Archive for January, 2006
I’m Implausible!
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 31, 2006 at 9:42 am
Your score was 57 in Unbelievability!
You are your author’s imaginary friend, but you’re not really the type of character fiction writers should aim for.
You’re more than a little out of the ordinary. You might have had some really crazy experiences, or have an unusual talent or two. Maybe you were even born with a tail. Whatever it is that makes you unique, it does the job well, because there are very few people like you on this planet.
A novel with you as a character would be a guilty pleasure to read. It would be considered intellectual junk food, of course, but damn fun to read nonetheless. Even if many people didn’t want to pay actual money to read about you and your exploits, surely it would be checked out from the library at least… once every couple of months.
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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(Stolen from Chip)
(I know there’s an HTML error there, but I can’t seem to make it go away without reworking the code, and I’m too lazy.)
No More Mister Happypants
Thus spake EnnuiJanuary 30, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Opening Preludes to an Election Bid?
Thus spake SheniJanuary 29, 2006 at 11:57 am
Feelin’ Hot.
Thus spake AntropologoJanuary 26, 2006 at 3:27 pm
What does Hamas’ victory mean?
Thus spake Antropologoat 1:04 pm
Monkey Cops
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 7:15 am
This article covers a study demonstrating that cohesion in group of macaques is maintained by dominant individuals that act to keep order and diffuse conflicts:
“While they were gone, group cohesion rapidly began to disintegrate. The researchers saw cliques forming and the breakdown of social networks and contact through communal activities like playing, grooming and sitting together. The amount of violence also escalated, with no one to broker the peace.”“In our macaques, a few individuals were perceived as disproportionately powerful. These animals are recognised as being very capable of using force successfully,” says Flack. “One of the important implications is this feedback between power structure and social network structure”.
F**k Dark Matter!
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 25, 2006 at 6:37 am
iTunes U: Distance Learning Via iPod
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 24, 2006 at 8:08 am
Mooning Declared Legal (Barely)
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 7:35 am
British Blamed for Arab Separatist Violence in Iran
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 7:16 am
Toxoplasmosis Alters Personality
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 23, 2006 at 6:37 am
Robo-Protestor!
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 6:12 am
Do you have an injustice to stand against, but can’t get time off from work? Never fear, the Spanish company La Fabricadecosasbonitas (”The Factory of Pretty Things”) has just received a grant to develop 20 robotic demonstrators for the G8 Summit to be held in 2007. The company was inspiried, apparently, by US plans to deploy autonomous robots for combat. The motto of the new millenium seems to be, “If it can’t be automated, it isn’t worth not doing”. Link to the article on We-Make-Money-Not-Art, or link to the project home page if you’re down with the Español.
In other robot news, it looks like South Korea is planning to deploy robots for autonomous police patrols in five years. Link
Song Tapper
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 20, 2006 at 2:09 pm
SnackShotz: Dog Biscuit Launcher
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 12:32 pm
To those who say that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were better off than modern man, I say, did they have dog-biscuit-launching handguns? They didn’t? Well there ya go. Billed as a way to bond with your pet while fighting obesity (presumably the dog’s), this innovative little device can launch a biscuit up to 12 feet. The biscuits (sold separately) are called Discos and come in Beef, Chicken, and MightyMint flavors. All brought to you by (I’m not making this up) the Dogmatic Products Corporation.
(Thanks again to Gizmodo)
Google v. Bush
Thus spake Tychoat 8:28 am
PigeonRank: How Google Searches Work
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 7:07 am
“By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user’s results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.”
Also, for a brief look into the short-term memory of the internet-using public, check out Google Zeitgeist.
Warlock means "Oathbreaker"
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 19, 2006 at 9:13 am
O, Pioneers!
Thus spake EnnuiJanuary 18, 2006 at 11:20 am
Claim: The State of Idaho passed a resolution commending Jared and Jerusha Hess for the production of their film Napoleon Dynamite.
Status: True.
Snope it!
George Carlin’s New Rules for 2006
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 17, 2006 at 6:25 am
Taiwan Engineers Glowing Pigs
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 12, 2006 at 6:53 am
Scientists in Taiwan have created green pigs that glow when lit up in the dark. Apparently this was accomplished by gene-splicing jellyfish DNA into pig embryos:
“Taiwan is not claiming a world first. Others have bred partially fluorescent pigs before. But the researchers insist the three pigs they have produced are better.They are the only ones that are green from the inside out. Even their heart and internal organs are green, they say.
To create them, DNA from jellyfish was added to about 265 pig embryos which were implanted in eight different pigs.”
Hyperdrive?
