reinventing the wheel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ffranchi/4082412529/sizes/o/

China vs. Copenhagen

How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room.

Interesting piece about just what went on at the disastrous Copenhagen summit, which apparently went perfectly according to plan.

The AI used in Left 4 Dead

It's all over the place. Did you know that the AI director will send fewer zombies at you if you kill them from close up than if you snipe them from far away?

Funny man loses camera

BEHOLD

Re: Meg

my reply to your amazing find. Note this comic is kinda twisted and by kinda i mean extremely.
Enjoy!

http://www.iheartchaos.com/content/dont-drink-kool-aid-oooh-yeah-pic

A thought-producing comic, read to end before you judge me:

"product"!

Conspiracy fact

You know how people are always saying that politics in this country are controlled by the super rich? You know how it sounds vaguely plausible but also sort of like a conspiracy theory? Meet the Koch Brothers.

Yahoo's "7 foods experts won't eat"

Yeah, it looks like a lot of these 'experts' are a little biased, but it sort of makes you think. Pretty surprised at the canned tomatoes thing.

Nom Nom Nom

This speaks for itself:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/52aad30152/cat-says-nom-nom-nom?rel=player

The three most important letters in health care reform

Have you ever heard of the MLR? It's the percentage of health insurance premiums that the company actually spends on medical treatment. And it's very important.

"A case in point is Aetna, the nation's third largest publicly-traded health insurance plan. Three years ago, the company reported that its quarterly MLR had inched up from 77.9 percent to 79.4 percent in 12 months. On the day this was disclosed, Aetna's share price plunged 20 percent as investors sold off their shares, reducing the company's market value by billions of dollars."

Play this 60-second game with the sound on

KISSMA

Robot scientists are takin' our jobs

"Eureqa is descended from Lipson’s work on self-contemplating robots that figure out how to repair themselves. The same algorithms that guide the robots’ solution-finding computations have been customized for analyzing any type of data."

Won't be long now 'til the robocalypse.

Brain time!

UCSD is currently slicing up HM's brain into large ultrathin slides, if you want to watch.

Muppets + Queen

If you haven't seen this video already, what have you been doing all day??

Awesomest little girl ever

Totally hardcore...awesome parents to allow this to happen also.


http://www.iheartchaos.com/content/hardcore-little-girl-gets-tooth-pulled-rc-car-video

Why I don't trust popular science books.

I've always been wary of the attempt to popularize science--while it's a worthy endeavor to try and make dense concepts more accessible, much tends to be lost in the translation. These types of efforts can be especially misleading with the social sciences, where anecdotes and statistics can combine to create an argument that has face validity to most people.

Malcolm Gladwell is a sterling example of how things can go wrong, as shown in this review of his latest book. It makes for exciting reading; unfortunately, the science doesn't stand up to scrutiny at times.

Glenn Beck Tuesday

In honor of the First Ammendment defeating Glenn Beck, here is some funny.

50,000 missing people discovered 2,500 years later

In a desert.

Talk to me: the Ethan thread (1)

How many of you folk are involved in gaming nowadays? One of our Haverford friends is DMing a cool D&D campaign in an ancient Greece setting. I'm playing a wizard, Mitra is a sorcerer, and Craig has made a scout. It's good times.

"Israel is not a tolerant society"

At least, according to the US State Department. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to scare up some Jewish votes because of Obama's "alarming" tendency to at least give lip service to the idea that Israel can't do whatever it wants.

Robot of the future fleshy, terrifying

Observe it here in its larval stage.

Carl Sagan Day

It's a thing, apparently. Neat article about his cultural importance over at New Scientist.

From the article:

Carl Sagan, by equal measure professorial and childlike, offered space enthusiasts a new paradigm. Buck Rogers was out; refined and groovy cosmic citizen was in. Here was a visionary whose perspective dwarfed the politics of the space race and who spoke of humanity as a brotherhood with a common past and a transcendent future in the heavens.

We are doomed!

If you look at some of the autocompletes on Google, then you will come to the conclusion that we, as a species, are doomed.

All Praise Jebus...giver of buy one get one free

Everyone shop at Safeway.

Big science

Binge drinking in teenage rats? The plausibility of Superman's x-ray vision? Training alligators on treadmills? All topics worthy of scientific study, apparently. Read more at NCBI ROFL, a blog aimed at unearthing the funnier research papers in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases.

thanksgiving and/or christmas

So Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching with Christmas shortly after that and I was thinking it would be a good time to attempt a get together. So if I were to try to organize something on the east coast, who would be available and when? I'm sure my mom could offer sleeping space, and I suspect the Alguire's could too, if they are around, though obviously that would depend on them. Amanda has a pretty short break for thanksgiving, I think Wednesday through Sunday, really only leaving Thursday through Saturday for fun but that should be about when others are available too, so how about it?

As for interesting idea, how about a dinosaur civilization? More here

Thomas

Art!

I don't know if any of you have seen this yet, but this guy is pretty awesome.

NMR vs. cancer

Turns out naked mole rats never get cancer. One reason is that they have a gene (called p16) that stops cell proliferation when density becomes to high. Unfortunately, this also makes NMR cells difficult to culture.

LHC is nuts

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one."

Dead Hand (reprise)

Some folks asked me about the Soviet doomsday machine the other day, and lo and behold but Wired has a full article on the topic.

