Metaphysicist

Looks like mind reading machines will be a reality sooner rather than later.
Where will the soul hide once we have the brain mapped?

Until this experiment, which was reported last month in Current Biology, nobody had ever tried to take a picture of free will. One reason is that fMRI is too crude to distinguish one abstract choice from another. It can only show which parts of the brain are demanding blood oxygen. That's too coarse to distinguish the configuration of cells that signifies addition from the configuration that signifies subtraction. So, Haynes used software to help the computer recognize complex patterns in the data. To dissect human thought, the computer had to emulate it.

I once had a telling argument with TJIC about neurobiology and the soul. He’s a firm believer in the latter, so I kept pushing his understanding of the boundary between which decisions were based on neurology and which were "free will" and therefore subject to "sin". It’s completely demonstrable that you can injure a brain and affect behavior, even predictably. If the brain, an analog computer subject to bugginess, can adversely affect consciousness, where does the soul and free will begin and end?

It was an interesting argument and he created a model which was neither biblical nor scientific but he used to highlight the difference. He analogized the brain as a radio and the soul a broadcast station in heaven which sent signals to the brain about decisions. In this model, neurological damage detuned the radio so the reception was imperfect and the brain did things the "soul" didn't intend. It's an elaborate, fascinating model without a shred of doctrinal or scientific evidence to support it, but I suspect if mind-reading machines come into widespread use you'll see some version of this to explain the soul, continuing to tuck the mystery away in the gaps. I did have an opportunity to ask a (non-catholic)priest about this particular model, he pointed out that it causes all sorts of problems around redemption and sin and isn’t a “remotely defensible position”. His position was along the lines that “God knows what’s actually going on” and makes the right decisions about the disposition of souls.

Personally, I think Occum’s Razor still holds.

Something Familiar About That Ship

Saw the first panel of this and thought... could it be....??? !!!!

The greatest video game ever made! Really!

I am *dancing* with the *sauce*!

The Mullah at Home

Andrew Sullivan does a good job on unpacking Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home:The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. It is terrifying, at least to those of us who believe that America is about invidualism and the freedom of the marketplace of ideas.

Read the full review, it seems pretty damning and, unfortunately, consistent with other reviews from the Right I have read on the same book. I was kind of hoping AS was being hysterical, but it seems he's on the money.

What is that path? At its core is a deepening rejection of cultural and philosophical modernity. D'Souza believes that the defining new distinction in American politics is no longer between the economic right and the economic left. The size of government and its role as a guardian of the public welfare are increasingly dead issues, or issues where no vital energy crackles. D'Souza rightly holds that the real divide in the new century is between authority and autonomy, between faith-based politics and individual freedom. And in this struggle at the level of first principles, D'Souza chooses his own side. He is at war with the modern West. If forced to choose between a theocratic order that upheld traditional morality and a secular order that saw such morality marginalized, D'Souza is with the former. He puts it more graphically himself: "Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I'd have to confess that I'm closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap."

Micheal Moore is the Right's boogy man in the same way that Ann Coulter is the Left's, so double props to DD for this construction.

Also,
One has to admire at least the frankness with which this secessionist strategy for conservatism is laid out. "How can we use the war on terror to win the culture war?" D'Souza asks in a final chapter called "Battle Plan for the Right." Notice here that defeating the forces of Islamist terror is merely instrumental to the deeper struggle to defeat modern individualism and autonomy. The idea of a common American commitment to the Constitution's guarantees of individual freedom and autonomy is secondary to the global battle for the "external moral order." Loyalty is not to country, but to a worldwide theoconservative ideology. Like the Marxists of old, the theoconservatives see their movement increasingly as global, resting on eternal truths, and not compatible with the "liberal morality" of their autonomous bourgeois fellow Westerners.

No wonder the libertarians on the Right are upset with their party. I certainly am.

"We Can't Assume What We Don't Believe"

This is well worth a read and a think

Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years

(via) and News Blog and PZ Meyers
The thing to do here is bold the ones you've read and italicize the one's you started but never finished. Green are, IMHO, extra awesome.

It can't be a very good list though, where's Eragon?

The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Seems I have some reading to do...

Get This Message to Obi Wan! Hurry!

The USPS is rolling out a line of R2D2 mailboxes in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars -- these are really amazingly cool, they just work really well. It's the Anthony Trollope/George Lucas mashup I've been waiting for all my life! Link (via OhGizmo)

(via)

True, that

about cats.

Actaully, It Could Be Any One of the Three

You'll die from a Heart Attack during Sex.

Your a lover not a fighter but sadly, in the act of making love your heart will stop. But what a way to go.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Seems like I am at a Triple Point, but I'll take what I can get.

"The Secret"

The latest in New Age religious scams, the Secret!


When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?"

Why Gods Exist for Some, but Not Others

I have, like many folks, often wondered about the evolutionary basis for a belief in gods. Human brains seem to have coded for this rather strongly, overwriting all kinds of higher reasoning and leading to kinds of logic that, while tolerated for god arguments, would never be tolerated for any other kind, e.g. prove god doesn't exist.

Also:
Religion seemed to use up physical and mental resources without an obvious benefit for survival. Why, he wondered, was religion so pervasive, when it was something that seemed so costly from an evolutionary point of view?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

Long article in the NYT, worth a read.

Department of If You Keep Making Faces, It Will Stick That Way

From the Wiki entry on Yahoo Serious:

Prior to making "Young Einstein," Yahoo Serious officially changed his name to garner publicity for the film. After the success of the movie, he attempted to change his name back to his given name, however, Australian law only allows one name change in a person's lifetime. As a result, Yahoo Serious is stuck with this name for life.

Science porn!

I had seen the photo last year, but of course PZ has *all* the salacious details!

Imaging was first done in a 1.5 Tesla Philips magnet system (Gyroscan S15) and later in a 1.5 Tesla magnet system from Siemens Vision. To increase the space in the tube, the table was removed: the internal diameter of the tube is then 50 cm. The participants were asked to lie with pelvises near the marked centre of the tube and not to move during imaging. After a preview, 10 mm thick sagittal images were taken with a half-Fourier acquisition single shot turbo SE T2 weighted pulse sequence (HASTE). The echo time was 64 ms, with a repetition time of 4.4 ms. With this fast acquisition technique, 11 slices of relatively good quality were obtained within 14 seconds.

I.. I may need a moment..

Something Said Well

There is a kernal of truth in this, and it makes at least one point I tried to make recently in a debate with a reader in my comments section:
(via)

I would suggest that it is not the philosophy of Christ's teachings that is the source of the friction, it is the institutional practices of the religion He never wished to found. One can indeed be a Christian and at the same time not be a Christian in the formal, institutionalized sense (and certainly not a "Christianist", a term I have great fondness for). One can follow the teachings of Christ in the everyday routine and still believe that there was no Resurrection. His teachings are universal. It is far more important to me that I attempt in my own fallible way to follow His (and I capitalize out of respect for others, a most Christian attitude) teachings than it is to believe in His divinity.

I truly believe, and of course I may be completely wrong, wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last, that daily interaction with others, whether they be individuals or nations, in accordance with Christ's teachings, has a more positive and reaching effect. The debate should not be science vs. religion; it should be science vs. philosophy, and in that there should be no discord. Religion as philosophy, science and rational thought can always live comfortably together. One must simply decide whether the teachings or the institutions are more important.

