Quotulatiousness

February 25, 2011

Friday fun link: BoxCar2D

Filed under: Randomness, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:48

Watch the Darwinian struggle of car evolution: http://www.boxcar2d.com/.

The program learns to build a car using a genetic algorithm. It starts with a population of 20 randomly generated shapes with wheels and runs each one to see how far it goes. The cars that go the furthest reproduce to produce offspring for the next generation. The offspring combine the traits of the parents to hopefully produce better cars. Now with the button at the bottom left u can choose to input cars and different terrains. This lets people post their results and even design a car by hand.

It uses a physics library called box2D to simulate the effects of gravity, friction, collisions, motor torque, and spring tension for the car. This lets the car be a wide range of shapes and sizes, while still making the simulation realistic. This is based on the AS3 box2D flash port of the library. Watch the demo of some of its capabilities.

My inspiration for this project comes from qubit.devisland.net/ga. My implementation uses the physics library to make the car a real object instead of two point masses. There are also many extra variables because of the complicated car and axles and the color cleary illustrates the evolution.

H/T to DarkWaterMuse for the link.

February 21, 2011

This just in: men still suck, say women

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:30

From the Wall Street Journal:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.

“We are sick of hooking up with guys,” writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, “I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I’ve Dated.” What Ms. Klausner means by “guys” is males who are not boys or men but something in between. “Guys talk about ‘Star Wars’ like it’s not a movie made for people half their age; a guy’s idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends…. They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home.” One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner’s book wrote, “I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?”

[. . .]

But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It’s no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today’s pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.

What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.

And that last point begins to answer the question “Where Have The Good Men Gone?” Women traditionally look to find men who earn more and/or have higher academic and social position. Now that women are beginning to out-earn and out-compete men, it has the paradoxical result of reducing the pool of available men with the requisite higher financial or social capital. There are more women competing for fewer men. This trend will only increase in western society.

This came up last month, and will probably be a very common theme for books and magazine articles in the coming year.

February 18, 2011

Ron Hickman, inventor of the ubiquitous Workmate

Filed under: Randomness, Technology, Tools — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:23

Many people have bought and used the Workmate collapsible workbench . . . 30 million or so. The inventor, Ron Hickman, Ron Hickman, died recently:

Hickman, who lived in Jersey, was 78. His design for the wood-and-steel foldable workbench and vice was rejected by several tool companies that believed the bench wouldn’t sell.

Tool company Stanley told him the device would sell in the dozens rather than hundreds, while other companies told him the design would not sell at the necessary price. It has since sold about 30 million units around the world, and 60,000 were sold in the UK last year alone.

Hickman sold the benches himself when he couldn’t find a backer through trade shows direct to professional builders. Black & Decker saw the light in 1973 and began producing them. By 1981 it had sold 10 million benches.

He came up with the design when he accidentally sawed through an expensive chair while making a wardrobe. He had been using the chair as a workbench.

His designing skill wasn’t limited to tools: he also is credited with the design of the Lotus Elan.

February 14, 2011

Your Valentine’s Day date could be worse: you might be a male Anglerfish

Filed under: Randomness, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:19

More bits of mating lore from the animal kingdom here.

“Skumavc likened it to the ‘infamous ping-pong ball scene’ in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert“

Filed under: Australia, Humour, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:25

Lester Haines summarizes the sordid details:

A shaken Oz stag party reveller has recounted how he was left “battered and bloodied” after taking a head shot from a flying dildo.

According to this very silly report, 31-year-old Darwin architect Jure Skumavc joined groom-to-be Peter Rolih and around eight other pals in a Brisbane pad on 28 December for the traditional pre-nuptial blokes’ knees-up.

Evidently, it wasn’t just the revellers who got their knees well and truly up, because “a scantily clad exotic dancer” entertained the chaps with her party piece — “shooting dildos at the guests”.

Suffice it to say, regular Bootnotes readers will not require a technical description of how this works, but for those of you who’ve never caught a Bangkok floorshow, Skumavc likened it to the “infamous ping-pong ball scene” in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Skumavc explained that the entertainer was firing the artificial todger from one side of the room to the other — an estimated seven metres with a peak altitude of around two metres — apparently targetting guests with the “pink projectile”.

Pondering dinosaur sex on Valentine’s Day

Filed under: Randomness, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:06

No, really:

I have been sitting here with two Stegosaurus models for 20 minutes now, and I just can’t figure it out. How did these dinosaurs — bristling with spikes and plates — go about making more dinosaurs without skewering each other?

