Something Stupid Someone Else Said

"The Holy Bible describes certain attributes of The Antichrist. He will be a man that ultimately "sets himself above all that is called god." (If one claims to adhere to several different gods, even though each one claims exclusive dominion, then what does that say about the man?) The Antichrist will be a persecutor of Christians. He will be a consummately skilled liar. And, his identity will be revealed only after The Tribulation has already begun.

Now, before readers make too many assumptions, consider that The Antichrist will be preceded by a False Prophet, who will give The Antichrist his political power. Recently, former president Bill Clinton endorsed candidate Barack Obama, even though Hillary Clinton has only suspended (not withdrawn) her candidacy for president. Bill Clinton cannot become president again.

But, he could be appointed — by a President Barack Obama, or even by a President Hillary Clinton — to become US Ambassador to the United Nations. And, in that position, he would be eligible to become UN Secretary General. That, in effect, would make Bill Clinton "king of the world," if the UN seizes power. All of that handed to him by a man that rises up, "speaking boastfully" to the world about "change we can believe in." Hmmmmm," -Tom Kovach (Christianist nutball), Renew America

Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman

The Dark Knight becomes his own worst enemy:

Hitchhiking Fail

U-u-u-um, no.

Star Trek Cribs

Spock takes you on a guided tour of the new freshness:

Hands Free In California

Today marked the first day of California's new hands free cell phone law for drivers 18 and older and a total prohibition on cell phone use for younger drivers. While I personally don't want this particular law applied to myself I'm actually kind of happy that it has gone into effect; I haven't lived in that many places but I can say with some certainty that California drivers are some of the worst I've ever seen. Maybe it's the proliferation of female Asian drivers out here (just kidding (not really)) but I've had many close calls on the road and the other party was almost inevitably yakking away on their cell, oblivious to the world.

So I'll need to buy a new bluetooth device (mine's old and kind of crappy but slightly nicer than the one in the picture above), and if anyone knows of a particularly good one that looks really cool in your ear please let me know. Of course this all reminds me of this study out of Australia a few years back that found that cell phone use, hands free or no, increases the odds of a wreck by a factor of four; it seems that the real problem stems not from using your hand to hold the phone but from the fact that you're carrying on a conversation with someone else who is not experiencing the same sensory input as yourself.

The thinking goes like this: you're on the phone with someone while driving and a dog runs out in front of your car. Now if you were conversing with someone else in the same car, they would see the dog at the same time as yourself and react to it in the same way, interrupting the conversation so you can concentrate on the road. The person on the other end of the line however doesn't have any clue about what's occurring around you so they pull your attention away from your immediate surroundings by continuing to talk, thus distracting you enough that you end up turning poor Sparky into a bright stain on the asphalt.

So again, while I think that it's a good idea to prevent young, new drivers from using their phones at all I wonder: did the California legislature actually do their homework by reading studies like this one, which says that the difference between hand held and hands free is negligible in preventing accidents, or did they just pass a law that seemed to make sense to them without consulting any research or experts in the field? I'm inclined to believe the latter rather than the former, as I watch government get just one more claw embedded into our civil rights and everyday lives. How long until those self-driving robot cars again?

Chronotopic Anamorphosis

This is pretty cool and trippy as hell:

This video shows the test of a software developed as a programming exercise.

The image is digitally manipulated by fragmenting it into horizontal lines and then combining lines from different frames in the display. The result is a distorsion of the figures caused by their motion in time, or, as Brazilian researcher Arlindo Machado calls it: chronotopic anamorphosis.

If you've never used mind-altering drugs before, this is a pretty good approximation of what things can look like. And if you're using mind-altering drugs right now, you'll definitely get your money's worth watching this guy:

Tunguska Blast

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event that occured over pre-Soviet Russia. It's still unknown what caused the explosion but a comet or asteroid are the two most likely suspects, according to scientists. The event occured about 5 miles above the Earth's surface and it's energy was around 10-15 megatons, or around 1000 times the nuclear explosion that leveled Hiroshima, Japan. It knocked over an estimated 80 million trees covering an area of about 830 square miles. Events like this one just illustrate how woefully unprepared we are if a small near-Earth object is found to be on a collision course with our planet; we can only hope that Morgan Freeman will be around to lead us to safety if the unthinkable happens.

Bar Graph Blues

One of the best SNL inspired movies ever; the car crashes are epic.

I Love The Discovery Channel

One of my favorite channels offers an ode unto itself:

Life Without Numbers

Scientists at MIT have discovered a living Amazonian language that doesn't include any words to express the idea of individual numbers:

An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of "one" or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT team led by professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson. The team found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers.

It is often assumed that counting is an innate part of human cognition, said Gibson, "but here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it's not useful in their culture, so they've never picked it up."

This is fascinating; imagine living so simply that there has never been any need in your life and the lives of everyone you know to have to keep specific count of anything. It seems that this tribe only counts quantities in a relativistic fashion, which suggests to me that they, unlike ourselves, are never really concerned with the things or material possessions that they don't or can't have. Quantifying relativistically says that they're only concerned with what they have at any given moment and are not worrying about how much of anything they've possessed in the past; this would also explain their problems with exact matching tasks requiring a memory component.

On a related note, it seems that the story from this post on a previously undiscovered tribe living in the Amazon was untrue; the tribe is real but the claims that they were unknown until the photos were taken were just lies told by the photographer to call attention to their plight in relation to the logging industry in Brazil. It's still a beautiful picture, nonetheless. His intentions were noble but these things usually come to light and just end up harming the credibility of others working towards the same ends. Anthropology is a fascinating science in and of itself and it should not tolerate any embellishment or false data corrupting it's pursuit of knowledge. At least that's how I feel.