The bottom line: frightened by Ronald Reagan, whom they thought was planning a first strike (justifiably, as it turns out, even though he didn't have any such intentions), a project called Perimeter was implemented not to deter foreign powers (they didn't tell anybody) but to appease potentially trigger-happy hard-liners. The idea is the following: if there is a situation where it appears that Russia is about to get bombed, they can activate Dead Hand and relax. If it is just malfunctioning equipment, then everybody is safe. If it is, in fact, a first strike, then they are safe in the knowledge that the US, too, will be enveloped in a radioactive firestorm. Therefore the incentive is to not launch a counterattack at what may be a flock of geese flying in front of a radar installation (something that has happened).

space!

This is a picture of every space exploration mission undertaken in the past fifty years. It's obviously not to scale, but it's pretty neat anyway.

SPIDER

More accurately, the cutest little spider ever!

Illicit agriculture vs. organized crime

It was once prognosticated that the only things the United States of the future will produce competitively are action movies and pizza delivery. Not so: it turns out that the multi-billion dollar United States marijuana industry, once heavily reliant on nasty Mexican drug cartels, is now producing nearly half of what it consumes domestically.

Why is this relevant? It turns out that while these cartels export meth, coke, heroin, and other 'hard' drugs, the majority of their revenue comes from the production of pot. It's this money that is fueling the violence that is plaguing many parts of Mexico.

Star Wars: Uncut

Star Wars: Uncut is a project where they take Star Wars: A New Hope and divide it into 15 second scenes, which are then claimed online to be remade by fans. It looks like it might be a pretty cool project.

Webcomic for the enlightened masses

REading this made me shudder in horror at the combination of two amazingly awesome and yet terrible things at the same time. Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy...yikes.

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/01/27/advanced-dungeons-and-discourse/

Warren Spector, Mickey Mouse, and creepyness

Together at last!

Mega64

This video here made me happy inside.

Zombocom

Has anybody ever tried to go to Hulu and accidentally visited huku.com? Apparently the website it links you to has been around for a decade...

Parrot party

"He looks so happy."

Economic systems, illustrated with stick figures

Cartoon featuring red person, blue person, lotsa guns, and sometimes even money.

Awesome update

Did you know the Soviets actually had a doomsday device, but never told anybody about it? The first part of this podcast detail why. The answer... may surprise you.

Also:

"'Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy - people thought I was smoking marijuana .'"

"When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings."

All that, and what it means for your weekend, at 10:00

NickPost

AAAAaaahhhdorable

Carl Sagan sings

A Glorious Dawn featuring Stephen Hawking.

Sand animation

Just found this link on Reddit: the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent in 2009, this 'sand animation' depicting the invasion of Ukraine doing World War II. It's very touching, even for somebody unfamiliar with the cultural symbols depicted. A lot of folks in the crowd are moved to tears. I've never heard of this medium before, but it's a lot of fun to watch.

More randomness from the Internet: Adam

http://mediafetcher.com/article_full.php?id=112369

EntertainMe: The Nick Thread

Annoy me: The Eben Thread

If you remember from the ill fated PbP boards, Nick and I had dueling threads. I would like to revive some of that via the post labels. I suggest labeling entertaining posts as "entertainme" or "nickthread" and annoying posts as "annoyme" or "ebenthread."
You know, for kids!


Anyhow, the reason for the season is this here link.

Yes, I do have a fever right now, why do you ask?

Autism as specialization

There's a short piece on Wired about this guy who started a company that searches for bugs in other peoples' software. The interesting thing is that the company employs mostly autistic individuals, whom he believes have an advantage doing this kind of work.

AIDS vaccine

AIDS vaccine

Schizophrenia

I have a love affair with comics that explain things, and this is a particularly good one. Presumably made by an afflicted individual, it discusses the nature of schizophrenia in society and from the perspective of a sufferer.

A Reminder:

Robo Geisha

From the country i love the most comes the movie i understand the least...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo-gGes6qig

President Obama Wan Kenobi

Noam Chomsky: a little cynical about US foreign policy

... and in particular, US/Latin American relations and the 'War on Drugs'. Makes for an interesting read, especially since there is almost no outlet for these views in the MSM.

Also, Chomsky is obviously a stylish dude.

Another win for science

You know how the widespread use of antibiotics has caused a wide spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria? Researchers at NYU have discovered a mechanism responsible for much of this trait: an enzyme that produces nitric oxide. Armed with this information, current drugs can be made more potent and even work against infections that were formerly immune.

Texts From Last Night Dot Com

I know all of you computer literate folks have probably already heard of this site, but this here is gold.

(480): You were running around the house covered in syrup, with shredded down pillow feathers on your body screaming "AFLACK!" at everyone.

Turns out economists aren't perfect

...and neither are the markets. Paul Krugman recently published a piece in the NYT saying what he's been saying for a while: the dominant school of economic thought in the US, which dictates that markets are perfectly efficient and investors are perfectly rational, might be a little inaccurate.

He presents an interesting story about the academic culture in the economics world with respect to dissenting opinions; the audience at conferences will begin to talk and giggle if a presenter appears to take a Keynesian standpoint. The dogma of the perfectly efficient market is never questioned, even when evidence suggests otherwise. Naturally, Krugman has his own biases and the article is a simplifcation for layfolk, but I find it truly unsettling that this powerful, high-paid people in charge of vast sections of the economy simply don't accept that people and corporations do not always act rationally.

Placebo

Apparently, an increasing number of promising drugs have failed the standard double-blind placebo test in recent years. Part of the reason is that the placebo effect is getting stronger.

The article explains that though placebos are crucial to the practice of medical science, they have never been thoroughly studied until recently. This article answers a lot of interesting questions:

-Why it matters where you conduct your study

-Why aspirin doesn't work as well on alzheimer's patients

-Why antidepression medication works better in conjunction with therapy (or analrapy)

-Why Dr. House may in fact not be such a great physician at times (he is pretty good when he is tasked by the writers of the show to do some lengthy exposition to the patient; he is not so good when he is acting imperious and unapproachable, or stabby)

-Whether 'nocebo' is a real word

Hobo Code

The one that was not discovered by John
Hodgeman.

