Month: July 2005

Clothing

The other day Nat suggested that it would be funny to make a t-shirt with the slogan “e^2pi*i is the loneliest number” and when I figured out what he meant, a few minutes ago (the answer is “1”) it occurred to me that, while it might be funny to have a shirt with an alternate expression of “one” on it as the loneliest number, aren’t there other, lonelier numbers? I mean, could e^pi*i be lonelier? That’s got one less pi*i, and it’s negative. Or maybe i is really the loneliest number. It’s imaginary, you know. That’s gotta be pretty lonely.

Not in the New York Times

Someone pointed out to me that just linking to some random Times article is the highbrow equivalent of posting random quizzes nobody else cares about: it’s what you do when you have nothing interesting to say.

So, here’s two links to random crap that is not from the Times
The Poor Man parodies Powerline:

But, more importantly, the MSM seems to have conveniently forgotten about a little thing called 9/11, the day that everything changed forever. Sure, prior to 9/11, it was wrong for Michael Jackson to rape the shit out of little kids, and I am on the record saying so. But that innocent world is gone forever.

Stewie, from the Family Guy, hates on his babysitter’s boyfriend:

HA! I got your hat! Take that, hatless! Now go back to the quad and resume your hackey-sack tourney! I’m not going to lie down for some frat boy bastard with his damn Teva sandals and his Skoal Bandits and his Abercrombie and Fitch long-sleeve, open stitched, crew-neck henley smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpson episodes every night! Yes, we all love Mr. Plow – oh, you’ve got the song memorized, do you? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at one in the morning – the guy who just whiffed his way down the bar-skank ladder.

Poorly Constructed Polling Systems

According to Yahoo News, 2/3 of US adults believe in creationism. OK, that’s a little surprising, but also fair: probably 2/3 of the US is pretty religious and that means in most cases a creationist outlook: “God directly created mankind.”

What amuses me about the survey is that it opposes “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design” as though they were two distinct things. Participants were asked “Do you believe that humans evolved from earlier species, that humans were created directly by God, or that humans are so complex that something else must have created them (i.e. God, or maybe Xenu.)

So, you could really rephrase one of their subsequent questions “Which of the following things do you think should be taught in our science classes: “God,” “Something godlike,” or “Science.” If you chose “Science should be taught in science classes” you were apparently among the minority. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, the poll was totally broken.

I’m gonna guess it’s the polling. Because the alternative– that people don’t want science to be taught in science classes– is really just too terrible.

Good Content Online

Like technology journalism, a lot of motorcycle press focuses on cool crap, and pretty much ignores anything useful. Also it often requires you to pay for it. Good free sites include: Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, Motorcycle USA (see especially this article about why being in a hurry can be fatal), the Canada Motorcycle Guide Online, and Australia Motorcycle News (MCNews.com.au), which has a great review of the 2004 Thruxton I have been eyeing covetously.

Sneaky Jerks

As Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games have become big communities and big business, they have attracted their share of friendly share-and-share-alike nerds and bottom-feeding sharks.

One of the nice nerds set up a website called Thottbot, which, in addition to providing a giant database of hints, tips, tricks, maps, item statistics, quest details, etc. also has message boards and some RSS aggregation stuff and other neat details.

Of course, someone set up Thotbot, with one T, which is a scam run by an ad network targeted at MMORPG players, and somehow affiliated with a site that deals in virtual merchandise for real money.

Signs you’ve become a genuine trend and a useful web presence: someone starts trying to squat on easy misspellings of your domain name, polluting the information stream, and shitting all over your good name.

Fortunately, that’ll never happen to me.

BRING ME INCENSE AND SACRIFICIAL VIRGINS. ALSO SMALL UNMARKED BILLS.

A lot of people are convinced that vaccines caused their babies to develop autism. The belief is that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that contains very small amounts of mercury, could damage the brain or the immune system at a crucial time in child development. It’s plausible– but the amouts of mercury are so tiny that they don’t really do anything. And the evidence is against it: countries where thimerosal has been removed from vaccines have not seen any decline in autism. So, the evidence is more or less that babies show signs of autism around the same time they are being vaccinated. Maybe it’s caused by television, or breast-feeding, or sunlight, or solid foods? How about cute little hats? Maybe it’s caused by cute little hats.

Autism is definitely in the news, though, and a lot of people think we’re having some kind of epidemic. Probably not: we’re just diagnosing more severely retarded kids as autistic. Previously, they’d have been given other diagnoses. So, autism isn’t any more widespread than it used to be.

Lesson the First: vaccinate your kids, dumbass. Things like polio and rubella suck and are really caused by not vaccinating, whereas autism is unlikely to be affected by anything you do. People who refuse to vaccinate their kids based on this hysteria are no better than the superstitious folks in the third world who refuse to vaccinate their kids because they believe that the vaccines are a CIA plot to sterilize Arab babies.

I wish there were some kind of superstition about me, one involving me kicking your ass unless you give me lots of money. Not that I’d do it– I just want people to believe that I have supernatural powers and need to be appeased.