An amusing little time-waster.
H/T to Jason Ciastko for the link.
Update: I didn’t do as well as Liam did (in the comments), but he’s right that the upper left seems to provide much more opportunity for scoring:
December 21, 2009
December 17, 2009
The Tiger Woods affair: the failure of the paparazzi
Kerry Howley says that the biggest disappointment of the whole convoluted Tiger Woods situation has been the embarassing performance of the paparazzi:
It’s not clear to me that the enduring interest in Tiger even needs explanation. For a while there, every time we looked away, a new woman emerged with an even better set of semi-sordid details. The story propelled itself forward. The gift kept on giving.
Since the above should make it clear that any cultural analysis of Tiger tends toward projection of one’s personal anxieties, I’ll refrain from using the universal “we.” I feel let down not by Woods, but by the paparazzi on whom we all depend to keep us abreast of these things. The man was with 11 women over how many years and not so much as a snapshot surfaces? Where were you, X17? Where were your swarming, flashing hordes, your ravenous stalkerazzi instincts? Does any photographer show up anywhere without a knowing tip-off from the entourage? My faith is broken.
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December 16, 2009
December 15, 2009
December 11, 2009
New study confirms what every parent’s friends suspected all along
Friends of parents have been profoundly confirmed in their almost universal feelings about their friends’ kids. A recent report shows that it’s the parents who are indulging in self-deceit:
A study published Monday in The Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry has concluded that an estimated 98 percent of children under the age of 10 are remorseless sociopaths with little regard for anything other than their own egocentric interests and pleasures.
According to Dr. Leonard Mateo, a developmental psychologist at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the study, most adults are completely unaware that they could be living among callous monsters who would remorselessly exploit them to obtain something as insignificant as an ice cream cone or a new toy.
“The most disturbing facet of this ubiquitous childhood disorder is an utter lack of empathy,” Mateo said. “These people — if you can even call them that — deliberately violate every social norm without ever pausing to consider how their selfish behavior might affect others. It’s as if they have no concept of anyone but themselves.”
[. . .]
According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a clinical diagnostic tool, sociopaths often display superficial charm, pathological lying, manipulative behaviors, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. After observing 700 children engaged in everyday activities, Mateo and his colleagues found that 684 exhibited these behaviors at a severe or profound level.
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December 10, 2009
Combining great music with a sense of humour
Tom Vinson sent this link to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list:
To which Dorian E. Gray responded, “I see your Hallelujah Chorus, and raise you an Anvil Chorus with real anvil:”
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December 7, 2009
A Devil’s Dictionary for Copenhagen
Tunku Varadarajan updates Ambrose Bierce for the Copenhagen conference:
A is for anthropogenic: (as in anthropogenic global warming, or “AGW”), a $10 word for “man-made” which global-warmists wield as proof of expertise — no one more so than Al Gore, who, after having invented the Internet, turned his prodigious mind to the conundrum of AGW.
[. . .]
C is for the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the now-discredited source of much of the data used to fuel climate hysteria. In November, in an episode that was oh-so-predictably dubbed Climategate, a cache of leaked emails showed that researchers systematically hid or manipulated data that was inconsistent with the accepted narrative of man-made climate change. (Read John Tierney’s clear-headed critique here.) Don’t forget carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas once considered essential to life on earth, not to mention bubbles in Champagne. (Although it’s now regarded as a poisonous pollutant, you can, however, trade it.) Think also of consensus — the idea that science is settled by an asserted poll of experts after all objections from dissenting scientists have been suppressed.
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December 5, 2009
Henry 8.0
H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke, who said “Forget about the Tudors – BBC’s “Henry 8.0″ is much more historically accurate”.
December 4, 2009
Don’t bother your pretty little heads about all this “science” stuff
The non-scientists among us (that’s you and you and you and . . .) should just take a pill, sit back, and stop trying to understand the science:
And history repeats itself with climate change. We tell you people of the imminent dangers from the earth warming, and what do you do? You mock us. You question our motives. People who can’t even convert Fahrenheit to Celsius try and tell us we did the science wrong. Now emails have leaked from the Climate Research Unit that apparently show that scientists were fixing the data and trying to suppress the scientific research of dissenters, and you people demand answers from us. I have one thing to say to that. How dare you!
You do not understand the first thing about climate research. Man-made global warming is settled science. Disaster is imminent. We know this. It is a fact. We don’t waste time on studies that say otherwise, the same way we don’t waste time on studies that assert that the earth is flat. We are very smart people, and when we say something is so, you should just accept it.
So you think what is in those emails is important? Well, what exactly do you know? Do you see the white lab coats we wear? That color symbolizes pure science. Were someone like you to wear one, within five minutes it would be stained with neon orange powdered cheese and wet with drool from you trying to comprehend the data sets people like me look at every day.