MacGyver!

If you have some (lots of) time, you can watch MacGyver at CBS.

Only a matter of time

Before we have these things rampaging through our neighborhoods murdering children. CHILDREN!

http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2009/09/start/the-robot-lumberjack-fire-fighter.aspx

Real-time CO2 simulation map

This map displays the carbon dioxide emissions, birth rates, and death rates in each country, in real time.

The coolest house in the world

I don't remember if this has been posted before, and I know that Ethan at the very least has seen and enjoyed it.

We need this. America needs this.

Barney Frank is a rock star

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was greeted with shouts and boos at a town hall meeting on health care at a senior center in Dartmouth, Mass., Tuesday night, an event that was targeted by supporters of perennial independent political candidate Lyndon LaRouche. But the combative House Financial Services Committee chairman met fire with fire.

In case you were wondering

I am now in San Diego. However, until I have a house and an internet connection, my online presence will be severely limited.

Ever wanted to drop off the face of the Earth?

You are not alone. Turns out that a signficant fraction of missing people are intentionally missing.

The article at Wired details how these folks are hunted down using modern data collection techniques. If you're on the grid, you're probably going to be found. A particularly clever trick:

"Then Klein decided to set up a Web site about the disappearance. Purporting to be asking for tips, it was designed specifically to trap visitors’ IP addresses. Suspecting that McDermott was in contact with at least one confidant from his former life — and relying on the investigator’s maxim that people on the run always monitor the pursuit — Klein blocked search engine crawlers from cataloging the site. He gave the URL only to McDermott’s friends and family. Ninety-six hours later, it started registering multiple daily hits from an IP address in the beach town of Sayulita, Mexico. Klein says he eventually tracked McDermott around South America and contacted him through an intermediary."

One common mistake, as it turns out, is keeping your old personality. Even folks who want to become a new person entirely eventually relax back into the person that they were, and that's when they get caught.

Lenny Cosmos

What if your city's mayor was truly eccentric?

We have plenty of wacky politicians, but none so colorful as he. From the article:

"He makes eccentric suggestions (a statue of Ukraine’s most famous poet should be erected in Africa) and staffing decisions (firing a zoo director for not finding a mate for an elephant), and personal gestures (offering to sell his kisses in a lottery)."

Happy Indian independence day

Let us celebrate the only way I know how: with links.

Turns out small town police aren't the only folks who have a hard time recognizing people; superstar Shah Rukh Khan was recently detained for two hours for having a suspicious name. The trouble was cleared up when an Indian MP got on the phone with customs officials and told them that they don't have to worry about terrorism, SRK wouldn't do that. It would be like if the Indian customs officials detained NPH because he shares a surname with a certain undesirable.

Also, check these guys out: bridges that are alive. Seems like something that you would find in Rivendell. Now I really want to go there.

Finally, if you are in the Philadelphia area, you can go to the Festival of India between 1:00 and 7:00 today. I don't know how well-advertised this is, since even though I knew that it was going to happen I had a hard time finding evidence online for it.

Paul Krugman: hyper nerd

Nobel-winning economist, New York Times columnist, and all-around dreamboat Paul Krugman is, as it turns out, a gigantic nerd.

At Worldcon he had a nice, long conversation with Charlie Stross about science fiction, technology, and all that good stuff. Audio isn't great but some interesting topics are mentioned. It's nice to hear about science fiction from an economic perspective; I find economic arguments for technological prognostications much more compelling than those of bright-eyed technophiles.

Moon walk explained

No, not that one.

Some folks at NASA started examining why astronauts walk so funny on the moon. It has to do with the pressurization of the space suit.

“Space suits are effectively reducing the gravity level by supporting part of the weight of everything that’s being transported,”

It might be a minor thing, but it's neat little look into one of the more prosaic challenges facing space travellers.

I'm Craig!

Hurrr derp derp derp.

News in Brief: what does Sotomayor bring to the table?

Once again, The Onion manages to alter the news enough to make me happy.

Time perception correlated to anger

I was cruising Boing Boing today, and found a neat little bit of psychology.

Suppose you are supposed to attend a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, but it was moved forward two days.

What day is the meeting on?

"If you think it's now changed to Friday, then you're someone who thinks of themselves as moving through time, whilst if you think the meeting is now on Monday, then you're more passive, and you think about time passing you by."

A clever trick indeed. It also tells you something about yourself-- how peeved you are feeling. Apparently.

It also works the other way around: if you think of yourself moving through time, you will become angrier. INTERESTING STUFF. Reminds me of that trick where if you make an expression that is related to an emotion, you will begin to feel that emotion. Our neural hardwiring is really a botched job, with all of these nonsinsical feedback loops. Damn you, Divine Watchmaker! Should have taken a few more classes.

Any thoughts on what else we might want to include in our caravan of wonders?

60 aerial photos

Some of these are really interesting.

Fallout game concept art

A sample for Thomas's character.

Chest Text Reads "The Amazing Mr Brain"

Bipedal dog!

It so crazy!

Killing me won't bring back your honey!

In part of his ongoing series My Year of Flops, Nathan Rabin deconstructs the filmography of the celebrated Mr. Nicholas Cage.

OH MY LORD

Gentlefolk, I believe I have found the best website in the entire interverse.

The vampire's timeless appeal

A speculative article on our perpetual fascination with vampires. Also touches upon the history of vampires in Western literature.