I agree with parts of this, i.e. while I don't believe in god or in the divinity of christ, I do think the philosophical message underpinning the stories about Jesus are generally worthwhile and quite revolutionary. It has always surprised me that his followers are quick to "yeah, yeah" the message and then tear right into rational thought.

Surprise is the wrong word. Disappoint is closer to the mark.

All that said, there was one comment in the Harris/Sullivan debate that rang true and I keep rethinking it. One of them (SH I think) said that the difference between believers and non-believers was that non-believers were more comfortable with uncertainty. This is I think mostly true, or at least embeds a true concept. I'm trying to decide if it's completely true, or if non-believers simply couch their uncertainties in the process of science while believers hedge theirs with the authority of their clerics and holy books. It would explain, for example, while religionists constantly attack folks like Darwin, Copernicus etc. without really coping to the fact that science admits its knowledge is incomplete. Religious knowledge, in this model is complete and handed down through authority or revealed by the gods. it does explain why the extremists get so worried and why their attacks are seemingly so off target (at least to non-believers). I'm comfortable not knowing how the universe and reality got started in part because I know that eventually, if the process of science goes on long enough, the answer will pop out. I may be unfortunate in that I live in a time when the answer is not known, but that's just my bad luck. I throw my little portion of science on the pile and hope it helps.

I need to think about this more, but I think it's essentially correct for a large segment of the religious population. I have to think of a way to test this.

Supreme Court Gives Gore’s Oscar to Bush

Stunning Reversal for Former Veep

Just days after former Vice President Al Gore received an Academy Award for his global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the United States Supreme Court handed Mr. Gore a stunning reversal, stripping him of his Oscar and awarding it to President George W. Bush instead. For Mr. Gore, who basked in the adulation of his Hollywood audience Sunday night, the high court’s decision to give his Oscar to President Bush was a cruel twist of fate, to say the least. But in a 5-4 decision handed down Tuesday morning, the justices made it clear that they had taken the unprecedented step of stripping Mr. Gore of his Oscar because President Bush deserved it more. “It is true that Al Gore has done a lot of talking about global warming,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority. “But President Bush has actually helped create global warming.”

In another setback for the former vice president, a group of scientists meeting in Oslo, Norway today said that Mr. Gore was growing at an unsustainable rate. “The polar ice caps may be shrinking, but Al Gore is clearly expanding,” said Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke of the University of Tokyo. The scientists concluded that if Mr. Gore continues to expand at his current rate, he could cause the earth to spin off its axis by 2010, sending it hurtling into the sun. “Here’s an inconvenient truth,” Dr. Kyosuke added. “Al’s got to stay away from those carbs.” Elsewhere, after foreigners received a record number of Academy Award nominations, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs proposed building a 12-foot high fence around the Kodak Theater.

via

If One Hand is on the Cell Phone...

Catholics taking the fun out of everything(via Slate):

North America's first cell-phone porn service surrendered to a Catholic boycott. Last month, Canada's second-biggest telecom firm, Telus, began offering downloadable nude photos and videos. A week ago, the archbishop of Vancouver urged Catholics to boycott the company; three days later, Telus gave up and said it would offer porn only through cable TV. Company's spins: 1) The porn was only soft-core. 2) We imposed an age limit. 3) We offered it as a public service, to help porn seekers avoid malware. Archbishop's spin: The spread of porn technology preys on addicts and their victims. Cynical view: Thank God we're keeping porn off 1-inch screens so people will have to keep watching it on 30-inch screens. Twist: The archbishop issued his boycott call through a podcast ($). (For a previous update on pay-per-view porn, click here. For porn HDTV, click here. For virtual-sex technology, click here. For live, on-demand sex, click here. For Human Nature's take on prosecuting cybersex, click here.)

And the Jews are into it as well

Almost Made it Past the First Sentence

before I burst out laughing at the "scare quotes"

What strikes you as being some thoughts that people would have if--in the short space of a few weeks--the universally held conviction that the Earth rotates on an "axis" daily and orbits the sun annually was exposed as an unscientific deception?

These folks are totally serious. Damn Copernicus for the money-grubbing, anti-religious corporate shill he is!

Actually, there are a few gems in here:
That bottom line is that the negative results of the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiments conducted in Europe and the U.S. in the 1880’s consistently showed no orbital motion of the Earth around the sun. No motion. Period

Moreover, by threatening the Copernican Paradigm, i.e., the very foundation--the raison d' etre--of this successful transmutation, these experiments contained the deadly potential of thwarting the rooting process of Darwinism, Marxism, Freudianism, Einsteinism, and (later) Saganism.

"Saganism" Oh Uncle Carl! How could you!

Let's see...
Scare quotes? Check!
Quotes bible passages as facts? Check!
Claims Grand Conspiracy(tm) to hide the truth? Check!
Colorful fonts and psuedo-random size changes? Check!

Geocentrism could spring from the same fertile imagination as ... Time Cube!

Edit: This was also pretty good:
As physicist Wal Thornhill (et al) agree: “Electromagnetic forces are infinitely more powerful than gravity…” (HERE, p. 4). As we know, a child can test this statement with a plain magnet or an electromagnet and a coin on the ground. Gravity holds the coin on the ground, but pass the magnet over it at some appropriate height and….

nothing happens! Coins are non-magnetic. Well, technically, the ones with silver in them are slightly paramagnetic.

I shouldn't do this, i.e. make fun of a person with sincerely held beliefs and deeply embedded emotional problems. I shouldn't but, as my friends will tell you, I am evil and it comes with the territory. And it's interesting!

Conservapedia: I Still Cant Tell!

I was drifting into the camp that Conservapedia was a parody site until I read this entry:

Some have criticized gravity, reminding us that it is only a theory, and that no scientist has ever seen a graviton or a space curve. Furthermore, experiments done by NASA prove that the Moon is receding (moving further away) from the Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, directly contradicting the theory that masses attract one another[1]. Indeed, astronomers can observe that all stars in the universe are moving away from one another. The considerable disagreement between scientists about the theory of gravity suggests that, like evolution, the theory will eventually be replaced with a model which acknowledges God as the source of all things, the Prime Mover, and the only real fundamental force in the universe.

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html

The moon is, in fact, moving away from the earth, but it's entirely due to the redistribution of angular momentum in the earth-moon system due to tidal fricition. Quite provable from first principles.
This is a sad entry, it makes baby Newton cry.

With a Name Like Conservapedia...

... it's got to be fair and balanced, right? Mucho gusto! (here)

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

Bias?? In Wiki? Like what?

For example, even though most Americans (and probably most of the world) reject the theory of evolution, Wikipedia editors commenting on the topic are nearly 100% pro-evolution.

Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English speaking users are American.

Wikipedia claims about 1.5 million articles, but what it does not say is that a large number of those articles have zero educational value.

Wikipedia has many entries on mathematical concepts, but lacks any entry on the basic concept of an elementary proof. Elementary proofs require a rigor lacking in many mathematical claims promoted on Wikipedia.

So it's un-American, un-educational and contains math.

Egad!