Stegosaurus has become an icon of the mystery surrounding dinosaur sex. Dinosaurs must have mated, but just how they did so has puzzled paleontologists for more than 100 years. Lacking much hard evidence, scientists have come up with all kinds of speculations: In his 1906 paper describing Tyrannosaurus rex, for instance, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn proposed that male tyrant dinosaurs used their minuscule arms for “grasping during copulation.” Others forwarded similar notions about the function of the thumb-spikes on Iguanodon hands. These ideas eventually fell out of favor — perhaps due to embarrassment as much as anything else — but the question remained. How can we study the sex lives of animals that have been dead for millions upon millions of years?

H/T to Maggie Koerth-Baker, who writes: “You’ve really got to read this entire article. Out loud. To someone you love. If they’re the kind of lover who wants to know about prehistoric mating rituals, the dino-sex theories of Victorian paleontologists, or how to sex a fossil, they’ll thank you. (And if they aren’t that kind of lover, well. Maybe it’s time to re-think the relationship.)”

Ingenious ways to re-use your Altoids tin

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:06

By way of Gerard Vanderleun’s Tumblr blog, a collection of neat ways to get further use out of your used Altoids tins:

Altoids have been freshening bad breath since the turn of the 19th century. But while they are touted as “Curiously Strong Mints,” perhaps the real curiosity is not the allure of the mints themselves, but the popularity of turning the tin in which they’re packaged into all sorts of truly handy, and just plain fun, creations.

The draw of the transformed Altoids tin, like the draw one feels towards, say, a secret book safe, is hard to put your finger on. Part of it is the satisfying challenge of fitting as much as possible into a small space. Part of it is the delight of being able to carry something cool in your pocket. Of course much of the appeal can be found in the enjoyment of tinkering and working on a diy project. There is also the satisfaction that comes from reusing an ordinary object for something else entirely. Grandpa’s old motto of “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” still resonates.

Any way you slice it, beholding the creative uses for an Altoids tin simply brings a smile to your face. So we searched high and low and put together this list of 22 manly ways to reuse an Altoids tin. You can make some of these things for yourself, or use the list for cheap and unique gift ideas.


A mini electronics lab

Altoids router plane
A self-storing router plane (blogged in 2009 here)


Altoids wilderness survival kit (from Field and Stream magazine)

February 12, 2011

A bad day at the wine store

Filed under: Randomness, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:08

H/T to Elizabeth, who sent me the link with the subject line “Don’t cry”.

Just an ordinary traffic accident, until the sword fight breaks out

Filed under: Law, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

By way of David Stamper’s Facebook update, a sad story of how ordinary attempted vehicular homicide turned into . . . a sword fight:

A hit-and-run collision Wednesday followed by a brief sword fight led police to arrest a 25-year-old man for assault.

About 4 p.m., the Sunnyside man spotted a 27-year-old rival and intentionally rammed his 1981 Ford F-150 pickup into the man’s vehicle as he backed out of his driveway in the 100 block of South 11th Street, said Charlotte Hinderlider, Sunnyside police spokeswoman.

The alleged assailant brandished a sword, swinging it at his enemy, who had climbed out of his own vehicle, Hinderlider said.

The suspect fell, giving the victim time to pick up a machete that happened to be laying in his yard and defend himself from his alleged attacker, Hinderlider said. Meanwhile, the victim’s mother, still in the vehicle, dialed 9-1-1 from her cellular phone.

You can’t really call yourself a swordsman if your intended victim can pick up a machete that “happened to be laying in his yard” and successfully defend himself. The report doesn’t spell out the actual weapon used, but it doesn’t seem to show that the attacker actually knew what the hell to do with whatever kind of sword he was using.

For those of you following along at home: you wound with the edge, but you kill with the point. The wounds may be painful, nasty, and gruesome, but if you’re trying to kill someone, the sword is a thrusting weapon, not a slashing weapon.

February 11, 2011

Reif produces first Canadian raisins

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Randomness, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:14

I always figured that we were too far north to produce raisins, despite our large-and-growing grape crops. Just because it was widely thought doesn’t mean it’s true:

“Originally, the idea was to make an appassimento-style wine that involves the drying of grapes that is common in a region of Italy where they make Amarone-style wines,” explains Reif Estate winemaker Roberto DiDomenico. DiDomenico and Reif Estate owner Klaus Reif, a 13th-generation winemaker who immigrated from Germany in the early 1980s and bought his uncle’s Niagara winery in 1987, had some contacts in Simcoe’s tobacco country. “We learned that there would be some kilns available as the tobacco industry has been waning,” says DiDomenico. They purchased two refurbished kilns that were shipped up to Reif Estates in the spring of 2009. And that’s when the process began. Almost. Explains Reif, “Our grapes that we use for the appassimento winemaking process were not yet ready, so we had these two kilns sitting here and we thought, what should we do with them now?”