You don't have to agree with the whole article, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Time to lose your faith in humanity

It gets worse every day.

He's the biggest and the strongest

so of course he can drink the most.

BONUS LINK to content that is related but all of you have probably seen by now anyway.

CHILD VS. LEWIS C. K.

LINK

Era of the Fan-Doc

LINK

"Timothy McVeigh Finishing School"

It's pretty well understood that the Iraq war will have some far-reaching negative consequences. One of them happens to be that relaxing military recruiting standards has lead to infiltration of the military by far-right extremist groups.

Yes, it's an ad.

But it's so well done that it's also a pretty cool stop-motion music video. Seems like there's a rekindling of interest in stop motion and almost a yearning for older, seemingly simpler times. Whether it's all just a dream, a collection of fondly recalled memories...well, I'll leave that for you to decide.

We need more commenting! Let's turn this not only into a links page but also a discussion board--who's with me?

(If you're not, comment anyway.)

recursion

I saw this on digg and it made me laugh.

Did you mean recursion?

Always Be Watching Stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFQkMAPVoIo

The problem is always with the product

What do you get when you make your tech support folk write up "problem/improvement" reports after every consultation? Comedy gold.

Israeli cell phone commercial, internet response

Recently a cell phone commercial has caused outrage in Israel and Palestine. It features a friendly game of soccer over the separation barrier. This type of commercial is not uncommon; Coca cola typically only shows this type of commercial, in which the apparent message is Coke == love.

This ad is pissing folks off because it implies what a lot of folks would like to believe: everything is hunky dory in Palestine, and the wall is A-OK with them.

In response, some Palestinians tried the stunt by kicking a soccer ball over the wall. What they got back wasn't a soccer ball.

TV Party Tonight

Ethan says I need to post more, so here is this:

http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2009/07/the-complete-jordan-schlansky-oeuvre/#more-4358

Geography trivia

A colleague at work recently introduced me to this geography game.

One minor complaint is that the map is tiny, which hinders efficient clicking - but aside from that, the game is addictive.

Oh no, keyboard cat!

Read about Warner Music Group's excision of a Hall & Oates/keyboard cat YouTube collaboration.

Fake technophobes

Is being a luddite of convenience in fashion?

This person is reacting to the reaction to the news of adult stem-cell generated artificial sperm, but there are lots of knee-jerk slippery-slopists out there.

For only pennies a day,

you too can save a print journalist.

Ada Lovelace:

Important person and crime fighter.

New Old Photographs

Also, in case anyone was interested, I've started going through my photos from college and am building up albums of the best ones by theme. Check out the first one, and other photos, here.

The new album is F&M Speakers. Let me know what you think, if anything.

Check it out--Reverend Billy says so.

Ebay, but more addicting

The logical fallacy of sunk costs have always flummoxed people and is consequently used in various marketing schemes all over the world. But I've never seen something that exploits it quite as effectively as this website does. Check out an article on it here.

Looking for a job?

Steve Machell builds sand castles for a living. And not just castles... also sand turtles, sand mermaids, and sand dragons!

Though it appears he hasn't updated his website in a while, you can still see some nice shots of his artwork.

West Philly Phun map

Speaking of our fair city, my housemate/soon-to-be-roommate Joe made a great Google map of West Philadelphia sites - bookstores, restaurants, grocery stores, parks, public transportation stops, and much more. The map may be very useful to anyone moving to West Philly (you know who you are), or those of you who are just visiting us.

Plus, Joe's Google avatar is a photo of himself wearing a bow tie and being hit in the head with a fiery bolt from above. How awesome is that?

Rave

It's great being in Philadelphia. Most of my friends are here, there is always some tasty food to eat, and there is also a zoo and lots of entertainment. The best part is that it's always sunny.

Yes sir: Philadelphia is the place to be in the summer time, or any time.

Rant

Seriously, fuck Maine. It has rained nearly every day I have been here. When it does not rain, it is 90 degrees and humid, and when it does rain, it is about 55. Sometimes the rain comes out of God damned nowhere and ruins a days worth of painting. So, fuck Maine.

Energy conservation in Japan

This article is a few years old, but there are some interesting tidbits about Japan's resources and its history of energy consumption (or lack thereof).

Signs

Australian wallabies get high off eating opium poppies, then hop around creating crop circles.

Here's a collection of short stories I've enjoyed from strange horizons.

http://strangehorizons.com/2009/20090622/empire-f.shtml

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010820/toaster.shtml

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001127/transubstantiation.shtml

enjoy.

Dr. Strangelove's Voice

Another link I found from The Online Photographer, but it's another good one. Weegee, one of the first crime photographers ever, was recorded just talking about photography. He was called Weegee (from Ouija board) because he always seemed to know exactly when a crime or tragedy happened before anyone else, sometimes appearing before the police did.

He also happened to be the voice Peter Sellers based Dr. Strangelove on.

Listen here.

My favorite phrase: "Even a picture of a drunk has to be a masterpiece!"

John Hodgman speaks at TV & Radio Correspondents' Dinner, is Delightful

Frames this 14-minute talk around the real culture divide: jocks vs. nerds. Obama, President, present.

They're taking my Kodachrome away...

Today Kodak announced that they will stop making Kodachrome transparency film. It's been coming for awhile, but it's still sad to see a film with such a history end its run.

In celebration, here are some 4x5 transparencies from the WW2 era. I think that the level of detail you can see is truly mindblowing. Even the best modern digital cameras, with the possible exception of some $60,000 digital backs, can't come anywhere near this level of image quality.

If you're interested in seeing more early color pictures, the Library of Congress has thousands of photos scanned and up on Flickr. Here's an example album.

The Joker's Greatest Boner!