(via)

"You Could Shoot Things From Orbit WIth This Thing!"

In defeat, I am making good on my promise to buy my son a gun. Given the nature of the transaction, he can kind of get any gun he wants. Today, he showed me his choice.

Misread

I thought it said "It's me and Jay Pinkerton on Bloggingheads.TV! "

cool!

but it's really "It's me and Jim Pinkerton on Bloggingheads.TV! "

FTL. I think my version would have been more interesting.

The Circle of Life is Complete

Red Hat Linux has finally completed the slow transformation into Windows 98.
Here


After thirteen years as a loyal Red Hat and Fedora user, I reached my limit today, when an attempt to upgrade one (1) package pitched me into a four-hour marathon of dependency chasing, at the end of which an attempt to get around a trivial file conflict rendered my system unusable.

The proximate causes of this failure were (1) incompetent repository maintenance, making any nontrivial upgrade certain to founder on a failed dependency, and (2) the fact that rpm is not statically linked -- so it's possible to inadvertently remove a shared library it depends on and be unrecoverably screwed. But the underlying problems run much deeper.

Over the last five years, I've watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what was at one time a near-unassailable lead in technical prowess, market share and community prestige. The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels. They have included, but were not limited to:
Chronic governance problems.
Persistent failure to maintain key repositories in a sane, consistent state from which upgrades might actually be possible.
A murky, poorly-documented, over-complex submission process.
Allowing RPM development to drift and stagnate -- then adding another layer of complexity, bugs, and wretched performance with yum.
Effectively abandoning the struggle for desktop market share.
Failure to address the problem of proprietary multimedia formats with any attitude other than blank denial.

There are all the problems that linux adherents criticize about Windows (and they are, for the most part, true when they say them). All complex projects eventually grind to stagnation unless interjected with competition and market forces (space shuttle anyone?) Linux has been in this phase for awhile. I expect the ad hominem attacks on Eric to begin forthwith.

The Vanguard League Poster

My SG had our avatars done up in Alex Ross comic book style. We're pretty thrilled with the whole thing.

Larger version here (although this is only the first draft). Close up here.

This is mostly done in Bryce and Poser, btw, with a great deal of Photoshop post rendering skill. The artist, Doug Shuler, is fantastic and a player on our server.

An Excellent Poem

And the physics works!
here

They Must Not Take The Precious!

Fox News seems to be going through a greiving process around the loss of Congress to the Dems and the Presidents toxic popularity. That makes sense. The only question I have is, does this represent "Bargining" or are they still back in "Denial"?

24 And Torture

Geoff and I are having a debate about the dipiction of torture on one of his favorite shows "24". I say the show is de-sensitizing people to the use of torture by showing it as always effective in a tight situation (basically the way the president sells it). I point out that when the US tortures or detains folks on a terrorism charge, they hold them for years, long after any potential information would be useless.

Andrew Sullivan as an interesting view here.

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2006 Winners

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
...

It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream.
...

It was a dreary Monday in September when Constable Lightspeed came across the rotting corpse that resembled one of those zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller," except that it was lying down and not performing the electric slide.
...

It had been a dark and stormy night, but as dawn began to light up the eastern sky, to the west the heavens suddenly cleared, unveiling a pale harvest moon that reposed gently atop the distant mesa like a pumpkin on a toilet with the lid down.
...


The rest are here.

Speaking of Which

This struck me as an excellent piece of snark. I might like having the Dems in power for a while if this is their attitude:

Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) has an idea for Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice: Have the State Department hire all those gay linguists booted from military service. In fact, hire a whole platoon of lesbians!Yesterday, during hearings on the State Department's 2008 budget request, Ackerman noted that Secretary Rice repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting qualified language experts to work in the agency. Remembering that the armed forces have fired more than 300 language experts (including at least 55 fluent in Arabic), Ackerman wondered, "Can we marry up those two — or maybe that's the wrong word — can we have some kind of union of those two issues?"

"Well, it seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages — Farsi and Arabic, etc.," Ackerman said. "For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists, but they're very brave with the terrorists. ... If the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they'd get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad."

Closing a Loophole

I’ve had the gay marriage debate with a number of people who, while supportive of the theory, try to find ways out of actually supporting it, largely due to religious reasons. Personally, I think it’s fine to object to an idea based on religious reasons, just be honest about. Disingenuous libertarians have posed their position as “I’m for equal rights for everyone, but I don’t think the state should be in the marriage business at all. Therefore I wont support gay marriage because, you know, more government”. This is wrong on a number of levels both morally and logically. What they’re really saying is, “I don’t support this, so I will hedge by making my support contingent on something very unlikely, the end of heterosexual marriage. That way I don’t look like a bigot, but don’t have to expose my actual opinions”. It seems however that bluff is going to be called:

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.
The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.

I completely and 100% support this effort, to the extent I am writing a generous check.
Look son! All the money your army scholarship will save me is going to a good purpose! to Freedom!!!

It will be interesting to see how people make a rational argument against this that can't be turned around and be for gay marriage.

Getting off the Gold Standard

The Almighty Dollar isn't back by gold anymore, in fact no currency is. There was a time when you could take a dollar bill to a bank and (in theory anyway) get $1 worth of gold for it. When it was decided to go off the gold standard, it was a Big Deal. The government created the fiction that it was still backing the dollar with gold, but in reality you dollar is backed merely by the credit of the US Government, with other currencies back the same way. This is all fine except when it goes wrong and you get hyperinflation spirals etc., but even there it's possible to dump value into other tangible assets for transport to other more stable countries. The upshot of the whole program as been a complex combination of lending, credit, inflation, recession and innovation that has propelled the world economy forward for most of a century.

I've always wondered though, "how much gold is there really?" which is another way of asking, "how much higher is the ceiling now than if we stayed on the gold standard?"

I ran across this today:
Finally, global gold mine production is between 2,500 to 3,000 tons per year and about 155,000 tons of gold would have been mined as of 2006, with a total value of $3.2 trillion at June 2006 prices. Underground an estimated 50,000 ton is left and booked as “reserves” on the balance sheets of mining companies.

For reference, the proposed US Government Budget for 2008 is $2.9 trillion.

Neat! :)

[As an aside, I don't really know how the anarchocapitalists tackle this problem. Anarchocapitalism seems to be gold standard type of economy, although in theory it could be backed by any asset. I should find out, but without the concept of a central bank, I think it isn't possible to pull off this fiction. I still think the biggest mistake Bremmer made in Iraq was not getting the central bank back up in 30 days.]

Credit Derivatives

I'm working on an interesting project at the moment, part of which involves designing an art-backed credit security. The basic idea is to take a bundle of a slow, illiquid asset, e.g. art, and turn it into a credit derivative that can be traded on an exchange. In the process I have learned some interesting things:

1) It’s quite possible to build a stable index for art
2) It turns out art naturally falls into a set of stable asset classes
3) It turns out that the value of sub-classes of assets, e.g. old masters, post-modernists etc. are surprisingly well correlated
4) Most interestingly: these asset classes have long term performance statistics which are different from either stocks or bonds in terms of market index correlation.

It’s #4 there that makes this a very interesting assignment. Some days, my job doesn’t completely suck.