Wine is made from grapes with seeds while raisins are generally made from seedless grapes. Niagara is wine country, but as luck would have it, a friend of Reif’s, John Klassen, who grows table grapes for supermarkets, happened to stop by the winery for a visit. “He was telling us that his grapes were ripe, but the supermarkets didn’t want them anymore,” says Reif. With those plump, juicy Sovereign Coronation grapes destined for the birds, Reif said, “Bring them in; we’ll try to make raisins.” (While most raisins are made from green grapes, these Niagara raisins are made from red grapes.) DiDomenico and Reif put the grapes in the tobacco kilns for three to four weeks to raisin-up.

February 10, 2011

Workplace diplomacy

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:42

An aside to an email discussion we were having provoked DarkWaterMuse to post his thoughts on the matter:

Diplomacy is a major cause of workplace inefficiency. Mostly, it doesn’t actually matter how things get said.

dwm tends to say whatever is rattling around at the top of his head. Too often what rattles around up there then manages to roll down mysterious passageways carved throughout his brain before it tumbles off the tip of his tongue.

Sometimes the words that escape just lay there, stunned and motionless on the floor, as other people in earshot simply glare at them.

Even worse though is when dwm doesn’t say anything at all. That probably means either there’s a log jam of words building up pressure inside his head, a clear sign of imminent unbounded and unpredictable cranial flatulence, or he’s mentally undressing one of the women who happens to be trapped in the same meeting room.

dwm has never really appreciated the need for diplomacy. Especially when there’s clearly work to be done. He subscribes to the notion that people like to be part of success, however it manages to manifest.

As it turns out, diplomacy isn’t necessary for success. It’s just necessary to manage the people who aren’t focused on it.

I’m not convinced, as I’ve found diplomacy to be one of the most frequently used “tools” in my arsenal. I suspect DarkWaterMuse, as primarily a “producer” of essentially original content has less functional need for the social lubricant of careful wording than someone like me (a “consumer” if you will), who generally requires the active co-operation of others to provide me with the raw material I happen to need to accomplish my tasks.

His point about diplomacy being “a major cause of workplace inefficiency” would more closely hit the mark if he were using it to describe weasel wording rather than diplomacy. As Sir Humphrey Appleby says “A good Civil Servant must be able to use language not as a window into the mind but as a curtain to draw across it.” What is ideal for a civil servant is toxic for good working relationships in non-bureaucratic environments.

February 1, 2011

The tattoos that say “I’ll never work retail again”

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:30

I’m always amazed how many people search the site for tattoo images. Just because I’m a nice guy (and not in any way attempting to draw more traffic to the site), I’ll post a few more (via Blazing Cat Fur). For most workplaces, these breast tattoos are not work safe.

(more…)

January 27, 2011

They’ll be around to collect his “man card” any moment

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Poor guy can’t get enough sleep because of his sex-mad spouse:

An exhausted Turkish man living in Germany has asked cops to protect him from his sex-mad missus, Bild reports.

The bleary-eyed victim of his wife’s “voracious embraces” walked into a police station in the southwestern city of Waiblingen on Tuesday to explain he’d spent four years kipping on the sofa in a vain attempt to get some shut-eye.

January 26, 2011

Kids, don’t do this at home. In fact, just don’t do this

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:32

This would be a pretty good safety video, to show just how not to handle firearms. H/T to Robert Farago for the link.

January 25, 2011

Neil Gaiman on feeling like a ghost

Filed under: Australia, Books, Media, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:13

Neil Gaiman wrote a book that came back to haunt him the other day:

There were a couple – a man and a woman, both in their twenties at a guess, both short and dark-haired, looking into a shop window, with their backs to me. The woman had a tattoo on her shoulderblade – writing – and because I cannot pass writing without reading it, I glanced at it. Part of the writing was covered by a strap.

But I could still read it. And I knew what the words covered by the strap were.

The tattoo (thank you Google Image Search) was a lot like this (which is to say, the same content, and similar typeface, but probably not the same person. I’m already trying to remember if it was the left or the right shoulderblade):

(I took that photo from here.)

I read the tattoo, read words I had written to try and exorcise my own small demons eighteen years ago, and I felt like a ghost. As if, for a moment, under the hot Sydney sun, I was only an idea of a person and not a real person at all.

I didn’t introduce myself to her or say anything (it didn’t even occur to me to say hello, in all honesty). I just walked home, through a world that felt flimsier and infinitely stranger than it had that morning.

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