Perhaps one of the most unintentionally funny Batman stories ever.

Bodyscapes

Check out gallery II on this website--it's a pretty neat idea. She takes close ups of various types of cattle, turning their bodies into design elements.

Sonic 'black hole'

Light escapes it, but not sound...

Ahoy, Net pirates!

Careful about those illegal music downloads...

Stop motion

This is a pretty cool music video. Check it out.

Am I still here?

Yes, you're here.

It's a short personal essay on the author's relation to the information overload of the modern world, particularly from the Internet. The overarching point of this article - that we as a society have become too dependent on the wired world - is nothing new, but the author's observation that we use the Internet to validate our locus at any given time is interesting, and probably an oddly familiar feeling for most of us.

Plus, I just like the idea that I have an evil twin inside my head.

Online encyclopedias II

If you've ever tried to look up song lyrics online, you've probably noticed that while you can always get the information you desire (with frequent misspellings), it often takes you to the seedier sort of web page. No more. I'm shocked I didn't know about it sooner-- it came out in 2006. I'm also shocked it didn't come out sooner, but apparently there are issues associated with publishing lyrics online that the crappy sites I used to use obviously didn't worry about it.

A site that contains significantly more depth and less breadth is, of course, This Might Be a Wiki.

Legal Logic!

I stole your images and use them on my Web site. You moved them. Put them back or I'll call my lawyer.

The best excuse ever

With its very own best note to get out of class.

The sounds of Science

In the Philadelpha area next week? Can't think of anything to do?

This may interest you. From the event description:

"A three-day series of conversations, workshops, and performances exploring the intersection of music and quantum mechanics. Organized by Professors Joshua Schrier (Chemistry) and Stephon Alexander (Physics). Supported by a Mellon Arts Residency Planning Grant."

Looks like it will actually be something of an event. DJ Spooky will apparently be stopping by. Not to mention everybody's favorite computational chemistry professor, Squashie.

PS: if the above description sounded a little bizarre, this might offer something by way of explanation:

"Mathematically, quantum mechanics (QM) has many analogies with the classical wave phenomena of sound, and yet the pedagogy of QM is almost entirely visual. This series of conversations and performances will explore how to “listen to” the simple systems used to teach QM, how this can increase student comprehension, reach out to non-technical audiences, and for its own inherently aesthetic benefits. In addition, we would like to explore how this could be used to explore/comprehend our research interests in cosmology and nanoscience. This planning grant will explore directions for this work during Spring 2010, determine how this could be integrated into the current chemistry/physics courses, and find synergies with courses in other departments."

Graffiti from Pompeii

Exactly what is sounds like.

Some of the 2000-year-old vandalism is rather prosaic:

"Aufidius was here. Goodbye"

Some are fairly sweet:

"Auge loves Allotenus"

There are a few which are eerily prescient:

"O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin."

Others are just cruel:

"Epaphra, you are bald!"

And now

For the real-life Banana Grabber.

Coke vs. Pepsi

Used to think that they were both heartless corporations overcharging for a product that damages the health of consumers.

Turns out that's true, but where they have failed to differentiate their products, they have differentiated the political affiliations of their corporations: while Pepsi has angered conservatives by donating money to organizations promoting gay rights, Coke has become a corporate partner with the Creation Museum.

Adam

So I've been talking to Adam Shusterman recently, that's been fun. I think we should invite him to join us here, but I'm not sure I have that privilege. Who does and does anyone have any objections?

Stem cells == magic

Once again, it appears just slapping stem cells onto something makes it better. In this case, three people who were blind in one eye had their sight restored via a contact lens slathered with stem cells from their functional eye.

Warning about the movie in the link: contains mild to moderate eye-poking. I give it a PG-13.

Singularity == rapture for geeks

According to this Newsweek profile of Ray Kurzweil.

Gay Penguins!

Homosexual penguins rearing an adopted chick!

Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

Fascinating article on slate. Here

Important survery question

Addendum

As an addendum to the previous post about cheese rolling, here is a Cracked.com article on insane sports.

Annual cheese-rolling in England

I learned about a curious custom through one of my housemates: in Gloucester, hordes of people will charge down a steep hill in pursuit of a wheel of cheese, as part of an annual tradition dating back hundreds of years.

I like cheese, but not THAT much.

Walmart's partnership with I Can Haz Cheezburger?

If only this were true...

It's just some water being poured on your face...

Conservative talk show host changes his tune after just six seconds on the subject of waterboarding.

Junk Shop Photos

I found this neat website with old photos from strangers. Some are thoughtful. Some are interesting. Some are funny. And some are downright disturbing (see May 22's the Battle of the Bulge):

http://www.junkshopphotos.com/

You have to be rich to be poor

Apparently, poor folks don't have it so easy. Lots of things that we take for granted are a lot more difficult for people who don't have that much money--making it harder for them to pull themselves out of poverty than you would expect. Very interesting article.

We do not tolerate failure

It has been pointed out to a few folks that the MMORPG City of Heroes is giving away a fortnight worth of play for free. We are thinking about starting up a group this Sunday. Naturally, we will use our powers for evil.

Two things.

First, won't you play with us? All you need to know about character creation you can get from these wiki pages: your powers, which are class (or 'archetype') -specific. In the previous link, they are grouped by the primary and secondary of each archtype. Note that it also includes hero archetypes and prestige class-type deals. In addition, there are the pool powers which everybody can choose from when they reach a higher level.

Second, and potentially more importantly, won't you help us develop a theme? This is important.