Dawn Breaks Over Marblehead

oooohhhhhhhh! I get it! The Onion Editorial Cartoon is also parody!

I was wondering why "this guy really likes crying Statues of Liberty"

Sometimes I am a wee bit slow.

Andrew Sullivan Concedes Defeat

If no evidence can change your mind, no argument assail your logic, you've left the realm where reason can aid you and you're flying on blind faith.

Which was, actually the whole point.

Here
So when I am asked to justify this belief, as you reasonably do, I am at a loss. At this layer of faith, the first critical layer, the layer that includes all religious people and many who call themselves spiritual rather than religious, I can offer no justification as such. I have just never experienced the ordeal of consciousness without it. It is the air I have always breathed. I meet atheists and am as baffled at their lack of faith - at this level - as you are at my attachment to it. When people ask me how I came to choose this faith, I can only say it chose me. I have no ability to stop believing. Crises in my life - death of loved ones, diagnosis with a fatal illness, emotional loss - have never shaken this faith. In fact, they have all strengthened it. I know of no "proof" that could dissuade me of this, since no "proof" ever persuaded me of it.

Faith is a very human thing, and every single person has faith in something (or someone). It's not a rational thing, but an emotional one. I have, in general, no problem with people having faith in things. It's when you start trying to rope reason in to "justify" faith that I step off the bus. Reason is ultimately a tool of proof, of habeus corpus, or finding what's wrong and fixing it. No matter how elaborate the argument, convoluted the logic, or loud the proponant, the existance of god cannot be justifed by reason without evidence. And, as any preacher will tell you, if you only believe because of evidence, it isn't faith.

"Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen, Yet Believe" John 20:19-31*

*this is also what god said to me during my first NDE when I was a kid.

Death and Taxes

Excellent visual graphic for the US budget, 2007.

Awesome, except that it's real money.

An Ad from the '80s

What's going on in this picture? Cyndi Lauper video? Bangels re-union? Soft-core episode of Family Ties?

...

Windows ad?

Yes, I'm using wawa-wa-windows ... 386!

It's long, and normal until about 7:10. Then crack addicited monkeys take the directors chair and it goes right through the window. The attractive young man from accounting gets more than the Lotus 1-2-3 he was expecting.

amazing!

And what's up with the freakin' space shuttle???

A Sentence I Heard Today

"unbaptized baby is *not* the secret ingredient in McRib"

Cat on Fire

From Slate:

Hon. Loretta Sanchez has quit the House Hispanic Caucus, claiming its chairman called her a "whore." A shocking affront to Congressional dignity! ... Wait. ... Loretta Sanchez ... Loretta Sanchez ... wasn't she the distinguished lawmaker who sent out a Christmas card showing her ... er, cat on fire? I think she was! ... P.S.: Wonkette is on the case, sort of. But instead of the scandalous flaming "cat" card they chose one with a modest surfing theme!

lolerskates!

Also above that is a gem of bad "if you can't prove it isn't false, it must be true " logic.

Baby Chloroform

Julie Aigner-Clark responds to Timothy Noah's piece which basically points out that Baby Einstien is a bunch of crap and, well.. opens herself to even more of a trouncing.

She got to spend time on the stage with the president, being hailed as "hero" in the same class as a marine or a guy who threw himself under a subway train to save someone. If I were her, I'd have quit while I was ahead.

Does Math actually Exist?

This is kind of an interesting question, especially when you think the answer might be "no".
Let me be more specific about the question I am asking since, obviously, a lot of folks fail math and if you can fail at it, it must exist. What I mean is, does mathematics have an existence independent of the existence of humans or is it like the economy and merely a construct of the human mind for dealing with something else we cannot currently comprehend? Or is it like music? Music doesn't exist outside of humans, yet there is a lot of sound in nature.

Another way to think about is, “Is mathematics invented or discovered?”

If cats became sentient, tool using, technology using creatures, would they have the same mathematics as humans, or some completely different metaphor for dealing with that aspect of nature? (likely it would involving burying things).

Mathematics is certainly descriptive of nature, but is it actually part of it?

An interesting view here on the “no” possibility. Also, this is interesting.

"The only mathematics that we know is the mathematics that our brain allows us to know," Dr. Lakoff said in San Francisco last month at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Consequently, he says, any question of math's being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is. "Mathematics may or may not be out there in the world, but there's no way that we scientifically could possibly tell," Dr. Lakoff claims. Math succeeds in science, Drs. Lakoff and Nunez argue in their book, only because scientists force it to. "All the 'fitting' between mathematics and the regularities of the physical world is done within the minds of physicists who comprehend both," they write. "The mathematics is in the mind of the mathematically trained observer, not in the regularities of the physical universe."

Conservative Principles

I have wondered in recent times what the term "conservative principles" means. I hear it used by politicians all the time, but the ones who use it are also the ones expanding the government, engaging in nation building and rolling back civil liberties. Not thing which are encompassed by my understanding the tern conservative. I've been having a Montoya Moment where someone says to me, "I dont think that word means what you think it means".

Glenn Greenwald though, in his usual way, defines it for me in a way I now understand when I hear it:

One of the principal flaws of Sullivan's book is that it speaks of "political conservatism" in a way that exists only in the abstract but never in reality. The fabled Goldwater/Reagan small-government "conservatism of doubt" which Sullivan hails -- like the purified, magnanimous form of Communism -- exists, for better or worse, only in myth.While it is true that Bush has presided over extraordinary growth in federal spending, so did Reagan. Though Bush's deficit spending exceeds that of Reagan's, it does so only by degree, not level. The pornography-obsessed Ed Meese and the utter lawlessness of the Iran-contra scandal were merely the Reagan precursors to the Bush excesses which Sullivan finds so "anti-conservative." The Bush presidency is an extension, an outgrowth, of the roots of political conservatism in this country, not a betrayal of them.All of the attributes which have made the Bush presidency so disastrous are not in conflict with political conservatism as it exists in reality. Those attributes -- vast expansions of federal power to implement moralistic agendas and to perpetuate political power, along with authoritarian faith in the Leader -- are not violations of "conservative principles." Those have become the defining attributes of the Conservative Movement in this country.

Well done.

We now return you to our usual, amusing program.

Romantic Drama Equation

It's a Laffer Curve!

We Used to Call it Republican Government

Remember the War on Drugs where the government could sell your house for being accused of dealing narcotics? Or Rudy Gulliani's unconstitutional seizure of cares in NYC?
Well,according to these guys, they were just getting warmed up for the real hiest!

Betrayed by the Brain

As I have mentioned before, the human brain is an engine for believing things. All human brains, even the most rational sketpic.

Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.
These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.
The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling.

In my humble opinion, this makes the technical and scientific achievements of the past 10,000 years all the more remarkable. Rationality despite the fact that the human brain is fundementally irrational.

Sam Harris Responds

I think Andrew Sullivan is in over his head with Sam Harris. He demolishes 2 big pro-religion/pro-god arguments fairly quickly. The first is one of the oldest: if science can't tell me what happens after death, it must be god.

