that is often used against naturalistic macro-evolution. Is proof against one opposing argument (and not the only one) the same thing as assertive, positive proof in favor of a particular theory? Not in my book. The Discover headline is misleading at best. It isn't evolution, and they didn't prove that evolution works.
That we all operate by faith is a universal phenonmenon. It has to be. No one is given the right or the ability to discern "truth", and we all suffer from the same limitations in our ability to discern our world and the forces that move and shape it. In the end, all we have are our own opinions, those things we choose to have faith in. So the real question then becomes, "What are you going to base your faith on?"
One final note: Atheists – Evolutionists – Darwinists – they had better hope they are wrong. Ed Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book on the Scopes "monkey" trial, points out that Creationists have a Darwinistic advantage over the secular.
"There's a survival value in religious beliefs. They have a sense of purpose. They feel their mission in life is to multiply and be fruitful. The whole Darwinian concept -- evolution -- is on the side of evangelical Christians. They're growing by any measure."
Posted by John at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2005
Escher Wannabes Click Here
If you're a frustrated tile designer, the Escher Web Sketch applet will give you hours of joy. It's very fun to play with, but - to me at least - very hard to use deliberately, as getting your mind around how the different mirror images replicate in the patterns is just... hard.
But just dragging new lines and swirls around and watching the pretty pictures emerge is kinda fun. Oooooh. Aaaaaaah.
Posted by John at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
Bin-Laden to you: Crappy Valentine's Day!
Latest Onion piece is priceless.
"Allah willing, embarrassment and tearful rejection shall rule this day," bin Laden said. "Paper hearts shall be rent and trod upon, and dreams of love delivered stillborn. Body language shall be misinterpreted, crushes unrequited, and sincere expressions of affection mocked. Invitations to dinner will be rejected, just as Americans have rejected Allah, the one true God."
"Bin Laden's depravity knows no bounds," Bush said.
Posted by John at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
Drizzle Drazzle Drozzle Drone...
Friday's RedNOVA has a writeup on the GCP that is simply fascinating. I'll leave it up to you to judge how seriously you take their claims, but still, fascinating. The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. They are developing the ability to see into the future.
In a large scale, general kind of way, it seems to be working. Employing black box random number generators designed to output "1"s and "0"s, there should be a fairly constant 50% distribution. The boxes displayed their greatest aberration 4 hours before the planes hit the towers on September 11, 2001. Their second greatest variance from the normal 50% distribution came last December, 24 hours before the tsunamis began hitting the shores. Although as Dr. Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon says, "Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the CIA", it seems remarkable. And the aberrations don't stop there. Really freaky, interesting, prognostication stuff here.
For more weird science, here's the website for the Global Consciousness Project.
Posted by John at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Google Maps
You knew it was coming... Google Maps. I haven't driven it around yet, but I already like the interface better than the other mapping services. Google knows user interfaces.
Posted by John at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2005
Little Golden Zogg
If you're sometimes creeped out by those Little Golden Books, know that you are not alone.
Jason Yungbluth at WhatIsDeepFried.com has done a very funny parody of the Little Golden Book About God, called The Cuddly Menace.
The pictures seem to fit his story better than the one the LGB folks intended, too.
Posted by John at 12:53 AM | Comments (2)
February 05, 2005
Live Long and Prosper
The Star Trek: Enterprise series will broadcast its final episode on May 13, 2005. It should be worth watching. The 2005–2006 season will mark the first time that a Star Trek series has not been on the air in eighteen years. Scott Bakula is no James T. Kirk, but still, that's quite a legacy that UPN and Paramount are walking away from. Unless there's yet another series waiting in the wings...
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UPDATE 3/3/05: Apparently, it will take just under $30 million to fund another season, and scientists in the space industry who were motivated to take up their careers by the show have already coughed up over $3 million. Amazing.
Posted by John at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
Simpson's Valentine Cards
Download the "I Choo Choo Choose You" and the "Bee Mine" Valentine's Day cards from the Simpsons.
"Hey look Lisa, if you watch it in super-duper-slow-mo, you can actually pinpoint the exact moment his heart breaks."
Posted by John at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)
February 03, 2005
Colin sacrifices his body for the game
If you
for the
and the
is made of asphalt, you're likely to get a
.
Of course this stuff only happens when I'm out of town, so I missed the trip to the emergency room. Colin, I hope it's not hurting too much! You'll be back out on the courts in no time.
Posted by John at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
Stroke/ Heart Attack
Is It a Stroke?
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, this lack of awareness can spell disaster. The stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
Ask the individual to smile.
Ask him or her to raise both arms.
Ask the person to speak a simple sentence.
If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.
After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.
Are You Having a Heart Attack?
Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone, of course) after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately, you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE
Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.
A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.
Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital. Tell as many people as possible about this. It could save their lives.
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According to the email Julie sent me, a cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people, you can bet that at least one life will be saved. [That would be a cardiologist who minored in statistics, obviously.]
Nevertheless, this is good info. If you start having chest pains, run to your Internet browser and go to Keelhauling.com and type "heart attack" into the Search box. There, see? All better.
Posted by John at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
