Beowulf

The reviewer can state, without hyperbole that;

Beowulf the movie, based on the epic poem of the same name, is quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made.

How can I *not* go see this??????

also:
I have read lots of poems but never have I seen nudity in a poem...

Addendum:
I had forgotten how mcuh I enjoy the CAP Ministries. From this review of the new Mr. Magoo movie, which they liked (bolding mine):

The only content applicable to this investigation area is Natalie Portman wearing a dress that exposed a large gap over her chest. Such a display of skin normally not seen is clearly sexual: clearly intended to tease, to incite lust in the male viewer. If she had worn a dress that covered the gap, the Sexual Immorality investigation area score would have been 100. Sure, some highfalutin, high society performers wear such clothing for such affairs, but does that make such a cultural-specific display acceptable? If you think "Yes" then the fact that some cultures eat other people makes it acceptable since it is a cultural-specific behavior. Don't argue with me about what is morally acceptable. Argue about it with God. He will give you a much better Answer than I ever could. [1Cor. 8:9, Matt. 5:28]

The review should be docked for violence. Against logic.

Bill Clinton is Gay

Much is explained.

Data Literacy Test

here

I got a 26, making the assumption that "B-tree" was a "binary-tree". I did see a couple of terms I had never heard of like "elongated stream," "retroactive syn­apse," and "value chain". I actually hear the last one every day, but never heard it applied to a data type before. I thought about what it could be and imagined a double-linked-list type of affair, but I was only guessing so I said no.

At the end, after my score, I read this:

You are a pompous fraud. The terms "elongated stream," "retroactive syn­apse," and "value chain" don't refer to data types-I made them up. Please read the "Intellectual Honesty" section in Chapter 33, "Personal Character"!

(via)

UPDATE: I got 25. B-tree is a specific data-type.

It's Real!

Holy Shit! I thought they made this up on 30 Rock.

The World's Most Terrifying Teapot

Read the commentary to the right

Dean Cain

From the imdb entry:
Gentle Ben (2002) (TV) .... Jack Wedloe... aka Terror on the Mountain

The Flying Car

Dilbert Packs it In

Scott Adams is downsizing his blogging efforts because .. basically... the internet is full of meanies:

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn’t read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book, to protect the rights of the people who already read it on the Internet, and might want to read it again for free sometime. You win.
...
It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

So, the creator of one of the most profitable cartoon franchises in history, is upset because the internet has only made him slightly richer.

boo fucking hoo

Exactly As Advertised!

Sometimes, early in the morning, the titles of some work emails strike me as amusing.

For example, this morning I received a work-related email entitled:

LARGE BI OPPT.- PLEASE HELP!

the text read:
The largest credit union in XXXXXX (28,000 employees, 2,000 branches, $120 Billion in assets, over 5 million members) is revamping its information access strategies (BI) for its branches. The Bank uses over 1,000 reports, 1,100 KPI, they send over $XXX million a year just on ad hoc reporting… We just finished implementing the information portal for all the branches on XXXXX and we are extremely well positioned with our BI solution (Analysis Services, Reportinmg Services, SQL and PerformancePoint).

sigh

And, when you crack them open, they taste like Lobster.

here

"I think I need one of these in my home to ensure that the King of England doesn’t try to take my rights away."

The Plot of Every Terry Goodkind Novel

1) People have a nice day
2) Something Terrible(tm) Happens
3) All Magic stops working
4) People spend 400 pages try to figure out why, using rape as their primary investigative tool.
5) The hero wins through objectivism and rape.
6) People dread the next nice day.

Not Quite Right in the Head

This is a very interesting piece of work, which I read through this weekend, A Primer on Geocentrism.

It's pretty wacky, but also very interesting. It's self-contradictory in places, especially when the author tries to show that the universe rotates around the Earth, but doesn't violate the speed of light. In that particular section, he offers not one, but three different (and contradictory) reasons why the universe is okay (relativity doesn't apply to rotating bodies (!), the speed of light goes faster as you get further from the Earth (!!) and besides the firmament isn't rotating (except when it is)(!!!).

The guy knows some physics terms (I didn't remember the Sagnac effect, and I still don't see what it has to do with his point), and seems aware that modern physics exists, but doesn’t let that slow him down from believing science is on the verge of a new geocentric revolution.

Sad.

This is what happens when you let invisible, sky-dwelling all-fathers into your head. They die there and stink up your whole mind.

The Smartest Man on Basic Cable

I'm not sure of the purpose of this hit piece on Ben Stein. I'm not a huge fan, and he seems to be take his invisible friend very seriously, but this seems a pointless attack on someone's intellectual insecurities.

Perhaps Stein's oddest avocation is being a financial guru to hookers. "Aside from practicing pimps, nobody knows as many call girls as I do," he says. It began when Stein was a columnist for the Journal, spending his afternoons by the pool in his West Hollywood apartment building, which was populated by call girls. "I think I put a couple of them in Berkshire Hathaway and made them a lot of money," he says. His skills are so well known, he boasts, that pros he's never met spot him at bars and ask about mutual funds.

Weird.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

It's worth remembering this:

We need to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you have low expectations, you're going to get lousy results.