Contrary to your assertion, I have not made any claims about there being a "nothingness at the end of our mortal lives." The truth is, I don't know what happens after death. Is it dogmatic for me to doubt that you and the pope do? What reason have you given me to believe that you know that "something" happens after death, or that your something is more probable than the Muslim something, the Hindu something, or the Buddhist something? The question of what happens after death (if anything) is a question about the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. It is true that many atheists are convinced that we know what this relationship is, and that it is one of absolute dependence of the one upon the other. Those who have read the last chapters of The End of Faith know that I am not convinced of this. While I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the brain (as I am finishing my doctorate in neuroscience), I do not think that the utter reducibility of consciousness to matter has been established. It may be that the very concepts of mind and matter are fundamentally misleading us. But this doesn't entitle religious people to imagine that all their crazy ideas about miraculous books, virgin births, and saviors ushering in the end of the world are remotely plausible.

The second is the one I didn't want to make with Nick, in part because it's kind of mean and once made , the other side usually goes for shouts of bigotry rather than answer it. The idea is, basically, any logical argument you make for god can also be made for the devil. It's impossible to construct a reasonable argument for one which precludes the other. You can then extend that to polytheism, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Arguments for their existance are essentially the same as the argument for god. In fact the Catholic church has made exactly this extention to extend divinity to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mary and a bunch of other gods and demi-gods they call saints. It's a surprisingly polytheistic religion, all ased on the extention that if one god exists and you can prove he doesn't, other could exist too.

Needless to say, your attempt to pull theism up by its bootstraps ("since God is definitionally the Creator of such a universe; and the meaning of the universe cannot be in conflict with its Creator") could be used to justify almost any metaphysical assertion. "The Flying Spaghetti Monster who created the universe" is also "definitionally" the Creator of the universe; this doesn't mean that he exists, or that the universe had a Creator at all. Many other chains of pious reasoning could be cashed-out in the same way: "Satan is the Tempter; I find that I am tempted on a hourly basis to eat ice cream and have sex with my neighbor's wife; ergo, Satan exists." Or what if I suggested that what we know about the brain renders the idea of a human soul rather implausible, and one your brethren countered: "The immortal soul governs all the activity in a person's brain; I have no fear about what neuroscience will tell me about the brain, because the soul is definitionally the brain's operator." Would this strike you as an argument for the existence of souls? Granted, there are still many gaps in neuroscience into which a soul might still be inserted, just as there are gaps in our understanding of the cosmos into which the faithful eagerly insert God, but such maneuvers are utterly without intellectual merit. You can insert almost anything "definitionally" into those gaps. The Muslims have inserted Allah, and the Qur'an is His perfect word. The Hindus have inserted Gods of every color and flavor. Why don't these efforts persuade you?

All in all, Sam's doing well and, I think, Andrew's rather weak argument boils down to, "The truth will prove me right, you'll see. Besides people like religion so it must be true." I may be being unfair to AS though, so we'll see how he responds.

EDIT: Andrew responds here
An interesting approach, pointing out that there are kinds of truth beyond the emperical. That is certainly correct, for example, one cannot prove emperically that something is beautiful. However, in this context, what he's done is change the underlying framework of the argument, i.e. does god exist. If gods exist, they must exist within the physical confines of the universe, and hence, should be detectable. AS has changed the debate to to say god exists as a subjective reality rather than an objective one, and hence may not be subjected to the standards of emperical evidence. This is a sly bit of rhetorical slight-of-hand which pretty much ends the debate. From this point, you can claim almost anything since you've put it beyond the test of objective reality. We'll see how Sam responds, but I think Andrew has basically conceeded that god cant be objectively proven to exist and is attempting to bridge to a different set of criteria.

Cut to the Quick

Colbert gets it right:

Stephen Colbert: What made [Tuesday's State of the Union speech] so groundbreaking, I think, was all the new stuff we've never heard from the president before...like a domestic agenda. Take his proposal to fix the whole health care mess with the only proven cure-all: tax breaks...

Bush clip: And for the millions of Americans with no health insurance at all, this deduction would help put a basic private health insurance plan within reach.

Colbert: It's so simple. Most people who couldn’t afford health insurance also are too poor to owe taxes. But...if you give them a deduction from their taxes they don’t owe, they can use the money they're not getting back from what they haven't given to buy the health care they can't afford.

It might be true...

It might work, a friend of mine and I once snuck his underage girlfriend into a casino using this same trick.

> Garda - a classic
>
> From the State where drink driving is considered a sport, comes a
> true story from Carrick-on-Suir Ireland.
>
>
> Recently a routine Gardai patrol parked outside a local neighbourhood
> tavern. Late in the evening the Garda noticed a man leaving the bar
> so intoxicated that he could barely walk.
>
>
> The man stumbled around the car park for a few minutes, with the
> Garda quietly observing.
>
>
> After what seemed an eternity and trying his keys on five vehicles,
> the man managed to find his car which he fell into. He was there
> for a few
> minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off.
>
>
> Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on
> and off (it was a fine dry night), flicked the indicators on, then
> off,
> tooted the horn and then switched on the lights.
>
>
> He moved the vehicle forward a few cm, reversed a little and then
> remained stationary for a few more minutes as some more vehicles left.
>
>
> At last he pulled out of the car park and started to drive slowly
> down the road.
>
>
> The Garda, having patiently waited all this time, now started up the
> patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man
> over and
> carried out a Breathalyzer test.
>
>
> To his amazement the Breathalyzer indicated no evidence of the man
> having consumed alcohol at all!
>
>
> Dumbfounded, the Garda said "I'll have to ask you to accompany me to
> the Police station this Breathalyzer equipment must be broken."
>
>
> "I doubt it," said the man, "tonight I'm the designated decoy".
>
>

What I Do At Work

part of a series. A note sent out today to the worldwide financial services crew on how I spent my weekend:

FYI: Continuous Query, the Next Big Thing in Streaming Data

In doing some research for solutions around real-time streaming data engines (e.g. Thompson, Reuters), it’s becoming clear that the next generation of quote engines is going to look quite different from the current one. Today a lot of streaming data technology is based on proprietary versions of the client/server model that we are all familiar with. Often the client side is a smart client, the server side is a highly tuned database and the transiting protocol is a web service (or it’s nearest moral variant). However, a lot of research is currently being done on Continuous Query Engines, which are vastly more efficient for processing multiple end nodes than current designs.

The basic idea behind a CQE is to identify which nodes are asking the same types of query , then group them for more efficient service, sending only deltas of information to the waiting nodes rather than long bursts of data. Clients are able to keep track of the deltas and cut down on complex query processing server side.

Below are a couple of papers I found in my research that I thought were interesting and did a good job of getting the concept across, along with at least one implementation.

I pass this along for informational purposes although, for the capital markets folks, this is something we need to really start thinking about. Many thanks to Ed Muth for suggesting this line of inquiry.


http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/sigmod02-cacq.pdf

and
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1170000/1164132/p31-agarwal.pdf?key1=1164132&key2=9067059611&coll=&dl=ACM&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618


an interesting implementation

http://java.sys-con.com/read/260054.htm

Meth Coffee!

Ah, it's only half-a-lie!

Best First Prize Ever!