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December 1, 2009
QotD: Nomenclature, 2.0
Paused over lunch to roll through the Deadpool on TechCrunch, reading about expired internet companies. Been a while. Most had to do with “social media,” and most got millions of dollars to produce a novel way where X could connect Y with P using Z, and then: profit! The names of these companies makes me weep:
Zopo, Lefora, Meetro, Ning, Sinopio, CapaZoo, Joox, Foonz.
These are not businesses. These are characters in a pre-school TV show. I have a tough time imagining a hard-nosed venture capitalist saying Well, it’s an interesting idea you have, and on behalf of my group, we’re willing to invest $12 million in Shagafumoo.
James Lileks, Bleat, 2009-12-01
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November 27, 2009
Cars for an under-served market: aging boomers
Jim Shea looks at the design innovations needed to serve the new growing market for appropriate vehicles for aging baby boomers:
What is missing is a vehicle specifically designed to accommodate baby boomers and their ever evolving driving needs.
The car I have in mind for this huge block, the Coupe de Coot, would include the following characteristics:
Size: The older people get, the larger the vehicles they prefer. If Buick made buses, you wouldn’t be able to get a parking spot at the senior center. The Coupe de Coot would make a Hummer look like a Mini Cooper.
Windows: They would be large and wrap-a-around to afford excellent visibility in all directions at all times. Also, the glass would automatically tint after dark to produce a night-vision goggles effect.
Turn signals: The interior indicator lights would be the size of frying pans, flash like emergency strobes when engaged, be accompanied by a Big Ben-level bonging sound, and automatically turn themselves off after an hour.
H/T to Kennedy How for the link.
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November 26, 2009
Dragon Age: Origins . . . not all that original
Darkwatermuse tries Dragon Age: Origins, and is not overwhelmed with joy and mirth:
Dragon Age: Origins enjoyment mileage will depend greatly on each gamer’s experience and familiarity with the RPG genre as well as any recent history of head injuries known to have affected their memory.
If I wasn’t familiar with the long history of RPG D&D styled games I might find myself in agreement with the more cynical rankings the game has received. Scores of 4/5 and 8.5/10 are justified only if you’ve never actually installed or played any of the game’s predecessors or have been paid handsomely through a complex financing network connected to the game’s publisher’s marketing department.
[. . .]
DWM’s biggest annoyance? Being confined to these cartoon landscapes which are clearly represented as hexes somewhere in the bowels of the game’s engine but which are not rendered in the visual 3d world we’re forced to navigate through during endless hours of click-double-clicking either the left — no, try the right one this time — button.
Christ on a dungeon ration biscuit! Whose idea was it to leave the last 15% of the game’s coding to the dyslexic?
DWM asks the question few before dared to ask, is it necessary for me to have to endure the chronic sense of shame evoked when I click on part of the screen I can only then discover can’t actually be moved to? More fool me. Again. Excuse me for having failed to recognize that empty terrain is actually harder than a young adolescent dragon’s pecker during the bumpy bus ride to school.
There’s much more . . . I had to force myself not to quote the entire review. Very reminiscent of a Yahtzee game review, with less yellow-background animation (who, interestingly enough, has also reviewed DA:O recently).
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November 25, 2009
Rule 34, Stross version
I can hardly wait until 2011:
If you’re wondering what this week’s excuse for scanty blog updates could possibly be, it might have something to do with me being 40,000 words into the (projected) 100,000 word first draft of 2011’s novel, “Rule 34”. It’s a sequel to “Halting State”, set some five years after the earlier novel, and focusing on the way our definitions of crime and morality (not to mention the practice of policing) change over time. (Yes, the title is an explicit call-out to you-know-what. The term “Hitler Yaoi” has been used with intent … but only after I googled, rubbed my eyes, and concluded that rule 34 was in effect.)
For the three of you who don’t know what Rule 34 is . . . don’t Google Image search for it. It’s a very short rule, but I suspect it’s true for most values of “true”: If it exists, there’s a porn version of it.
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Tonight on Iowahawk Geographic
This is a fascinating show on a topic of great public and scientific interest:
Narrator
This is the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, home of one of the largest nesting populations of climate scientists in Europe.
Gentle ant’s-eye scene of idyllic campus lawn, strewn about with drunken mating undergraduates
Each year it attracts magnificent migratory flocks of graduate students, adjuncts and visiting faculty from across the northern hemisphere.
Shots of jumbo jets landing at Heathrow; herds of climate researchers busily milling at Duty Free shops, retrieving baggage, phoning for prearranged limo service
Within minutes of arriving on campus, the migratory researchers approach the entrance of the Climate Research Unit and perform the secret credential dance, fiercely displaying their prominent curriculum vitae. This signals to the security drone that they can be trusted with the sacred electronic lanyard badge that will grant them entrance to the hive’s inner sanctum.
During the upcoming research season, this hive alone will produce over 6 million metric tons of grant-sustaining climate data guano, but until recently little was known about the elusive genus of homo scientifica living inside. Where do they come from? What strange force draws them here year after year? In order to unravel the mystery, Iowahawk Geographic documentary filmmaker David Burge undertook a painstaking one-week project to finally capture the climate researchers in their native habitat.
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