It's one of the few things the president has said which for which, I think, history will speak well of him.

Also, it gives me a way to underline this:

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.
Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

and this:
A White House assessment of the war in Afghanistan has concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met, even as U.S. and NATO forces have scored significant combat successes against resurgent Taliban fighters, according to U.S. officials.

The evaluation this month by the National Security Council followed an in-depth review in late 2006 that laid out a series of projected improvements for this year, including progress in security, governance and the economy. But the latest assessment concluded that only "the kinetic piece" -- individual battles against Taliban fighters -- has shown substantial progress, while improvements in the other areas continue to lag, a senior administration official said.

So lets run down our checklist of success:

Removed nuclear WMDs from hands of people threatening America: Not Found
Removed non-nuclear WMD from Iraq: Oops, we gave them to him in the first place.
Received Candy and Flowers from Iraqis: Nope
Built a Stalwart of Democracy in the region: built Islamic Republic incapable of self-governance
War pays for itself by 2004: Est. $2,000,000,000,000 price tag by 2008
...
Stability in the green zone: sporadic peace
24 hours worth of electricity and water in Iraqi Cities (after almost 4 years)? Yes! 24 hours per week though, not per day.

Captured OBL dead or alive? Still At Large enjoying proceeds of enormous personal fortune.

Yes, a rousing success. Only the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy(tm) is keeping us from hearing all the Good News.

Repositioning History

Does anyone remember why we went to war with Iraq? I mean really? The Right has put together a lot of spin and moved the goal posts to the 49-yard line, brazenly suggesting they were there the whole time.

This is a good reminder of the environment of 2003, and typical of the arguments of the Right at the time.

Remember, we did eventually find WMD in Iraq. They were the one's we gave them to use in their war against Iran.

Why the Right has any credibility left on the war is a tribute to their marketing skills, not their intellect.

Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right

The Catholics! There is no end to their ability to amuse and inform.
From Catholic Apologetics International:

Galileo Was Wrong is a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe. Garnering scientific information from physics, astrophysics, astronomy and other sciences, Galileo Was Wrong shows that the debate between Galileo and the Catholic Church was much more than a difference of opinion about the interpretation of Scripture.

Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.
Readers agree.

I honestly thought the last of the geocentric adherents died out a couple of hundred years ago, and I know the official position of the Vatican on this subject is heliocentric. Still... as a fully trained astrophysicist, I can't help but wonder what "discoveries" in the last 100 years would support geocentrism. Did someone discover the aether and not let me know*?

Maybe we should just "teach the controversy"!

Also, see this from the Biblical Astronomer, a proud son of Cleveland! It must be right, he has a Ph.D.

*I did take a stroll through this, the logic is irrefutable. Assuming the bible is literally true, then a heliocentric cosmology cannot explain the Sun standing still for Joshua and a variety of other biblical miracles, so it must be false. Quod erat faciendum!

Alternative Fuel: Salt Water?

Extremely interesting:

We watched as they poured Morton's salt into a container, mixed it with water and then exposed the fluid to the Kanzius radio frequency device.An intense flame erupted over the test tube."In this case we weren't looking for energy," said John Kanzius. "We were looking for something that might do desalinization. And the more we tried desalinization, the more heat we produced until we got fire."

I'm guessing that the RF ionized the water, producing hydrogen and water vapor, which is the actual buring part. If I'm right, the burning would have to begin long before you see the flame becuase hydrogen flames are invisible. Once enough water vapor got mixed in, you'd see something.

It's still an open question if it's producing more energy than it requires though.

Why Atheists Should Fear the Big Bang Theory

I have to admit, as an astronomer/atheist, I am more than a little curious about this:

Why Christianity explains what modern science tells us about the universe and our origins—that matter was created out of nothing, that light preceded the sun—better than atheism does

How Christianity created the framework for modern science, so that Christianity and science are not irreconcilable, but science and atheism might be

Why the alleged sins of Christianity—the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Galileo affair (“an atheist's fable”)—are vastly overblown

*Why atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history

*Why evolution does not threaten Christian belief, but actually supports the “argument from design”

Why atheists fear the Big Bang theory and the “anthropic principle” of the universe, which are keystones of modern astronomy and physics

How Christianity explains consciousness and free will, which atheists have to deny

Why ultimately you can't have Western civilization—and all we value from it—without the Christianity that gave it birth.Provocative, enlightening

This seems like the usual rhetorical ass-hattery from Dinesh D'Souza, a fellow who beleives that how you talk about science seems to him to be more important than science itself.
In this case, the least of his sins seem to be confusing the existance of god with the correctness of Christianity.

If science can't bat down a fool like this, we deserve to lose the public debate.

The Cuddly Menace

From Mike, A Golden Book!

The Cake is a Lie

I finally got to the end of Portals which sports, among many redeeming features, the funniest AI since GIR. After you blow up the AI, the end credits roll to this song, which I loved (even more than Companion Cube). Apature Science(tm) is the name of the portal comapny and Black Mesa is their rival.




Also, at the end, there is cake.

I wonder if the AI is still alive, and working on a sequel...