For the Vanishing Point Contest

A trip to orbit:

The Rocketplane® XP Vehicle is a four-seat fighter-sized vehicle fitted with a delta wing and a V-tail which provide good flight characteristics both subsonically and supersonically. The vehicle is powered by both turbojet engines and a rocket engine, enabling it to accelerate to speeds just over 3,500 feet per second (2,386 miles per hour) and reach altitudes in excess of 330,000 feet (100 kilometers) providing the sensation of weightlessness for three to four minutes!

too bad I am disqualified :(

Can Tylenol Make You Stoned?

Probably not, but it's interesting that it's mode of action is based on activating cannabinoid receptors. I wonder if the Ant-Drug lobby will try to get rid of tylenol. Or at least confiscate it at airports.

Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is one of the most popular and widely used drugs for the treatment of pain and fever. It occupies a unique position among analgesic drugs. Unlike NSAIDs it is almost unanimously considered to have no antiinflammatory activity and does not produce gastrointestinal damage or untoward cardiorenal effects. Unlike opiates it is almost ineffective in intense pain and has no depressant effect on respiration. Although paracetamol has been used clinically for more than a century, its mode of action has been a mystery until about one year ago, when two independent groups (Zygmunt and colleagues and Bertolini and colleagues) produced experimental data unequivocally demonstrating that the analgesic effect of paracetamol is due to the indirect activation of cannabinoid CB(1) receptors. In brain and spinal cord, paracetamol, following deacetylation to its primary amine (p-aminophenol), is conjugated with arachidonic acid to form N-arachidonoylphenolamine, a compound already known (AM404) as an endogenous cannabinoid. The involved enzyme is fatty acid amide hydrolase. N-arachidonoylphenolamine is an agonist at TRPV1 receptors and an inhibitor of cellular anandamide uptake, which leads to increased levels of endogenous cannabinoids; moreover, it inhibits cyclooxygenases in the brain, albeit at concentrations that are probably not attainable with analgesic doses of paracetamol. CB(1) receptor antagonist, at a dose level that completely prevents the analgesic activity of a selective CB(1) receptor agonist, completely prevents the analgesic activity of paracetamol. Thus, paracetamol acts as a pro-drug, the active one being a cannabinoid. These findings finally explain the mechanism of action of paracetamol and the peculiarity of its effects, including the behavioral ones. Curiously, just when the first CB(1) agonists are being introduced for pain treatment, it comes out that an indirect cannabino-mimetic had been extensively used (and sometimes overused) for more than a century.

What Did I Get My Niece for XMas?

Fizz Wizard Reaction Kit
Space Sand
Safety Goggles
Periodic Table of Elements Poster with Bios
Cool Blue Light Experiment Kit
Glowing Gel Experiment Kit
Rubber Flubber Experiment Kit
Chemistry Wiz – Solids, Liquids and Gases
My First Chemistry Kit
Amethyst Crystal Kit
Rose Quartz Crystal Kit
Our Solar System iCD
Keychain Laser Pointer


there is a theme here....

Why Am I Excited About This?

Gears of War:

Despite the mantra of many gamers, graphics do matter. (As Bleszinski told GameSpy last year, "[U]ntil recently you couldn't express a nuanced brow raise or a wry grin which can say a thousand things to the user. Instead we'd just go, 'That's hard, let's give her some huge boobs and call it a day.' ")

I don't play this genre much, so why do I care? Because Microsoft is doing the next version of City of Heroes, Marvel Universe, and this is what I am looking forward to :)

Codependant Enabler

There is a very interesting debate going on over at AS on the top of the religious and the atheists. Interesting because Sullivan's logic is clearly wrong, i.e. he's trying to have it both ways, believing that reason leads to faith. His opponent, Sam Harris, keeps calling him on this and pointing out that reason leads to less faith, not more.

Personally, I think faith is a fine thing, if you have it, good for you. Where I step off is when you try to hedge your faith (believing something without evidence) and say it's based on reason (i.e. evidence). Nick and I did a quiet round or two last week, but frankly I dont have the energy or inclination to do a proper job. Nick's basic premise was "assume there is a god. based on that assumption, faith is logical", mine was "why would you assume there is a god? There is no evidence", it very quickly degenerates into which is the more reasonable set of assumptions. Personally, I've also thought the assumption of god without evidence is specious logic. I could use the same one to assume the existence of the Devil, or of just about any other mythological figure and would be unable to prove they dont exist (the debate usually ends when one shows that one is unable to disprove the existence of Santa Claus. Ends in a huff with a sentence along the lines of "you're not taking this seriously"). Just because you cant prove something doesn’t exist, doesn’t justify the assumption that it must.

In this dispatch Sam makes the argument that religious moderates are the codependant enablers of religious extremists, i.e. if you pick and chose which parts of religion to believe, choosing some and ignoring others, you enable extremists to do the same and have access to the same arguments, just with a different spin. If you're a moderate, it's difficult to say exactly what you have faith in, and back it up with any kind of coherent religious argument. Sam says, basically, if you throw out parts of your religion, why not toss out the whole thing as a bad investment, shudder the doors to the churches and spend the resources on more useful capitalist endeavors?

I eagerly await Sully's reply. He may come up with an argument I haven't seen before.

Edit: Having read Sam's note twice now, I think Sully has to change the subject in his reply. Sam is just too spot on.
BTW, in case you were wondering, I don't think we will ever live in a world free of religion. The human brain is just built too well as a belief engine. There will always be mystics, faith and foolishness in human history. I have not dispared though that religion will take on a less violent and noxious form in the future.

Where's Victory?

Why Klingon's Dont Run for Elected Office

Last Man Standing

From Wonkette:

Guess who somehow found room in his liver for some backbone? Teddy Kennedy!
The sole survivor of the CIA’s bold 1960s campaign to rid Washington of Kennedys, Senator Ted says Congress will be blocking whatever crazy “surge” Bush will announce tomorrow.

LOLerskates!

New Link

I'm going to offically add Hankspot to my blogroll to the right. Not a lot of posts/week ( a plus in my book), many of them interesting. I agree with some, disagree with others. If you enjoy some of these posts, you may enjoy some of his.

Hank's another CoH person who (I think) spends more time in game than out. Well known on the server, he's a decent guy (even if his style is very different than mine). He's had some interesting and amusing battles with some individuals in the Goon Squad.

As some of you know, my son Geoff has been underwriting my Something Awful membership for years now, making me a crypto-goon. I have not yet had the time, energy or inclination to purposely team with the Goons, but in the whole they've been decent players individually.

And yes, I know the Terrible Secret of Space!

Blue Origin

The future made a special guest appearence this week!

Neat!

Spiders! On Drugs!

Remember, this was done for Science!

Science!

A Rare Tale of Integrity and Engineering

I ran across this the other day while looking for something else. It's a true story of an architect, his building and a surprising lack of ass-covering.

Engineers really do think different. Almost makes me wish I had had the kind of mind it takes to study it.

It also makes me wonder if the novelity is due to the rarity.