We could be The Monsters of Alternative Rock: Conman Meloy, Michael Stab, James Russel Murder, Death Cab for Cutie, Magma White, ...
Or we could be The Confirmed Bachelors (of Arts and Sciences): Political Science as a Mastermind with mercenaries, Chemistry as a Corruptor with radiation and kinetics, Biology as Dominator with plant control, film/theater as mindless Brutes...

This is where certain members of our collective, long shunned for their terrible, terrible propensity for puns, can really shine and save the day. If the Venture Brothers have taught us anything, it is that a villain is only as good as hir pun-laden name.

EDIT for adding links, including the following to the official CoV manual.

Sharks have problems too

From your friends at Animals Have Problems Too

How Topical

Antimatter

There's a light article about it on Wired. 

Sorta neat.

Sharks? Sharks!

I hereby declare this week shark week for the blog. Post shark related things!

I assume a few of you have already seen this, but it is still jawsome!

Destroy the world!!

This is what I do at work:

http://www.sharenator.com/Pandemic_2/

We are all megalomaniacs here. Now you can really destroy the world with Swine Flu.

Mustaches of the 19th Century

For your daily mustache fix:

mustaches of the 19th century

This is what you learn about when you work in an archive.

Attn: People who use Google Chat

I seem to have accidentally deleted my contact list... somehow... so I need you, yes you, to contact me so I can put this back together again. That is all.

We're Rock Stars...

Dum! de dum da dum!

Vaccines and Autism: How Oprah is Murdering Children

So it's been established for some time that the Huffington Post missed the boat on real science. Summary: their "Wellness Editor" since 2009 has qualifications limited to a "Masters Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine" (Buster?) and a doctorate in "homeopathic medicine."

But it turns out, just about anybody can get an editorial printed. And editorials advocating junk medicine are being printed with some regularity now.

But they aren't the only ones: the problem is escalating, with Oprah beginning to promote noted anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy a blog, in what is expected to be only the first step in turning her into some sort of self-help celebrity (as she did Dr. Phil, apparently).

Other resources:

TIME interview with Jenny McCarthy

Washington Post article on vaccine-autism link (there isn't one)

Email Oprah! (Please!)

Save the asses!

Seeing as how the Neezer has brought us to the important topic of asses: consider donating to Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land. Donkeys are common beasts of burden in Israel, and are typically viewed as expendable, so they are mistreated and overworked. Sick and elderly donkeys are often left to die.

SHADH aims to change this. You can adopt a rescued donkey, or just make a small donation. At the very least, their website contains a gallery of cute asses for you to ogle.

Even Uri Geller supports SHADH! Maybe he will teach the donkeys to bend spoons with their minds.

Ass!

The cutest ass you will ever see!

Spiritual Heritage Week

"The resolution, H.RES. 397, would put Congress on record as “recognize[ing] the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures.”"

And they're all like, 'we should blur the line between church and state,' and I was all like, 'folks should sign this petition.'

Keyboard cat

Meme alert.

100 days of Barack Obama's Facebook news feed

I showed this to Babyfingers, but then I realized that because he is not a real person (i.e. not on Facebook), he wouldn't completely get it. Maybe you real people will appreciate it more.

Kitties with Kalishnikovs

Maybe this is a little immature, but I thought it was cool!

It's meowcenaries

where lolcats meet first person shooters!

Thought this crowd would appreciate it.

What you can't do with iTunes

If only this clause wasn't in here.

The four horseman of a trauma death

link

Also, it's now off the front page, but I posted a comment on the epilogue to the cthulu campaign.

Superpoop

I accidentally typed the wrong URL into my browser and stumbled upon this. I guess this individual finds pictures online and captions them. Some of them are pretty funny. Enjoy.

Tone Matrix

Too much time?

If you haven't already seen this, it will suck up a good hour or so. The horizontal dimension sets the time of the tone, the vertical dimension controls the pitch. My only complaint is that it isn't longer.

I don't know what the musical term for this is, but it's hard to make something that doesn't sound good.

Cap & Trade

I've heard some nasty things about it-- particularly involving corruption and poor regulation wherein Chinese companies will be founded for the express purpose of not producing carbon dioxide who can then sell their emissions permits-- but Paul Krugman has a well-reasoned defense of them.

I don't tend to trust economists, but he's a clever guy.

Corewar

Looks fun.

You Can't Take it With You: Epilogue

August 29th, 1918

To Misters Krukov, Shay, et al, c.o. Miskatonic University,

On behalf of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Douglas, allow me to extend thanks to you and your friends for the interest and concern shown towards two poor souls under my care.

Mr. Phillips, you may be pleased to hear, shows remarkable signs of recovery. After consulting with your Dr. Franz Hypner and our on-call staff, we took Mr. Hypner's suggestion and allowed Mr. Phillips to follow the news concerning Miskatonic University's new Baldwin Collection; the results have been astonishing! His nervous condition is remarkably subdued. I believe, in fact, that once his naturally weak constitution recovers from his dependence on alcohol, our new electrosurgical therapies may be able to finally penetrate the last of his hallucinatory false-memories and lead, one day, to his release as a changed man.

The case of Mr. Douglas is, sadly, less hopeful. His advanced age and a family history of senility play against him, and he seems to have regressed to a state of clinical imbecility. We have managed to re-train his gross motor skills, however, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel; given adequate rehabilitation, he may soon be able to feed himself. And a stroke of luck for the gentleman: a liberal organization--Друзья сука, I believe it says on their letterhead--interested in improving the quality of life of our unfortunate patients has contacted me, rather out of the blue, about Mr. Douglas specifically. They believe that, given time, he may be suited for sponsored employment, and are making arrangements to have him transferred to one of their facilities in Canada.