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 11, 2006 at 7:07 am
This article on a theoretical hyperdrive/antigravity engine postulates an 8-dimensional universe, referred to as “Heim-Dröscher space”, after the originator of the theory (Heim) and the Austrian patent clerk (Dröscher)(what is it with patent clerks, anyway?) who extended the idea and worked out the ramifications for space travel. The original work arose out of an attempt to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity:
“In the early 1950s, Heim began to rewrite the equations of general relativity in a quantum framework. He drew on Einstein’s idea that the gravitational force emerges from the dimensions of space and time, but suggested that all fundamental forces, including electromagnetism, might emerge from a new, different set of dimensions. Originally he had four extra dimensions, but he discarded two of them believing that they did not produce any forces, and settled for adding a new two-dimensional “sub-space” onto Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time.”
Sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? Apparently what is causing the theory to be taken seriously is that it produces far more accurate predictions of particle mass than any other currently accepted theory. The test of this theory involves rotating an extremely intense magnetic field around the test mass. It may be a while before we have confirmation or negation of this theory, however, since currently available materials aren’t strong enough to withstand the required current density. Still, it’s exciting just to have a solid theory of faster-than light travel.
Link (stolen from Warren Ellis, who only found it first cuz he’s in Britain)
Happy 100th!
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 6:40 am
LSD pioneer Albert Hoffman turns 100 today. He had this to say about his flagship creation, among other things:
“It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis,” he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960’s and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He said LSD could be dangerous and called its distribution by Timothy Leary and others “a crime.”“It should be a controlled substance with the same status as morphine,” he said.
Biometric Flash Drive
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 10, 2006 at 1:49 pm
This 512 MB USB flash drive stores data on an encrypted partition, and can only be accessed when an authorized fingerprint is applied. Very cool. It’s almost a shame I don’t have any data sensitive enough to justify the £109.00 price tag.
The Faces of Goatse
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 12:15 pm
Check out this compilation of pictures taken of people viewing Goatse (otherwise known as goatse.cx) for the first time. This particular site, long since taken down, was for many years the veritable Mount Rushmore of the Internet, and the reactions of peoples’ faces to its particular variety of disgusting are both hilarious and eloquent. Featured: Ron Jeremy.
Link (Worksafe)
(from Boingboing)
Speaking of Origins…
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 9, 2006 at 2:15 pm
…the first Americans may have been from Australia:
“Because skulls similar to those at Lagoa Santa have been found in North and South America, Neves and Hubbe conclude that their data support a hypothesis in which two distinct populations colonized the New World: one group from southeast Asia that is morphologically similar to Australians and Melanesians, which arrived around 12,000 years ago (also via the Bering landbridge), and a second group from northeast Asia, which followed soon after and eventually gave rise to today’s Native Americans. As for the immigrants fromwith southeast Asia, they may have been replaced after the second group from Asia arrived or may even have held on until Europeans arrived on the continent, Neves says.”
New Protein May Relieve Depression
Thus spake Evil Overloadat 11:55 am
Which route did your ancestors take?
Thus spake Joanneat 6:07 am
DeLay Begins to Accept That He’s Fucked
Thus spake SheniJanuary 8, 2006 at 10:23 am
In what seems to be an acknowledgement of the political situation that everyone who’s been paying attention for the last couple of months has already accepted, Tom DeLay has decided that he’s not going to continue to pursue the resumption of his former position of House Majority Leader. Good job Tom. And it seems that the rest of your party agrees, seeing as how they initiated serious efforts to replace you a couple of days before you made your announcement.
It seems that DeLay is about to go down, as are several other members of the Congress, as a result of their dirty dealings with Jack Abramoff. But you have to wonder exactly what’s going on here? Are we actually cleaning house? I don’t know about you, but the revelations concerning widespread corruption surrounding Abramoff and many of his associates didn’t really come as much of a surprise to me. In fact, I (and assume most of the rest of my generation) assumed that this was basically the modus operandi in Washington. It’s the nature of the beast. I operate under the assumption that there’s a basic level of corruption inherent in modern politics (possibly all politics) and that you’ve got to have competing forces at that high level of office in order to ensure that no corruption is left unchecked by another.
So why the intense level of indignity surrounding Abramoff? Well, there’s the simple fact that our nation’s leaders have to act outraged at the slightest hint of impropriety, in an effort to hide the dirt on their own hands. But beyond that, I speculate that there is an added measure of outrage due the brazenness of it all. It appears that Abramoff had no allegiances whatsoever. He charged both sides of the fence in a debate and played them against each other. And then there’s the ugliness. The sloppiness. When I was a kid, I would get mad at my little sister when she got caught disobeying my parents, because she did it so stupidly. Her stupid missteps made it more difficult for me to get away with the same things. To this day, I wish she would tighten up her game. And that’s what I think is going on in Washington. There will be a couple of scapegoats. Hands will be slapped. Red-faced, self-righteous speeches will be made. And legislation will be passed. But ultimately, I doubt much will be done to actually change the level of corruption in Congress. This is just a call for them to tighten up their game.
Google Steps Up Bid to Take Over the World
Thus spake Sheniat 10:10 am
Which Linux Is Right For Me?
Thus spake Evil OverloadJanuary 6, 2006 at 8:54 am