In May 1978, while working on another project, LeMessurier discovered that bolts had been used to join the diagonal braces to the columns of the Citicorp tower (by then completed and occupied). This surprised him because he had originally specified that the joints should be welded (a proper weld between two metal pieces is usually stronger than the individual metal pieces). However, when he checked into the matter, he found that the contractor had proposed the change to bolts to make construction easier and less expensive, and that, after carrying out some calculations to ensure that the bolts were strong enough, LeMessurier's chief engineer had approved the change. This was all proper practice, and so LeMessurier did not think any more of the issue at the time.
Approximately a month later, LeMessurier received a phone call from a student working on a senior-year project. To this day he does not know who the student was, but the student said, in effect: "Sir, can I bother you for a minute? I know you are a very busy man but my professor thinks you should have put the columns on the corners to better resist the loads which occur due to wind blowing on the tower."

The rest of the story

I Really and Truely Did This

Here

Although I didn't know the term "Turning Machine". I had worked out a secret code for sending messages on candy-button paper when I was 6, with the "clever" notion that you could eat the message afterward or, better yet, eat some of the reamining buttons and send a reply.

My scheme crashed directly into reality when the first person I gave my siliva-covered, half-eaten strip of candy to (my uncle as I recall), looked disgusted and threw it away.

Slight Atheism Debate

Here with Dr. Nick

Nick and I politely take the field, politely click lances, politely return to our camps and each declare to our followers that we were the victors!

With no mention of Santa Claus or the FSM.

Not quite the gusto of a debate with TJIC, but I am also spared the usual tjicistan personal attacks and verbal diarrhea, so I think it's more interesting.

My respect for Nick over TJIC continues to accelerate.

Vanguard League Website

I did manage to build a website for my SG last month, and to my utter and complete surprise I find it not only being used, but it has an active Forum.

Check it out when you have a chance. The Trading cards are also my work. There should be more of them as more members send me their pics.

BTW, the Vanguard League is now in second place as a hero group on our server (Victory) and in 5th place over all. :)

Zune!

Hee hee

Longish Hiatus Over

I should be back to bloggin more regularly now. I picked up a nasty, nasty bout of the flu in London and have been down with that and the usual Holiday stuff since.
Actually, I have a back log of stuff to post, so there might be a surge before we resume normal operations.

Insta-Wine

Be Jesus through this efficeint Japanesse machine:

Heim Theory

If you read the first page of this and you mind isn't blown completely away you either didn't understand it or ... you're not from this planet.

It completely re-invents 20th century physics and makes very accurate predictions which have withstood emperical testing. The gaviton as a soliton of a probabilty-based dimensional extention to 4-space...

Damn!

Interstellar travel just might be within my lifetime afterall.

Instant Freezing Beer

Because beer comes in a sealed container, it's possible to chill it well below the normal freezing point and still have it in liquid form. This is interesting becasue when you top the top, the pressure drops and the beer freezes solid very quickly.



Here's the whole story.

Note that you can do the reverse process with hot liquids and a microwave oven, i.e. heat water past the boiling point but not have it boil. The trick is to have relavtively pure water with very few nucleation sites. If you add something with a little surface area, e.g. sugar, tea, instant coffee etc. the water will instantly boil up. This is a significant source of injury with tea btw.

Mars: 2020

This made me chuckle. I tried to identify all the missions and I think I got most of them. I'm guessing the little lost one is the lamented Phobos probe.

A Bad Day for PHP

Stefan Esser retires. He's an excellent security guy, but the Open Source community is often more like a religion than a software development house, and the one thing they can't abide is a heritic.

Saturday, December 9. 2006
Last night I finally retired from the PHP Security Response Team, that was initially my idea a few years ago.
The reasons for this are many, but the most important one is that I have realised that any attempt to improve the security of PHP from the inside is futile. The PHP Group will jump into your boat as soon you try to blame PHP's security problems on the user but the moment you criticize the security of PHP itself you become persona non grata. I stopped counting the times I was called immoral traitor for disclosing security holes in PHP or for developing Suhosin.
For the ordinary PHP user this means that I will no longer hide the slow response time to security holes in my advisories. It will also mean that some of my advisories will come without patches available, because the PHP Security Response Team refused to fix them for months. It will also mean that there will be a lot more advisories about security holes in PHP.
Posted by Stefan Esser in Security, PHP at 10:58

(

Father October

could take my confession.

Is that not just a little bit, well, I don’t know…suggestive? It kind of gives me the heeby-jeebies. I mean, it’s a priest. And if I’m not mistaken, they’ve taken a photo of him, trying to make him look almost seductive. Do I need a new pair of contact lenses or is this a fairly accurate assessment?Another point to make note of: there’s not one ugly priest in the bunch. It’s not like they got a shot of some 90-year old priest giving confession, or tried to represent the entire spectrum. These priests are in their prime and they are all fairly or very good-looking.

It's interesting to watch market forces collide with the Catholic Church. What's next Nun's at the Beach? A prime time soap opera? It should be a very interesting decade ahead for the faithful...

(via)

While you're over ther, Andrew seems to be talking himself in to accepting Romney's 1994 pro-gay outreach as a position, while distancing Romney's 2004 miscegenation-based anti-gay works. Seems similar to the benefit-of-the-doubting that lead to his Iraq endorsement. He does have enough intellectual integrity to call mea culpa on that though, so this could correct itself. If only the dems would get over Hillary already and show they are not actual GOP co-dependent enablers, otherwise sane middle-ground folks would stop rationalizing the best of extremely poor choices.

Saving Baby Miriam

This was sent over by a friend. When I read it, I thought of an arguement I had with my son a few years ago about the primary purpose of a soldier.

Playboy, May, 1963

Wow, a scanned in issue of Playboy from the bygone era.. Let's just chalk this up to "changing standards" and "different time, different place". There is actually more nudity on FOX these days.



(via)

And then there are times when I tihnk...

... maybe legalizing drugs isn't such a hot idea afterall. The matter-of-fact tone of this article is pretty amazing. At no point is it mentioned if the police hold the victim on drug charges. Or maybe I missed the point and that's assumed.

He was naked, on crack and in alligator's mouth

...
Mayid's call shortly after 4 a.m. sent four Polk County, Fla., deputies racing to the 2,150-acre lake just outside Lakeland, Fla., where they jumped into the water and wrenched Apgar's arm from the gator's mouth. The 45-year-old victim, who told authorities he'd passed out nude on the shore after smoking crack cocaine, was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
Later Wednesday, state wildlife authorities trapped and killed a nearly 12-foot-long alligator thought to be the one that attacked Apgar.
...

Full article here

Foot Shoot for Programmers

From a former intern at CertCo (now a successful real-estate tycoon).