I must admit that overseeing the admittance and care of these two--and the curious effect of the news stories on Mr. Phillips--piqued my own interest, and I have been following the recent news regarding the Baldwin Collection and estate. The University's 'extensive renovation plan' sounds quite remarkable! I can only imagine the considerable honor your group must feel at being nominated the Head Trustees of the Collection, though I think the decision to close the peninsula to visitation until the last of those strange Waheela creatures can be tracked down is a wise one. Congratulations on the discovery of the beast, and on the slaying of the one responsible for so many unfortunate deaths, but I think visitors will feel much more secure once your hired team has declared the area safe. Such brutal maulings! Simply dreadful.

I was a little puzzled, though, at Mr. Phillips' reactions to various of the articles; he seemed much more impressed by the little note that the Baldwin Mausoleum was being personally sealed by Mr. Krukov than by the preceding plans for renovation of the manor house as a museum. His necrophobic tendencies at work, I suppose.

Again, let me thank you all for showing such interest in and concern for your ill fellows. Few of my patients are as lucky as Mr. Phillips and Mr. Douglas, to have such firm friends.

Sincerely,
Dr. Armand Spencer,
Director, Arkham Asylum

Interactive squid!

Now you, too, can have a squid friend! Build a squid, then set it free. You can visit it whenever you like, and play with it, and see what adventures it's been having.

My squid was hanging out with a penguin, and then it was searching for a lost tentacle, and after that it got in a fight with a Japanese whaler...

does this accurately describe your life?

Chart

Urban exploration

While I'm still up for that road trip, there are many local adventures to be had. Check out Infiltration for resources on journeying through forbidden places.

Architecture for armegeddon

Though the doomsday seed bank might be the most famous (and useful example), there are plenty of structures within the United States that are meant to last longer than some catastrophe and sometimes even help out the survivors.

In the spirit of the Fallout campaign, post any such structures that you are aware of. Maybe Nathan will have us stumble upon one.

Or maybe we should visit them as part of a real life campaign-- I mean road trip.

Optimize your memory

This program is called Mnemosyne. It’s basically an automated flashcard program. I find it very useful.

As it turns out, you can more efficiently memorize information if you can control how frequently you are tested on it.

You can download flash cards for certain things (i.e. learning a language), but more imporantly, you can make your own. In studying for my subject test, I just bought a chemistry GRE prep book and used that to make a card database that made it very easy for me to study every day. When you make your own cards, you can implement LaTeX to display equations within the program. In order for this to work, however, your computer needs to be able to read LaTeX formatting... the Mnemosyne website says that you should download MikTeX  if you have Windows or MacTeX  (and possibly dvipng...?) if you have a Mac. In any case, doing a Google search for Mnemosyne and LaTeX should get you the help you need.

Upcoming high school reunion

Question: Are you coming to the reunion in a couple weeks? If so, what days/events are you attending?

You can reply by commenting on this post, or you can email me if you want.

(I'm about to sign up for the reunion.)

Super Slo-mo!

Videos shot at 1000 FPS.

"The most dangerous show on earth!"

The folks at Survival Research Labs create robotic performance art. Their mechanical menagerie includes: the Shockwave Cannon, the Flame Hurricane, the Stu Walker (a 6-legged guinea-pig-powered walker… here’s to you, Megan), the Mumbly Peg Stabber (a robotic arm programmed with “stabbing, thrusting behaviors”), and more.

Legway

The steampunk version of a Segway.

Good news, everybody... they've invented a doom clock

Ever wondered just how much we have left? Hint: it is a finite number.

Horay for zero population growth.

Eww.

I especially like the question mark after "free"

Start your weekend right

Friday Link

Pirates vs...dolphins!

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/china-reports-dolphins-foiled-pirate-attack/?hp

Also, I distributed googledocs access to the Fallout Skills list; if anybody can't access it, let me know!

This looks like the best movie of last year, that never got the awards it deserved:
http://www.morrismovie.com/

Watch the trailer. Be joyous. Dance.

PG rated porn

Watch de video

The Yes Men

The Yes Men impersonate corporate criminals: ExxonMobil representatives (to deliver a keynote speech on turning human corpses into oil), the WTO (to convince businesspeople that slavery was good for developing countries), spokespeople from Dow Chemical (to claim they were going to liquidate Union Carbide to pay for cleaning up the Bhopal disaster), and more.

From the maker of American Astronaut

http://www.stingraysam.com/

I'd like my pizza with an extra slice of...ew.

My friend (Amy Wilson in this article) did some online sleuthing. I thought this was really interesting. I did not watch the videos because I didn't think my stomach would want to:


http://consumerist.com/5211428/consumerist-sleuths-track-down-offending-dominos-store#viewcomments

It's really interesting what people can do when they get together virtually. Strangely enough, it can actually be good.

mythbusters + car + rocket sled + wall

http://digg.com/d1oX2S

This is pretty awesome, though I fail to see how it might not be awesome given the above recipe.

Safety first

This advice may save your life one day.

The best part is that I can't tell wheter certain parts have a basis in physics or are complete nonsense.

On a lighter note

Seriously Amazon?

I thought you were cool.

Okay, here is a CNet story on what is going on.

If you search twitter for hashtag #amazonfail, it is pretty amazing to see all the tweets flying around (about 30-50 per second)

He can outrun you

If not now, then probably in a few years

Online encyclopedias

You might've heard of Everything2. In case you haven't... it's like Wikipedia on LSD.

Uncyclopedia, on the other hand, is Wikipedia on meth.

Don't shit your pants!

The game!

Can you get all the achievements?