--------------------------------------------
> Shoot Yourself in the
> Foot in Any Programming Language
>
> The proliferation of modern programming languages
> (all of which seem to have
> stolen countless features from one another)
> sometimes makes it difficult to
> remember what language you're currently using. This
> guide is offered as a
> public service to help programmers who find
> themselves in such dilemmas.
>
> C
> You shoot yourself in the foot.
>
> C++
> You accidentally create a dozen clones of yourself
> and shoot them all in the
> foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is
> impossible since you can't
> tell which are bitwise copies and which are just
> pointing at others and
> saying, "That's me, over there."
>
> JAVA
> After importing java.awt.right.foot.* and
> java.awt.gun.right.hand.*, and
> writing the classes and methods of those classes
> needed, you've forgotten
> what the hell you're doing.
>
> Ruby
> Your foot is ready to be shot in roughly five
> minutes, but you just can't
> find anywhere to shoot it.
>
> PHP
> You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made with
> pieces from 300 other
> guns.
>
> ASP.NET
> Find a gun, it falls apart. Put it back together, it
> falls apart again. You
> try using the .GUN Framework, it falls apart. You
> stab yourself in the foot
> instead.
>
> SQL
> SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger =
> 'PULLED';
> INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);
>
> Perl
> You start shooting yourself in the foot, but you
> lose the gun.
>
> Javascript
> YOu've perfected a robust, rich user experience for
> shooting yourself in the
> foot. You then find that bullets are disabled on
> your gun.
>
> CSS
> You shoot your right foot with one hand, then switch
> hands to shoot your
> left foot but you realize that the gun has turned
> into a banana.
>
> FORTRAN
> You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until
> you run out of toes, then
> you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out
> of bullets, you
> continue anyway because you have no
> exception-handling ability.
>
> Modula2
> After realizing that you can't actually accomplish
> anything in this
> language, you shoot yourself in the head.
>
> COBOL
> Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN
> place ARM.HAND.FINGER. on
> HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to
> HOLSTER. CHECK whether
> shoelace needs to be retied.
>
> LISP
> You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
> gun with which
> you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
> gun with which
> you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
> gun with which
> you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
> gun with which
> you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds ..
>
> BASIC
> Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On
> big systems, continue
> until entire lower body is waterlogged.
>
> FORTH
> Foot in yourself shoot.
>
> APL
> You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day
> figuring out how to do it
> in fewer characters.
>
> Pascal
> The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the
> foot.
>
> SNOBOL
> If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot.
> If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.
>
> Concurrent Euclid
> You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
>
> HyperTalk
> Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot of the
> left leg of you.
> Answer the result.
>
> Motif
> You spend days writing a UIL description of your
> foot, the trajectory, the
> bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory
> handles of the gun. When
> you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the
> gun jams.
>
> Unix
> % ls
> foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
> % rm * .o
> rm: .o: No such file or directory
> % ls
> %
>
> Paradox
> Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your
> users can too.
>
> Revelation
> You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as
> soon as you figure out
> what all these bullets are for.
>
> Visual Basic
> You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll have
> so much fun doing it that
> you won't care.
>
> Prolog
> You tell your program you want to be shot in the
> foot. The program figures
> out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to
> explain.
>
> Ada
> After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to
> concurrently load the
> gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in
> the foot. When you try,
> however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong
> type.
>
> Assembly
> You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to
> discover you must first
> reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot. After
> that's done, you pull the
> trigger, the gun beeps several times, then crashes.
>
> 370 JCL
> You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page
> document explaining how you
> want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot
> comes back deep-fried.
>

From the Kitchens of Hell

Totally and completely edible.

This is for all you serious bakers out there. BE SURE to follow the instructions NOT TO PEEK AHEAD!!! If you do it will spoil the fun. And it IS fun!
- Judith
READ FIRST.....LOOK LATER....IT'S A LOT MORE FUN. Want to be forever eliminated from the guest list? Just take this to your next "pot luck" dinner!!!

Kitty Litter Cake" * ~
This is *no joke*
READ THE INGREDIENTS AND STUFF FIRST AND THEN LOOK AT THE PHOTO...
TRUST ME...

DON'T LOOK AT THE PHOTO FIRST, BUT LAST...?
This is for all you cooks out there looking for something a little different.........?WANT TO HAVE FUN AT A PARTY? PREPARE THIS RECIPE! COMPLETELY EDIBLE,?
BUT YOUR FRIENDS MAY NOT THINK SO!On a recent visit to our veterinarian to get shots for our cat I found this recipe on the waiting room bulletin board. After recovering from hysterical laughter, I obtained a copy from the office staff so my wife could make it, which she refused to do. I took it to work and gave the recipe to a lady at work who loves cats. The pictures below show the results of her work. It doesn't look very nice, but it's actually quite tasty, so I decided to pass it along.
CAKE INGREDIENTS:
1 box spice or German chocolate cake mix
1 box of white cake mix
1 package white sandwich cookies
1 large package vanilla instant pudding mix
A few drops green food coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls or equivalent
SERVING "DISHES AND UTENSILS"

1 NEW cat-litter box
1 NEW cat-litter box liner
1 NEW pooper scooper
1) Prepare and bake cake mixes, according to directions, in any size pan. Prepare pudding and chill. Crumble cookies in small batches in blender or food processor. Add a few drops of green food coloring to 1 cup of cookie crumbs. Mix with a fork or shake in a jar. Set aside.
2) When cakes are at room temperature, crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with half of the remaining cookie crumbs and enough pudding to make the mixture moist but not soggy. Place liner in litter box and pour in mixture.
3) Unwrap 3 Tootsie Rolls and heat in a microwave until soft and pliable. Shape the blunt ends into slightly curved points. Repeat with three more rolls. Bury the rolls decoratively in the cake mixture. Sprinkle remaining white cookie crumbs over the mixture, then scatter green crumbs lightly over top.
4) Heat 5 more Tootsie Rolls until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with crumbs from the litter box. Heat the remaining Tootsie Roll until pliable and hang it over the edge of the box. Place box on a sheet of newspaper and serve with scooper. Enjoy!?
"Kitty Litter Cake"
ANY OF YOU WHO HAVE A HALLOWEEN PARTY TO GO TO NEXT YEAR, THINK ABOUT THIS CAKE.
I KNOW OF SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY MADE IT AND TOOK IT TO WORK. (THEY HAD A GREAT TIME!!)
BE BRAVE!!

Reader Quiz

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Literate Good Citizen
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Fad Reader
Book Snob
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

(via)

Not A Good Week for Glenn Reynolds

2 in one week. First, Andrew Sullivan takes down Glenn for, well basically lying, about Sullivan's definition and use of the work "Christianist".

Now Gregory Djerejian takes him apart point for point on his selective use of quotes and his cherry picking, CYA on Iraq.

Not a good week at Instapundit.

heh, Indeed.

Why do I pick on Glenn? He's an exemplar of a particular type of rationalizing rightwinger that can find a justification for almost anything as long as it protects his aximoatic beliefs. While we all do this to one degree or other, most of us take time to consider, among other things, that we might just be wrong and act accordingly. Glenn seems to be of that breed who thinks that thought is cowerdice and honest re-evaluation is a kind of treason, so seing him backed into a corner is amply entertaining.

non-Calculated Risks

Gravity is a theory just like Relativity and Evolution. I once had a jaw dropping debate with an otherwise smart fellow who somehow thought that Stellar Evolution was related to biological evolution and that both were subject to Darwinian critique.

My Signature Weapon

This seems about right :) (via)

Air Strike You preferred a weapon with 74% power over speed and 85% range over melee.

You use Air Strikes. Fighting? Fighting is for idiots! All you have to do is make a quick walkie-talkie call and have the ground ahead of you carpeted with explosive charges. Your enemies will be searching frantically for refuge as you chuckle from afar.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on power You scored higher than 99% on range

Link: The What's Your Signature Weapon Test written by inurashii on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Excellent Cartoons

here. Too twisted to comment on.

What if Stan "the Man" Lee worked for Jack Chick?

Wow, I wish I had thought of this!