Exonerated

DNA Evidence Frees Black Man Convicted Of Bear Attack

Hot New Video Game Consists Solely Of Shooting People Point-Blank In The Face

Hey Nick

We saw that movie with your friend in it. It is a New Zealand Napolean Dynamite. Your friend plays the role of Uncle Rico. Jermaine is a jerk.

Help a robot, receive bacon

POBOTbI POBOTbI robots robots people want to be friends with robots.

From the article "Know your chances" in Scientific American:

"Consider a woman who has just received a positive result from a mammogram and asks her doctor: Do I have breast cancer for sure, or what are the chances that I have the disease?

• The probability that a woman has breast cancer (prevalence) is 1 percent.
• If a woman has breast cancer, the probability that she tests positive (sensitivity) is 90 percent.
• If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability that she nonetheless tests positive (false-positive rate) is 9 percent.

What is the best answer to the patient’s query?

1. The probability that she has breast cancer is about 81 percent.
2. Out of 10 women with a positive mammogram, about nine have breast cancer.
3. Out of 10 women with a positive mammogram, about one has breast cancer.
4. The probability that she has breast cancer is about 1 percent."

If your answer was not number 3, then read this article. Seriously, I mean it.

большие пальцы цепной пилы

Fallout Game Basics

Right! We've finished up "You Can't Take it With You" and are moving on to Fallout. I still have an epilogue to write, but while I'm working on that, you guys can begin thinking about characters.

In the Cortex system, Assets and Complications cover personal advantages and disadvantages, but can also be used to construct character races, special abilities/superpowers, etc. Groups of Traits that are all meant to represent the same thing (like the combined benefits and drawbacks of being a Super Mutant or Ghoul) get lumped together and called 'Bundles.' There is no actual cost-break for using a Bundle, but it looks neater on your character sheet (rather than recording 20 different Traits), and it does have one mechanical advantage. Normally, characters can only gain 30 Trait Points by taking Complications. However, for these purposes, you DO NOT count the Complications in Bundles separately, only the overall total cost of the Bundle. Read the Traits Chapter for more details, but basically, I didn't like how GURPS worked, where if you wanted to be an elf or a dwarf or whatever you used up all your allowed points on the racial package, and then never got to personalize your character. So in Cortex you can.

I'm comfortable running the rules of the game, but I'd prefer if everybody learned enough to make their own character, for the most part; since we've played Serenity before, you probably have a fairly good idea of the basics.

Here are the rules/requirements:
1. Characters start at Recruit Level. I'm going to be messing with Advancement a bit by allowing Fallout-esque items that permanently raise abilities, skills, etc during play; there WILL be experience-based advancement, too, however.
2. We will be using a game-world-specific Skills list. Do not build your character using the default skill list from the Cortex book; I'll post the modified list here soon.
3. Characters can be bizarre, but ya'll have to work together. I'm going to let you be largely responsible for deciding, pre-game, why you are working together/how you met/etc. You may want to chat about characters while or before building yours, too. Some intra-party conflict is fine, but I'd prefer it if it didn't derail the game.
So while coming up with your charater's schtick, please keep in mind whether or not it's going to make it difficult to work with others, make it hard to roleplay, or get you killed by Brahmin-from-the-Sky.
4. There will be a 'Main Quest Line' style plot. I'll post soon what the game's startup is about, and you can keep that in mind when making characters.

And a question...what/where shall we host this game? We'll be trying to mix Skype and posting, but I think the sense was to use something other than PbPHouse because of their server problems. So; a Google website or Group? Another Blog devoted to the game? Bueller? Bueller?

No, Olive Oyl, don't do it!

You have too much to live for!

I hate people

And this is why.

A.I. + Games = EVOLVE

Two AI related game links;

First is Akinator, a version of the 20-Questions AI specifically meant for guessing the names of characters or real people you are thinking of. Plus, it learns; if it guesses wrong, it asks you to enter the name of your character, and then compares that name to a list of similar names to see if it is already in the database, etc, etc. Very cool, but slightly buggy. Can guess Minsc, Jaheira, or most other NPCs from BGII, got Garrett, Viktoria, and The Trickster from Thief, can differentiate between Star Trek captains, and a bunch of others.

The second is a site called GWAP, or Games With a Purpose; each time you play one of their games, you're educating an AI. Games include verbal associations, describing tunes, selecting 'important' things from pictures, etc. Very interesting stuff, and potentially leads to Amazon.com gift certificates.

Googling my Life Away

Question: Does Google make us smarter? Or does it make us dumber? 

You, the people, decide.

(Another related question: Facebook--yea or nay?)

Where all the children are... what?

The Onion delivers again.

Robot ant can do pelvic thrusts

You heard it here first.

This video means job security for me.

There will always be a market for people who can... you know... talk and stuff.

A Video

"It looks different on you computer monitor than on a "Tee Vee" monitor. Television."

evidence that Craig has entered the dating scene

http://www.fmylife.com/love/836792

Cthulhu

So what's been up the last couple of weeks in the Cthulhu campaign?

Last I heard Patrick almost got Chauncey killed.

Also, something about clowns?

Comment on this post if you have something to add.

We're watching a good movie right now

We just don't know it.

A tutorial in passive aggression

I received the following email from my boss this morning (names have been changed):

Hi all:

I was very excited to see that there was a plate of chicken dinner on my desk when I came in this morning.  =-O   Too bad I was in the mood for breakfast and too bad it was only remnants.  :-(

I am sure there is a story behind this and I would love to hear it! 

Joy

AI 20Q

Playing artificial intelligence 20 questions is a nifty way to kill time.

The AI's guessing capabilities can be downright uncanny. I've only tried the classic version, but the game has other flavors, too: music, movies, Star Trek, and the Simpsons, to name a few.